Ask HN: Thoughts on being “boring”

When I was in college I was pretty entrepreneurial. Since graduating and starting my career over the past few years, I've built a good foundation for myself (getting my own place, saving money, and growing in my career in a way that's complementary to my personal interests), and I'm now ramping back up to the levels of thinking and dreaming that I used to do (if not moreso).

Edit: relating to your mention of the importance of relationships, note that you need to make connections with people that do the things you're interested in and keep your mind oriented towards that. I have entrepreneurial and creative friends. You have your mentor. You might benefit from meeting people that are closer to you in terms of how far along they are on the path towards what you're interested in - people to grow with and mutually inspire and encourage.

I am working on another reinvention now and it will take a lot of time and a lot of work…. And I’ve still got some time and ability to work and a strong feeling of urgency because I don’t know how much I have left.

There may be a time you want to go back to startups but don’t do so in the interest of not being “boring”.

I've had a few cushy jobs that would have set me for life with good money and work life balance, and I quit them because I was bored af and felt like I was wasting my life. I don't regret it at all, but I'm definitely "behind" lots of my peers who have been happy to settle. If you can find fulfillment in a "boring" life, do it. To some extend it's miserable always looking for more. But it's also exciting and I personally wouldn't want to "settle" and would be miserable if I did. As I say, i don't think it's really a decision, it will depend on who you are and what you prioritize.

Spend your energy on what makes you happy.

When it comes to work, I prioritise a high money/effort ratio. I get paid well at a megacorp but I work normal hours and take it pretty easy while working. That's not to say I'm lazy but I'm not crazy ambitious like some of my colleagues.

Entrepreneurship really needs a lot of time, risk and dedication, so it's not for me.

I also want to be creative but I do that outside of work. I have a lot of varied hobbies.

Having a child changed my perspective. All I care about is max compensation for least amount of time consumed by work. As long as my manager/boss isn't an awful individual and there is no micromanagement I will be happy.

Eventually we might stumble on an idea and build something that takes off but it is ok to go about life just making six figures. Some people work harder than me for half of my salary.

There is nothing wrong with finding a state of being that is comfortable for you right now. Maybe this is what you need, right now. There is nothing that says this is how it will be from now on. You might quit and start something in 5 years, you might not. You might enjoy side projects or other creative endeavors alongside your job.

What you probably don’t want to lose is that creativity, that excitement. Again, that doesn’t need to look like a successful startup. It could look like a fun side project, a community effort you’re involved in, whatever. The point is, and I think this is a big realization for me from the past year (but what do I know I’m not even 30) is that you don’t need to put all your eggs in the job basket. It doesn’t need to be your primary creative outlet. I’m fact, it might be better if it isn’t tied to your livelihood.

Sorry if I’m way off the mark from where your head is at, but I hope thoughts like this are what you’re looking for. If not, my b!

You don’t have to take risks and financial sacrifices to be interesting. And being an entrepreneur isn’t the end all solution to happiness, no matter how many Steve Jobs movies they crank out.

Do good work, work that pays, that you're good at, that you can be proud of. Then go home. Switch off, and enjoy your hobbies. Learn an instrument, get good at cooking exotic foods, and find a workout routine you enjoy.

If you want to indulge your big ideas, read voraciously, and code up side-projects. Write a blog, or a book, or something like that. But don't try to make money from it. Betting your livelihood on your ideas puts too much pressure on, and you won't be happy. Most entrepreneurs aren't happy, not even the wealthy ones.

For now just enjoy the money, the relationships, take care of your body. You will need all of these when you go into your creative mid-life crisis bout.

Your mentor wishes they weren’t boring.

Nearly everybody’s boring (myself included). Don’t sweat it.

- Career-wise*, work with good people on something important, maybe switch it up every 3-5 years. That is under your control and steady. Professionally, daily wins/losses, keeping up with joneses, etc. don't matter when you can point to these. Likewise, your trajectory is largely kept on lock by your peers as well. Skipping out on any of these causes problems like you're finding. Doing lots of tiny things doesn't add up after a point, and instead distracts from getting anywhere on the good ones. Working with bad teams, bad companies, and bad projects make it hard to progress as well. So line up the basics and no longer a concern -- just progressing on the mission largely takes care of the rest.

- Same-but-different home-wise.

*This kind of advice doesn't apply to ultra-political orgs like FAANGS or say banks.

Literally the most important thing you can do in life is find that balance that works for you. Being an entrepreneur isn’t for everyone and there’s no shame in that.

Maybe take a step back and think “what would I regret not doing when I’m 30?” It might be start a family, travel the world, write a book. Or it might be start a business. But don’t push yourself into that direction just because someone said you can/should do it.

I can illustrate this with an example. Having started my career shortly before the pandemic, I realized that it was pretty unlikely I'd be able to build out my network or get sufficient investment as the pandemic trudged on. The social and physiological factors mattered less, so I chose to double down on my job and skipped a bit of the social and physiological maintenance I could have been doing.

As a result, I got really good at my job and accelerated my career and made a ton of impact. I got my career into a place that I'd be comfortable coasting at for the time being. And now I have the time to focus on those other factors, now that people are out and about and these things are beginning to matter again.

Being entrepreneurial will mean different things throughout your life. Until you have a network and the resources and the skills necessary to start your own thing, you may want to spend time building those things up rather than starting something from the outset and learning everything the hardest way possible. In 2018, Harvard Business Review suggested the average age of the successful startup founder was 45,[1] and YC's Winter 2018 stats show that the average applicant/founder age was ~30.[2] So at least there's some indication that you have some time between now and then.

And there's nothing wrong with taking smaller steps towards your goal. If you're looking to build up experience, you can work at a startup or start an open source project or look for leadership experience. You can do creative things without it necessarily being immediately entrepreneurial.

tl;dr: take it easy, work on making yourself more ready for opportunities, and adjust how you balance your life based on the opportunities that are actually available to you and actually worth taking.

1: https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...

2: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/yc-winter-2018-stats/

Our industry obsesses over successful entrepreneurs, and it's fine if that what you want to do, but don't let it blind you to everything else life has to offer.

Every decade or so you'll notice you're changing, you're not the same person. It's okay, it's part of life. Getting children for example will deeply change your perspective in life on what is important and what is frivolous society dreams.

As you're moving into a position of more stability, you might be wondering if this is it. And that's a normal thing to think about. The sudden feeling that a block falls into place demands whether or not this is a good thing after all. Shift your focus towards other things that may spark your interest. Working fast and hard is only a facet of modern life.

Do whatever makes you happy, or head in that direction and don't sweat the details. If however you feel you're headed in the wrong direction, then don't be afraid of bold moves. That's what never settling means; I don't think it means keep chasing your tail like wild pup. If one good thing falls into place, it's an opportunity to shift focus onto something else and try to excel there too.

"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble."

I'm in my late 30s and I find that energy ebbs and flows through life and career. Sometimes you are excited and energized and you can channel that for change. Other times you are down for whatever reason. Take care of your self, and learn how you do your best work.

You still believe, and have proof, that just about any one human can achieve incredible things. You know this because you have some hero who forewent significant parts of their lives in exchange for the mere lottery ticket of succeeding in the thing you admire them for. Many just like them failed at that same shot, and we are left without much reverence for the invisible graveyard of the almost-Jobs, almost-Gandhis, almost-Curies, et. al.

If the world was set up with immense reward in mind for those who change it for (let's not quibble on definitions, but:) the better, maybe human superstructures would have a lower baked-in resistance to change. Maybe. But the meager quantity of right-tail prizes available mean that most would hardly sacrifice a little comfort, let alone the sum totality of their possible lives they could live, for what? A lance lofted at a windmill.

If you wanted to give up everything and chase your big ideas, which at a young age, or even long from now, or tomorrow, you could. You could, seriously. And because you're on this forum you're probablistically understand risk scenarios enough to gauge the odds of success in exchange for your massive sacrifice.

I think about this all the time, too. Your average person will hardly give up the tiniest comfort, but how could we judge them or ourselves for it? It's not nature's fault nor ours that this same selfishness is how we killed to eat for all these millennia.

Anyone with too firm of an answer to this whole riddle fancies themselves a hegemon.