I stumbled upon this talk by Douglas Kruger on YouTube. I decided to take notes and write my own summary to deepen the learning experience. It provides me with a reference for later times. Douglas Kruger mentions 8 points, I reorganized them into 5 themes.
The starting point to get you where you want to be is to see a learning curve separating you and your goal, not an abyss. You are not separated from your goals by a number of years. You are separated from your goals by a number of actions. There you have control.
Give yourself permission to try and fail. Let it be OK that others laugh at you.
You’ll never be wealthy if you hate the rich. Money is neither evil, nor embarrassing, nor finite. Wealth makes you an amplified version of yourself, thus be sure to like who you are.
You must be willing to talk about money, and to figure out how to make more of it. Money is infinite, because work adds value and thus money to the system. The more we do, the more wealth there is for all. Grow the pool instead of trying to contain it!
Positioning determines your pay-scale, not the quality of your work. If you are the celebrity of your industry, you are going to out earn the non-celebrity. Be the icon, be the face, be the creative thinker.
Knowledge is important, but you have to bring personality, you have to bring humanity. Bring things that can’t be automated. Embrace being a human being with a face, a voice, ideas & opinions. Anything that can be commoditized becomes invaluable.
Invest most of your energy to generate income, release yourself from the bottom line. Saving is important. However, saving means you’ll starve to death slower, if you forget to generate income.
You must act on your ideas. They can multiply your income 10x. Risk aversion may paralyze you. Yet, it is unsafer to rely on someone else to take care of you, because you are not their priority. Job security doesn’t exist, you exchange work with somebody for a salary. Generate it yourself from your ideas! Allow yourself to fail, and keep trying. The average millionaire has been bankrupt 3 times. Risk is there, but reward too.
If Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or any other billionaire were left in your current situation, would they become rich again? For sure! Would they act like you now?
Knowledge and education are out there, you must embrace it. You need to move out of the spaces that hold you down, because they depress your thinking. You get averaged by your environment, thus get exposed to successful individuals. They are worth the approach. The world is at your service. Ask questions! Get the experience. Ask people with knowledge, never remain silent.
As scientist I studied the physics of the very small quantum world. As a computer hacker I distill code. Software is eating the world, and less code means less errors, less problems. Millions of lines of legacy code demand attention and have to be understood and simplified for future reliable operation.
