what's the worst that can happen?
And you just, okay, be explicit.
Well, if that happens, then what can you do?
This is Dalton plus Michael.
And today we're going to talk about how to spend your twenties.
We are, as people who are no longer in our twenties,
We're people on the internet, man.
We have all the answers on how to live your life.
In all honesty, I think that 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 that would apply to people who might not even ever want to do a startup.
So where would you start?
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.
And so when you get a new cool thing, when you're a kid and you get a new toy, you're like, wow.
I'll never want for anything again.
And then two days later, you're like, Oh yeah, this toy sucks.
It's just like 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.
And so the treadmill is you're always trying to
walk forwards on achieving new goals or getting new stuff.
And it never feels satisfying.
And you just keep running on the treadmill forever.
Well, and I think that there's some dangerous, hedonic treadmills in your 20s.
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.
Like they're clipping the .01% of their lives that are awesome and they're putting it on a site and you're like, wow, everyone is living a more awesome life than me.
And it changes kind of what you think your goal should be.
And what's sad and unfortunate is that there's only so many... I mean, wow, this is going to sound really depressing.
There are only so many good things.
There's only so many toys in life.
This isn't a speed run to get through them.
And people who grew up super rich have this problem of like, oh crap, I already did all the fun stuff.
and I have a lot more life to live, oh man, this sucks.
So we definitely see people screw that up in their 20s.
And we're 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 like enjoyment.
to intentionally delay each step and to give yourself room and upside.
So there's always more steps for you to climb in the future versus speedrunning it and getting it all at once.
So for example, you gave this example.
The first place you live after college should not be much nicer than your dorm room.
Even if you got a job in Facebook and you can afford it.
And the reason is you're leaving yourself a lot more upside there.
Your first vacations should probably not be that nice.
There are lots of examples.
Your first car is probably not being that nice.
I think this applies in so many areas.
And I think that if you can get those hedonic distractions,
a little bit out of your 20s, you can focus on other stuff.
What should people be focusing on?
The best way I've heard this said is to do the most hardcore thing early in your career, because you can always mellow out.
You can always pull the ripcord and do less hard things.
It's very hard to go the 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 harder to do it that way.
Why do people, it's interesting to me because that seems
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 you're actually bombarded with like- You might burn out.
I found these messages very confusing when I was younger.
Well, I might argue maybe I was just kind of
But I feel like I hear those messages now.
I didn't hear those messages then.
Almost all of my friends were trying hard.
But now it almost feels like, oh, if you try too hard, you'll pull a muscle.
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 run too hard.
Being young is when you actually
How about to riff on it this way?
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 some heart crazy ER doc.
You could be like a part-time plastic surgeon once you go through med school.
So you're doing the hardcore thing early 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.
And so I think regardless of the career you're going down, the more hardcore path just gives you more optionality when you're older.
And I think this comes back to a point we talk about a lot, which is that you don't really know your capacity.
Don't speedrun all the fancy things in life.
and do hard shit 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-aborting.
And it's hard to contextualize how much of your life you'll spend being risk-aborted.
But it's like, you have kids, you have mortgage, you have elderly parents, you yourself are elderly, you are
less willing to take risk.
Most people in their 20s don't have any of those things to worry about, or many, I shouldn't even say most.
Yet sometimes it seems like they're not taking as much risk.
What do you think is 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 risks in their 20s.
Again, I'm not really sure exactly where that's coming from, but doing a startup is seen as risky.
You can destroy your life if you do a startup or something like that.
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.
I understand the feeling of fear, but the result
Like, oh, if I get a job at IBM today, like I go there until I'm 60, like probably not.
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.
then to actually be out there in an uncomfortable area and have to put up a show.
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.
What's the worst that can happen?
And you just, okay, be explicit.
Okay, well, if that happens, then what can you do?
I would advise this for everybody out there.
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 is really bad.
Like, and if it really is bad, 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.
Or they realize later and they're like, wow, whoops, like that was done.
Yeah, that's a tricky one.
I think it's probably worth revisiting.
want to have a vision for your kids.
It's not 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?
But it's hard to not have that, right?
It's hard to not feel responsible.
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.
When you're 14, if you're following your parents' plan, maybe your parents chose that.
But when you're 23 and you're following your, like, that's your plan now.
Are you living your own life or the expectations of you?
Because at some point, you're going to wake up and realize, this is my plan.
And I think what's interesting is, like, maybe your parents' plan's great.
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.
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 did I want that or not?
and then they realize they're 30s and that's a little, some of that's baked.
I think the biggest point around these lines is also peers and who you spend time with.
I always like to reference your personality is just an amalgam of whatever the six or seven people you spend the most time with.
And a lot of the things that we think are our own ideas or our own identity is bullshit.
It's just your period 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?
Am I around people that make me more optimistic?
That make me want to do things.
That is kind of a big factor into all the life decisions we make.
Think about how much of our lives are dictated by who we get randomly assigned as roommates in college.
Like, is there any bigger decision in what kind of person?
Negative or positive, yeah.
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.
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 too.
Do you see how that would?
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.
And so startups aren't weird at all in certain groups.
And in some friend groups, they don't get it.
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.
And hey, changing those people might require changing where you work, changing where you live, 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, period.
And that's no big deal in 20s, everyone's doing that.
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 at 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.
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, 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.
I also think being in the practice of being in stable relationships is good.
Like, it is a good hobby to develop.
Your future self will enjoy that you are, you like stable relationships.
And I think that the opposite hobby can harm, right?
Never once table 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.
That's like is trying to do FOMO every minute.
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 20s I'd argue the debt thing is harder So yeah, that would be my controversial piece of advice.
What are our final pieces of advice?
Let's let's let's rebut ourselves so so Michael hmm
This is all startup advice.
Most people don't want to start a startup.
Why is any of this relevant to me as a person that doesn't want to do a startup that's watching this video?
Well, and I think what's interesting is I think that we're not trying to presuppose what?
you want to do with your life.
I think we're kind of trying to say, hey, if you have something tricky you want to accomplish, here are some tricks that can help you.
And I think that there's a lot of commonality between the startup founder experience and the experience of someone who wants to do anything that's really hard.
I think the scary thing that people don't want to hear is that investments in your 20s pay off for the rest of your life.
Yeah, they don't want to hear that.
Whether they're good or bad investments.
And it's like, I think anyone who lived through a childhood where you're kind of told, hey, every door is open to you.
It's a world of opportunities.
Hates being told, hey, this decade, doors start closing.
Other commoner buttock questions.
Oh, well, what if I have debt or I have to support people?
You guys are giving all this advice.
This is just not applicable to me.
This is not applicable to most people.
So I think that that is certainly true.
I think that there are a lot of people out there that have extremely specific limitations.
Hell, some people are stuck in a country and they can't get out.
I would say, once again, this is not go do a startup.
Startups are for everyone.
That's not what we're trying to say.
What we're trying to say is that doing maximum effort
is probably the only way you get yourself out of a not great situation.
Many not great situations are get out of bowl.
Or at least there, you can, you can millerate them, you can make them slightly better if you work really, really hard.
One of the things I have noticed is that the people who are the most
I don't know, like who have the most challenges, like when they can be optimistic and when they can see themselves as like agents as opposed to kind of victims.
crazy shit can happen in their lives.
Crazy shit can happen by just twitching what's in their head.
So yeah, you might not be able to apply to YC.
You might not be able to move.
You might not be like, fine, yeah, but there's probably something in your life that you can apply one of these lessons to that is a chance of making things a little bit better.
And the last thing that comes up, and this definitely comes in the context of YC, what if I didn't go to a good school?
I feel as though the people who went to a good school, they still have a lot of doors open.
I'm getting out in the working place and I don't see the doors.
Trying to identify what companies or workplaces have the most interesting people doing the work you're most interested in.
Even if it's not a tech startup, it can be like a magazine or something.
But where you're like, wow, this is really good work they're putting out.
I would try to get any job there.
Because once you're in the room, once you get into an organization, you will get to meet and be around all these other people and soak up the culture.
And there's so many people I know in Silicon Valley that didn't go to a good school that just got in the door somewhere with any kind of random job.
And once they were in there, their intellect and their skills and their abilities allowed them to win people over.
you're giving subtle advice here because this isn't go get this brand on your resume.
This isn't, oh, go get a job at Facebook.
Like this is where are the super talented people and can you get yourself around them?
And what's interesting is that like many cases super talented people aren't at the big companies.
Or if they are, they're not at every part of the big company.
And so many times super talented people are at the beginning of stuff where getting in is easier.
Well, this is what's funny about smaller startups is they're not famous yet.
But you can get hired there.
Like it's not as hard to get hired there is the larger places.
But then you're like right in the pit of the craziness when you work in an earlier stage startup.
I mean, we had an intern.
at my startup that went on to get into YC, start a company that's generating tens of millions of dollars of revenue and did not go to good school.
I remember when he was applying for the job,
he was working as a security guard for a housing development.
How did he get hired at your company?
You know, we wanted someone to be a content moderator and we were like, what are your qualifications?
He's like, well, my qualification is I'm the security guard and I work basically the gate and it's like a college kind of housing community and nights and weekends are just crazy.
And I'm and I'm just like, you know, you're hired.
We didn't hire him to be a community director.
But it was definitely like you're putting your best foot forward.
Like actually, I've been one of those kids.
Yeah, like you you you've done some hard shit.
What I would say is man like getting in the game is as simple as like yeah once he got into your startup and he was hanging out with you guys Yeah, like all the founders and it's just you're in the game.
You're in the game And I think this is what's so cool about startups is that like man small startups
You know, they might say, oh, we're looking at people who only went to this school or only got this job.
But like, you know, humans are reading every email.
Like, you know, there isn't a machine.
Like, if it's a 20 person startup, five person startup, it's like, your email got read.
And man, when people are in those startups and they're desperate, they're open to giving people opportunities.
Probably the overall TLDR we're trying to share with you is, man, don't be the 30-year-old who wakes up and says, what happened to my 20s again?
This is one of those things like, you know, hard-life troops, life does move.
And most of the most successful people we know, they were laying that foundation in their 20s.