I turned 35 a few months back and I've thought the past couple of years were my best yet, with more best to come. I had kids early-ish (my daughter is about to turn 12) and people would always say I missed fun stuff in my 20s. The way I look at it is my kids will be out of the house in my mid-40s while everybody else is getting older _and_ dealing with kids. I'm living in my favorite city, doing kickass things at work, getting less afraid to do more interesting/scary things all the time. I laugh in the faces of kids who think life ends after 29.
Does life end after 35?
131–140 of 228 posts
Re: Does life end after 35?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know it is trite to say, "No one can afford having a kid." but it's really the truth. For me, sure daycare, toys, and food aren't putting me in the poorhouse, but there is no way I can bankroll everything I think my kids deserve.
My problem is my house is 50mq with just one bedroom, and I can't still afford moving to a larger one. Where larger means 2 bedrooms. Context: in Italy you are supposed to own a house vs renting one. Everything in the society and regulations is organized towards owning it vs renting.
We lived in a small apartment when we had our first. It was simply a choice we made, we wanted to be somewhat younger when our kids grew up. Now we have a house, and I think not starting right off with everything made me appreciate things more.
There's others that do it the other way too. It just depends upon your's and your other half's choice.
Re: Does life end after 35?
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I came up with the idea for my startup when I was 47. I don't expect it to be able to make a living at it until I'm 49. Age? Pffth. Then again, I'm not hacking together "Facebook for cats" and hoping for some zeitgeist to make it magically successful while buckets of venture capital rain down on my head, either. A college kid would never have come up with what I'm building, because they wouldn't realize the problem I…
"A college kid would never have come up with what I'm building, because they wouldn't realize the problem I'm trying to solve actually exists." This is such a key point. Sometimes it takes years, if not decades, of experience to even know that the problem exists. Put another way, if the problem can be solved by a 22-year-old with no experience in the field, there's a good chance they've misunderstood the problem.
... And years of work experience to understand organizational dynamics to setup a healthy business helps too. It's more than the idea that matters, but can you build and run the team that will make that idea a reality. I know that when I was fresh out of college I didn't understand organizational dynamics at all. I've read many examples of young startups failing because of rookie management mistakes.
Re: Does life end after 35?
#134A similar question was asked on Quora recently: https://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/What-do-people-in-Silic... Some of the companies and founders' ages compiled from the answers: - Zynga: 41 - LinkedIn: 36 - Salesforce: 35 - Intel: 41, 39 - Qualcomm: 52, 50 - Juniper Networks: 42 - Wikipedia: 35 - Pandora: 35 - GigaOm: 39 - Zipcar: 42 - TechCrunch: 35 - Craigslist: 42 - Netflix: 37
To clarify, that's founders age at founding. Not curret age of founder.
Re: Does life end after 35?
#135A similar question was asked on Quora recently: https://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/What-do-people-in-Silic... Some of the companies and founders' ages compiled from the answers: - Zynga: 41 - LinkedIn: 36 - Salesforce: 35 - Intel: 41, 39 - Qualcomm: 52, 50 - Juniper Networks: 42 - Wikipedia: 35 - Pandora: 35 - GigaOm: 39 - Zipcar: 42 - TechCrunch: 35 - Craigslist: 42 - Netflix: 37
I know that LinkedIn culturally didn't work crazy hours to get where they were - does anyone know, are any others listed that started out as '9-5' organizations?
I am skeptical of the 60-80 hours thing. It seems like more of a macho thing than a real requirement. The problem is that when you workaholic yourself your productivity per unit time drops, so you're spending more hours but doing as much as you might do in shorter bursts of more focused time. In some cases it's worse... you get total burnout.
Re: Does life end after 35?
#136Yeah. I'm dead.
Re: Does life end after 35?
#137In the west everything is more focused on the individual. I have to succeed at X. I deserve Y. I have to put my stamp on the world. etc. etc. Not sure this is the best path to happiness.
Unfortunately even though its not, its soon becomes for you when others start doing that.
A few days back, I remember there was a story posted here about a fisher man living the good life, and having the best of time with family, friends and leisure. Only that later another fisher man helped by a business guy started working extra hours, sets up his own company, establishes a monopoly and employs the first fisher man. Soon the first guy sees though he didn't want any of it, he is now a part of that very system.
For philosophical sort of happiness to work, we all need to go into some sort of equilibrium without ever breaking a few rules that are necessary to preserve the equilibrium. That is neither possible, nor good for the larger fate of our society.
Re: Does life end after 35?
#138I turned 40 last year, and I am loving it. I miss the physical resilience of being in my 20s, but I wouldn't trade where I am now to go back to my 20s. I grew up relatively sheltered in New England, and moved to NYC to teach as soon as I graduated from college. I spent my 20s teaching in the city and bicycling around North America in the summers. At 29, I moved to Alaska. I spent my 30's climbing mountains, doing mou…
You guys have trouble getting dates with attractive girls?
Most people around the age of 40 have morphed that question into a different one to match their changing interests and needs.
Re: Does life end after 35?
#139I turned 40 last year, and I am loving it. I miss the physical resilience of being in my 20s, but I wouldn't trade where I am now to go back to my 20s. I grew up relatively sheltered in New England, and moved to NYC to teach as soon as I graduated from college. I spent my 20s teaching in the city and bicycling around North America in the summers. At 29, I moved to Alaska. I spent my 30's climbing mountains, doing mou…
You guys have trouble getting dates with attractive girls?
As we get older the "attractiveness balance" shifts from the young women to the older men. One of the things I wish someone explained to me as hopeless youth.
Re: Does life end after 35?
#140What a great article. I loved the Chinese idiom too (or whatever you call those four-character things). It's funny, I was watching a video on this today: http://www.wimp.com/getfit/ That made me feel a bit more realistic about life. :-)
Those idioms are called "chengyu" (成语) and there are hundreds (or thousands) of them. Some of them come from ancient Chinese stories and poems and are pretty allegorical in nature; others, like (seemingly) the one mentioned in the article, are self-explanatory (to a Chinese speaker).