Ha, author here -- I'm probably a member of this group myself. I bootstrapped my first company and then ran a small consultancy for awhile.
Spent some time at a fund, but we primarily bought and operated SaaS companies as cash flow businesses. It's been base hits all the way.
I think if you're happy with building a business that gives you freedom and work life balance, this can be a great life. Personally, I eventually got tired of consulting even though it was good money and lifestyle. There were other things I wanted to work on that I didn't have time for, and I wanted to create something of my own, rather than just working on other people's projects.
But that's just my experience--I think if you're happy in the freelance / agency life, it can be great, but you are still ultimately selling time for money. Maybe this is a 4th path, the career craftsman--working a job you enjoy with people you like, and not needing your work to be as aligned with a "passion" or some sort of calling.
Just my $0.02 -- appreciate the comment and will have to make my writing sound less like an AI in the future ^_^;;
Yep -- this is where I tend to see people end up after doing a sabbatical. That, or they alternate between periods of highly paid work and periods bumming skydiving, making art, etc.
Hey, author of the post here. My takeaway after trying all these strategies is that there's no one right answer. All paths can work but also have failure states.
If you want to talk, feel free to drop me a note - [email protected]. I spent 2 years doing consulting before shifting into other work, happy to share more specific thoughts / reflections offline.
I hear you — taking some time off can definitely help.
The one other idea I’d offer is that the way you’re talking about drinking is a sort of “dead person goal.” In behavioral psych we define this as a goal that a dead person can accomplish better than an alive person.
A dead person will be really good at not drinking.
To turn it into an “alive person goal,” all you need to do is make it positive — ask yourself, what am I moving towards that I care about by not drinking?
Maybe this is a better relationship with work, connection to family, health, or even something like making space for healing. Whatever it is, the more you can focus on what you do want to move towards rather than what you want to move away from, the greater chance you’ll have at tapping into vitality and engagement in your day to day.
All that being said, this can be easier said than done. Especially if you’re burnt out, taking time off and getting back in touch with doing things for the intrinsic rewards can go a long way towards rekindling the spirit.
I quit drinking ~9 years ago. I tried to start several companies while drinking, built and exited a company after quitting. Now I work as an exec coach w/ a focus on recent applied research in behavioral psychology. All that to say, I’ve thought a lot about both healthy / unhealthy alcohol use and productivity. Here’s my $0.02.
I’m not of the mind that no one should drink, but if you’re noticing that it’s hard to work and be productive without alcohol, you might want to explore that more before going back to drinking.
It could be as simple as you’re using alcohol to get past the initial discomfort of starting a task / etc, or it could be that it’s a way of avoiding some deeper emotional issue (anxiety, depression, ptsd, etc).
Regardless, even if you continue drinking, it would be ideal if you could access vitality and excitement and productivity without needing alcohol, so you can freely choose when to drink and when not to. If you can’t be productive without drinking, on some level you’ve developed a dependence on it, and this is not typically a great place to be. Even if you never have major consequences, it just tends to make the joy of everything else a little duller.
The fact that you’ve quit for 6 months and still aren’t feeling more excited seems indicative that something else is going on, whether you’ve replaced alcohol with something else (caffeine, nicotine), you actually don’t enjoy your work, or you were drinking quite a bit and your brain is still recovering. It can take 6-24 months for people who were significantly alcohol dependent to get through “post acute withdrawal” and return to normal brain activity. If you drink during that period, it more or less resets.
Anyways, hope the above is helpful for some context. If you want to talk, drop me a note.
College degree is a requirement for most work visas. Otherwise, you can show significant work experience, but from what I remember last I checked (been a few years since I looked into this), it's a significantly higher hurdle in terms of # of years.
If anyone is interested, I'm currently starting a weekly ZK meetup on Zoom w/ a few founder friends who want to dive into the method.
Format is:
* 15 mins - check in on your workflow
* 30 mins - work on your ZK (write notes, refactor, etc.)
* 15 mins - set ZK goals for upcoming week and discuss tactics
If you're interested in joining, drop me a quick note to the email in my profile with a bit about yourself and experience in the method!
You can have uniting religion, ethnicity, or purpose and still have multiculturalism. You just have people deeply engaged with separate communities.
The real problem he’s talking about is disaffiliation —- people not feeling connected to any overarching group to which they experience a sense of belonging.
In a city like NYC, the only people you really see regularly are the people you live with, the people you work with, and the people you sleep with.
Finding good roommates is definitely one way to solve the problem, but if you’re not knee deep in a community with a strong sense of values and culture (like EA), finding matches can be challenging.
Also, as someone who has been in and around this space, several of the coliving companies you mentioned are not doing well financially.
Especially in NYC, all of the coliving spots (some of which have raised significant capital) have almost all their inventory in deep Brooklyn or Queens. It’s nearly impossible to find a good share in the city unless you stumble into it or create it with friends, which depends on having a wide network of people who have leases ending around the same time (or who are willing to break leases). Also, much of the good housing inventory is either taken or overpriced, so part of this also depends on either having wealthy friends or finding a way to finagle a deal on a place before it hits the market.
Last thing I’ll say is that one of the reasons why people only see roommates, coworkers, and partners regularly is because of lack of religious / school affiliation. It’s hard to get people to commit to something weekly, but if you can do it, it’s way easier to spin up than coordinating a group house.
The past few months I’ve been doing a weekly Monday breakfast with 2 friends —- it’s quickly become the highlight of all of our weeks.
Other than, I think the best choice is to find (or create) something that you’re willing to commit to at least 1x per week. Finding a spiritual institution (even an agnostic friendly one like humanist society or Unitarian church), picking up a martial art, or auditing a course at a local grad school (this is my recent fav) are all ways you can find more depth in city life.
+1 for the idea of community porn, though. 1-off events just aren’t the same.
I think this is actually the exact problem the article talks about.
It’s possible to engage with mindfulness practices without buying into the entire Buddhist belief system.
This comment reinforces the author’s (I believe mistaken) point, that mindfulness sneaks in a bunch of Buddhist ideology. In my experience, it’s been possible to benefit from the practices while deciding some of the more doctrinal Buddhist beliefs (like non-self / anatta) don’t resonate.
Spent some time at a fund, but we primarily bought and operated SaaS companies as cash flow businesses. It's been base hits all the way.
I think if you're happy with building a business that gives you freedom and work life balance, this can be a great life. Personally, I eventually got tired of consulting even though it was good money and lifestyle. There were other things I wanted to work on that I didn't have time for, and I wanted to create something of my own, rather than just working on other people's projects.
But that's just my experience--I think if you're happy in the freelance / agency life, it can be great, but you are still ultimately selling time for money. Maybe this is a 4th path, the career craftsman--working a job you enjoy with people you like, and not needing your work to be as aligned with a "passion" or some sort of calling.
Just my $0.02 -- appreciate the comment and will have to make my writing sound less like an AI in the future ^_^;;