This one is true but with an opposite interpretation. And one work to make my point. When you turn 35 you'll see the difference between those who took STUPID risks and those who didn't.
There are smart risks (travel, education, loving hard, following dreams that have a way forward others, having a child by yourself when the clock is running out, divorcing the person who was the wrong person to marry in the first plane) and stupid ones which lead to the list in point 1. It is not a smart risk to trust the person who stole that money, risk your whole future when you are supposed to be building it up by doing the things that led to bankruptcy... Says a 67 year old woman who took lots of risks but never those.
I would think that depends on who answers. For me, his advice about not working in corporate at all doesn't fit many personalities. Many people don't have risk taking in their blood. Working for a company helps them to be a part of a team, learn how to lead, learn how to follow. Following isn't as horrible as he makes it out to be. The other one I disagree with is 'religion'. I get his disdain for organized religion. But believing in something bigger than yourself is important for a variety of reasons. That said, many of his points are spot on especially about having a child. I liked this post a great deal. Gave him a subscribe. Thank you!
Grouping all religions together is sloppy and unhelpful. On a guess he refers to Christianity as practiced by many. The right religion is great! Find a community and learn and engage and sing and become active to make a better world. It has to fit but Unitarian Universalist, bhai, some synogogogs. The right religion is really a joy.
It’s taken me a while to return to this. So here is my answer: Depends a lot on what you really feel is a fulfilling life. His hatred of religion is troubling. His loathing of a 9-5 doesn’t work for most. Obsession is interesting yet likely unfulfilling for the vast majority as only a few can get someone to pay them for their opinions. Getting married and having children SHOULD focus and fulfill, yet many see it as a burden, which is fine - in fact if your career / fun is what motivates you - I encourage no marriage or children - but not for the reasons you think. Saving money is critical and credit cards are evil. Try to do what you love - but realize you likely will do what people will pay you. Finally, be with someone you love and who loves you in return (DO NOT CHEAT- it’s narcissistic and a slap in the face to the one who lives you). My pillar’s of success: family, faith, finance. Do those well and you will be, IMHO, a successful human being.
Not the kind where you do shit that scares others, but are unbothered. I’m talking about the kind where you act against your every bit of your flight instincts. You do something that terrifies you, and if you survive, you are rewarded with another breath. The more you do these things, the more interesting you become. The more interesting you become, the less you care about what others think. The less you care, the more of your attention they want. The more they want, the more they pay.
Indeed. I could see the people that took risk by 35, but it was ten years later before the risks paid off in my friends that have been successful. Others are still toiling away.
lol yes I heard in a discussion on parenting last week someone saying that generally, men see children as pets since most of the (invisible) labour is done by women and that paragraph made me think of that
This was the dumbest one. Absolute, pure cope. I’m glad he enjoys being a parent and finds meaning there, but it is not pure joy all the time and it absolutely is the end of A LOT of freedoms. Every door you walk through in life closes a hundred others.
But where he's right, dead on the money, is that having a kid, always assuming that you actually do love and wish to raise him/her with as much potential for positive personal agency as possible---*THIS* focuses you, and answers any lingerimgs about the purpose of your life, if you had these sorts of questions.
Focuses you and motivates you like nothing else...
Haha, yeah, how old are his kids and how often does he see them? I love my kids and there's plenty of joy but there's also frustration and boredom and work involved.
And that's normal. If we want every moment to be pure joy, we'll break when things get hard. We either get mad at ourselves for not being perfect parents, or we put un-due pressure on our kids to be perfect that will destroy them, or their relationship with us, down the road.
As a parent who feels his share of frustration and anger and every other negative emotion that comes along with parenting, I also get what he’s saying here. Even in those moments, there’s a pure joy and aliveness underlying it all. It may not be ‘pure’ in the sense that it doesn’t include those negative emotions, but it is ‘pure’ in the sense that the complete, distilled essence of joy and love is still there, even at the hardest times. As far as the end if freedoms, sure, there are things that you can’t do anymore, or at least not without some serious planning ahead, but there are lots of things that we aren’t free to do because we have chosen a higher purpose. I don’t go on benders on Tuesday mornings even when I’m on vacation because it sucks and I end up feeling like shit and I have better things to do with my time. Do I lack freedom? On any given Tuesday, I might actually want to drink myself into oblivion, but I’ve chosen to commit to a better version of myself. I think parenting is, for most people, the same sort of commitment. Yes, it cuts you off from certain actions, but so does any choice or commitment. Freedom is in your ability to choose, and parenting is a choice, even if it can occasionally feel like a burden.
Let's chalk it up to hyperbole. It's true on a deeper level, it's just not literally true.
Parenthood is suffering, and suffering builds character. Character teaches you to find the joy in every aspect of life, including the suffering. So parenthood is the path to joy. From a certain point of view.
You may not realize it now and there are ups and downs but the joy outweighs the pain. But nothing can prepare you for losing your child just after they turned 34.
Actually, it is factually right! It may be hard and you may want to scream, but it’s still pure joy. The joy is just being covered up or masked temporarily because of your intolerance of how they act . (Or whatever the current show may be) it’s still pure joy. I have 3 kids and they all drive me nuts a lot of the time, but it’s still joy. If I didn’t have them then life wouldn’t be worth living. That’s how joyful parenting is. So what the actual fuck to you!
Disappear from public life but also obsessively comment on your tweets 14 hours a day to gain followers to never have to work another job. Writing on Substack is the definition of having a public life and without one you wouldn’t be making a living.
Really well written and I agree with many of your points. But: I wouldn't say that the corporate ladder is generally wrong, as you did in "9. No one who climbs the corporate ladder is happy."
I'm very happy working as a programmer in a fairly large company. It is fun, it pays the bills, and even though I know that the corporation will not care for any individual if things get worse, at least my day job makes me happy.
So I think everyone has to decide for themselves. Not every corporate job consists of sitting in a cubicle and doing meaningless stuff :)
I agree 100%. I have been working as a programmer/architect for many years in a corporate setting and I am very happy with my choice. I enjoy my work, do really interesting things and with pace of technological change I have had the equivalent of 4-5 different careers. Yes, I have been laid off twice due to cutbacks but each time I ended up with a better job. I’m not rich but it pays the bills very nicely and we have everything we need.
I agree with you, especially because not everyone needs to derive ultimate meaning from their work. I do think that a lot of people in the corporate world become miserable, but I think the biggest reason is that they become fearful. As he describes, they become too afraid to lose what they have so they don't act the way they want to. They just keep suppressing themselves and imagining they were somewhere else. Or they kill themselves trying to mold into someone else's picture of a perfect senior executive.
My problem with many places I've worked is that I genuinely want to provide value to the company, but often the leadership in the company doesn't see much value in myself or my ideas. If I felt like I had to stay in that environment forever because the money is too good, I would be incredibly miserable. Instead, I moved to a different career path making half what I used to, and I couldn't be happier. In this way, I think what he is generally getting at is accurate, don't think you *need* to climb the corporate ladder to be successful.
That’s really good to hear, actually. I am also on balance positive about my corporate employment, but unfortunately I can’t quite say that I’m very happy in it every day. Often I find myself enjoying what I do, but the constant frustrations arising from needing to think things out yet again from first principles, despite years of accumulated experience, leave me exhausted sometimes. On the other hand, I’m sure it exercises the mind and keeps me sharp. I think if I were a programmer I might enjoy the work just as you do. I explored that path until about age 13, but then found other interests and by the time I looked back, the technology had moved on.
Avoid being too busy to make time for the important stuff or accept invitations. Prioritize what you actually want to do. That was my interpretation of what the author wrote, and by contrast, I immediately nodded in agreement.
What I want to do is the interesting and important stuff, and doing that makes me busy. Sometimes having focus means scheduling events on my calendar to prioritize them and that makes me “busy”. Regardless of what you’re filling up your time with, even if it’s hobbies and friends that are making you busy, it’s an interesting choice to call it low status
I’m 37 and I urge the younger generations not to read anything with such an obvious clickbait title. People who write like this should be sent to a 20th century journalism school, but also get detention every day where they have to write “I WILL NOT BURY THE LEDE” 100 times on a blackboard (if the school doesn’t have one, one should be provided specifically for the task) before being allowed to go home.
Most religions are not cults, few religions are cults which is the one somehow you ended up, do not normalise extremism, overall good article but some of the points don't apply to everyone's career
Which religions aren’t? They capture you unwillingly when you’re too young to know any better, and then bake in fear and punishment if you try and leave or think for yourself. How many religions exist that start teaching you only when you’re an adult and can make decisions for yourself?
Lots of people enter the church at later ages and learn as adults. Especially now, when people are finding that “thinking for themselves” on moral matters has led to decadence and societal decay.
Not what I said, just pointing out that “thinking for oneself” is no guarantee of better moral outcomes or more fulfillment for the individual or society. Why do you think people turn to religion as adults? Is it because they are dumb and can’t think for themselves? Or because they recognize that religion gives them something that pure rationalism and individualism can’t?
I’d be concerned for someone who can’t find a moral compass without turning to a an institution that’s based on “trust me bro”. I get that religions provide people with a sense of community and belonging, but those religions have tenets of beliefs that are hard to square in the modern times of science, and general knowledge growth since the near-primitive times when religions were formed. Join a pickleball squad in your neighborhood if you want belonging and community, not a bronze age ponzi scheme.
I mean, at its core, Christianity is about having a relationship with Christ. That’s not something I can get from pickleball. Church isn’t just a community thing, though that’s one benefit. Many assumptions here to unpack, including that we’ve experienced a “knowledge increase” since ancient times. The Greeks invented the steam engine but didn’t see it was necessary to actually use it to benefit society, because they already had slaves. It’s only due to Christianity that people came to see the use in inventing things to better the lives of others. Centuries later, we have a scientific rationalism divorced from any sense of the divine that is essentially a Christian heresy. Your ability to believe in “science” and “knowledge” is downstream of one of the most influential religions in the world. But do go on believing it’s a “Ponzi scheme.”
Tune out of politics? There’s nothing intelligent about being clueless about the climate you live in, the suffering of others, and the decisions that will affect YOU.
I’m 52, I don’t poo poo on your lived experience. Was an interesting read and some may find this helpful, however as someone that had a notably different life path (I was raised in strict religious home, married and 4 great kids early, left religion at 40, divorced after a good marriage of 23 years which was the right call, lived my 20s in my 40s) and now have my best life from 45+ … I wouldn’t write what you’ve written here… (although #6 is super important!!) I don’t see it the way you do, especially about kids, but that doesn’t mean you or I am more “right” , to me , it just again shows me how each person and path is so unique and yet with common themes and different interpretations of them both.
My great wisdom to offer is this… the moment we think we know how someone else SHOULD be living THEIR life is the moment we show our hubris and limit our understanding of who that person is…. Cheers :)
I like maturing. The first sentence told me I wasn’t gonna agree with anything after written. 100 year old Ginseng is much more stronger and potent than a 10 year old one. It’s all in your minds. If you believe we are mortal beings, we will take every day as ‘we only live once.’ While I do love learning new things and challenging new tasks and ideas, its never because aging sucks. Aging is beautiful. Taking risks..I would word it differently - overcome fear to do what your heart desires.
As a 60 year old, most items are decent advice. Others not so much - but still, again learn as you mature.
I agree. 74 here. Some of this advice is great, not all.
60, and agree. Certainly worth reading, though.
33 and agree. Some is great, some terrible, some in between, and some I don't know
This one is true but with an opposite interpretation. And one work to make my point. When you turn 35 you'll see the difference between those who took STUPID risks and those who didn't.
There are smart risks (travel, education, loving hard, following dreams that have a way forward others, having a child by yourself when the clock is running out, divorcing the person who was the wrong person to marry in the first plane) and stupid ones which lead to the list in point 1. It is not a smart risk to trust the person who stole that money, risk your whole future when you are supposed to be building it up by doing the things that led to bankruptcy... Says a 67 year old woman who took lots of risks but never those.
Which ones are questionable ?
I would think that depends on who answers. For me, his advice about not working in corporate at all doesn't fit many personalities. Many people don't have risk taking in their blood. Working for a company helps them to be a part of a team, learn how to lead, learn how to follow. Following isn't as horrible as he makes it out to be. The other one I disagree with is 'religion'. I get his disdain for organized religion. But believing in something bigger than yourself is important for a variety of reasons. That said, many of his points are spot on especially about having a child. I liked this post a great deal. Gave him a subscribe. Thank you!
Grouping all religions together is sloppy and unhelpful. On a guess he refers to Christianity as practiced by many. The right religion is great! Find a community and learn and engage and sing and become active to make a better world. It has to fit but Unitarian Universalist, bhai, some synogogogs. The right religion is really a joy.
It’s taken me a while to return to this. So here is my answer: Depends a lot on what you really feel is a fulfilling life. His hatred of religion is troubling. His loathing of a 9-5 doesn’t work for most. Obsession is interesting yet likely unfulfilling for the vast majority as only a few can get someone to pay them for their opinions. Getting married and having children SHOULD focus and fulfill, yet many see it as a burden, which is fine - in fact if your career / fun is what motivates you - I encourage no marriage or children - but not for the reasons you think. Saving money is critical and credit cards are evil. Try to do what you love - but realize you likely will do what people will pay you. Finally, be with someone you love and who loves you in return (DO NOT CHEAT- it’s narcissistic and a slap in the face to the one who lives you). My pillar’s of success: family, faith, finance. Do those well and you will be, IMHO, a successful human being.
"Be a maniac", maybe?
Idk I’m kinda tempted to reply to a million people on X now lol
Bravery is the secret!
Not the kind where you do shit that scares others, but are unbothered. I’m talking about the kind where you act against your every bit of your flight instincts. You do something that terrifies you, and if you survive, you are rewarded with another breath. The more you do these things, the more interesting you become. The more interesting you become, the less you care about what others think. The less you care, the more of your attention they want. The more they want, the more they pay.
Be brave! Your opinion of yourself depends on it.
Yup. The sad part of that equation is getting so soon old and so late smart.
On the wrong side of 35
Indeed. I could see the people that took risk by 35, but it was ten years later before the risks paid off in my friends that have been successful. Others are still toiling away.
Ha what „every minute parenting is pure joy“— what the actual fuck? No, that’s factually wrong.
lol yes I heard in a discussion on parenting last week someone saying that generally, men see children as pets since most of the (invisible) labour is done by women and that paragraph made me think of that
I read that paragraph and ran to check if it was a woman writing😭
THIS!
Amen
This was the dumbest one. Absolute, pure cope. I’m glad he enjoys being a parent and finds meaning there, but it is not pure joy all the time and it absolutely is the end of A LOT of freedoms. Every door you walk through in life closes a hundred others.
But where he's right, dead on the money, is that having a kid, always assuming that you actually do love and wish to raise him/her with as much potential for positive personal agency as possible---*THIS* focuses you, and answers any lingerimgs about the purpose of your life, if you had these sorts of questions.
Focuses you and motivates you like nothing else...
Yeah exactly. Having children absolutely ruins certain parts of your life but it does open other doors that would have otherwise not been opened.
I think he is the father. I don't know one woman who feels that way. Men don't have the same burden as women in parenthood.
Haha, yeah, how old are his kids and how often does he see them? I love my kids and there's plenty of joy but there's also frustration and boredom and work involved.
And that's normal. If we want every moment to be pure joy, we'll break when things get hard. We either get mad at ourselves for not being perfect parents, or we put un-due pressure on our kids to be perfect that will destroy them, or their relationship with us, down the road.
The video game one? It seems excessive. It’s okay to play video games as a 40 year old, don’t listen to him.
As a parent who feels his share of frustration and anger and every other negative emotion that comes along with parenting, I also get what he’s saying here. Even in those moments, there’s a pure joy and aliveness underlying it all. It may not be ‘pure’ in the sense that it doesn’t include those negative emotions, but it is ‘pure’ in the sense that the complete, distilled essence of joy and love is still there, even at the hardest times. As far as the end if freedoms, sure, there are things that you can’t do anymore, or at least not without some serious planning ahead, but there are lots of things that we aren’t free to do because we have chosen a higher purpose. I don’t go on benders on Tuesday mornings even when I’m on vacation because it sucks and I end up feeling like shit and I have better things to do with my time. Do I lack freedom? On any given Tuesday, I might actually want to drink myself into oblivion, but I’ve chosen to commit to a better version of myself. I think parenting is, for most people, the same sort of commitment. Yes, it cuts you off from certain actions, but so does any choice or commitment. Freedom is in your ability to choose, and parenting is a choice, even if it can occasionally feel like a burden.
Let's chalk it up to hyperbole. It's true on a deeper level, it's just not literally true.
Parenthood is suffering, and suffering builds character. Character teaches you to find the joy in every aspect of life, including the suffering. So parenthood is the path to joy. From a certain point of view.
I agree with you. saw that as a rage bait.
You may not realize it now and there are ups and downs but the joy outweighs the pain. But nothing can prepare you for losing your child just after they turned 34.
Im so sorry for your loss. I cant fucking imagine.
Actually, it is factually right! It may be hard and you may want to scream, but it’s still pure joy. The joy is just being covered up or masked temporarily because of your intolerance of how they act . (Or whatever the current show may be) it’s still pure joy. I have 3 kids and they all drive me nuts a lot of the time, but it’s still joy. If I didn’t have them then life wouldn’t be worth living. That’s how joyful parenting is. So what the actual fuck to you!
Not to sound too harsh, but I think when we will be on the end of our stories we will change that opinion :)
Some good advice and a lot of terrible advice. Great headline though. Drew me in.
Disappear from public life but also obsessively comment on your tweets 14 hours a day to gain followers to never have to work another job. Writing on Substack is the definition of having a public life and without one you wouldn’t be making a living.
The strongest animal on the planet eats between 2500 and 3000lbs of krill per day, not plants.
Really well written and I agree with many of your points. But: I wouldn't say that the corporate ladder is generally wrong, as you did in "9. No one who climbs the corporate ladder is happy."
I'm very happy working as a programmer in a fairly large company. It is fun, it pays the bills, and even though I know that the corporation will not care for any individual if things get worse, at least my day job makes me happy.
So I think everyone has to decide for themselves. Not every corporate job consists of sitting in a cubicle and doing meaningless stuff :)
I agree 100%. I have been working as a programmer/architect for many years in a corporate setting and I am very happy with my choice. I enjoy my work, do really interesting things and with pace of technological change I have had the equivalent of 4-5 different careers. Yes, I have been laid off twice due to cutbacks but each time I ended up with a better job. I’m not rich but it pays the bills very nicely and we have everything we need.
I agree with you, especially because not everyone needs to derive ultimate meaning from their work. I do think that a lot of people in the corporate world become miserable, but I think the biggest reason is that they become fearful. As he describes, they become too afraid to lose what they have so they don't act the way they want to. They just keep suppressing themselves and imagining they were somewhere else. Or they kill themselves trying to mold into someone else's picture of a perfect senior executive.
My problem with many places I've worked is that I genuinely want to provide value to the company, but often the leadership in the company doesn't see much value in myself or my ideas. If I felt like I had to stay in that environment forever because the money is too good, I would be incredibly miserable. Instead, I moved to a different career path making half what I used to, and I couldn't be happier. In this way, I think what he is generally getting at is accurate, don't think you *need* to climb the corporate ladder to be successful.
That’s really good to hear, actually. I am also on balance positive about my corporate employment, but unfortunately I can’t quite say that I’m very happy in it every day. Often I find myself enjoying what I do, but the constant frustrations arising from needing to think things out yet again from first principles, despite years of accumulated experience, leave me exhausted sometimes. On the other hand, I’m sure it exercises the mind and keeps me sharp. I think if I were a programmer I might enjoy the work just as you do. I explored that path until about age 13, but then found other interests and by the time I looked back, the technology had moved on.
Big disagree on the “avoid being busy”. I am busy because my life is filled with rich hobbies and friends. What else could busy mean?!
Yeah I was confused about that too…be maniacal and obsessive about the way you pursue your interests but also avoid being busy…what
Avoid being too busy to make time for the important stuff or accept invitations. Prioritize what you actually want to do. That was my interpretation of what the author wrote, and by contrast, I immediately nodded in agreement.
What I want to do is the interesting and important stuff, and doing that makes me busy. Sometimes having focus means scheduling events on my calendar to prioritize them and that makes me “busy”. Regardless of what you’re filling up your time with, even if it’s hobbies and friends that are making you busy, it’s an interesting choice to call it low status
Yeah, that one seems to contradict virtually every other point he makes...
I’m 37 and I urge the younger generations not to read anything with such an obvious clickbait title. People who write like this should be sent to a 20th century journalism school, but also get detention every day where they have to write “I WILL NOT BURY THE LEDE” 100 times on a blackboard (if the school doesn’t have one, one should be provided specifically for the task) before being allowed to go home.
I love this comment! 😆
Most religions are not cults, few religions are cults which is the one somehow you ended up, do not normalise extremism, overall good article but some of the points don't apply to everyone's career
Which religions aren’t? They capture you unwillingly when you’re too young to know any better, and then bake in fear and punishment if you try and leave or think for yourself. How many religions exist that start teaching you only when you’re an adult and can make decisions for yourself?
Lots of people enter the church at later ages and learn as adults. Especially now, when people are finding that “thinking for themselves” on moral matters has led to decadence and societal decay.
So people shouldn’t be thinking for themselves?
Not what I said, just pointing out that “thinking for oneself” is no guarantee of better moral outcomes or more fulfillment for the individual or society. Why do you think people turn to religion as adults? Is it because they are dumb and can’t think for themselves? Or because they recognize that religion gives them something that pure rationalism and individualism can’t?
I’d be concerned for someone who can’t find a moral compass without turning to a an institution that’s based on “trust me bro”. I get that religions provide people with a sense of community and belonging, but those religions have tenets of beliefs that are hard to square in the modern times of science, and general knowledge growth since the near-primitive times when religions were formed. Join a pickleball squad in your neighborhood if you want belonging and community, not a bronze age ponzi scheme.
I mean, at its core, Christianity is about having a relationship with Christ. That’s not something I can get from pickleball. Church isn’t just a community thing, though that’s one benefit. Many assumptions here to unpack, including that we’ve experienced a “knowledge increase” since ancient times. The Greeks invented the steam engine but didn’t see it was necessary to actually use it to benefit society, because they already had slaves. It’s only due to Christianity that people came to see the use in inventing things to better the lives of others. Centuries later, we have a scientific rationalism divorced from any sense of the divine that is essentially a Christian heresy. Your ability to believe in “science” and “knowledge” is downstream of one of the most influential religions in the world. But do go on believing it’s a “Ponzi scheme.”
Tune out of politics? There’s nothing intelligent about being clueless about the climate you live in, the suffering of others, and the decisions that will affect YOU.
I’m 52, I don’t poo poo on your lived experience. Was an interesting read and some may find this helpful, however as someone that had a notably different life path (I was raised in strict religious home, married and 4 great kids early, left religion at 40, divorced after a good marriage of 23 years which was the right call, lived my 20s in my 40s) and now have my best life from 45+ … I wouldn’t write what you’ve written here… (although #6 is super important!!) I don’t see it the way you do, especially about kids, but that doesn’t mean you or I am more “right” , to me , it just again shows me how each person and path is so unique and yet with common themes and different interpretations of them both.
My great wisdom to offer is this… the moment we think we know how someone else SHOULD be living THEIR life is the moment we show our hubris and limit our understanding of who that person is…. Cheers :)
I bet your life experience must be very rich and colorful
Nice AI photo, hack
I’d bet all my money and worldly possessions (and I have a lot of baseball cards) that this guy Tim Denning has never read a novel by Edith Wharton.
Having kids at 35 is ending your life in your thirties. Those who say “it gives you purpose” didn’t have a purpose before that, I suppose.
Too many. Narrow it down. Brilliant idea. But too many.
10 commandments. 10- not 20, 30 etc.
You had me until about 15.
I like maturing. The first sentence told me I wasn’t gonna agree with anything after written. 100 year old Ginseng is much more stronger and potent than a 10 year old one. It’s all in your minds. If you believe we are mortal beings, we will take every day as ‘we only live once.’ While I do love learning new things and challenging new tasks and ideas, its never because aging sucks. Aging is beautiful. Taking risks..I would word it differently - overcome fear to do what your heart desires.