Most people are stupid not because of weak mental faculty. People are stupid because they do not listen to their inner voice. They are not honest with themselves. They do not practice intellectual curiosity.
Millennials are lazy. What is laziness? Related to the above, laziness stems from the inability to acknowledge reality. The reality is that to earn a living, you have to sacrifice something valuable.
Millennials are obsessed with passion. Not all passions or dreams should be followed. Not everyone can achieve everything. Following dreams blindly may turn your life to nightmares. Work is meant to be work.
Millennials are arrogant. Usually stems from the feelings of entitlement and delusional. Millennials feel that they deserve everything, without having to sacrifice anything. Millennials feel that they are above the reality.
Solution: Aaron advocates for millennials to acknowledge the reality. Stop being lazy and obsessed with passion. Stop being arrogant. Go to where there is value, where people will pay money for you to do something.
Acknowledging The Reality
A career is not a passion. It’s not your life. It’s a form of ‘prostitution’ where you are selling your time for money. My job is to provide value in exchange for as much money as possible from my employer. With the money that you have, you can do two things in life:
• Extend your life
• Enhance the quality of your life
What are the alternatives to working?
• Travel and adventure.
• Food and drinks.
• Enjoying your family’s company.
Aaron argues that lazy people work twice as hard. In life, there’s the hard way and the really hard way. There is no ‘easy way’. The ‘easy way’ is the really hard way disguised to look easy.
• The hard way: Studying for STEM degrees, suffering for four years but after that working in a high paying job.
• The really hard way: Studying liberal arts degree with no job prospects. Not having any job after graduating. Have to settle for low-paying jobs.
• The solution is to choose the hard way early on. Work on something that seems hard but are valuable to other people.
Imagine you’re the greatest chef of all time. But if you were put in a space where there are no other people, your skill would be worthless. Hence, the degree of value is determined by other people, not by the individual. Your traits do not provide value, but your accomplishment does.
With this in mind, Aaron concludes that the only thing that is valuable in this world is other people. Related to point number 1, the money or resources that you accumulate should be used to maximise the time you spend with other people and to enhance the quality of people you spend time with.
Adam Faliq 