Serious (Effective) People:

Mind Meandering:

"I think the concept of a serious or unserious person has lingered in my mind because I’m at the perfect age to notice it. I’m 29 now, so I exist in this weird purgatory where some people my age are married with kids, and others are in the same position they were in when we left school 11 years ago. At 22, the discrepancy between the people that consistently work hard, and those that don’t is pretty small. Not enough time has passed for the rewards of good decision making to pay off. Now at 29, the returns are compounding, and you can see that some are changing gears, and leaving the rest of the pack behind. These people, are serious people.

I have a close friend that had a very similar start to adult life to me. We both had the same friends, similar grades, and similar personalities. We lived in the same unremarkable town, went to the same unremarkable school, and did the same unremarkable teenage things together. If you looked at us at 18, you’d probably have guessed that we’d be in a very similar position at 30. However, you’d be totally wrong. Sure, I’m doing pretty good. I like my life. I have good relationships, I’m a senior at work, and think I show a lot of potential. He, however, operates on a different level. He’s married, has a kid on the way, and moved to the US to run a new office for a business that he was only the 3rd employee of. He probably makes more money in a year than I make in three. In other words, he lives the life that I could have in 5 years if I continue to keep my head down.

If we started from essentially the same place, why has he squeezed so much more success in the same amount of time? Easy. He was always a serious person, and I only became one when I was like 25. He’s always done the small things that add up. He shows up on time. He fulfills his commitments even if he doesn’t feel like it. He doesn’t waste his time getting involved in petty squabbles. He says what he means, and solves his problems instead of wallowing in them. He’s dependable, and knows that if he wants something, he has to go out and get it instead of waiting for the world to give it to him. He keeps a cool head in times of stress and makes prudent decisions. He’s not humourless (far from it), but he takes his life seriously - and you can tell that he does by just being around him for 5 minutes.

However, just as you can tell someone is a serious person quickly, I think you can also tell when someone is the opposite. Just recently, a guy I’ve only known for three months asked to borrow money. Literally the day after he paid me back, he asked for more. What? Why did you pay me back if you knew you were going to have no money immediately? What was the plan here? It’s as if he thought “I’ll give my last 20 quid to Connor today - oh shit, now I have nothing. Better ask Connor again!”. It’s the sort of thing that makes you roll your eyes and think “C’mon man, we’re not 16 anymore. Get your shit together”. He’s like the ghost of Christmas future if I never put the beer bottle down. I know that if he became a serious person, he could have a totally different life within a year, but he fails to see the role he plays in his situation. His circumstances are entirely the result of the external factors around him. He believes he’s powerless, and as a result, actually is.

This is the potentially worrying thing about serious and unserious people - everyone can tell which one you are. If you show up late to a meeting and laugh it off because you had a late one the night before, people may laugh with you, but they’ll know that you’re an unserious person. If you say you’ll do something, and let the deadline go by hoping that no one will notice, they will. They’ll identify you as unreliable, and politely go on, quietly deciding not to give you another opportunity. Likewise, if you show up to your life with a sense of urgency and purpose, people pick up on that. They are drawn to, and respect competence.

So I think the benefits of being a serious person are immensely valuable. In fact, I’d go as far as saying I’d rather be a serious person that was made redundant, than an unserious person that won the lottery. In ten years, I’d still bet on the serious person having a better life, because they have the means to create something good from any situation. The unserious person doesn’t create value, they just use it up, and complain when it runs out.

I regret not taking my life seriously sooner. I think back on all the adults that told me, regret in their eyes, that they wished they’d tried harder in school, and realise now that I’ve taken their place. I also want to shake teenagers and yell “Don’t your realise!? If you start putting effort in now, you’ll be king of the universe!” despite the fact that it’d almost certainly fall on deaf ears. It seems that learning to be a serious person is a class we have to take the hard way. It might be the most important thing we learn though, because if your life isn’t worth taking seriously, what is?"