"No one has ever changed the world by doing what the world has told them to do."
Everything I did for about 2 years was buying time.
For every decision made in life I've always asked myself if this decision allows me to buy more time.
We all agree that time is a scarce resource, in fact it is the most precious resource in universe.
And even though we all agree on that simple fact, we very rarely do what needs to be done in order to buy or to save it. If we have time, everything is possible. If we have time, we can be millionaires, billionaires, we can change the world. We can create, destroy and create again. And yet, I see so many people simply wasting their time.
This is something my mother would say, except that she didn't get the whole picture and that she would just repeat those useless words as a mere contribution to the dogma she was living in. In Russia, if you have no degrees you are less than a human. Russians and Americans are pretty much the same, they both like drinking, they both like making noise, they both love financial success and they are both obsessed about education. Or at least what they consider to be an "education".
My parents were obsessed about degrees over everything, degrees over money, over well being, over literally everything. They were very mentally strong and determined people but they stayed locked in the old world, unable to evolve with it. As smart as my father is, he is not a visionary, he is a follower and even a bad follower. Intelligence is basically the capacity to foresee the future. And with all his intelligence and education as a software architect he wasn't able to foresee the rise of cryptocurrencies, nor he was able to foresee the rise of social networks or the rise of Elon Musk. The normal thought path is education -> degree -> good job. However even though I showed them that I can have a good job without a degree it was still not enough. At a given point I realised that my family was living in a preconceived world with not attachement to reality. It was all about their ego and I simply stopped trying changing them. It's hard to say but If people you love care more about their egos that your well being and what is important for you, there is no more place for a relationship. People show a lot of resistance when you try to challenge their beliefs and the more you show them wrong the more it actually reinforces their own beliefs. It takes much more than just intelligence in order to succeed (whatever that means) in life. It takes balls, persistence and a long term vision, something they don't teach in uni. One might persist in his university studies in sociology or archeology only to find himself unemployable with a magna cum laude. We can hardly call it success.
When I was studying law I knew that this path was condemned.
It was condemned because of competition, there were too many students for too few jobs. It was condemned because of the finality, you'll end up serving some big law firm for years and if you are smart you'll open your own in your 40th, you'll succeed as an entrepreneur, not as a legal practitioner. But most of all, it was condemned because I hated it, I hated it and couldn't do anything about it simply because I knew no better.
"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."
I will not relate my whole life but at a given point I became interested in programming. It opened my eyes as well as a door, the door I was waiting for such a long time. I enrolled in computer science without telling anyone while still doing law in university.
The moment I did that, I bought time. Following normal's people logic one would first finish law and then do his computer science stuff. Don't chase two rabbits at the same time, you'll catch neither of both. Except that it's not degrees that need to be chased, it's knowledge. If I were to wait to get my law degree first before doing any computer science I would simply waste time with only marginal benefits. (You can show off that you have a piece of paper and parents will be proud).
Thanks to my choices I was able to find a job in a Bank and later find one in an exciting startup in London while my peers were studying for their exams. The amount of things I've learned in the process is enormous and exceeds any expectation. And it's just the beginning. Now I've quit the startup and I will try to disrupt the world with Blockchain technology by launching my own stuff.
And if I were to return back to the corporate world I have a plethora of job offerings and contacts I can work with.
Put simply, buying time is making the right choices in life. If the choice you make allows you to go faster and further towards your objective it is probably the right one. Even though you might sacrifice some stuff in the process. That's why it's important to know your objectives, but let's leave that for another post.