Case against retirement

`3:06:08`

— You can't do it again or most people can't do it again. A, because their second idea is not gonna be as good as the first one. It is so rare to capture lightning in the bottle like we have, for example, with Basecamp. I know this from experience because I've been trying to build a lot of other businesses since. And some of them have been moderate successes, even good successes, none of them have been Basecamp. It's really difficult to do that twice. But founders are arrogant pricks, including myself. And we like to think that, do you know what? We succeeded in large part because we're just awesome. We're just so much better than everyone else. And in some ways that's true some of the time. But you can also be really good at something that matters for a hot moment that door is open. The door closes now you're still good at the thing, but it doesn't matter. No one cares. There's that part of it. And then there's the part of it that going back to experience things for the first time only happens the first time. You can't do it again. I don't know if I have it in me to go through the of the early days again.

`3:07:09`

And I say bullshit in the sense of the most endearing sense. It's all great to do it. I know too much. This is one of the reasons why, whenever I'm asked the questions, if you could tell your younger self something that would really, what would you say to your younger self? I would fuck not say a thing. I would not rob my younger self of all the life experiences that I've been blessed with due to the ignorance of how the world works. Building up the wisdom about how the world works is a joy. And you gotta build it one break at a time if you just handed all the results. It's like, oh, should we watch your movie? Here's how it ends. I don't wanna fucking watch the movie now. You spoiled it. I don't want you to spoil my business experience. I don't wanna spoil any of my ignorance. The greatest blessing half the time when you're starting something new is A, you don't know how hard it's gonna be; B, you don't know what you don't know. Like the adventure is to pay off, the responsibility is to pay off. This is something Jordan Peterson has really taught me to articulate.

`3:08:10`

This notion that responsibility is actually key to me. "Man's Search for Meaning," Viktor Frankl talks about this as well, that we can endure any hardship if there's a reason why. Now he talked about it in truly life altering concentration can't waste. But you can also apply at a smaller scale with less criticality of even just your daily life that all that hardship in building the original business that is responsibility you take upon yourself the appeal. The reason you take that on you is in part because you don't know fully what it entails. If you had known upfront, if I had known upfront, how hard it would be? How much frustration there'd be along the way? If you just told me that in a narrative before I got started, I would've been like, eh, maybe I should just go get a job. — You said so many smart things there. Just to pick one. It's funny that sometimes the advice givers, the wisdom givers have gone through all the bullshit.