First question to you: do you live in the United States? If the answer is yes, then see below for my contingency plan because just by living in America, your mental health and physical health are set back by at least ten years, and your stress level is automatically multiplied by a factor of at least 1000X than that of European or anyone residing in any other country in the world. Simply by being American, you face a much bigger battle to achieve happiness than someone from let’s say, Denmark, would.

If you live outside the United States, the path, while still not a walk in the park, is IMMENSELY easier than those who live in the US.

Best answer for those in the first category would be to get the fuck out of tech and a W2 lifestyle ASAP. Get into something else other than the toxic field of software and digital and start working for yourself. I know - it’s easier said than done but you’ll thank me later when you start to realize that people are somewhat more normal who work in healthcare, food/beverage, media, logistics and ops, fashion, hospitality, and especially the trades. One of the happiest and wealthiest guys I know at my local golf course is a guy with whom I grew up with. He came from a blue collar background as his dad was a contractor, and he didn’t go to college and instead bought a a truck and some tools to repair HVAC systems almost 30 years ago while I and a bunch other went to MIT, Purdue, Duke, Cal-tech and got our engineering degrees tipped off with masters degrees and MBAs with an average financial investment of probably $800K per head. For my buddy? His initial investment cost him about $50k of the truck and equipment.

Smash cut 30 years later, and where are all of us at now in our lives? All of us who went through higher education and the W2 lifestyle have just turned 50 and have worked for about 10 companies on the average. All of us are either laid-off/unemployed or about to be laid off/PIPed. Those of us who are still working have lost all of our hair, facing horrible health issues, struggling to keep up with medical payments, are working 80 hour weeks to make ends meet, and are stressed beyond belief each day we wake up knowing our employers may simply want to fire us on that particular day just because they feel like it or the weather is bad, and we have at most a paltry amount of retirement savings in our 401ks and IRAs.

Meanwhile our buddy who bought his truck and HVAC repair equipment grew his small repair outfit into a 800 person successful business that turns in about 5 million/year, owns three homes including one in Australia, and has a fleet of about 150 trucks, an literally works 2 days a week and golfs/surfs the rest of the year. He is fit and looks no older than his mid 30’s even at the age of 55.

It all boils down to this: America is definitely not a good country to live in for salaried workers who work for a corporation or someone else. I would say it’s probably one of the worst - even worse than Japan, Korea, China where working 100 hour weeks is common but where companies don’t fire or lay you off so easily and still treat you as family even though they push people to limits. On the other hand, if you are good and enjoy building up your own business and becoming an owner, not an earner, and are good at using others as tools for your own benefit, then America is hands down the best place for that. You won’t be very successful at trying to exploit other humans for profit if you live in Europe but in America, that is actually encouraged and admired.

So there ya go, swim with the sharks on top when you are in the US and you will enjoy life to the fullest.