Friday, July 14, 2023

After reading "Rich Dad Poor Dad" epiphany, I fell into the "rat race trap" for so long

 

1

In the book "Rich Dad Poor Dad", there is a term called "rat race trap".

The mouse had to run on the wheel in order to eat the cheese in front of him. The faster it goes, the faster the wheels turn. Until the end exhaustion, also can't reach a mouthful of cheese. In fact, if you want to eat cheese, you need to jump up, not run forward.

But the mouse just ran with its head buried in its head, exerting force in the wrong direction, wasting its energy.

Many people are like this mouse, walking forward non-stop, but rarely stop to think. In the busy cycle, they are trapped in the cage of life. After all, the life you want is not accumulated by ineffective efforts. Without deep thinking, all hard work is in vain.

I think such questions have more or less appeared in our minds.

Why do we work overtime until 12 o'clock in the middle of the night, but our colleagues get promoted?

Why do we enrol in many courses and study hard every day but still get little effect?

Why do we pack our schedule so full and we can't grow at all?

Physical effort is just a habitual exercise of muscles, and diligence without thought is actually the greatest laziness.

Efforts without thinking, without structure, without logic, will only lead you into a cycle of fatigue and inefficiency.

Getting rid of low-quality diligence and developing the habit of deep thinking is the first step in life advancement.

2

There is another story in the book "Rich Dad Poor Dad".

There is a village with no water source within a mile radius, and the villagers can only drink the rainwater that falls occasionally.

To solve the water problem, the village selected young men Ed and Bill to be responsible for the water supply, and signed contracts with both of them.

After the contract was completed, Ed couldn't wait to buy two large barrels to carry water from the distant lake for the villagers to use.

However, even if he gets up early and works late every day, it cannot fundamentally solve the water supply problem.

Another young Bill, who disappeared after signing the contract.

Half a year later, he brought back an engineering team and worked hard for a year to establish a complete water supply system.

This method greatly saves labour costs, and the price is much cheaper than Ed.

Soon, the whole village used Bill's water.

In a hurry, Ed called his two sons to carry water even harder, and the price of water dropped even more than before, but in the end he found that he could not compete with Bill at all.

The different circumstances of Bill and Ed reminded me of a story circulating in the Ford Motor Company.

Ford's boss once hired an expert to evaluate the performance of employees.

The expert said after the inspection: "There is a lazy guy who stays in the office all day and wastes your money. Every time I pass by, I see him sitting around with his feet on the table."

The boss laughed when he heard that, "I know this guy is lazy, but he once came up with an idea that saved our company millions of dollars. He put his feet on the table like that when he thought of that idea."

What do these two stories tell us?

Because no matter in life or in the workplace, people often only look at the results, not the process.

Mediocre people always emphasize their own efforts, and then do nothing; while masters do things, they often act after thinking, and speak with results.

Effort is just a "tactic", but developing a global thinking, spreading out the map, and finding the right entry point is the "strategy" that will get twice the result with half the effort.

Therefore, working overtime every day does not make us great people, and working from dawn to dusk does not necessarily make us better.

If a person is not good at thinking, no matter how hard he works, it will be difficult for him to innovate and make breakthroughs.

Only those with sharp vision and advanced mind can be favoured by fate.

What really widens the gap between people is never the degree of effort, but the depth of thinking and the quality of diligence.

3

Chris Bailey, the author of the book "Don't Let Ineffective Efforts Destroy You", was called "probably the most efficient person in the world" by TED. He proposed that there are three elements of high-efficiency life:

Time, energy, focus.

Any efficient life is related to one or more of these elements.

If we don’t have any plans for life and work, and rush all day without any focus, we will lose efficiency due to distraction, and thus fall into the vicious circle of "the busier the poorer".

I think of a survey conducted by Harvard University, targeting a group of young people with similar intelligence, education, and environment.

Studies have found that those who set long-term goals from the beginning have basically become successful people after 25 years;

People with short-term goals also successfully entered the middle class of society;

Those who have no goals are almost at the bottom of society, often unemployed, and rely on social relief to survive.

There is a saying in "University": Make a decision before you move, and you will gain something when you know it.

When a person's goal is clearer, the path to the goal will be clearer.

It is absurd for many people to repeat their busyness day after day, but imagine a different future.

What really makes you stronger is that you can establish a thinking framework and grasp the underlying logic of things.

Learn to manage by objectives and put your energy on the cutting edge in order to maximize your efforts.

Read Also:

Do you own all six types of wealth?

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