Ask HN: Thoughts on being “boring”

In the end 99% of people do boring things, first in teenage years well into 20s people have great ideas, they wanna change world and other nonsense until they hit reality and usually by 30s while having children they realize how naive they were and why were their parents boring, doing things like other people with no more great ideas anymore, just wanna live peaceful life with health and enough money.

Do what you want, not what other people tell you to do, but sooner you realize the reality the less energy you will waste on things you can't change. Same goes for success stories if billionaries, for each of these there are thousands and thousands failures which are not promoted in media. You can do whatever you want but statistically odds are against you acomplishing something great.

Btw. I was living in China which was definitely not boring country, but that craziness and excitement and constant changes can be manageable only for so long, before you get tired of them and before I left I was saying boring is good, can't wait to be back in boring Europe. I'm glad to be back in boring Europe, which is changing slowly compared to rapid changes in China. What changes in China in 1 year takes in Europe at least 5 years.

Here's my 30-something perspective. It's mostly settled for 10 years now with little change, as I'm very happy with it.

I decided then what should be my guiding principle: build things, and don't become mainly a consumer of things.

That's very vague on purpose: "build things" can refer to writing, photography, build gizmos with electronics, inventing cocktails, woodworking, games theorycrafting, repairing broken stuff, and obviously developing things (that's my profession). Those have all been hobby of mine at some point, ranging from a few months to several years. I generally loose interest once I've learned enough or feel like it's starting to get repetitive or there is no way to progress without being a professional. And that's okay, those are hobbies.

Not being main a consumer doesn't mean never playing games, watching shows or socializing, but it does mean I'd rather not spend all my time on those. If I find myself spending too much time on those, I try to kick myself in the butt to build something instead.

Another decision was that I wanted to be my main job to be for societal good, and not a meaningless or morally questionable job. That means, for me, no banking, defense, ads at least. Despite not wanting to create a company, I ended up creating one (luckily when I was younger and had more energy and free time). Nowadays, I consider myself a regular employee with a weird "founder" status. This leaves me enough time to engage with whatever building I fancy at the moment.

As a consequence of those choices, there are a few things I had to make peace with: I'm never going to be really rich, I will stay firmly in the middle class (dev is a good position, but doesn't pay as much as in the states here). I will never be famous, I won't become an entrepreneur or businessman. Frankly, it's really okay: I don't want the stress associated with those, I'd rather have a happy life I can enjoy.

That is an important observation: as you get older you become more aware of the clock ticking so if you do start something the pressure will be up considerably.

First, I will offer you an internet hug. I do think we are all entitled to more than suffering and toil, and I think you are too.

Second, I'll invite you to go back and read that quote a few more times. Sit with it. There is more there. I am half-heartedly fanatic about it.

Third, I think you are overestimating this great society. Might it be creating this suffering instead of easing it? Is joy rare, only produced by capitalism, and built on the sufferings of others or free and abundant? Why are we all working so hard? Is it for ourselves and our neighbors, or do you hear the same giant sucking sound as I do while the profit of our collective labor goes to benefit a few barons and the negative externalities rain from the sky?

You don’t need that if you earn $200k a year, have two kinds of stockbroker licenses, or are good at lying.

I signed up for some accredited investor sites after passing via the income rule and was kind of annoyed that it just causes people to call you who expect you to have $50k to invest like it’s pocket change.