If you’re not envious of someone you may be insane.
People love to say whatever they want is “very reasonable” and “isn’t too much to ask.” They say stuff like it’s pretty reasonable to:
ask for a bunch of coworkers that are competent,
expect the drive-thru worker to get your order done right,
to expect your CPA to NOT get you audited again,
to have your spouse have dinner ready,
to have a business doing what you love make great money,
and so on.
Maybe your reasonable desires and expectations ARE reasonable. But maybe not. It’s hard to tell, so we came up with the best reasonability and sanity test ever –
Do the Truth Cake Envy Test: if there’s no one that you could possibly envy for living the life you want, you’re likely insane and you’re unreasonable.
If you don’t know a SINGLE person that works with all smart colleagues, but you think it’s “reasonable” to expect something that you don’t even know could possibly exist in the universe, this is probably a good start to the definition of insanity. If you know of someone that has a spouse that helps out around the house, then sure, maybe you could be aiming for that too then. But when you don’t know of anyone that always has their drive-thru right 100% of the time, it’s probably not reasonable for you to expect that either. If you don’t know know anyone at all making $200k a year teaching guitar lessons, then yes, it IS unreasonable to expect you’re going to “do what you love and teach guitar, but also get rich.”
If you can find the person (hopefully there’s more than one) living the life you’d like, try to surround yourself with them.
So, is it too much to ask to get a multi-million dollar startup off the ground and still have a social life? Well, if you don’t know a single person that’s managed to do that, then yes, it’s TOO MUCH TO ASK. Yes, you might change the world and do something no one else has ever done before. But before you go patting yourself on the back calling yourself the next Steve Jobs, realize you’re much more likely to be insane.
Stop imaging the life you want built on fairy tales and instead find someone’s life that you envy and see if you can mimic that lifestyle before you invent a lifestyle that’s never been experienced.
