How to Improve Your Situation
Three Mindset Shifts:
1. First, treat yourself as a VIP user who values their time; shift your mindset so that whenever something comes up, your immediate instinct is to calculate the opportunity cost of your hourly rate. Wherever money can solve the problem, prioritize spending it.
2. Another mindset to change: price doesn't matter, what matters is whether there's someone ready to take it off your hands. Further reading: Most people aren't used to solving problems with money
3. Recognize the principle of exchange. If you can't provide value to others, they won't let themselves be used by you. Tie your interests with your teammates—both of us winning is true win-win. As long as you provide value that can be utilized, you'll only get better; don't always look for ways to take advantage. (When you're old, would you be more favored by your children if your pension is high or low?)
If you want to change yourself, become better, and get back on track, it's not nearly as hard as you think. Just ask yourself every morning: What utility do I bring? Every time you encounter someone or something, ask yourself: What utility do I bring?
Build this habit—ask it when you meet your wife, when you talk to your boss, when you speak with your subordinates, even when you hail a ride. Ask it in every situation.
If you want even better results, write the answers down in a notebook. Record everything, big or small.
Afterward, review whether you were right—did your utility make the difference when you won? Did you fall short when you lost?
Make keeping a utility journal a daily habit, and regularly revisit what you've written. Stick with it for a few years, and getting better will be almost inevitable.
In life, success often depends less on your own brilliance and more on staying aligned with the people around you. It's not that you're exceptionally clear-headed while everyone else is confused; it's that most people just talk a good game but don't actually deliver.
When you were studying, your goal was good grades so others would give you opportunities.
After you start working, your job is to keep raising your utility. Otherwise, how will you get promoted?
Once you're in management, don't limit your vision to the departments under your command. Technology, product, marketing, and capital form a single ecosystem—if you can't leap over these boundaries, why should you expect your boss to pull you up?
When you become an investor, the market is an even grimmer place where survival demands relentless effort.
What you can exchange is determined entirely by where you stand right now. This is the rule: What you have, what you want, and what you're willing to give up.