This has been the most eventful year of my life. I got married, bought my dream house, traveled almost every month, and found out I’m going to be a father.
The last thing is the best gift. As I’m writing this, my wife is almost 36 weeks pregnant. I honestly can’t wait for my little guy to come into this world.
Before the end of this year, I took some time to reflect on the lessons I learned or relearned. I hope they will serve you on your journey.
Everyone wants to own a business.
It really doesn’t matter who you talk to. People want to be their own boss. I have nothing against that, because I also had that desire.
But looking back, there was no widespread desire to be self employed until about ten years ago. But since Covid, this trend has only accelerated.
During my college and university years, I didn’t come across a single person who said they wanted to start their own business after graduation.
Most people were after traineeships at large companies. A few considered getting a PhD. Others wanted to work at smaller firms so they could know everyone. It was all about finding employment and getting good at what you do.
Now, people hate jobs.
Why is that?
So you want to have a good job that pays well. But you also want to have loads of free time so you can do fun things.
And if that’s not enough, you also want to have a nice car and a comfortable house. Oh yeah, and go on a vacation every few months.
But the reality is that jobs that pay well are scarce. And if you do get paid well, you have to put in a lot of time. So you don’t even have much free time to do all those fun things and vacations.
You have to pay taxes, do groceries, clean your house, spend time with the people who are close to you, and fulfill a bunch of other obligations. And this is all if you don’t have kids.
I went through a little crisis of purpose over the last year.
You see, I started writing full-time in 2015. And I pretty much dedicated my entire life to building my career. I looked at it this way. First, improve your skills, then earn money, and finally, invest it so you no longer have to worry about financial constraints and paying bills.
I worked on my skills by learning and immediately applying them. I committed to reading 2 hours a day and writing pretty much the rest of my day. I think the best way to learn is to do something publicly. You can write as much as you want behind closed doors, but you will lack the challenge you need to improve yourself.
Writing publicly is scary. People might not like it. Or worse, you might get ignored. But you need that type of friction or pressure to improve. If there’s nothing at stake, why would you push yourself harder to improve?