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The days are long but the decades are short

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#11

Post by vinceguidry »

kungfooey wrote: post #6

Are we really at the point where a 30 year old can offer sage advice on living life? Wow. As a counterpoint to "be the best you can be in your profession": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIJdFxYlEKE [PyCon keynote by Jacob Kaplan-Moss on 'mediocre developers'].

There's advice smart 30 year olds give, advice smart 40 year olds give, advice smart 50 year olds give, and so on. Each decade tends to revolve around the same themes. All of it is worthwhile stuff to pay attention to, particularly from someone whose accomplished the sorts of things people aspire to in that decade.

Even the people who haven't accomplished much can still have worthwhile things to say about life. My father's had a hard, hard life. His advice isn't really good in terms of success, but rather as a "don't do the kinds of crap I did" sort of thing. Our lives are different enough that little of it is actionable, but I still listen to it, even if he thinks I don't.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#15

Post by nine_k »

kungfooey wrote: post #6

Are we really at the point where a 30 year old can offer sage advice on living life? Wow. As a counterpoint to "be the best you can be in your profession": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIJdFxYlEKE [PyCon keynote by Jacob Kaplan-Moss on 'mediocre developers'].

Being wise has some, but not very strong, correlation with age. You don't have to be very old to give wise advice. No amount of being old makes you wise; experience and contemplation could.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#17

Post by sz4kerto »

amackera wrote: post #4

Sam seems so wise, even for somebody so young! Everything he writes is a pleasure to read. Calm, considered, sometimes controversial, but always worth digesting.

Many 20 yo liberal arts students (sorry, exaggerating here) could come up with a list like that but nobody would care because they're not the head of YCombinator. With Status comes authority, with authority comes self confidence and with that comes the feeling of wisdom.

This is a good list, worth reading and talking about it; but for me wisdom means non-trivial, sometimes contraintuitive deep insight. Wisdom needs intelligence, experience and perspective (that mostly equals age). If you take any of these three out then it's usually not wisdom.

Or maybe I'm totally wrong because I definitely lack the age :)

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#18

Post by mtbcoder »

samsolomon wrote: post #3

Those of you on HN that are past the 30+ mark. What would you add to this list?

1) Spend more time with your family before it's too late. Call your mother, father and siblings more often.

2) Save, save and save more. Spend your money on things that matter (such as visiting your family more). I worry about the future of labor in the US.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#20

Post by toomuchtodo »

trequartista wrote: post #12
samsolomon wrote: post #3

Those of you on HN that are past the 30+ mark. What would you add to this list?

Learn when to back out - could be from an argument, job, partnership (personal or professional). This is very important for your sanity

As someone close to me once said, "Choose the hill you want to die on carefully"
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