A man reflects on how society measures male worth by status and money, trapping many in endless work. He spent his 20s and 30s grinding until his identity was just his job. The better path: work hard early to build savings and freedom, then stop chasing more.
This is a problem that you see among men much more commonly than women because it's what we're told by society. We're told that the measure of you as a man is your status and your net worth. And so how do we react to that? We go all in. And early in your career, you gotta pay the bills, especially if you've got a family, but you gotta do it with the end in mind. And that's the key. In my 20s and 30s, I was grinding. Most of my identity was wrapped up in my work. And I like to think of it as a sliding scale. When I was young, coming outta college, I didn't know anything. I had zero control. I had zero money. I had to do what I had to do to get ahead. But do that with the end in mind. Do that with the idea that slowly I'm going to gain control. As I start to build up my nest egg, as I start to move up the ladder, I'm slowly gaining bits of control. Don't use that to then just double down again on your work stuff. You can do that for a while, but ultimately that's a road to nowhere.
