A lot of people envy the rich and the intellectual elites of the modern world of technology and automation. You’ll probably wondering why despite of having good grades at school or people you know that are valedictorians and achieve a lot of academic recognition and yet they are struggling financially.
If you’re not wondering, that’s a greater problem.
Getting an academic recognition or achievement is the actual motivation of those people who achieve such accomplishment. Though they want to be rich or acquire substantial amount of wealth is their ultimate goal, not everyone are on the right track despite of their diligence and determination it will not bring them to their desired destination.
The ultimate formula for financial success is solve the problem of enough number of people then the money would follow. Solve a problem of a billion people and charge them $1 each then you just made yourself a billionaire.
One of the obstacle of those people who dream and fail or at least not yet there yet is that they are limiting their options to those things that they enjoy or comfortable with with their current skills and intellectual aptitude. This applies to myself, despite of my “perceived” awareness where the world is leading to because of AI and automation, I should be learning coding or engineering to make myself relevant to the different world we’re gonna live in the future.
An average American reads a book a year and an average CEO reads 50+ books a year. This is the reality that people are conveniently dismissing, it’s probably because it’s easier to protest and complain than to pick up a book. However, reading book is not a direct causation for financial wealth. I know people who reads more than one book a year but not significantly ahead of the game or at least vs those who only read one book or no book.
The problem lies, which i’ve noticed in the quality of books they are reading. To be rich you have to serve other people but when you consume materials to get you through boredom or for purely entertainment and pseudo intellectual stimulating activity, you’re being the market, someone is solving your problem instead of the other way around with no financial return on your side.
Even materials about self improvement can harm your progress financial success if it consume so much of your time than necessary. Time that you could have used in execution towards your goal. This probably the reason why some billionaires end up making stupid mistakes like Jeff Bezos sending his nudes, and some would have failed or failing family life. These people bury themselves with work to the state of obsession which is necessary to achieve such success. But just like anything in life, everything has a price. The inevitable dichotomy we are all subject to, even the ultra rich.
On the other side are those who mastered self-improvement, the person with lots of friends, the authority of TV shows and classic novels etc, but broke. but that’s all in history on the rise of these influencers who looks like having the best of both worlds, but not really. The price that they’re paying if they not being authentic is the false sense of self and the unsustainable lifestyle that they set up for themselves that would bite them in the butt when the tide turns around. And there are some trading their privacy for fame and ephemeral adulation.
The constrains of time always put us in a situation that we have to choose between things. Study and pursue your goal or go out and have fun? Sleep or party? Work or be with your love ones?
In the it is a matter of prioritization and the narrative that runs inside your million years old brain. Non negotiable.