The days are long but the decades are short (2015)

[JadedEngineer]

Here's something these posts never touch on: dealing with the inevitable routine and the boredom that comes with it. You always read that life is short, seize the moment, etc. and I call BS. I like to think I did all that, I'm well under 40 and have really travelled the world, succeeded professionally, lived in 10 countries, did everything I ever wanted to do. And now what? The problem with achieving things is that you run out of goals. I find it harder and harder to find things that excite me. I have no desire to network aggressively with "smart people" like these posts tell you to. What's the point, ultimately more opportunities i.e. money? That doesn't motivate that much anymore. I want that feeling back, the anticipation when I was about to go to a new place or have a new experience. That's the most precious thing there is and I miss it.

[stn8188]

I feel you, there's a certain feeling of ephemeralness if you step back and think about it that way. Put another way, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away".

The thing that changed this for me is, no joke, having kids. This brought me away from the feeling that life is fleeting with little point to the minuscule things I may accomplish and showed me a grander scale. As an engineer, I'll never be a Maxwell, Shannon, etc., but I can raise the generation to come in a way that - though I may never know it - could have an incredible influence on the world.

[belugacat]

That’s why there’s a biological impulse to procreate, such that by the time you’ve reached your 30s/40s your main drive is not to fulfill your own goals, but help tiny humans navigate the world and fulfill their own. That becomes your metagoal, and adding a 25th stamp to your passport or getting 100 more stars on your GitHub library doesn’t seem to matter as much.

[et-al]

How did you do these things, though? E.g. traveling is incredibly easy nowadays with smartphones and flying by plane. Have you biked across Euroasia with no internet access and and paper guidebooks? There's a good chance that magic of not knowing what comes next will come back when you ditch the GPS and internet.

btw, I know the other commenters mean well with sharing their experiences, but to be blunt, folks should not be having kids because there's something missing.

[hammyhavoc]

Then you're one of the lucky few.

The truth is that a dream isn't meant to be reached or achieved, it's meant to inspire people to do more than just sit around under trees smoking pot all day. It's a nice lie they tell themselves as to why they're trading time with their families for time at the office.

[smegsicle]

> The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.

[dang]

Related:

The days are long but the decades are short (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26065466 - Feb 2021 (73 comments)

The days are long but the decades are short (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20903714 - Sept 2019 (33 comments)

The days are long but the decades are short – Sam Altman - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20668835 - Aug 2019 (1 comment)

Sam Altman: 36 Life Lessons I Learned Before the Age of 30 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9491492 - May 2015 (3 comments)

The days are long but the decades are short - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9454440 - April 2015 (387 comments)

[atleastoptimal]

Should a prerequisite to every successful tech person advice list include "Be 99th percentile IQ or higher"?

All these people go to schools and work environments where they exclusively interact with incredibly intelligent people. Do they really know just how mediocre the average person is? Or is the average person implicitly written off with respect to any sort of prodigious success.

[dragonwriter]

95th percentile wealth and 90th percentile IQ is probable better than the reverse or 99th percentile IQ alone, if you want to succeed in any business, including tech.

[ZephyrBlu]

Eh, 95th percentile is probably more reasonable. You don't have to be super smart to be successful. In tech you probably have to be pretty smart, but I think being from a well-off family is more important in most cases.

[comte7092]

The hubris on this site never ceases to amaze.

That one would assume these people are solely in the place they are due to exceptional intelligence and merit and not a combination of luck, connections and a degree of hard work and talent just shows how much of a bubble tech is.

The meritocracy myth rages on.

[blackoil]

Depends on your definition of successful. Will these advice help make you next tech billionaire. Most probably no, that requires too many dices to land in your favour.

But all of these advice while not novel and may sound superficial, will make you more happier and more successful if followed.

e.g. a ~20%(adjust by country/age) CAGR in income will make most feel monetarily successful no matter what the start point is. Spending less time on TV and more with family/friends will for most give them more happiness. Working hard may not be enough but almost always a pre-requisite.

[thatguyknows]

Can you list one invention or idea that Sam has had that requires 99th percentile IQ?

[weekendvampire]

I'm always surprised by how often advice from extremely successful people tends to repeat itself, which tells me that there really is no "secret" to making it and living a great life that I don't already know.

[zamfi]

Yes, implementing this kind of advice is much harder than merely reading it.

[musicale]

The secret to becoming extremely successful is to already be extremely successful.

[dahwolf]

It's like combining the advise of Schwarzenegger, Dr Phil, Yoda, a random tech bro's substack, life-hack Youtube stars, and more.

None of the advise is incorrect of course, it's just that the sum is unattainable and at times contradicting. It basically says: here's 20 balls. Now juggle them up in the air, don't let any of them drop.

That being said, your 20s are special. It's indeed the decade where you have the most energy versus the least responsibilities. Don't take your 20s in slow or tame mode.

[woodruffw]

As another commenter points out: the advice is not contradictory only if you’re stinking rich, as the people who tend to write these posts tend to be.

[angarg12]

On 5): The most transformative step in my journey up the class ladder was when money stopped being a source of problems and instead became a way to solve problems.

[SoftTalker]

I have plenty of money (relatively speaking, I don't make FAANG money but I don't worry about paying the rent or saving for a rainy day). I have real trouble spending it though. It almost causes me physical pain to spend money on something I don't regard as essential. I don't like to travel, or eat expensive meals, or go to movies, concerts, shows, etc because I hate to spend the money on it. Don't know what the root of that is, but it bothers other people more than it bothers me.

The hobbies I have are similarly frugal: fixing stuff, repairing old cars, where I feel I've gained some value for the time spent.

[dionidium]

Sam Altman went to a high school that costs $32,800 per year. His "journey up the class ladder" started on a rung where money isn't an issue.

https://www.jburroughs.org/admissions/tuition-affordability

[aziaziazi]

Also on 5)

> Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom

This is true outside of your work but not so much during it:

- when you makes lots of money you feel less free to resign than for a shitty interchangeable job. It’s even more true as the shitty job has less chance to be intellectually interesting

- building your own business usually means you’re even less free mentally as you got more responsibilities

- if you’re got employee it’s even worse : you’ve got more legal obligations and probably moral implications.

Money can buy a lots of thinks but certainly not freedom.

[winphone1974]

Don't know if Sam has young kids, aged parents or dependents who require extra help but if you do #1 will consume pretty much 100% of your life, if you're not independently wealthy. Good luck with anything else from this list.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

It all comes down to being in the right network. When his Loopt startup failed he had to be in the right network to fail upwards. Most people lack that network. I think the IQ and the hard work bits are common.

[ZephyrBlu]

Yeah, luck and opportunity is generally bestowed upon you by someone else not generated out of thin air.

[voidhorse]

It's a bit silly for me to raise this stance on this website, but I'm so sick and tired of tech luminaries giving life advice.

It's all so flat and tasteless. It lacks character, it assumes such basic goals for human beings as happiness or money. They all write like they're handing in some kind of flavorless college freshman's book report.

I don't know where the truly philosophical individuals are these days but they certainly aren't heading up tech companies.

Want life advice? Start looking into the history of philosophy and read it widely and deeply. The words are powerful and there's no underlying assumption that life is reducible to making it out the best way we can in the current dominant socio-economic structure; they actually suggest that, gasp dominant systems and structures might not be serving people well. People actually believed in this thing called meaning and thought about how to pursue it beyond fulfilling prescribed roles and desires.

It's so arrogant of these founders to suggest that their personal experience in capitalism is extractable to some set of general principles worthy of moralization. Worse, they do it with the literary style of a lemming. At least the moralists of the 16th and 17th centuries knew how to construct a pithy, catchy aphorism when they were dolling out vague advice. Sheesh.

[asdfman123]

The trick is spending a decade or more of your life inside of an office to the exclusion of virtually every other activity.

Your success will convince you you’re a genius, qualified to comment on anything, but you will have completely killed anything inside yourself that doesn’t involve corporate advancement.

[quickthrower2]

All the timescales are short for me: seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades.

I am not joking. Now going to the gym is 'easier' vs 20 years ago, because an hour at the gym doesn't seem like much time.

[aschearer]

And sometimes the days are short, too.

Nice list, though. Happy birthday and good luck on your journey, Sam.

[koolba]

> Summers are the best.

If you take nothing else from this repost, let this really sink in.

And for those of us in the northern hemisphere, you should have a plan by this point in the year for your work life to truly enjoy it when it arrives.

[m463]

One time at work years ago, at our group meeting our manager said "and these are the things we'll be working on this summer".

It sort of stopped me in my tracks. I looked out the window at the green outside and thought of being stuck indoors working on a bunch of milestones and goals and... sigh.

[randallsquared]

The bestness of summers varies widely by location. On the US east coast, summers are best only north of New Jersey. ;)

[aecorredor]

How is this up here when I turn 30 tomorrow? Brah…

[block_dagger]

Reminds me of Meditations, also an excellent read.

[fauxreb]

The thing about Meditations is that it's advice from a Roman Emperor, and, at first blush, more important than the advice of a 30 y.o. tech bro.

But only a few years later Altman has more influence and power than even Aurelius in his time.

We should all read Montaigne instead, the reflections of a man 1400 years later, isolated, considering his influence and how he lives/lived in the world.

[fnordpiglet]

37. When doing non profit work, always be ready to take the profit.

[rvz]

38. After selling and hyping the poison (ChatGPT), also sell its antidote (WorldCoin).

[jeron]

fun fact, this saturday is Sam's birthday

[mdriley]

(2015)

[dang]

Added. Thanks!

[garbagecoder]

0. Thirty is too young to give life advice.

[burcs]

This is a bad take. It's like paying people based on years of experience vs. talent and output.

[MattRix]

Clearly it isn’t, since this is a good list.