Work Hard Young, but Skip the Extra Pressure

In a 2021 group conversation, I spoke with a young man who had recently started working. The video describes him as twenty-three, with a double major in computer science and finance and a 4.0 grade point average. When I asked how he was doing, his answer was that he was okay. I wanted to know what would have to happen for him to feel good about where he was.

He had already shown that he could work hard. My point was that he did not need to make himself miserable to prove it. The details of my workload and plans below are what I described in that 2021 conversation, rather than a prescription for someone else's life today.

Work toward the freedom to choose

I encouraged him to make use of his early working years. Working a lot while he was young could give him more choices later, including the choice to spend his time with people and projects he cared about. That was the reason for the effort, not a reason to feel disappointed with himself every day.

I used my own priorities as an example. I had earned my first entrepreneurial money at seven and wanted to keep building with people interested in entrepreneurship and investing. I had spent many hours creating programs for clients. I wanted the work to be demanding and useful enough that a participant could finish, look back, and say the effort had been worth it. I also wanted us to enjoy the people we were working alongside. The work and the company were connected.

Effort and extra pressure are different

The warning I gave him was direct: You're going to have worse results putting that extra pressure on yourself. A demanding goal does not require you to treat every good result as a disappointment. He had already reached a high standard at school and was carrying that same pressure into work.

At the time, I also told the group that a young person could work ninety or a hundred hours in a week to build something. I was describing the intensity I believed could be useful at that stage. I was also working at that pace myself and admitted that it did not make sense for me to keep doing so indefinitely. Those two parts of the conversation belong together: I valued effort, but I did not think constant strain was the point of the effort.

Make room for the life the work is meant to support

In that 2021 talk, I had a real estate program I wanted to make excellent and a book I had committed to write later that year. I told myself I would ease up the following year so I could finish those commitments. Afterward, I wanted to put more time into my health and into things I found fun.

For me, fun included spending time with thoughtful entrepreneurs and investors. I liked learning from people my age and older who had experience, and I liked meeting younger people who were just starting. If the young man built a strong career, I imagined that we could still be exchanging ideas or looking at a deal decades later. I did not expect him to be accomplished at twenty-three in the same way he might be later; I saw a long relationship and a long runway ahead.

A good record should still feel like progress

I came back to his grades at the end. I could not imagine treating a 3.9 as a failure. I told him my own grade point average had been 3.83 and that it had opened the schools I wanted. He could take his work seriously and still enjoy the people and the process around it. That is also why I pay attention to the people I choose to build with: a demanding goal is easier to sustain when the work itself and the company you keep are worth your time.