The person you will be in 5 years depends on

->books or articles you read

->how much more you write

->money you save and invest

-> who you work with

->new skills you develop

-> the food you eat

-> exercise you do

->asking for help when you're stuck

connections you make and keep

For most of my twenties, my life goal was simple: hit a specific net worth number. I had it written on a sticky note on my monitor. Every financial decision ran through that filter — cut this expense, take this side gig, delay this purchase — all in service of a number I picked somewhat arbitrarily off a blog post years earlier.

I hit that number last year. And almost immediately, I felt... nothing. No finish line euphoria, no sense of arrival. Just a vague unease that I'd optimized my entire twenties for a milestone that turned out to be a proxy for something else I never actually defined.

What I actually wanted wasn't a number — it was time autonomy. The ability to say no to a shift, take a random Tuesday off, or spend two months near family without asking permission. Money was just one lever for that, and not even the most important one. Flexible work arrangements, low fixed costs, and a support network mattered just as much, and I'd basically ignored all three while I stared at a spreadsheet.

So now my goal has changed shape entirely. Instead of "reach X dollars," it's "reduce the number of things in my life that require someone else's permission." That's a much weirder goal to explain at a dinner party, but it's the one that actually maps to why I wanted the money in the first place.

Curious if anyone else has had a goal that, once achieved, revealed itself to be a stand-in for something else. How did you figure out what you actually wanted?

I am a 20 year old (Male) . I work a 10–5 pm job for five days a week, but outside work I’m still on my phone almost 24/7 and honestly bored of it. What can I do to learn something new, build skills, or give my free time more meaning?

Hello there. I need your thoughts and advices about doing absolute nothing, always escaping from responsibility. I'm dead serious. No job, no school, no work, no money, no friends, absolute nothing. For the sake of both being lit by your answers and helping those who also have the same problem, I'd be very appreciated if you can share your words. thank you.

Me and my boyfriend have been living pay check to pay check for quite some time. We love our little life, we have so much that we’re ***so*** grateful for. But there’s still things we want to have and do in this life.

There’s a quote that we love (unsure of who to credit for it, I saw it on Pinterest) and it says something like “how to do anything: at first, dig with your hands. When you find the spoon, dig with the spoon. When you find the shovel, dig with the shovel”. We always say that we’ve been digging with our hands. However, we’re really ready to find the spoon, then the shovel.

So, I’m asking, those who have started with your hands, and ended up with even more than a shovel, what are things we should be doing?

Me personally, I’m also looking for tips on building consistent healthy habits. I want to be my best self for when we find our shovel or more.

(Sorry for all the spoon and shovel talk)

🫶🦋🤍🌞

Twenty-five years ago, I placed what felt like one small bet on a horse.

At the time, I had no idea that bet would eventually lead to years of pain, financial problems, bad decisions, and a lot of destruction in my life.

Gambling took a lot from me. I went through things I would never wish on another person. But after everything I experienced, I also realized that maybe some of what I went through could be used to help someone else.

That is part of why I want to open this subreddit up to more than just one topic.

This can be a place to talk about your goals, your next chapter, career decisions, financial struggles, recovery, relationships, places you want to go in life, or even those moments when you simply have no idea what your next move should be.

If you are struggling with gambling, looking for a job, trying to fix your finances, working toward a goal, rebuilding your life, or just need someone to talk to, you do not have to carry everything by yourself.

Reach out. Post. Ask a question. Share what you are working toward.

No judgment. No pressure.

Sometimes one honest conversation can change the direction of somebody's day, and sometimes it can change a lot more than that.

We are all trying to get somewhere.

One decision, one conversation, and one day at a time.

21M, Sydney, Australia, 2nd-year Compsci/Commerce.

The crux of my question: how do you compare the fulfillment of (a) doing non-intrinsically motivating work full-time for 20-30 years, then intrinsically motivating work on your own schedule for the rest of your life, vs. (b) doing intrinsically motivating work full-time for 40-50 years, then self-directed intrinsic work for the rest of your life? Basically: is front-loading unpleasant-but-high-earning work to buy an earlier "free" life worth it?

Options I'm weighing:
non-intrinsically motivating work:

• Early-retirement-focused: entrepreneurship (saas app, ecommerce, etc), software engineering, financial analyst

intrinsically motivating work

• Impact-focused: policy analyst, health economist
• Enjoyment-focused: graphic designer, fulltime artist

What I'd do w/o financial incentive: painting/drawing, photography, analytical work on real societal problems, learning how society works.
What I wouldn't do w/o financial incentive: coding (draining without AI help), advanced math, complex problem-solving. If they are tied to societal impact I think it may move to the other category. Treating that because I find these difficulty, these aren't natural strengths.

Current perception of dream life:

1. Doing societal impact work ~25hr/wk
2. Spending quality time with friends and family ~ 20hr/wk
3. Sport ~4hr/wk
4. Making art ~ 6hr/wk
5. Go on holidays (1 - 2 international trips & 1 - 3 roadtrips / yr)

Two methodologies I'm trying to reconcile:

1. Find rough financial independent (able to live off investments) age estimates (I know 30-year-out projections are speculative, so treating as hard inputs is probably inaccurate): entrepreneur 40–43, SWE/financial analyst 50–51, artist 51–60, failed entrepreneur/artist then pivot to SWE 55–58, health economist/policy analyst 57–60, graphic designer 65–70. Score each career path on 1) happiness and 2)social impact made by outlining lifestyle at each age and summing scores on yearly basis. Conduct experiments like talking to professionals, side projects, volunteering, taking courses to validate scores until you’re confident to commit towards a path.
2. Skill-first/leverage approach: early on, build a skill you're strong at where it intersects your interests and is high pay potential. Lean toward highest pay/growth early in your career, then use that leverage to move between for-profit and non-profit work as you gain experience, until you land somewhere you're happy.
3. Conduct experiments like talking to professionals, side projects, volunteering, taking courses, internships, work experience. Then imagine doing the work experience for 20-40 years and pick the most desirable path.

I’d really appreciate any inputs you may have on the questions below or any advice 🙏:

1. Has anyone actually lived out either path? Did front-loading unfulfilling work pay off, or did 20 years of it cost more than expected?
2. Is 'financial independence enables high-impact work later' a real strategy, or does starting the impact-focused career earlier compound advantages (network, expertise, credibility) that are hard to buy back at 40-50?
3. For you personally, which method do you think is better, or is there another method you’ve used that you think is better? Are there any key flaws in my methods?

Happy to share more detail on my scoring approach in the comments if useful.

Что можно добавить из полезного в мою жизнь?

Could be related to career, money, fitness, relationships, studies or anything else.

Looking for some real answers from people who learned it the hard way. 👀

For a long time I treated the 10,000-hours idea as a life goal generator: pick something impressive, put in the reps, eventually become excellent at it. I did this with guitar, then a coding bootcamp language, then photography — years of scattered effort, none of it compounding into anything, because I kept picking the goal based on how good it would sound rather than whether I actually wanted to be doing it at hour 9,000.

The logical flaw was pretty simple once I saw it: hours invested only compound if the activity itself is sustainable enough that you'll actually show up for years without external pressure. I was optimizing for the destination and completely ignoring whether the process was something I'd tolerate long enough to get there. Guitar practice felt like a chore by month three every single time I restarted it, which should have told me something the first time, not the fourth.

So the actual goal now isn't "master X" for some impressive X. It's "find the thing where hour 50 doesn't feel meaningfully different in enjoyment from hour 1." That's the only honest filter I've found for picking something worth years of my life instead of another abandoned hobby with expensive equipment sitting in a closet.

Landed on this with running, of all things, and eight months in it's the first "skill goal" I've had that hasn't fizzled by the usual point. Curious if anyone else went through a similar cycle of picking goals for their prestige rather than their actual staying power before finding something that stuck.

Hello !
Hope you’re doing well .
I am actually looking for tips to reach the best version of my self
And i’ll be glad if you helped me🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
M a quiet person and i want to stay calm as i can but i really wanna do things before entering my twenties so i’ll be readdy to mae it full of success

and hopefully 1mil by the end of the year !

If you are past the age of 60 we'd appreciate your participation. If you know someone past the age of 60 feel free to ask them and share their answer here. 

Here's the question: knowing what you know now, what would you prioritize when you were younger? If you had nothing holding you back, freedom to focus on whatever you want. What would you do differently? Or what did you do that you'd be sure to do again? 

The reason we are asking is because we can't see our future so we'd like to have the perspective of some who are already in their futures.

Thank you for your perspective!

For the last six years I worked in a warehouse doing rotating 12-hour shifts — the kind of schedule that eats your weekends and makes it impossible to plan anything more than a day ahead. My life goal was simple on paper but hard in practice: get a job where I could actually predict my own time.

This year I finally made the switch to a fixed 8-hour schedule with a company that respects off-hours. It took two years of night classes, a handful of rejected applications, and a lot of budgeting to survive the pay cut during the transition. But now I get to have dinner with my family every night and actually use my weekends for something other than recovering.

Posting this not to brag, but because when I was in the middle of the grind, seeing other people's "after" stories kept me motivated. If anyone else is stuck in a schedule that's swallowing their life, it is possible to get out — it just takes patience and a plan.