You can do all the work you want, but if there are no results, you have nothing. This is the cold, hard truth that a lot of peope don’t want to accept. It’s really easy to end up in a position where your skillset means nothing. Just put in 4 years of hard work as a young man in a middle income country. I guarantee you will go nowhere. This fact of life can be really discouraging for many, but it really shouldn’t be. Life is getting easier for everyone across the world. It’s just selecting for the most dedicated. So generally speaking, you’re going to reach a time
A lot of endeavours are all or nothing
Meaning only about 10-1% of people are succeeding at any given time. This is true for music, sports, and online business to an extreme. Even more mainstream endeavours such as teaching languages have an exponential curve to them. You usually have to be in the top 10% of a skill to get recognized and paid for it. Bare minimum
Get used to spinning your wheels
If you’re just in the top 10%, your skillset means nothing. You need vastly and dramatically outperform the competition in order to see the fruits of your labour. It’s extremely difficult, but there’s nothing that you can do besides accept reality, and keep spinning your wheels until you make it.
Set lofty goals
The best way to make sure you fail properly is to shoot for the stars. You’ll end up doing ok if you are able bodied and average. Most skills are about repetition and putting in the time. If you set lofty goals, you’re going to be forced to put in the time in order to see them through.
Have a 10+ year plan
If you can force yourself to think in timeframes greater than 10 years, you will feel a lot more secure learning and honing your craft. You’ll break your journey down into bite sized chunks and celebrate the wins more than losses. This is crucial for the first few years, especially if you’re in a middle income country. You can’t learn if you can’t think long term.
Be frugal
When you’re honing your skills, you’re basically going to want to put yourself under immense stress until you learn what there is to be learned and are able to complete tasks at a high level.
Realize most of your life happens after 40
Which is now what you’re optimizing for. If you’re Gen Z, odds are most of your life happens after 40. Until then, you just kind of have to let the chips fall. If you aim to be in the top 1-0.1% of whatever it is you do, even a spectacular failure in your endeavours should net you some results. Work really hard in your 20s and early 30s so that life after 35 can be beautiful.
Acceptance is the most important stage of grief. When we find ourselves stuck and spinning our wheels, we greive the time lost. In reality, most of the time we just need to calmly evaluate the situation, assess how far we are from a breakthrough, and set a pace of work. Your skills mean nothing right now and it’s ok. Time is just an illusion. They’ll mean something when you have done your work.
Thanks for paying attention.