We Have SO Much Time Left in Our Careers

What if you found out today you'd live twice as long — what would you do differently?

For many of us, especially young startup Founders, our issue isn't whether we're going to live longer but instead recognizing how young we really are, and by virtue of that, how much time we truly have in front of us.

Without a good measure of how much time we have in front of us, we simply make really amateur mistakes. We rush things, we create endless anxiety, and we create a false narrative that the world will implode if we somehow get to "30" without being a huge success.

The reality is our misperception of time is a huge impediment to our career. It's not until we properly calibrate our path that we can start building the future we want at a pace that's sustainable.

Reset the Numbers

When I was 25 years old I would say to myself "Whew, I'm already 25% done with my life — I don't have much time left" To be fair, I gave myself 100 years to live which was pretty optimistic, but had I been less optimistic I'd have even less time.

But what I got horribly wrong in that equation was understanding when the timer started. It didn't start at 0. It started in my case at 19, and for most Founders, typically after college around 22 or later.

That means our "career" is only 3 years old. If we assume we're going to work until 65 (and it will certainly be longer) then we're at Year 3 of 43. We're not even 7% through the progress bar of life. The game hasn't even started, and we need to recognize that fact so we can give ourselves the appropriate amount of time to do great things.

Remember What a Decade Can Do

Early in our career we often don't have a good sense of how much we can actually accomplish in a "career decade". Often it's because we haven't lived through one yet, or in other cases, it's because we've only had a single decade to compare it to.

Remember that every major successful startup you could possibly list in the last 30 years all took less than a decade to build — and in some cases, the real growth came in less than 5 years. That means we don't need "40 years" to build something great — we need any given decade.

In the last decade, I got married, had 2 kids, lived in 3 different cities, Founded Startups.com, bought 6 companies, designed my dream home, battled some crippling diseases, and had incredible adventures — and this was my least active decade. If you're still experiencing your first, trust me, friends — there are so many more lives to live.

Build Pyramids

Recognizing how much time we really have, and how we want to do truly great things, a powerful way to think about our careers is like building the ancient Egyptian Pyramids. Instead of trying to build this massive thing in one day, we need to think about simply adding a building block each and every day, nonstop, so that the culmination of our effort (our career and lives) ends in something truly spectacular.

The great thing about the Pyramid analogy is that we have to accept the fact that we can only make it go so fast, and no matter what, it will take a substantial amount of time. We know that we have to pace ourselves, we have to keep our eye on the long-term prize. Those are all incredibly healthy things.

Once we recognize what we want and give ourselves the time and pacing to build it, we truly are an unstoppable force.

In Case You Missed It

Retiring Early is a Broken Concept Retiring isn't really our end goal, so we shouldn't aspire to it. What we really want is to shape our life the way we want it to be.

Why No One Tells Founders "It's over, move on." (podcast) No one ever actually tells Founders it’s okay to quit. No one except other Founders, of course.

When am I "too old" to launch a startup? When is it "too late" to start a startup? Is there a point where it's no longer feasible to assume the risk associated with starting a company?