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by Teknoman117 1686 days ago
28/M myself, and if I ever ended up with that kind of money, the first thing I would do is focus on my health. I'm very overweight and out of shape and never seem to be able to muster the motivation outside of work to do anything comprehensive about it. I'd love to just be able to quit and consider fitness my full-time job for a year or two.

Depending on exactly how much I made, these are daydreams I've had before:

Start a "company" that focuses purely on open source contribution. Pay people tech salaries just to work on open source projects they care about. My main intent would be to focus on areas where no decent open source software exists or is dominated by a small number of complacent companies that consider it a license to print money.

Learn how to teach and mentor kids, then do it. My mom is a high school computer science and math teacher, and I always wonder how much more effective she could be if funding for equipment wasn't an issue. My students would have access to whatever I thought could benefit their education.

Be a stay-at-home father. My mom was a stay-at-home mom until I turned 16, and my dad worked from home when I was 8 through 12 (the years following the dotcom crash) I started learning to program and got into robotics at 8 years old and I don't think I would've been nearly as successful starting at that age if I didn't have access to both of my parents pretty much constantly. If I ever have children, I would want to give them the same or better. Try to guide them along whatever piques their interest and enable them to access the resources to do well.

My personal view on life is that there really isn't any higher meaning to it. I'm content to wander the Earth finding and doing interesting things until the day I die.

2 comments

It's awesome that you have such concrete dreams. Please don't wait until you're rich to pursue them, especially dropping weight and becoming healthier. That's one of the best things you can do for yourself in life.

I was a fat kid who managed to lose the weight around ~16 and kept it off till my 30s. I'm 36 now and independently wealthy - much chubbier now than in my 20s. I can tell you that money and lack of worries doesn't make finding the motivation to see a large weight loss through any easier. I go through periods of working out/playing sports for 3-4 hours a day, but if you like eating, it's easy to super compensate and continue to put on weight. I always seem to manage eating one more croissant.

You don't have to do it all at once to become healthier either. any year where you trend downward, even by half a pound, is an improvement. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Again, easier said than done, but you don't have to be comprehensive - just 1% better every day.

Happy to chat with you about weight loss and health if it would be helpful: zemvpferreira @ the old gmail.

Try Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, BJJ. Best sport for software engineers, because you constantly have to solve hard puzzles. You never have to worry about motivation again to do sports. I started it 6 months ago. I'm still in the very very beginning, but I can't imaging not showing up in class, it is so fascinating. In order to get better I lost ~30 pounds, started eating better, etc. Changed my life.