20 pieces of advice to help you stand out
Against 99% of your beta peers
So, you hate your job, you don’t make enough money, and you are wondering: Why does that person have a better job? Why is my career not progressing?
Let me share 20 pieces of advice to set you in the right direction in your career and more importantly, in life.
WATCH this article below:
1. Life is unfair. Accept it.
Life is unfair. Get used to it. We didn’t have the same starting line. I wasn’t born in a target hospital, went to a target kindergarten, ran a bulge bracket lemonade stand, or attended the right boarding school that gave me a clear shot to target colleges. But I am generally a happy person because I came to acceptance of my socioeconomic upbringing early enough. Stop the complaint and envy, you won’t change anything external. Make the most out of what you have.
The professional world works the same way: Not the most qualified person gets the job - Inside track; HR in a good mood; Some just sell themselves better. Someone more experienced and willing to work for less pay.
When I worked in equity research, I know other MDs got text messages from clients who asked to place their kids for research internships. Why their kids can’t do anything better I don’t know, but the inside track is real and there is nothing we commoners can do about it.
Gordon Gekko might be a fake character, but the original Wall Street movie is such a classic because quotes like “if you are not on the inside, you are on the outside” are just too damn real.
If you are still complaining about unfair life. Stop wasting your time and work with who you are. Control what you can control: learn more skills and how to better pitch yourself. That leads to my next point.
2. Dreams take hard work
If you want to accomplish something in life, you got to put in the work. That’s the secret sauce you don’t want to hear about, but it doesn’t stop being true. The shortcut you are looking for … doesn’t exist.
Successful people make things look easy because they mastered their field of expertise. Media likes to portray wealth as an event when it’s in reality a journey. Behind the scene, it’s decades of compounded effort that you don’t hear about.
Do Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, Kobe Bryant, Serena Williams, and other star athletes have innate talents? Yes. But I will bet they are also the hardest working motherf*ckers in their discipline.
The case of Usain Bolt is particularly deceptive. Every four years, you get to see his work results once for like 10 seconds. But think about the work that goes into becoming the world’s fastest man where a tenth of a second difference could derail you off the podium.
It’s 100% your choice of having fun or suffering through pain, you just have to be okay with the consequence of your decisions. You also can choose to suffer now or later.
I get tons of questions on the BEST book on investing, BEST course on modeling. If you are truly resourceful enough, you can find all the knowledge on the internet FOR FREE and piece the knowledge together and master them.
I also get too many “Yo, I want to work at a hedge fund, man.” comments. My first check is to look through their social media to see what they are doing over the weekend.
Look, I am not saying you aren’t allowed to have fun, but if every Friday night and every weekend, your social media just shows highlights of you going to parties, concerts, and watching TV shows, forget investing, your chance of achieving success in any discipline is zero.
As long as you are okay with the consequence of your actions, it’s perfectly fine. The worst ones are those who complain but they don’t want to suffer. There is no free lunch here. There is no free lunch anywhere.
3. Stop acting so entitled
I had bad grades in college, so I am always grateful for opportunities and I have a good attitude that no task is beneath me. However, I hear enough stories about candidates acting entitled about not wanting to do certain tasks. That’s a problem, only for you of course.
At the start of your career, 99% of you add zero strategic value. It’s not your fault, you are just brand new. You are paid to learn. What you need to bring are a good attitude and a work ethic. These are intangible, but 5 years out, I guarantee the ones with those qualities are getting ahead in their career.
At first, the tasks you do at work might not be the most intellectually stimulating things. In exchange, you learn about the big picture stuff through osmosis. Over time, you should see the bigger picture, the more strategic stuff, which hopefully interests you more.
If you are not interested in anything, you have a bigger problem.
In the corporate world, most get promoted when they are already functioning at the next level. If you can handle most of the work your manager can do, the company knows you are ready for the next challenge.
Your job is to take things off your manager’s plate so s/he can focus on taking things off their manager’s plate. That way, everyone grows. They are not the most exciting tasks but you develop good foundational technical skills that are transferable across different industries, which leads to my next point.
4. Be good at technical
My first manager gave me invaluable advice on learning one Excel trick per day. I took that advice to heart and ran into issues of underbilling my clients because I was so efficient at getting the analysis done.
My manager noticed the “good problem” I was having and gave me more talking roles at client meetings. As a result, I was progressing on the job more quickly than my colleagues who were hired at the same time.
The sooner you can get the lower-value technical tasks done efficiently and correctly, the sooner you can focus on the big picture of how your work fits into a larger deliverable and how senior people use it to make business decisions.
That piece of advice is true for any profession:
Junior programmers code.
Junior bankers format slides and make financial models.
Junior consultants make slides and do spreadsheets.
Junior research analysts dig into stock ideas given by portfolio managers and form a view.
Get the basics down. So you have more time to step back and think about why you are doing these analyses and what they mean for your company.
There are many resources on how to get good at coding, excel tricks, and so on. Find them, consume them, and apply them every day on the job. It compounds. The sooner you get strategic, the sooner you will be given tasks that are probably more enjoyable and financially lucrative for you.
And that leads to my next point on seeing the big picture.
5. See the big picture
My first corporate job was as an actuarial intern in advanced research at a major insurance firm. That summer, my department was exploring the launch of food truck insurance. I was tasked to do statistical analysis to assess the risk profile that ultimately goes into whether the product can add a big profit pool for the company without taking on too much risk.
I analyzed tens of millions of insurance claim data, read white papers on statistical theories, and iterated different combinations of variables that spit out a reasonably predictive model.
I was tasked to make a few slides in the upcoming presentation to the commercial line CFO. I was way more naïve back then, so I made about 20 slides, going into all the unnecessary details: T-stat, F-stat, and significance level. Sorry about all the statistics class flashbacks.
In my final week of the internship, my team and I walked into the CFO’s office, the CFO said “Ok, you guys got 10 minutes. Just point me to the slide that tells me: how much profit is this product going to generate for the firm?” Thankfully, my manager had it on page 2. Clearly, it wasn’t his first rodeo in town.
The CFO saw the profit is too small, decided against the product launch, and ended the meeting. Of course, he didn’t look at the 20 slides I made. I was a little bummed out about that.
But here is the thing: That’s why the CFO makes the big decisions and the big bucks. As an investor today, of course, I understand. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is whether we create more shareholder value. Otherwise, all the detailed work just doesn’t matter.
Even after more than 10 years of working professionally, I still tell this story because I was so grateful that I got this big eureka moment so early in my career.
Regardless of where you are in your career or what profession you are in: When you do your next task, ask yourself, why am I doing this? How does my work fit into a bigger work stream? How does that impact the company?
As you progress professionally, you will probably do less technical work and focus more on the big picture and make decisions. So you should start training yourself to ask these questions and think big picture today. The sooner you do that, the better it is for your career progression.
6. Focus on value, not price
I understand salary is tangible, predictable and it’s in the present. Especially as a college grad, you need to pay rent and want to have fun. But let me tell you, rich or high-earning people don’t care about base pay because they know the action is in linking their compensation to their value creation.
What does that mean for you? You need to relentlessly focus on becoming a more valuable individual every day. Find a place where you have a good boss, a good firm, and can learn a lot.
Don’t quibble over $20k salary difference. In the long run, say you work till in your 60s, you have 40+ years of professional life and most of your peak earnings power is not in the first few years. $20k really does not matter.
But the intangible of having learning opportunities and good mentors early on is super crucial because that’s when you are building your career foundation.
Never stop learning new skills, taking on more responsibilities, and understanding your industry more deeply. Just because your job now is not what you exactly want to do, doesn’t mean you cannot control what you want to learn in your own time. You know the information is out there because you are reading this article.
7. Stop gathering badges.
Most professional exams are broad and shallow, like the CFA, and have almost zero applicability to the work itself. Actuarial exams have almost zero applicability to the work itself (I was an actuary and we just use a spreadsheet).
Too many prepare by taking practice exams instead of learning the material. Passing the exam and getting the badge shouldn't be the only goal.
Instead, I favor free-form learning over structured learning any day. A lot of CEOs don’t have anything other than a college degree. Some billionaires didn’t even go to college. Well, Bill Gates and Zuckerberg are insanely smart and Buffett I argue didn’t need to go to school either. That said, you should get a college degree because it still opens too many doors that you cannot afford not to have.
Theories and formulas don’t explain the real world. My two rules are: learn from practitioners and learn by practicing.
8. Work on Your Communication Skills
The world will never know your intrinsic ability if you cannot communicate. Work on it: Read a lot, write consistently, practice public speaking, and learn to be a good listener.
Read a lot
Billionaires read a lot. Why shouldn’t you? Read broadly, you never know which mental model from a seemingly unrelated discipline can help you understand a new situation or come up with a new idea. Be open to learning about a new subject: Anthropology, philosophy, business and people biography, science, etc.
It doesn’t have to be explicitly reading, you can consume podcasts and video interviews.
So much free great content out there. You just need to pay with your time. Next time when you want to watch a tv show or play video games, I would think about reallocating just some of that time to things that can make you more valuable as a communicator.
I read mostly nonfiction, but I wouldn’t just undervalue the power of fiction. Storytelling is a useful skill for interviews. And what do you think being a content creator is about? Storytelling.
And when you read, focus on comprehension instead of trying to hit the number of books read each year. Applying the learning is very crucial too.
Start a blog
If you are worried about what others might think about your blog, I can tell you from my experience: people care about themselves too much to care about what you got going on.
Just start, being a better writer has to be good for your career. Executives have to make dozens of decisions each day, keep your communication short, it will make you stand out. Your manager for sure will like you.
There is always a way to say the same thing with fewer words. And you will see more reading and writing translate into better public speaking skills too. If something you wrote about today can benefit one potential audience, put it out there.
Since I also recommended you to read a lot. Share your learnings from books with your audience. One, teaching is the best way for learning, because you are forced to be intellectually honest and really condense to the essence because you really need to be concise to get your audience’s attention. Two, you added value by saving others time. Three, it’s an evergreen content theme as long as you read more books.
Be a good listener
Talk less and listen more in a one-on-one conversation. Let others finish, and when it’s your turn to talk, don’t just start talking about yourself, you should respond to what others just said.
When you are so busy talking or thinking about what to blab about next while others are talking, you gonna miss out on learning opportunities. I think all of us have room to improve in this area. It obviously can benefit our personal relationships too.
9. Things take time
The cliché is true. Be patient, and enjoy the process. It takes time to master something and that’s only if you discovered your passion so you have a deep desire to master it. The only lever you can pull I can think of is you can put in more time than others, but that obviously takes the fun away. You have to ask yourself: How hard do you want it? Obviously, I don’t advocate for a complete lack of fun, because that would not be a life worth living.
Also, keep in mind a lot of things in life don’t progress linearly.
Social media is nonlinear. Actors reach fame only after breakout roles. Some things can grow exponentially, some things can get stagnant for a period of time.
When you are in that valley of disappointment, it can feel like you are not making any progress. However, if you ask successful people, they will tell you when they zoom out over their entire journey, they realize everything they put in contributed to where they are today.
When I was actively networking for buy-side jobs, I forgot how many portfolio managers I talked to, I got rejected by many times, some right before the case round some even after the case round. And my mentor, who is a Portfolio Manager, put my resume down with a few start-up funds, I got reached out by one, and one behavioral and two technical rounds later, I was hired and moved back to California. You know what they say: “You only need one job.”
Were all the rejections completely useless? No. I got better at telling my story, anticipating interview questions, and defending my stock pitches. They didn’t achieve my final goal but in reality, they were part of my progress toward my goal of breaking into the buy side.
I heard this saying, 95% of people on this planet work for the 5% who didn’t quit. There are a lot of nuances to it, but the intention is good that too many give up before getting into that critical mass. Things take time, stay patient. And that leads to a related point.
10. The beginning is always the hardest.
The beginning is always the hardest because you start from 0.
It’s hard to get your first corporate job because you have no corporate experience and strategic value add.
It’s hard to know what to focus on for your first stock analysis because you need to draw a diverse array of knowledge in financial analysis, modeling, valuation, and competitive analysis. It also takes time to connect these somewhat unrelated disciplines into a cohesive toolbox that becomes a repeatable process for you as an investor.
It’s difficult to get your first customer as a start-up because even the first adopter is looking for that reference customer. But it’s hard to get a first customer, without having a first customer.
I am sure you feel the same when you are trying to get into a profession and the job post almost always states they are looking for someone with 2-3 years of experience in that profession.
I do have good news for you: It does get easier after the beginning. So you do have something to look forward to. You just have to keep on and not give up. I saw this motivational quote from someone “The first million is always the hardest and the second million is inevitable.” Same idea.
To get my first corporate job, I networked aggressively because no one selected me for an on-campus interview because of my bad grades. I reached out to anyone who was willing to speak with me on LinkedIn.
Life is so random like that: I reached out to this one alum who is a math major who worked at an insurance firm. I genuinely only wanted to learn about what he does, but he told me his team is hiring a summer intern and asked me if I was interested. Of course, I said yes. A few rounds of interviews later, I got my actuarial internship. Once I had my internship on my resume and had passed two actuarial exams, I was getting more interviews for full-time jobs.
The same narrative for stock investing. An ex-colleague introduced me to the concept of stock research. At the time, I did not know accounting, business strategy, or anything. I was a quant and actuary. I did not know where to start and what to look for to analyze and value a business.
Just like a lot of beginners, I hit the classic books. Ben Graham, Buffett / Munger, Seth Klarman, Joel Greenblatt, Phil Fisher. You name it. They were helpful, I was making small progress here and there. But I stay consistent and kept reading more literature.
I cannot explain it really, but you know how in life you just get these smoke suddenly cleared moments? No, I didn’t mean running out of weed. I meant like the big eureka moment that is big intellectual breakthrough. And the less clueless I got, the more passionate I became about investing. And I went even harder on self-learning and looking at more companies and here we are today.
For those who are new to my channel, I started a business last year around this time. It was a similar story that it was very tough in the beginning. All clients signed up for the free introduction, but I could not convert any to paid clients.
I knew I can only control what I can control, which is to keep giving value and collect customer reviews on the free sessions. Over time, I started to get first adaptors because more of my content is out there and prospects are getting a better picture of the problems I can solve for them and then it just snowballs in a good way.
As you can see, you just need to keep going. Keep working on yourself and keep networking. As a YouTuber today, I watch a lot of big YouTube channels, and the one recurring advice from Big YouTubers is don’t give up too soon. Be consistent and keep putting out content.” That’s the only thing you can control.
You only need one job and someone will give you a chance. And while you are waiting for that someone, you are getting better and better as an intrinsic talent.
11. Get your basic etiquette down
The world has rules. The ones who follow them progress more quickly. Rule followers are not guaranteed success, but those who just “don’t get it” are guaranteed to struggle without ever knowing why they are not getting ahead.
For now, I will just rattle off the common senses you need to follow. I might need to make a standalone post in the future.
For example, when you interview, formal or informational:
Be on time.
Don’t swear.
Turn off your phone.
Don’t multitask.
Don’t wear black suits.
Don’t speak ill of your former companies and bosses.
Do your homework and don’t ask first-level questions.
Don’t ask about pay unless they bring it up first.
Always send a thank you email.
I have seen too many intelligent people trip up on these common sense things.
Early on in my career, I interviewed at many subpar companies. I remember my interview at a data technology firm: Each candidate had to present in front of the interviewers and the other candidates why they want to work there. One candidate said I want to work here because of the great perks and benefits.
I was definitely shaking my head on the inside. None of you should make this common sense mistake.
Seriously, colleges need to stop forcing you to take multivariable calculus when most of you will add and subtract numbers at work. Instead, provide a course called common sense in the professional world.
Forget about getting into a high-caliber profession like investment banking, just progressing within a normal corporate job is going to be a challenge if you can’t get your basics down.
12. Network relentlessly
If you don’t have the perfect resume or the connections, level the playing field by going direct. No one will hand you that high-caliber job on a silver platter.
You need to get into the mindset that no one is above cold emailing. Put yourself out there. People want to help you, provided you have your etiquette down and you have a clear ask.
When I was in sell-side research, a person in commercial banking at another bank emailed me for coffee. He was very clear about his goals, understood what sell-side research is all about, and attached a stock write-up.
I did not hesitate to meet for a coffee and hopefully saved some time in his journey. Today he works on the buy side after a stint in sell-side research.
If you are hungry and you can demonstrate your skills, you can go very far in life because the target school folks are entitled so they don’t do a lot of networking since firms come to their schools. And the rest of your non-target comrades don’t have their etiquette down yet or don’t make an effort to figure out the game.
That’s your edge.
HRs should be the last people you talk to when you job hunt. And the best job leads are the ones where you are the sole candidate.
Even when you have a job, you should network for many benefits.
You can find mentors who can shorten your path or help you avoid detours. Your mentor can be an internal colleague or an accomplished professional outside your firm or profession.
You also need to have sponsors inside your company for career progression.
Remember this: The most important decisions in your career are made when you are not in the room. You need a sponsor in that room to make sure your accomplishments and potential are recognized. Sponsors vouch for you in your promotion.
Knowing whom to call within the company when you don’t know something can save so much time. When I worked at a Fortune 100 insurance company, I was really amazed by my manager’s network.
One time I was struggling to figure out where the numbers came from in a spreadsheet we got from another department. I was stuck for hours and my manager called me into the office, put on the speaker call, and called one of his contacts in that department. The smoke immediately cleared and I rushed back to my desk to put comments on those cells in the spreadsheet so I remember how the other department got these numbers.
You can brute force your way to complete the task, or you can be that social butterfly and build a network of contacts who can provide you with crucial intel when you are stuck on a task. Which of those two people do you think has a better work-life balance?
Learn to network. That leads to my next point on how to sell.
13. Don’t Be Loyal To Your Company
When you just graduate from college, you might want to work for a specific firm for all sorts of right and wrong reasons, but over time you will learn that most firms have issues: Small firms are disorganized and have no process. Big firms are bureaucratic and political. No place is perfect. So it really comes down to whether you can find a manager and a team that can create a good culture for you and mentors you.
If you are naïve enough to believe any company treats you as family, this wave of layoffs should remind you they don't. No employee is a must-keep. It's just capitalism, not that people are evil or anything. But it grosses me out when they message these things and spend company money to create that illusion. The only person who can say we are family is this guy because he has backed up his words in 10 movies, AND COUNTING.
Take care of yourself first, then take care of whom you want to take care of. Unless you are a 100% or significant owner of something, remember you are always just a number in the spreadsheet and even if you bring revenue for the company. Everyone is replaceable. You have seen press releases about the CEO "pursuing other opportunities out of the company," right?
14. Learn how to sell
Every company needs sales and marketing. Especially as a start-up, marketing is crucial for revenue generation. Forget profits, I am talking about revenue. Learn how to pitch yourself. There are great books on the subject. My recommendations are here.
When you interview, you are selling. When you are getting promoted, it’s not just your accomplishments and knowledge that matter. It’s what senior people’s perception of you gets you promoted. Creating that perception is selling.
Every role at the senior level is selling. Investment bankers, consultants, lawyers, and portfolio managers are all selling their services. CEO sells their vision to employees and investors. If you claim you want to get to the very top, work on that skill today because every day when you are working on things for your manager, you are implicitly selling as well.
Junior people trade technical skills for money. Senior people trade relationships, experience, and strategic vision for money. Who gets paid more money? I hope you see how important is selling now.
That leads to a related point on brand building.
15. Be Consistent with Your Brand
Jamie Dimon said it really well in my favorite graduation speech:
There is already a book on you. That book is already being written. And if I spoke to your teachers, your friends, your professionals, your parents, I would know whether you trusted how hard you work with your ethics, I would know so much about you, you’d be shocked, I don’t even have to meet you. So that book is already growing. You should you write the book, you want the way to be written, you actually have that choice. And you can do it as you want. Now. Don’t let others write it. And when you get caught in situations that you’re uncomfortable, I remember I worked at a company not far from here. And I remember I was asked to do something I didn’t want to do, I’m not to tell you, I’ll take this advice, you can always quit. It’s your responsibility, whether you accept to do something or not. And it will be in that book written on you.
People can easily validate by channel-checking YOU. It’s like doing expert network calls for stock research: If one person says something about you, it could be an outlier and a biased opinion. If five people say the same thing, it’s a credible insight. So be consistent about who you are. Because if you aren’t, people can call your bluff and that can’t be good for your career.
Every industry becomes incredibly small the more senior you get: Tech FP&A people know each other. All the data scientists go to the same conferences. In my first job, I see people just move around the three companies within the industry for a higher title and more pay. And these three companies are competing for the same sets of clients so they all know each other. Eventually, they settle in one of the three firms as a senior person or they leave to join a client. And it’s safe to assume they get the job by getting a phone call from a senior person at a competitor, not through HR screening.
Just be aware that the moment you stepped into the corporate world, you are building your brand.
16. Think independently
Too many college students started as pre-med, pre-law, or pre-business just to end up graduating with some random major. Too many MBA students recruit for IB and MBB only because their peers are. If you don’t work hard to figure out what you really want, I am not going to be the one who suffers. You are.
I understand when you are in school, you are kind of trapped in a bubble like your school is its own world. But you need to think independently about what YOU want, instead of going with the crowd. Some of your peers really want to be doctors, lawyers, or investment bankers. If that’s what you want to do, that’s fine. Just know medical / law schools and companies are very good at separating the truly passionate from the herders. And you can’t win against passionate and determined candidates who have the self-discipline to stand out. All you will get is rejections.
It’s the same with work: When you join a company, just because something has always been done that way, doesn’t mean
It’s the only way or the right way
There aren’t better ways to do it.
Real problem solvers challenge conventional wisdom to create transformative outcomes. Those folks go on to be senior executives because they ask questions, take action and take risks by being different. The really courageous ones even go on their own to solve a problem in their differentiated way.
It’s nuanced how much you can voice your opinion at work, but you need to start to develop that independent thinking.
17. Take Action
Have you ever caught yourself saying, "Oh, I really want to start this or that?" I was chatting with a friend over Zoom, and I told him about my experience creating content on YouTube. He said, "You know, I've always wanted to make a YouTube channel teaching others about value investing."
I'm sure he has had this idea for many years, and he's a more experienced investor than I am. The problem is that, as of now, he hasn't activated his YouTube account, and there are 0 videos and 0 followers.
If, three years ago, I didn't sign up for an account on Instagram, there wouldn't be "dickthesellsider." I hesitated at the time because, other than meme posts, I didn't have any other idea buckets that could fill an entire week of content. But I started, and I figured things out as I went along. And I'm still learning.
If you want to do something, take action. Perfectionism is a big enemy. I am confident that every entrepreneur agrees with me on this point. If you're a start-up, you need to get a minimum viable product out there. If you're a YouTuber, you need to post videos. If you're a stock investor, you need to actually act on your idea to monetize it.
The goal is to get data back so that you can tweak and pivot if necessary. I don't know whether you will like this video, but the data will tell me.
Sometimes, I thought my post was really funny, but it had very low engagement on Instagram. Other times, I thought it was a "meh" product, but it became a top 10 engagement post of the year for me. It's never what I think that matters; it's what you, the audience, want.
You need to create a skin in the game by starting today. Your first stock analysis is going to suck, your first blog article is going to suck, and your first YouTube video is going to suck. But what sucks more? Never trying and not taking action.
If Jeff Bezos only wondered about selling books online (well, today he sells whatever the hell he wants), we wouldn't have Amazon. If Elon Musk only wondered about electric cars or space exploration, we wouldn't have Tesla and SpaceX. They are some of the richest people in the world because not only did they wonder, but they also executed their ideas, dealt with all the operational and financial challenges, and got to where they are.
The folks living in Portola Valley, Atherton, and Hillsborough are undoubtedly smart, but a lot of smart people cannot afford a house there because they didn't take the business and financial risks to execute their vision, turn their vision into products, and market them.
Life is short, your obligations change, and tomorrow is not a strategy. Start today.
18. Dress Well
Robert Cialdini shared research that shows humans automatically assign positive traits such as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence to good-looking people. Sadly, most of us don’t look like George Clooney and Miranda Kerr. But, we can control how we dress.
Dressing well doesn’t mean buying expensive clothes. There are simpler things you can do, starting with clothes that fit well. I can guarantee you stand out just from a good fit.
In most parts of the corporate world, especially in a profession that still has a conservative dress code, a well-dressed junior person can stand out positively.
I have worked at banks and insurance firms, both of which have pretty conservative dress codes in the corporate standard, so the C-suite management still wears suits. Imagine a quarterly townhall or a social event attended by the CEO or CFO; if you are the junior person who dresses well, it makes you memorable. You never know when the company CFO knowing who you are can pay dividends in your career when it comes to a promotion or being spared in a layoff.
Of course, the definition of "well-dressed" differs across industries. So, dress well to the extent that you still fit in. You don’t need to wear monk straps and a three-piece suit if you work at a tech start-up. And, of course, dressing well is another one of those things that will obviously benefit your personal life (such as dating.)
19. Stop Comparing
You want an easy trick to be happier in life? Stop comparing. Social media is selective disclosure, and you only see your peers' best moments in life on social media. But a lot of things are not what they seem. Your friend might be traveling all year round but have no savings. Focus on yourself and compare yourself to where you were a year ago. Did you grow as an individual? If not, you know you are the problem. If you did, keep it up, and that should bring you joy.
Life isn't fair. People have different innate talents and family resources that can fast-track their progress or help them find their passion earlier, so they started earlier. Those 30 under 30s? A lot of them have rich parents. Some of them have questionable ethics, as we are learning now. Maybe if you have access to Daddy and Mommy Venture Capital Management, you can scale a DTC ShitCo faster than they can.
And yes, luck plays a role, but by definition, no one can control luck. However, I can tell you from my own experience that the harder I worked, the luckier I got. I continue to believe that hard work plays a big role, and that's something within our control.
20. Time > Money
We have a limited lifespan. You can make more money, but you cannot make more time. You must be judicious with time. Of course, it’s easier said than done when we don’t control 100% of our time. But you can control your own actions.
Think about your long-term goal. How do the things you plan to do in your free time today help you achieve your goal? You need to have self-discipline. Next time when you come home from work and just want to Netflix and chill, think about what you can do instead with that time to make yourself a more valuable individual so that you can get promoted more quickly, enter a higher-paying industry, build a side hustle or build your own business.
For example, I have a rule about reading. If five minutes into it, I feel this reading is not going to make me smarter, I am moving on. You don’t have to finish every book. You should actually read good books multiple times because every time you learn something new.
I am happy to have read only 10 books every year that are totally transformative. The number of books read doesn’t impress people. When you start talking, I can tell whether you are well-read or you cannot keep up with the conversation. It ultimately comes down to what you took away from your readings.
Also, you don’t need to be generous with your time to everyone. Anyone who wants an informational interview needs to earn it by having a strong cold email, so it shows they respect your time and have done some basic-level homework. We are not asking for much; we are just worried that you will waste our time, because we are not getting that time back.
Leave a comment to let me know what you think. I would love to have a discussion going.
Thanks for reading. I will talk to you next time.
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