You life is carefree, and you feel unconditional love from all over.
You're surrounded by your peers, and everyone is basically doing the same.
Other people!
They'll tell you what to do, how to feel, before you know it, you're pouring your life out in search of something other people told you to go look for. Soon, you're lost in the search of what's not yours in the first place.
The irony of the world we live in.
You life is carefree, and you feel unconditional love from all over.
You're surrounded by your peers, and everyone is basically doing the same.
Nothing really changed except now you have a certain place you need to be for a good portion of the day to 'learn things' you may or may not be interested in. Odd but hey - life isn't asking too much of you.
- Get good grades, so longer school hours,
- Getting physically stronger and more capable to care for yourself,
- The pressures to fit in and conform increase,
- After graduation, you have some big life choices to make, to some extent.
You quickly learn to conform to what's expected of you.
You find that if you work hard enough, you can have the nights, weekends & days off so you live for these times when you get to connect with people you care about.
- Late 20s/early 30s go by so fast
- You're now 100% accountable for your mistakes,
- Now you pay for everything yourself,
- Stay in the loop w/ society & politics,
- Financial security becomes a drag.
Life is beginning to become a grind.
Are you married? Do you have kids? You begin to look back on life and wonder if you made all the right choices, yet you do the needful.
More from Life
1/ Some initial thoughts on personal moats:
Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.
Characteristics of a personal moat below:
2/ Like a company moat, you want to build career capital while you sleep.
As Andrew Chen noted:
3/ You don’t want to build a competitive advantage that is fleeting or that will get commoditized
Things that might get commoditized over time (some longer than
4/ Before the arrival of recorded music, what used to be scarce was the actual music itself — required an in-person artist.
After recorded music, the music itself became abundant and what became scarce was curation, distribution, and self space.
5/ Similarly, in careers, what used to be (more) scarce were things like ideas, money, and exclusive relationships.
In the internet economy, what has become scarce are things like specific knowledge, rare & valuable skills, and great reputations.
Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.
Characteristics of a personal moat below:
I'm increasingly interested in the idea of "personal moats" in the context of careers.
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) November 22, 2018
Moats should be:
- Hard to learn and hard to do (but perhaps easier for you)
- Skills that are rare and valuable
- Legible
- Compounding over time
- Unique to your own talents & interests https://t.co/bB3k1YcH5b
2/ Like a company moat, you want to build career capital while you sleep.
As Andrew Chen noted:
People talk about \u201cpassive income\u201d a lot but not about \u201cpassive social capital\u201d or \u201cpassive networking\u201d or \u201cpassive knowledge gaining\u201d but that\u2019s what you can architect if you have a thing and it grows over time without intensive constant effort to sustain it
— Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) November 22, 2018
3/ You don’t want to build a competitive advantage that is fleeting or that will get commoditized
Things that might get commoditized over time (some longer than
Things that look like moats but likely aren\u2019t or may fade:
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) November 22, 2018
- Proprietary networks
- Being something other than one of the best at any tournament style-game
- Many "awards"
- Twitter followers or general reach without "respect"
- Anything that depends on information asymmetry https://t.co/abjxesVIh9
4/ Before the arrival of recorded music, what used to be scarce was the actual music itself — required an in-person artist.
After recorded music, the music itself became abundant and what became scarce was curation, distribution, and self space.
5/ Similarly, in careers, what used to be (more) scarce were things like ideas, money, and exclusive relationships.
In the internet economy, what has become scarce are things like specific knowledge, rare & valuable skills, and great reputations.
