Through our entire lives, we want to become a better version of ourselves. Whether it is to be a better parent for our children, a better employee for our companies, a better citizen that is more responsible and protective of our communities, from the bottom of our hearts that we know we have a goal that we are striving for. I might have a different goal than yours but I deeply believe that we have some common grounds that we could agree on and work towards together.
I am thinking about this not only for myself but also for my future kids. Imagine that you are running a university for your kids and you are arranging what classes should be mandatory for your kids. Do you have any idea? I give you 30s for this question. My own answer to that question is I partially know what needs to go into my kids’ schedule but I am also evolving. But if I were the student at that university, I have no clue what is next up for me. My parents and grandparents put a lot of effort into raising me up but they never emphasized any skill that I should know to make my life easier. I am not blaming them for any of that because I truly believe they have never actively and logically thought about it. In other words, this has never become knowledge for them. So today I will give it a try, to summarize what I have known that has helped me and will help me, make it solid knowledge so that I will have a plan (or curriculum) for my kids.
Make a decent living
Class 101. I am not sure if we need to elaborate on this, I mean, it is obvious, right? A squirrel can find enough food for herself. Any reason can’t I?
Make good friends
Class 101. Making friends is another basic need, although this is more complicated. There are good friends and bad friends to make, everyone can agree on that. I would like to think of this problem as what types of friends to make for what need. If you want to copy some homework, you need a good-student friend, if you want to hang out with someone, you need a party monster.
Be reasonable and think logically
This section title might sound naive but we are really getting more serious from now on. This is the foundation for everything we are going to talk about. If there is only one thing that you are going to take away from this article, I think this is the one. Why this is so important? Because without being able to do this, people will suffer financially, lose jobs, lose friends, mess up with their lives. How do we do this? The first thing I would say is to forget about your ego and be honest with yourself. You don’t have to let anyone know how that works but internally, you should know what is going on in your mind. Richard S. Fuld, Jr. is an example of that. If he was more honest to himself, he wouldn’t lose Lehman Brothers. But he is also a good businessman and leader, so he must be also very good at doing that. This controversy just reveals how hard it is to be consistent especially in extreme cases. Let’s talk about how to do this. The first thing is that this should be practiced since childhood and that really means parents should really help. We cannot rely on teachers since we have no control over who the teachers are and what their world views are. If the only thing that a parent knows about how to persuade people is to scream and yell, how’d you expect the child can do differently? The second thing is there are some textbooks that teach this, and we can google them. The last and most important thing is to practice. From my own experiences, this is really hard and I have thought about quitting a thousand times. To do this, a person needs to a) concentrate on a specific issue b) collect large information around it c) judge which part of information is reliable by looking at the source, the author, and using common senses d) endure uncertainty, this means we might never be able to draw a conclusive point of some issues and we have to live with that. Another trick that I found useful is whenever I have some new information, I decide to not trust it first unless it is verifiable upfront (like stock price) or first-handed. Then I look at the information that comes with it and try to find any explicit conflict. After that, I use internal knowledge to make judgments, this really requires a lot of active daily thinking where you are aware of how everything works around you. If all checks pass, I will resort to other sources like a search engine, friends, or books.
There is so much to talk about being reasonable and thinking logically. I should open up another post focusing on this. Once you master it, you will instantly become sharp and wise. You will understand why you think the way you do and how you can change it, and relating to others, you start to better understand people and their needs. You also begin to get a better sense of things like why we had the Iraq war, why my wage is not going up, why we are losing our jobs to other countries, why we got a stupid president and everybody seems happy about it.
One homework I want to leave to you right now is, use your judgment, list the reasons why being reasonable and thinking logically is crucial to what will come in the next sections.
Be sociable
Be sociable means, as an adult, we want to be nice with each other first but I would like to elevate that to another level up. I am sure there is someone in any workplace who is nice, well-organized, polite, always-responsive, someone as soon as you talk to for 3 minutes, you will like her/him. How do they do that? These people have really high Emotional Intelligence (EQ), not only do they manage themselves well but also they understand people so well that as you open your mouth, they will know what you are trying to say. This characteristic can be born with, but can also be learned and practiced. The reason most people are not doing this is that they have not yet realized that they can nail it. People are fearful and worried that they could screw up on it. My tips on how you start to do that are to start with people you know better and feel comfortable to interact with. Don’t start with your best friends, you are too comfortable with them and you won’t get any improvements. Start with your boss, the receptionist at your company, or the right-next-door Starbuck person. Ask how they are doing, if they are happy with work, anything you can do for them. Be considerate of others and expressive about it. And remember, it takes some time for the results to show.
Know how to predict (well)
We make predictions every single second. This is how we obtain senses of control of life, by making good predictions about our lives, acting on it and let it happen as we want it. What we are not doing too well is to do long-term and large-scale predictions, things like how global warming will impact us, how economic cycles will affect my choices of owning a home, how ethnicity composition will change over time and how that is going to affect politics and economics. If we know how economic cycles work, we can save hundreds of thousands of dollars getting an ideal home. If we know what types of people are in high demand in the job market, we can plan ahead about our college majors and suffer less from our student debt. My tips on how to do it well are to read, read a lot. Focus on books that talk about business and history. Find interesting books. I strongly encourage people to read interesting books, boring books only drive people away from reading and leave people with the impression that reading is the last thing they want to touch in the world (this is especially true for kids). When I start to read history books, I have no knowledge of what I am looking for and how I should frame my knowledge. As I read more and more, I start to be able to connect dots from different books and topics that I read. I start to see some patterns working in the world. I also enjoy it when I find a small topic that is really interesting and I dig very deep into it, no matter how much time I spend on it, I love it. (A recent example is to understand why Middle East is always in chaos.) When we start to internalize the knowledge and framework, we will have the ability to apply that to our current situation, we will find answers from history. That is how we can predict well into the future.
Be financially wise
Every parent wants the kids to have some knowledge of how to manage finance. We give small money for work they do so they know they need to work to get paid. This is a great practice. Understanding why money doesn’t come in an easy way is crucial. I strongly recommend people to understand some basic ideas in economics, like absolute advantages, relative advantages, opportunity costs, demand and supply curves. These are like the 1+1=2 in your daily process of making any decision. These also help you in large decisions like whether you want to move to another state, or when to own a house.
Know the strengths and weaknesses of yourself, and acknowledge it
We are not god and sometimes we don’t deserve being told: “you have done an awesome job”. We are not awesome and everyone has many weak points. I think about strengths and weaknesses through the lens of comparative advantages. Imagine you and another bud are competing for the principal violin and principal cello in a band. Comparative advantages are where you are not as good as your bud at both instruments, but you can still choose to be one of the principals because your bud can only play one instrument at a time. There is some genius that does everything in the perfect way, and we all feel stressed about that. But that genius can’t do everything at a time, that leaves u a great space to do our best. We also need to acknowledge that we can’t do everything well. Someone else’s compliments do not make ourselves great, our work makes us great.
I have talked a lot about how to make ourselves a better human being. This is not an easy path. Everyone who wants to take it will get hurt. But be prepared, and you will make it.
