Advice to my 23-year-old self

Let me start by reproducing a charming little story originally written by John Lane in Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society.

The industrialist was horrified to find the fisherman lying beside his boat, smoking a pipe.

“Why aren’t you fishing?” said the industrialist.

“Because I have caught enough fish for the day.”

“Why don’t you catch some more?”

“What would I do with them?”

“Earn more money. Then you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. That would bring you money to buy nylon nets, so more fish, more money. Soon you would have enough to buy two boats even a fleet of boats. Then you could be rich like me.”

“What would I do then?”

“Then you could sit back and enjoy life.”

“What do you think I’m doing now?”

As millennials and Generation Z, you guys are rocking the boats like never before – the world is moving at the speed of light and the progress that we have made in the last 20 years outpaces that of the previous 200 years. 

But as the world is getting more and more connected, it is also getting busier by the day. Communication, internet, globalization, and hyper-scalability is requiring people to become life-long learners, extremely over-worked, more materialistic, and heavily dependent on a consumeristic way of living.

This is maybe the first thing that I’d like to tell a 23-year-old.

Money is important,…