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Stop listening to your parents advice
I listened to my parent's advice for years until I realised most of it was outdated.
Hey friends š,
Growing up, I always thought that my parents knew everything.
Whenever I had a difficult decision to make or didnāt understand something, I would ask them for advice.
However, as the years have gone on, I have found their advice less and less useful. Instead, it is often them coming to me for advice.
Unless you have genius parents then chances are, if you keep learning you will outgrow your parentās wisdom.
It is not entirely their fault.
If you look back over the last 70 years, for the first 30 years between the 1950s and 1980s, not a great deal changed.
All the advances in technology were mostly incremental. TVs changed from black and white to colour and gradually got bigger (but not yet thinner). Games got slightly better with incremental graphics increases.
The stock market continued to gradually increase yearly, and savings interest rates fluctuated between 8% and 15%. On top of that, housing was cheap compared to salaries and jobs were easy to come by.
Our parents had it relatively easy, provided they didnāt do anything stupid. To get a job at 18, you didnāt need any qualifications, provided you turned up to your interview in a suit.
Unless the company went bust, or you were incompetent, you pretty much had a job for life. For example, my Dad stayed at the same company for 37 years. At the end of it, you could retire on a final salary pension.
Since the 1980s and especially since the dawn of the internet, the rate of change has increased rapidly. Long gone are the days of people staying in one job for 30 years, 3 is more likely a maximum. The chances of a company staying in business for 30 years are extremely unlikely, especially in the tech industry.
Companies have to reinvent themselves every few years to stay relevant. Failure to do so means they are out of business.
The stock market has had major highs and lows, and the interest rates have stayed at an all-time low for a long time.
Your parentās job is to keep you safe and guide you to the safe path in life. However, the path they once walked on has gone into disrepair and is covered in potholes, and no one is going to fix it.
As a result, the advice given to us by our parents is often outdated and not fit for the modern world.
I have been reading Nassim Nicholas Talebās book Antifragile (affiliate link) this week.
We all know what it means if something is āfragileā, it is vulnerable, easily damaged and breaks at the smallest of shocks.
Often, when we try and think of the opposite, we think of words like robust and sturdy. However, the opposite of something getting damaged by external shocks isnāt the lack of damage, but something that strengthens as a result.
When you lift weights your muscle fibres tear, but with some rest, you become stronger. Nassim came up with the word āantifragileā for this, as there seems to be a lack of a proper definition.
Our parents' path is now very fragile compared to what it used to be. If your sole income is from one job, your income goes to zero when you lose that job.
While reading the book, I have been trying to think of ways that I can make my life less fragile.
One of these ways is building multiple income streams, especially those that donāt require my attention on an ongoing basis. Once I have found something that works, donāt worry, I will share it with all of you.
ā¤ļøĀ Picks of the Week
š Article - The ladders of wealth creation. I read this article a few years ago and recently stumbled across it again on Twitter. It is written by Nathan Barry, who made ConvertKit. In the post, he describes the different ladders of wealth, moving from a salaried employee to an entrepreneur selling products.
š¦ Tweet


This was a tweet from Paul Millerd who wrote The Pathless Path (affiliate link). It is always interesting getting some insights into fellow creators.
š Book - Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (affiliate link) - As I mentioned above, I have been reading this book this week. I am only about 25% of the way through, but I am enjoying it so far. It is an interesting read, so I will probably share more ideas from the book in the future as well.
šØāš»Ā Latest from me
Every week I post new articles and one video on my YouTube channel. Here is what you might have missed out on this week.
š¬ YouTube - Automate Twitter (for free) with Notion and n8n. As I mentioned in my last issue, I have been using some no-code or low-code tools to automate some of my workflows. I use Notion to plan out all my content, so why not my tweets as well?
š Article - Hosting n8n for Free with Railway. If you want to set up your own instance of n8n for free, you can use Railway, which is what I am doing. Railway offers $5 of credit a month to developers, which is enough to run an n8n instance.
š Article - What is CRUD? CRUD Operations in APIs. One concept that beginners need to understand is CRUD. Once you have CRUD down, it makes designing software from scratch a lot easier.
š Article - Unit Testing vs Integration Testing - Key Differences - Unit testing and Integration testing is a key part of software development. In this article, I cover the differences and some tips on implementing both.
š¬ Quote of the Week
āIf you have one person youāre influenced by, everyone will say youāre the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say youāre so original!ā
FromĀ Steal Like an Artist (affiliate link) by Austin Kleon. Resurfaced withĀ Readwise.