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A personal story in support of what @Daojoan is saying here:
At 23, less than 2 years into my first job out of college, I quit to spend several months traveling North & Central America and sleeping on friends’ couches. I’m so glad I did.
At 27, having saved money by living in a tiny apartment, I took an entire year off to devote to music and…whatever. And I’m so glad I did, because “whatever” turned out to be…
…taking Argentine tango lessons, because I like Astor Piazzolla and why not, and a random person showed up to check out the lessons one night, and now we’re married, have a kid, and have been together coming up on 20 years.
And I took another break at 31 to go teach a course for fun, which turned into a second career.
And I took another break from work to record The Broken Mirror of Memory and tour it with Pat O’Keefe.
And another to spend •real• time with my new infant.
And and and…
2/
If I’d taken hustle-bro-dude’s advice and done nothing but “work my butt off at the beginning,” everything I love most in my life — my kid, my spouse, my music, my teaching, my creative software work, all of it — would be…well, it wouldn’t be.
Thank you so much, younger me, for giving me the life I have now.
Thank you, younger me, for living as if life’s not all work.
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My anti-hustle-bro advice for folks at the starts of their careers, in case anyone wants it:
• Your job is to live. Make your life your priority.
• Unfortunately, yes, living involves money — and much of early adulthood is about cultivating a healthy relationship with money. Greed is not healthy. Spite is not healthy. What is healthy? Having an “enough.” Knowing what “enough” is for you, and being practical about it.
4/
• Set healthy boundaries around what you give of your time, energy, health (physical and psychological). Sometimes it can be fun to go hard, to dig in and do the crunch — for a job, for a personal endeavor, whatever! Just be mindful. Know where your boundaries are. Figure it out. They’re a whole hell of a lot easier to set when you’re young.
5/
• The best financial advice I ever got: As people earn more, they tend to take on more non-discretionary expenses. Those box you in, because they’re hard to shed. If you’re short on money, you can just stop eating out so much, but you can’t just stop paying an expensive mortgage. Live like a college student for as long as you can! If you have the good fortune of extra money, use it to pay off debts.
6/
@inthehands yeah, I've always found that quite a number of people ignore this side of the "wealth" equation. (Not ignoring that for many people there's a certain amount of privilege in being able to do this)
@paulcox It’s absolutely a privilege (see subsequent post in thread), and it’s one that we encourage people to waste.