Ask HN: Thoughts on being “boring”

I’m also late 20s, have enjoyed some startup chaos, and have come to similar points regarding contentment derived from relationships and coming to terms with my limits and finitude. I’ve thought “Am I giving up? Am I just doing the easy thing so I can live comfortably? At the cost of my dreams/ambitions/yearning?” Which seems like what your mentor has named “boring”. But I don’t think it’s quite that simple.

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!

If you want to be "exciting" (the opposite of boring) you'll always feel like you aren't living up to your potential; just like how power lifters always think their muscles are small and anorexic instagram models don't think they're skinny enough. Balance is much more rewarding.

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.

Be boring, start a family, focus on obligations and responsibilities.

Less is more, especially later:

- 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.

As with engineering, it's all tradeoffs. It's important to keep your "economic, social, and physiological" factors in check, and it's important to keep growing and keep pushing your limits to become better at the things you're interested in; the most important thing to do is to keep those things in balance, and adjust that balance when opportunities arise.

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/