Growing up, I always thought that my parents knew everything.
Whenever I had a difficult decision to make or didn’t 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 parent’s 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 didn’t do anything stupid. To get a job at 18, you didn’t 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 parent’s 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As a result, the advice given to us by our parents is often outdated and not fit for the modern world.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 Taleb’s book Antifragile this week.
We all know what it means if something is “fragile”, 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 isn’t the lack of damage, but something that strengthens as a result.
When you lift weights your muscle fibres tear but with some rest becomes stronger. Nassim came up with the word “antifragile” for this, as there seems to lack of a proper definition.
The path that our parents took is now very fragile compared to what it used to be. If your sole income is from one job, when you lose that job, your income goes to zero.
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 don’t require my attention on an ongoing basis. Once I have found something that works, don’t worry, I will share it with all of you.
❤️ Picks of the Week
📝 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.
🐦 Tweet - In 2022, I somehow made $249k doing things I loved. This was a tweet from Paul Millerd who wrote The Pathless Path. It is always interesting getting some insights into fellow creators.
📚 Book - Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - 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.
👨💻 Latest from me
Every week I post new articles as well as one video on my YouTube channel. Here is what you might have missed out on this week.
🎬 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?
📝 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 offer $5 of credit a month to developers, which is enough to run a n8n instance.
📝 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.
📝 Article - Unit Testing vs Integration Testing - Key Differences - Unit testing and Integration testing is a key a part of software development. In this article, I cover the differences and some tips on implementing both.
💬 Quote of the Week
“If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say you’re so original!”
From Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. Resurfaced with Readwise.
This post is from my weekly newsletter The Curious Engineer where I share my insights as an engineer turned entrepreneur and the lessons I am learning along the way.
Top comments (4)
Hi Alex,
You could have rephrased the title to something like:
and so on, etc.
You surely wouldn’t wanna be a parent that isn’t being listened to or taken serious, valued.
You must listen to your parents advices for sure, make your analysis, come to your own decisions, and do it your own way.
No one is punishing or judging you for doing things your way, it’s your life. But at the same time they are your parents, and they brought you up and brought you to your current state.
They have more than enough experience and wisdom to give advices to anyone younger, especially their child, who they know from A to Z.
PS:
LISTEN TO THEM, MAKE THEM FEEL VALUABLE, RESPECT THEIR THOUGHTS,
THEN GO AND DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, WHATEVER YOU CONSIDER RIGHT.
Yes true, there is still a lot of valuable advice you can get from listening to your parents. After all, they do have your best interests in mind.
I liked reading this post. Thank you for the book advice. Will sub to your newsletter.
Thank you for subscribing, I am glad you enjoyed it.