M&Ms: Life Begins After Comparison

According to historian Mark Jackson*, mid-life crises get triggered at around 40 for three reasons.

The first is theorized to be psychological. With 40 years of our lives gone, it’s easy to see the downward slope of the other half of our lives. And realize it is the last forty we've got.

How some view their life in a mid-life crisis.

But the second reason people sometimes have a mid-life crisis is biological.

The body begins to deteriorate—something known as sarcopenia kicks in. Sarcopenia is the involuntary loss of muscle mass and function. Muscle mass decreases approximately 3–8% per decade after age 30, and this rate of decline kicks up even higher each extra decade.

The third and biggest reason is societal. This psychological and biological middle-of-life inflection point triggers a lot of comparisons. Perhaps one hasn't accomplished what they thought they'd achieve by 40. Sometimes, society and people close to us let us know we haven't. But many of us have been compared to others our whole lives up until 40, so comparison is easy. First, with grades in school, then with annual evaluations at work.

Forgive me for going off on a tangent here, but Corporate America's end-of-year evaluations can be pretty demeaning.

God, I don't miss the "Stack Rankings." A student in my newsletter course in Small Bets recently wrote about stack rankings and used a term I hadn't heard in a while: "Rank-and-Yank." And he said at Amazon when you get "yanked," they say: "You got promoted to customer."

I thought that was great because I "yanked" myself out of all that. And I promoted myself to customer.

Good riddance to the annual evals. I once heard the founder of Jet, a startup I was a part of that sold to Walmart for $3.3 Billion, lament in our all-hands about having to receive an annual eval for the first time. He sighed and said, "I've been an entrepreneur for so long. I am just not used to these things." He didn't stay there much longer after that to get re-evaluated.

But nobody likes annual evaluations, even without the stack ranking. Those things are anxiety-inducing even if you are doing great. Even if you know you've "crushed it" all year. You're on eggshells because you're unsure how hard you "crushed it?" Will you actually get that promotion, or will they yank it from you because of some budgetary constraint by HR? Will they make good and give you that raise? Will they rank you as "exceeds" expectations and give you a bigger bonus? You'll find out, but you'll have to wait until after the holidays.

Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, once said: "Few people wake up in the morning and say, 'Oh, I wish I could go work for a company today.'"

But if you're lucky enough to be in a great company, maybe a startup, moving fast, doing something important, and you say that phrase Larry said, then enjoy that. It can make the annual evals bearable for a little while. I was once in a company that felt like we were doing important work, and then the company sold. Don't get me wrong, we all did well, but it stopped being the kind of work where you wake up and say, "Oh, I am so glad to be going to work for a big company today."

But nothing great can last forever. Even the sun will eventually implode. Google imploded quite a bit recently. The firm Larry Page tried to create as an exception to all this, the beacon of engineering prowess, has its challenges these days. They've had layoffs, which I am sure involved annual evals and some sort of "Rank-and-Yank," and now the luster is off. Perhaps the destructive behavior is a sign of a mid-life crisis? Can a company have a mid-life crisis? But now, Google's even got startup(s) running laps around them in the most important race of the modern era: Artificial Intelligence.

But also remember that a company isn't the sun. These days, companies burn out faster than ever. There is very little chance a firm will burn bright your whole career. The days of working for 30 years at a firm and then retiring are over, so make arrangements.

But Larry Page is right; most people never even say the words, 'Oh, I wish I could go work for a company today.' They wake up and go to work to get compared at the end of the year because they have to. Some have bills to pay and think there is no other way. And there might not be another way for them yet. Many have a family to feed.

But some have neighbors to compete with, too. So they stay and take the annual evals and comparisons.

But with comparison being all one knows, it's easy to spot someone doing a little better at 40 and wonder what we did wrong up to that point? This can trigger a crisis in some.

The paradox of living is that it is only after coming to terms with the fact that we might have less life left to live than we've already lived that most people actually begin to live.

But it makes sense. In his famous Stanford Commencement speech, Steve Jobs said:

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — just falls away in the face of Death, leaving only what is truly important...

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, Death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life...

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life... And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."—Steve Jobs

Some people rebel when they begin "to live." According to the historian Mark Jackson*, infidelity goes way up as people try to prove to themselves that they've still got vitality. Divorce rates shoot up. And all sorts of destructive behavior kicks up during a "mid-life crisis."

But as I approach 40, I am not going to rebel.

With a few years to go to 40, I've already made arrangements. And I think you can too if you want to, with some preparation and work. I've made arrangements, so I can't be compared to anyone else anymore, at least not in any way that matters or will impact my livelihood. It turns out that without worrying about comparison, you need to make less than you think to have a good life and be happy. The freedom to work on what you want to work on seems to make up for some of the money. Remember, I "yanked" and promoted myself.

My hero, Charlie Munger, lived to 99. He didn't have it easy early on in life. But I saw it in his last interview a few weeks before he died, he was happy as a clam with eight children, fifteen grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren already. He despised comparison and envy, and I think that was a huge reason he ended up doing his best work and doing so well later in life.

So if you're approaching 40, and you're feeling some anxiety, but you've got your health, a family, and friends around you, then you need to remember you've already got the whole world. Now, you just need to find a way to avoid comparison, and life can look like this:

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*The talk by Mark Jackson on YouTube: Life begins at 40: the biological and cultural roots of the midlife crisis.

Three Things: Crab Mentality, Finance + Health + Life, Code & GPT

Comparison is the root of a lot of evil. Crab mentality, as shared by Danny and commented on by Pieter Levels harms a lot of people.

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This is true for money, true for health, and probably true for life.

Like Steve Jobs said:
”And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know… Everything else is secondary."

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I, too, am a big fan of ChatGPT for code, it is hard, with its limited context, to get large amounts of code out of it, but it is awesome for the reasons DHH shares here.

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Three Memes: Meal Prep, Death Lemonade, Google’s AI Flop

I’ve got some family & friends who are into meal prep, so I had to send them this.

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There is a Lemonade made by Panera Bread that is linked to two deaths, according to a lawsuit.

It seems like Panera might be trying to capitalize on Millenials’ impending mid-life crisis.

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Google recently launched an AI that is meant to compete with GPT 4, but it turns out a good chunk of the video for the demo was faked. Perhaps, Google really is having a mid-life crisis.

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-Louie

P.S. You can reply to this email; it will get to me, and I will read it.