A well-rounded life is a PURE Life.
It should multi-factored and have enough variety to stay interesting. If you have a goal you will never truly get bored. The harder the goal is, the more fun you will have and the more fulfilling it will be as you spend more time on it.
I am involved in so many things. I have started several technology companies with varying degrees of success. I experiment in biohacking lab every now and then. I enjoy and attempt to create comedy. I give to charities like Liberty in North Korea. If I drop any one of these, I tend to feel something lacking in my life.
If I chart all the work, hobbies, and activities in my life. I found I always been most satisfied when I have something in 4 distinct categories.
Let’s define them.
Progress is activities that try to change how the world works. Usually charity or running for office. It could also be the military or police related work.
Research is pretty self explanatory. Doing research.
Entertainment is anything artistic or entertaining. Writing, Videos, Drawing, Magic Tricks.
Useful is anything business related. Trying to do something for a profit.
Don’t the names mislead you, many businesses aren’t useful at all. Many politicians don’t progress the world. But many entertainers don’t entertain and many researchers don’t do research. Many people don’t do their job well in every field. This is only for what they are “attempting” to do.
They are charted out this way for a reason.
Progress is the opposite of usefulness. Politics has the opposite goals of business. Businesses try to maximize profit where countries try to maximize the well-being of their citizens.
Research is the opposite of entertainment. I suppose this doesn’t really need explaining. Entertainment is entirely about the present and seeking to understand yourself. Research is entirely for the future and seeking to understand the world.
I have also found Progress sometimes has to oppose research. The most “political” politicians straight up don’t believe in a lot of inconvenient research like Climate change.
Entertainment also can oppose useful. Entertainment is entirely creative. I found starting a business to be the complete opposite, completely going in the direction of what other people want for money.
You can also chart them by utility and empathy.
Research is extremely useful and requires some level of empathy to be conducted correctly.
Useful business things are pure utility.
With Progress, politics involves empathy to understand your constituents. Even if some politicians use that to be manipulative. It inherently has no utility though. A perfect world would need no politics.
Entertainment can be entirely for yourself.
It doesn’t mean any of these is better than the other.
Progress and Entertainment are more alike. Many entertainers get into politics or use their influence in similar ways. Researchers also frequently join or start companies too.
The sides are opposed in emotion as well.
Politics and entertainment attempt to make people better whereas research and useful things aim for the world as a whole. One side is inefficient and expensive where the other side coldly relies on efficiency and what the data shows.
There’s a lot of different worlds you can find yourself. I meet a lot of single track minded people. I think that is okay in your 20s but you should branch out into different groups even if just for the occasional hobby.
Having multiple circles has many benefits. If you start to feel one isn’t going anywhere or have a major setback, you still have 3 others to throw yourself into. Like a table with 3 legs, it can still stand.
And when any of your worlds start merging, it feels amazing. You find endless opportunity. I was able to send some of my engineer friends to help refugees send remote control balloons over North Korea. I had money from startups to pore into comedy, a field where nobody has money.
You also feel like you have a longer life. One project and set of people I know occupies the same space in my brain as another project. Even if one was only for a few months and the other was for 4 years. You have more “things that you did.”
Be PURE.
I personally like the Phrase “Pure Life”, but you are also welcome to pursue DUMB CLAPS if that is easier to remember.
DO
Usefulness – Money Business
Civil Liberties
Art
Progress/Science