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cuisine

Life purpose or dating/social life?

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I'm 22 and graduated college last year. I used to be a workaholic success-oriented type and left no time for friends or dating. After quitting my job a couple of months ago due to burnout, I have made a lot of progress on social and physical health. I've also been working on a side passion project (an online learning app) based on my life purpose.

I'm stuck on whether I should spend the next few years continuing to prioritize work on social and physical health (and choose an easy 9-5 job) or prioritize working on my side passion project to achieve financial independence. When Leo was my age, he chose financial independence and only went into dating later but has previously mentioned he wished he started dating earlier.

Edited by cuisine

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This depends on the particulars of your situation.  Some things to keep in mind:

     -Figure out why you burned out after a couple months and address those problems.  What caused your unsustainable work/life situation?  Did you hate the job?  Commute too long?  Neglecting your health?  A loud inner critic that didn’t let you enjoy your accomplishments?  Those challenges are different for everybody and will likely pop up again unless you fully address them.

     -Sounds like your passion project is a tech startup.  The vast majority of successful start ups are created by founders who didn’t quit their day job until the startup was successful.  There’s lots of podcasts, books and articles about creating a successful startup.  This one from Tim Ferriss and Reid Hoffman is a good start.

     Unless you have the chance to get paid right away to do your passion project, you should probably keep a day job to fund your passion.  Not having a stable source of income creates a lot of stress and neediness, which drains your passion!

     -Once you get healthy habits in place they should become automatic.  They won’t take up too much time or effort unless you have a complicated health situation or your goal is to become a bodybuilder.  Learning some healthy recipes and getting a solid 3-5 times a week exercise routine doesn’t take much time at all.

     -Work hard on weekdays and socialize on Friday night and Saturday afternoon or night.

     -High quality relationships are important.  Having excellent social skills and a network of happy, good-hearted, inspiring, passionate people are the biggest force multipliers you can have.  It’s not just about getting laid or promoted at work (although you can do that too).  Healthy relationships make you happier, more resilient to setbacks, increases life expectancy, strengthens the immune system, makes life more meaningful, makes it way easier to get jobs or funding for a startup or a nice, pretty girlfriend and so forth.  Ignoring that aspect of life to focus on career only works for jobs that are truly a one-man show. 

     This means investing in high quality friendships, not just amassing Facebook friends or getting distracted by gossip and human bs.  Quality > quantity.  Granted, it can be tough to do that if you don’t have access to likeminded people.  That also doesn't mean becoming a people pleaser, chasing popularity or having poor boundaries.  Actually, if you have significant wounding around relationships, it's important to start healing that asap so you can reap the benefits asap and let the benefits compound over time.

     -Watch Leo’s “Advice for Young People I & II” videos.  It’s perfect for your situation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3Ap1-UkPLU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liwbIO4tbxE

Edited by FlyingLotus

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