The short answer
"Suffer while you're young" is half right.
But it's also a pretty sloppy thing to say.
Here's what I think we should actually be saying:
While you're young, take on hardship that gives your future self more freedom.
Avoid hardship that breaks your future self as much as you can.
Hardship comes in different kinds.
Some of it pays off.
And some of it not only fails to pay off, it ruins your health, eats your time, and shrinks your options.
Telling someone "suffer while you're young" without separating the two is pretty dangerous.
Why is "suffer while you're young" risky advice?
When people hear "suffer while you're young," a lot of them take it to mean things like this:
- Stick it out even if the job is miserable
- Working long hours is normal when you're young
- Night shifts and irregular schedules are good experience
- Unfair treatment is just part of learning how the world works
- Quitting means you're soft
- Hard times when you're young will pay off someday
But that's a pretty crude way of looking at it.
The reason is simple: the fact that you suffered has no value in itself.
What matters is what that hardship leaves you with.
What counts as good hardship?
Good hardship makes your life easier later.
For example:
- You pick up skills
- Your market value goes up
- You gain another source of income
- You find out what you're actually suited for
- Your judgment gets sharper
- You get better at reading people
- You end up with assets or systems that keep working for you
- Your future options grow
- You stop repeating the same mistakes
This stuff is hard.
But the hard part turns into freedom down the road.
Studying for a certification, preparing for a job change, learning about investing, building an app, building up a body of articles or content, understanding how your work really functions, putting words to what you're good at.
These are heavy right now, but they may well help you later.
What counts as bad hardship?
Bad hardship leaves you with nothing, and worse, it wears you down.
For example:
- It breaks your body
- It wrecks your sleep
- It breaks your mind
- You gain no skills
- Your pay doesn't go up
- Your exits disappear
- You get more responsibility and nothing else
- Your own time vanishes
- Your future options shrink
- You get used up because "you're young, you can handle it"
That's not hardship so much as attrition.
To be clear, I'm not saying night shifts, temp work, or hands-on frontline jobs are all bad.
Some of those jobs are necessary, and plenty of people do them with real skills, income, or a goal in mind.
The problem is making young people endure something without ever telling them why they're doing it, what they'll get out of it, or whether they're losing their health and their future options.
Night shifts and long hours aren't something you can wave off with "just tough it out"
Long hours and night shifts are the classic examples of things people say you can handle "because you're young."
But you can't just treat them as a matter of grit.
A study by the WHO and the ILO (the UN's International Labour Organization) reported that working 55 or more hours a week, compared with 35 to 40 hours, raises the risk of stroke by 35% and the risk of death from ischemic heart disease by 17%.
Kokoro no Mimi, a mental health site run by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, also says that death from overwork is a big loss not only for the person and their family but for society, and that people need to know how to prevent overwork.
As for night shifts, the IARC (the WHO's cancer research agency) classifies night shift work as "probably carcinogenic to humans."
In other words, long hours and night shifts when you're young aren't just "experience."
They're a way of working that carries health risks.
Of course, society needs some night work.
Healthcare, nursing care, infrastructure, logistics, disaster response, manufacturing: there are fields that simply don't run unless people work at night.
That's exactly why the answer shouldn't be "you're young, so put up with it." We should be thinking about shift design, rest, training, health management, pay, and career planning too.
If you say "suffer while you're young," you owe them some guidance
The problem isn't that young people go through hardship.
The problem is that nobody teaches them how to choose it.
What young people really need isn't a pep talk about toughness. It's information like this:
- What they're actually good at
- What they'll learn from this job
- What kind of career this job leads to
- How this way of working affects their health
- Whether this hardship will increase their future freedom
- Or whether it will just close off their exits
- Where to go for advice when things get rough
- Whether they have options like changing jobs or retraining (learning new skills for a new line of work)
Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare defines career consulting as "advice on choosing an occupation, planning a working life, and developing and improving job skills."
It also lays out the elements of building a career: understanding yourself, understanding the work, hands-on experiences that spark awareness, decision-making, carrying out a plan, and adapting to the job.
So instead of "just endure it somehow," the right approach is to understand yourself and understand the work, and then choose.
It's not a bad thing if a teenager or young person picks a path "kind of randomly"
On the other hand, it isn't necessarily bad for a young person to choose a path without much deliberation.
Say your family works in manufacturing, so you get interested in manufacturing too.
Or you've watched your father or grandfather work, and a similar job feels reassuring.
Or you tried learning a new job on a workplace visit and found it fun.
That's all pretty natural.
People picture their jobs based on the role models close to them.
Family occupations, where you live, school, friends, teachers, work experience programs.
Of course those things shape the career you choose.
And if it turns out to suit you, that's perfectly fine.
The real question is whether you can course-correct after choosing "kind of randomly."
If you get in and it doesn't fit, can you look for another path?
Before it breaks your body or your mind, can you put your unease into words?
When someone tells you "suffer while you're young," are your exits being blocked?
That's the important part.
The right kind of hardship makes things easier for your future self
There's no need to reject all hardship when you're young.
In fact, some kinds of hardship can only be done while you're young.
But that doesn't mean "endure until you break."
The right kind of hardship is the kind that makes life easier for your future self.
- Study
- Get a certification
- Figure out what you want in your next job
- Understand how your work is structured
- Learn what you're good and bad at
- Learn about investing and money
- Try a small business
- Build assets like articles or apps
- Automate things
- Build a safe circle of relationships
- Get ready to leave a way of working you hate
All of these are hard.
But they lead to more freedom later.
Hardship that only wears you down is a different thing.
- Long hours that teach you nothing
- Night shifts that wreck your health
- Low-paid work with no way out
- A workplace where all you do is put up with unfair treatment
- Responsibility that takes away your exits
- An environment that narrows your future options
You don't get rewarded for going through these when you're young.
If anything, young people should learn how to steer clear of them.
Not "people who suffered are great," but "people who picked hardship that pays off are strong"
You don't need to judge a life by how much someone suffered.
What matters is which direction the hardship points.
Even when it feels equally rough,
- Hardship that adds to your freedom 10 years from now
- Hardship that ties you to the same spot 10 years from now
are completely different things.
If you're going to struggle while you're young, you're better off choosing the first kind.
Don't just endure it. Shape it into something that helps you later.
That's what matters.
Wrapping up: how I'd reword "suffer while you're young"
"Suffer while you're young" is dangerous as it stands.
It glorifies hardship too much.
What we really need to say, I think, is this:
While you're young, take on hardship that sets your future self free.
Get away as early as you can from hardship that breaks your future self.
Hardship has no value in itself.
What has value is what it leaves behind.
Does it leave you with skills?
Does it widen your options?
Does it protect your health?
Does it show you what you're suited for?
Does it build you a safety net of money, systems, and relationships?
Telling young people "suffer" without looking at any of that is just too careless.
Sure, it's fine to go through some hardship while you're young.
But it's better to choose the kind.
Pick hardship that frees you, not hardship that breaks you.
That, I think, is the right way to read "suffer while you're young" today.
