Hard work may be your most important career weapon!
From the Weekend FT, Simon Kuper (If you have to sign just one paper the FT is the best, plenty to read and really bright people writing)One day this summer, while we were watching our kids play together, an American mother told me her child-rearing strategy. Her children’s school cost more than $30,000 in tuition a year. Its raison d’être was to get pupils into brand-name colleges. To boost its chances, it encouraged kids to repeat grades. This woman’s daughter was performing well at school but only with intense after-hours tutoring. The girl was therefore going to repeat fifth grade. The mother’s endgame, as I understand it: the children become doctors or lawyers earning top 1 per cent incomes.
Of course, game plans like hers are now common. As the 1 per cent keeps getting richer, more parents want their kids to join it. Recent findings on happiness seem to support their thinking: most researchers now believe that happiness keeps rising with income. There is no satiation point beyond which money doesn’t matter, as was previously thought.
I like money plenty. However, I’ve decided not to try to push my kids into the 1 per cent — a group whose lives seem to be getting worse. While the rewards of membership are rising, so are the costs. Instead, I’ve devised my own child-rearing strategy for happiness.
I think it's really difficult to be in the 1% but it pays big time. balanced people are poor! This is the world we live in. However i don't think the way for the 1% is trough studying & going to work for a lawyer firm or Goldman Sachs.
What get's you in the 1% is to be an workaholic and really putting the hours in anything. You have to do more than most of the people. you have to know your stuff you have to study, investigate, try etc.... For this you need FOCUS & work this will put you in the 1%. To get into the best colleges and the best firms will give you a very difficult life because there are thousands of mothers that have the same child-rearing strategy.
"Everything in moderation, including moderation."
Julia Child
No One who rises before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich
Chinese Proverb
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To get to the 1%, by definition, you have to do better than 99% of those that surround you. A lot of people think that you have to do better in school than 99% of the people, and I agree with you that does not seem to be the case. Others think you have to work harder than 99%, but I also don’t think that’s the main reason. I think that those who get there often do something very different than the others, and usually that’s what gets them there, they don’t follow the herd. I know that they are usually hard working and often top tier students, but thinking for themselves is a big part, and it’s hard to think for yourself when you go thru such normalization systems like school and work.
ReplyDeleteIn essence, if we all do the same things, learn the same things, have the same hobbies, we will end up the same.
P.S: You can also be very hard working, educated and have divergent thinking and end up nowhere. Luck also plays a importante role in life.