what's the worst that can happen, yeah? And you just, okay, be explicit. This happens. Okay, well if that happens, yeah, then what can you do? Could you go get a job?

They're like, yes. And I'm like, okay, so the worst case, this is Dalton plus Michael, and today we're going to talk about how to spend your 20s.

Yeah, we are as people who are no longer in their 20s. Yeah, we're qualified. Extremely people on the internet man have all the answers on how to live your life.

That's we're Elder Millennials. In all honesty, I think that, uh, we see a lot of young people at YC become really successful.

And so there are some lessons that probably can be pulled out and they would apply to people who might not even ever want to do a startup.

So where would you start? How about, how about, here, do you know what the hedonic treadmill is?

Friends, it's this thing where no matter what's going on in your life, you will get used to it. Yes. And so when you get a new cool thing, when you're a kid and you get a new toy, you're like, wow, this toy is awesome, what a great Christmas.

And then two days later, you're like, oh yeah, this toy sucks. It's just, I want more new stuff.

And so whenever you get new things, whenever you get new rewards, you get used to them and they no longer are awesome the way you thought they would be once you get them, okay?

And so the treadmill is you're always trying to walk forwards on achieving new goals or getting new stuff, yes, and it never feels satisfying and you just keep running on the treadmill forever.

Okay, well, and I think that there's some dangerous hedonic treadmills in your 20s.

Um, and what's funny is like Instagram kind of blew this up in a really awkward way because it's like everyone's sharing videos and photos of them living their absolute best life.

Yeah, it's fake. Like they're they're clipping the 0.1% of their lives that are awesome and they're putting on a site and you're like, wow, everyone is living a more awesome life than me like every day, every day, all the time, my life sucks and and it changes kind of what you think your goal should be.

So I and it what's what's sad and unfortunate is that like there's only so many, I mean, wow, this is going to sound really depressing.

There's only so many good things, there's only so many toys, yeah.

This isn't a speedrun to get through them. And you know, you know, people who grow up super rich like have this problem of like, oh crap, like I already did all the fun stuff and I have a lot more life to live.

Oh man, this sucks. So we definitely people screw that up in their 20s and we're arguing, we are arguing that there is a way to hack this.

There's a way to hack the atomic treadmill.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't seek enjoyment and the hack is to intentionally delay each step and to give yourself room and upside.

Yes, so there's always more steps for you to climb in the future versus speed running it and getting it all at once. Yes, so for example, you gave this example, the first place you live after college, yeah, should not be much nicer than your dorm room.

Yeah, even if you got a job in Facebook and you can afford it and and the reason is you're leaving you're leaving yourself a lot more upside there.

Yes, um, your first vacations should probably not be that nice.

Um, there are lots of examples. Your first car is probably not be that nice. I think this in so many areas and um I think that like if you can get those hedonic distractions um a little bit out of your 20s, you can focus on other stuff.

The best way I've heard this uh said is to do the most hardcore thing early in your career because you can always mellow out, you can always pull the rip cord and do less hard things.

Yes, it's very hard to go the way other way around.

Like if you've been on mellow chill mode and then you decide you want to be very ambitious and hardcore, much hard to do it that way.

Why do people? It's it's interesting to me because that seems obvious, that seems like obvious advice, but I also feel like people are like afraid of it somehow.

No, I think you're bombarded with you want to have a good work life balance.

I think I think you're actually bombarded with like you might burn out the opposite of that right? It's it's weird. I found these messages very confusing when I was younger.

Well, it's I I might argue maybe I was just kind of in in a weird bubble but I feel like I hear those messages now.

I didn't hear those messages then. Like almost all of my friends were trying hard, but now it does it almost feels like oh if you try too hard, you'll pull a muscle.

Yeah, which is so weird. It's kind of like, oh if you run too hard when you're young, you'll hurt yourself versus like you'll definitely hurt yourself when you're old and you aren't like being young is when you actually, how about to riff on it this way?

Yeah, if you choose to go to med school, that is a hardcore thing.

And once you get your MD, you could be a more mellow doctor. You don't have to be crazy. You could be like a part-time plastic surgeon once you go through med school.

So you're doing the hard thing, and you have a lot of choices. Same thing with law school.

I would say same thing with people that work at hedge funds or investment banks. But I think a lot of people that opt into other careers do the less hardcore thing.

And again, maybe they should. Maybe if you want to be a novelist, you should be a really hardcore novelist in your 20s and write a lot.

Yeah, yeah. And so I think regardless of the career you're going down, the more hardcore path just gives you more options when you're when you're older.

And I think this comes back to a point we talk about a lot, which is that like you don't really know your capacity. Yep.

Don't speedrun all the fancy things in life and do hard early, get used to it, get comfortable. I think the third thing that comes up a lot in your 20s is it's an opportunity to be risk-seeking versus risk-avoiding, and it's hard to contextualize how much of your life you'll spend being risk-avoided.

Yep. But it's like your kids, you have a mortgage, you have elderly parents, you yourself are elderly, you are less willing to take risk.

So most people in their 20s don't have any of those things to worry about. Um, or many, I shouldn't even say most yet, sometimes it seems like they're not taking as much risk.

Yeah. What what do you think's going on there from talking to founders, a lot of them are told by their parents to not do something risky and to not take career risk in their 20s.

Again, I'm not really sure where that's coming from, but doing a startup is seen as risky, like you can destroy your life if you do a startup, or something like that.

So I think it's fear, and again, perhaps justified.

I don't really get it. This is the thing that always gets me. It's not the idea that you get a job and you can do that job at that company for the rest of your life has already been disproven.

Yeah, like, so it's like I understand the feeling of fear, but like the result, like, oh, if I get a job at IBM today, like I'll build there until I'm 60, like probably not, sorry.

And so I think the other thing that happens when people think about risk is they have to test themselves. It's hard to kind of know what you're made of.

It's easy to, like, think you know what you're made of and never test it than to actually be out there in uncomfortable area and like have to put.

I think one good exercise you could do on that point whenever people talk about risk or they're worried about it is I encourage them to just be like, okay, well, let's talk about it.

And you just, okay, be explicit. This happens. Okay, well, if that happens, then what can you do? Could you go get a job?

They're like, yes. And I'm like, okay, so the worst case, like, it's like I would just, I advise this for everybody out there. Yeah.

you know, talk through explicitly what the worst thing that could happen if you take a risk is, and it might not sound as bad as you think once you name it once.

you talk about it explicitly. Well, and here's the interesting thing, because we're making this for a general audience, I want to leave open the door that maybe it it is really bad.

Yeah, right? Like, and if it really is bad, don't take the risk. Don't take the risk. Like we're not saying you should always, no matter what starting conditions, be risk-seeking.

I think what we're trying to say is there are a lot of people who their starting conditions would allow them to be risk-seeking, but they don't realize it.

Yep. And that's, or they realize later and they're like, wow, yeah, whoops, like that was dumb.

Yeah, that's a tricky one. You brought up parents. I think it's probably worth revisiting. Um, we're parents. Yep.

It's hard to not want to have a vision for your kids. Yeah, it's hard to not have expectations. It's hard to not have dreams, and maybe they're not like, oh, I want them to be a doctor, right?

For some people it is, but it's hard to not have that, right? It's hard to not feel responsible.

Yeah, but your 20s is really the first moments where your plan's kind of your own. If you're following your parents' plan, you chose that, like, right?

When you're 14, if you're following your parents' plan, maybe your parents chose that.

Yeah, but when you're 23 and you're following your, like, that's your, are you living your own life for the expectations of you?

Yeah, because at some point you're going to wake up and realize this is my plan, this is my life.

yeah, yeah. And I think what's interesting is like, maybe your parents' plan is great, maybe it's bad, like, who knows? But, um, I think there are a lot of people who kind of look back and they're like, oh, I didn't question my plan enough in my 20s.

Yeah, like, I woke up in my 30s and was like, wait, did I really like the path that I walked? Did I ever spend a lot of time thinking about what do I want that or not?

And then they realize in their 30s, like, that's a little, some of that's baked.

Yep. I think the biggest point around these lines is also peers. Yes. And who you spend time with. Like, I, I always like to reference your personality is just an amalgam of whatever the six or seven people you spend the most time with.

Yeah. And a lot of the things that we think are our own ideas, or our own identity, is no, it's not.

It's just you're, like, this is you just soaked it up from your peer group.

And so, to the extent you're thoughtful about who you're spending time with and asking, are they making me better? Yeah. Am I around people that make me more optimistic?

Yeah, that make me want to do things? That is kind of a big factor into all the life decisions we make.

It's funny, think about how much of our lives are dictated by who we get randomly assigned as roommates in college. Huge. Like, is there any bigger decision in what, yeah, what kind of person you grow up to be is like random roommate assignments like freshman year?

And so, this is hackable, kind of like the hedonic treadmill. Yeah, you could choose to spend more time with different people based on who you want to be more.

like we're not trying to say your friends are bad. What we're trying to say is, like, if you want something different, like if you want to change, if you want to do a startup, having more friends that are startup people that won't be like, startups are dumb, startups are risky, why would you want to do that?

And instead of, like, oh yeah, I'm doing a startup to, do you see how that would, yeah, like everyone becomes a centrist in whoever they're surrounded by.

And so if you're surrounded by extremists on any topic, you'll think you're a centrist, but you're actually an extremist.

Yeah. And so startups aren't weird at all in certain friend groups, and in some friend groups, they don't get it. Yeah, and it's tricky because it's like, you know, we don't want to make this corporate and transactional.

It's just more like, hey, know how powerful those people are around you and like, understand a hack to changing your life is changing those people.

Um, and hey, changing those people might require changing where you work, changing where you live, um, moving to a different city.

Like, one of the nice things about your 20s is you can make big decisions like that, and they usually only impact yourself.

Yep. You can move to a foreign country, you can move to the big city, you can get a job where you don't know anyone.

Yeah, period. Yeah, and that's no big deal in the 20s. Everyone's doing that.

And I will say this, um, your really good friendships will survive. Like, your really good friendships, you can talk to that person once or twice a year, you can see them once every three, four years, and they'll stay your friends.

So you're not maybe risking as much as you think you are by changing where you live or who you're living with or what industry and what job, you're not changing as much as you think you are.

Let's move to relationships. Uh, Dalton challenged me to offer what I might say is a controversial piece of advice and one controversial piece of advice I would have is I think you should seek long-term relationships in your 20s.

I think a lot of people would say, oh you don't want to get tied down with a partner and like yada yada, and I'm not saying like get married, buy houses, have kids.

I'm saying I think that there is something really powerful about having a strong partner, especially when you're trying to do hardcore things and you're trying to work really hard and work in maximum effort.

I think then having a really good partner actually unlocks some of the gears. I think having someone to come home to that you really enjoy being around kind of recharges you faster.

Um, I also think being in the practice of being in stable relationships is good, like it is a good hobby to develop that's your future self will enjoy that you are you you like stable relationships.

Um, and I think that the opposite hobby can harm, right?

Like the person who never wants stable relationships that just wants to be on Tinder that like doesn't ever want to be tied down, I'd argue that like that ghosts everyone, yeah, constantly, yes, that's like is trying to do FOMO every minute, right?

You're kind of training your body at the wrong lessons. Like if you do aspire to have a family one day, you know, just you can start orienting yourself in that direction in your 20s or you can like create debt for yourself in the 20s.

Um, so yeah, that would be my controversial piece of advice. What's left? What, what are our final pieces of advice? Let's, let's rebut ourselves. So, so, Michael, what do you guys know?

How To Make The Most Out of Your 20s

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How to Spend Your 20s:  Overcoming the Hedonic Treadmill

Introduction of the hedonic treadmill: getting used to new things, always wanting more.

Instagram's impact: showcasing idealized lives, leading to dissatisfaction.

The limited nature of enjoyable experiences and the danger of speed-running through them.

The 'hack': intentionally delaying gratification to create more opportunities in the future.

Examples of delayed gratification: housing, vacations, cars.

Prioritizing Hard Work Early in Your Career

Doing the most challenging work early allows for more flexibility later.

Counteracting societal pressures for work-life balance and avoiding burnout.

Examples of hardcore early career paths: medicine, law, finance.

Embracing risk-seeking behavior in your 20s, contrasting it with risk aversion later in life.

Parental influence and societal pressures against risk-taking.

Explicitly identifying and analyzing the worst-case scenarios of taking risks.

Acknowledging that some risks are genuinely bad and should be avoided.

Many have the conditions to be risk-seeking but don't realize it.

Navigating Parental Expectations and Peer Influence

The challenge of balancing parental expectations with personal aspirations.

Distinguishing between following one's own plan and fulfilling others' expectations.

The significant impact of peer groups on personal identity and decision-making.

The hackability of peer influence: choosing to surround oneself with people who encourage growth.

The unconventional advice of pursuing long-term relationships in your 20s.

The benefits of a strong partner for support and faster recovery from hard work.

The potential downsides of avoiding stable relationships and constantly seeking new ones.

Developing healthy relationship habits early on for future well-being.

Addressing Common Rebuttals and Applicability Beyond Startups

Clarifying that the advice isn't limited to aspiring entrepreneurs.

Addressing the feeling that opportunities are closing in your 20s.

Acknowledging individual limitations and varied circumstances.

The power of optimism and self-agency in overcoming challenges.

Advice for those who didn't attend prestigious schools: finding and working with talented people.

How To Make The Most Out of Your 20s

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