This is a fantastic post, very thought-provoking. But also very sad to me. I disagree with the underlying premise that success and happiness are somehow negatively correlated. There's this idea in the post that if you want to be uber-successful, you can't have a "normal" life.
I know very successful people who are miserable, stressed-out workaholics. And I know very successful people who could have been one of the people strolling around Sebastian when he was writing this post. I know people who run startups from their home office and take their kids to school in the morning. Hell, look at Sebastian's own situation: he apparently has enough time to sit and pontificate for a couple hours on a train platform in Japan, in the middle of the day. He can't be working THAT hard :) Maybe what he's trying to say is that you can't have the idyllic suburban family life if you want to float around the world living off of random consulting gigs? But there are probably quite a few very successful people here on HN that live relatively idyllic family lives in cities and suburbs all over the world.
I think the idea of feeling isolated for being very ambitious is true, but I would caution Sebastian and others against the idea that you have to sacrifice your connection to a community, your face-to-face relationships, your health, and your overall happiness on the alter of amassing $40m for an amorphous purpose like being able to build a shrine with 5% of your wealth or less. You certainly can sacrifice all those things, but most people will never amass $40m no matter what they sacrifice. Better to find something (and someone) that you love, work hard at it, and enjoy life. Yes, you should take chances, yes you should push yourself and be ambitious. But this is the only life you get; don't squander it living a life you don't enjoy because you're hoping for the big payoff down the road. It probably won't come.
I think you might be misunderstanding the post - or at least interpreting it differently than me.
I dont' think it's so much about success as it's about being different. Once you step over the cliff into the unknown there aren't that many people that will follow you. You become a loner, a misfit and a stranger to many people. Your desires, goals and interests drift away from normality, and thus you will eventually find yourself in a state of loneliness because there's noone else like you.
That's one of the ideas presented, and one that I agree with. That's part of why I think it's important to have people around you who are supportive in general, but also people who have similar goals and dreams. No matter how abnormal you are, there are probably many out there who can relate.
But that's only part of the post, and Sebastian seems to indicate that "being different" means not living the idyllic suburban family life. And not because he doesn't want it, but because he's driven and wants to succeed (like where he talks about $40m as being his number). And this is what I disagree with; you can be driven and successful and still have a happy family life. You can even live in suburbia! There are literally millions of millionaires in the world. There are almost a million households in the US with net worth of more than $5m. Most of those people live normal family lives. They don't all float around continents writing blog posts and attempting to win the lottery by trying to start a bank one month and sell a $2m government contract the next.
In fact, now that I'm thinking through this, I think what bums me out about this post is the idea that it doesn't really matter what you do as long as you get rich. I doubt Sebastian has any real interest in starting a bank or fulfilling a huge government contract. He just wants money, and it's not even clear why. I don't think that's a healthy way to live, that's all.
He just wants money, and it's not even clear why. I don't think that's a healthy way to live, that's all.
Reminds me of Ecclesiastes... "Whoever loves money never has money enough..." The entire book is full of wisdom on chasing the vanity of material goods and all that is "under the sun".
By all accounts, Solomon was a man who had everything the American dream could ever hope for - money, possessions, women, power, prestige... And yet from his position on high, he realized it was all meaningless. Pretty powerful.
"He just wants money, and it's not even clear why."
I'm not sure that's quie right; my takeaway was that he wants to create something awesome, and that the fact that it would likely be highly profitable is somewhere between a pleasant side effect and a way of keeping score.
Totally agree, the perspective Sebastian has indicates that he really doesn't have a lot of money- this kind of post is just way too immature.
I've done years of world traveling and met so many people that remind me of this guy its uncanny. They like to talk big, but that's about it. From an interview with this guy, question is "what is your profession?" Answer:
Entrepreneurship. Current company does technology, engineering, and business processes for a few different high margin fields. Two sets of business cards - one with "General Manager", the other with "CEO"
Oh really? What's your company? Do they have a website? What are the "high margin" fields? You write 8 million word blog posts about crows cawing in Miyagi prefecture but when it comes to what you do it's extremely vague and there's usually a reason for that. The huge numbers are for show and attention. $1k an hour! $40 million! Yeah. Right. Whatever, man.
This -- it's not that he's saying you can't be happy. He's saying it's like moving to a distant land, before there was even mail service. Your communication with the people who are emotionally close to you will begin to fray and finally (in most cases) stop altogether. You have to start over -- make new friends, begin a new life. You can't have the happy Truman-show-esque comfort things; they just aren't available to you in a recognizable form (at least not while you are morphing and changing, taking risks, moving around literally and figuratively).
I am reminded of the novel "Stranger In A Strange Land".
I think you have 'issues' if you can't be friends with people who live life a bit differently than you do. Those sound like very artificial barriers to me.
Perhaps you won't be 'best friends forever' or something, but it's healthy to have a variety of people in your social circle.
I think you're right that it's about being different. A disproportionate share of entrepreneurs are immigrants, for example. We are already used to being different, so we have less to lose.
All of this assumes a different definition of success than I have. It presumes wealth == success.
My definition: Being happy.
That comes with a loving family with strong relationships, intellectual challenges and growth, and work that I enjoy (and that pays the bills plus some), but where the job is a means not an end.
Conversely, if happiness is the sole metric by which you measure your success, unhappiness becomes a personal failure. Happiness is elusive and difficult to define, so I measure my success by my level of engagement in my work, and the value it creates for others (that last part is critical). If I'm excited about what I'm doing, and I'm doing it for any reason besides the paycheck, I consider myself successful.
> For many of us, it simply means having the bills paid and being able to do work we love, on our terms.
But not for all of us, and that was the whole point of the essay. He never says you have to buy into his definition of success, and he doesn't seem to begrudge the people in his Japanese suburban diorama their definition of happiness. In fact he's a bit wistful that it's not his definition.
Sebastian appears to have been thoughtful about his plans and as long as he doesn't give up (have a change of heart, lose motivation, etc) he'll get there. He'll go back to step1 and keep trying again. Giving up and not truly wanting what one thinks one wants, is the cause of not succeeding. Determination and relentless resourcefulness (eg http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html) is what leads to success, defined as "the accomplishment of an aim or purpose". If most people don't amass something, it is because most people don't truly want it: they have a flawed plan, don't iterate, and they give up. I'm with you Sebastian and maybe we are crazy.
Hmm.. I didn't really get that message. I think you're absolutely right. You don't have to sacrifice relationships, happiness, and certainly not health to be successful.
But when you're entrepreneurial, you often can't be content with living the "normal" life. You really want to be like one of those people in the suburbs: they're blissful (partially because they don't know the possibilities/opportunities you see).
But deep down, you know you have to follow your dreams. You often wish you could go back, but you know you can't. In a sense, you wish you had the mindset and experiences of "normal" people, so you didn't had this itch to achieve more.
This too -- I can identify precisely with this second paragraph. I can't be content with filling some kind of mould. But that's because I can see the mould, and it certainly isn't me.
Seeing possibilities is not something one necessarily chose to do - it was maybe the result of a great need at a time, but now that you're out of the mould, and you see you're a pot maker - not just the clay - the bets are off, because your dreams are different.
I think that's when meaning becomes important, in order to not be consumed by ambition. That's probably also when it becomes really important to make sure that you have both supportive and different people around you.
I know very successful people who are miserable, stressed-out workaholics. And I know very successful people who could have been one of the people strolling around Sebastian when he was writing this post. I know people who run startups from their home office and take their kids to school in the morning. Hell, look at Sebastian's own situation: he apparently has enough time to sit and pontificate for a couple hours on a train platform in Japan, in the middle of the day. He can't be working THAT hard :) Maybe what he's trying to say is that you can't have the idyllic suburban family life if you want to float around the world living off of random consulting gigs? But there are probably quite a few very successful people here on HN that live relatively idyllic family lives in cities and suburbs all over the world.
I think the idea of feeling isolated for being very ambitious is true, but I would caution Sebastian and others against the idea that you have to sacrifice your connection to a community, your face-to-face relationships, your health, and your overall happiness on the alter of amassing $40m for an amorphous purpose like being able to build a shrine with 5% of your wealth or less. You certainly can sacrifice all those things, but most people will never amass $40m no matter what they sacrifice. Better to find something (and someone) that you love, work hard at it, and enjoy life. Yes, you should take chances, yes you should push yourself and be ambitious. But this is the only life you get; don't squander it living a life you don't enjoy because you're hoping for the big payoff down the road. It probably won't come.