For the first ten years of the millennium, it seemed like once or twice a year some new piece of tech came out and immediately found a central role in the universe. You could almost immediately spot what would trend: the move from search results in a series of animated folders to a simple, endless list gave the world “Google” as a verb. Want to post and watch videos online? Youtube. Want to run a simple website? Wordpress. People were dying to get into Facebook, going so far as to spoof .edu email addresses to get around their early “college-only” rule. There were a ton of first-mover advantages and thus fortunes were made.

Similar energy can still be found in tech for businesses. The first person to send a Loom video blew our minds; now it’s surprising when corporate communications aren’t a person's face in a circle on the lower left of a series of slides. Launching such buzzing tools as Loom is a way to make your fortune. The three Loom boys sure did: Atlassian bought their company for almost a billion; each of them walked away with a rumored $300 million.

Maybe ten or 12 years ago, reading about consumer finance would lead you to the early FIRE bloggers. They wanted enough financial independence to retire early. Most of them, in the more popular blogs, achieved the objective. Ironically, more than a few completed their nest eggs via a sale of the blog (remember Get Rich Slowly?). The blogs were more interesting to read when they were pursuing the goal. Those stories were about working harder, earning more, spending less, and saving creatively. After the bloggers retired, their blogs either petered out–often because their lives went adrift. Many uprooted repeatedly in search of a better spot to live; more than a few divorced their spouses. Retiring at age thirty had been such an all-encompassing pursuit, having accomplished it, many of the bloggers woke up and found themselves with empty lives.

Back to the Loom founder: Vinay Hiremath wrote (linked below) with surprising honesty that sad tale of an empty life. As you can intuit from his essay, he had previously found all of his meaning in his work. He launched the startup just after college; fledgling companies can be all-consuming; his the venn of life and work was a circle. The essay shows just how much drift can be found when you no longer need to work: he moves around; he buys stuff; he over-relies on his girlfriend and then they break up; he takes fitness seriously and becomes buff; he joins and then leaves DOGE. By the end of the essay, you want him to have found hope, but instead he’s preparing to start another company. It’s an empty life.

As important as work is, a company is only a business and, no matter how vital you are to the business, you’re working a job. Work certainly can provide a great deal of meaning. But its most vital purpose is to, in exchange for giving us something to do, provide for the rest of our lives. Like lottery winners, FIRE people, and normal retirees, Hiremath has his life provided for and now wonders what to do with it? The early bits of the essay show that all he had was work, his work was over, and he wasn’t left with anything. When there’s nothing in your life outside of work’s circle, losing work can make you feel lost.

A better concept of life is a series of vaguely overlapping circles. Rather than every waking minute being devoted to work, you have a wider set of commitments. Maybe you’re the big boss at work, but you also have kids and thus know the nights and weekends of serving them. Maybe you’re a star performer at the office, but you’re the slowest skier in the ski club. Maybe you’re known for knowledge in one context, but you’re a parent of tweens and teens, and thus are deeply familiar with being perpetually either uncertain or dead wrong (and, “ruining my entire life”). Maybe you’re a boss at work, run a tight ship at home, but volunteer at your church, where you wash dishes and carry things around to help the priest run the parish. It’s the same you in each context, but your role in each requires something different from you and thus contributes to a much more diverse, whole person.

Because a diversified life portfolio asks different things from us in each context, we are formed to be more things–not only professional, but also parent, leader, volunteer, member, skier, runner. Even if a primary aspect of this more diverse and complete life ends, one imagines forced retirement, kids leaving home, the loss of a spouse, we would find ourselves with more to fall back on.

That’s a vision I have. Maybe it’s wrong. But it sure is better than the sad story told below. Our man finds himself with life-changing wealth. He stops working, wanders around, leaves his long-term romantic partner, and finds himself continually searching for some kind of meaning. It’s not an unqualified good, winning this sort of lottery. Better to diversify.

Reading

I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life

Life has been a haze this last year. After selling my company, I find myself in the totally un-relatable position of never having to work again. Everything feels like a side quest, but not in an inspiring way. I don’t have the same base desires driving me to make money or gain status. I have infinite freedom, yet I don’t know what to do with it, and, honestly, I’m not the most optimistic about life.

vinay.sh