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advice_for_you/advice_for_you_knowledge.html

2025-05-20

To do for myself:

Advice for you (Knowledge class)

If you don't understand anything on this page, please ask me about it.

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Summary

Career advice

If you have atleast 6 months worth of savings - career advice

Proof: I don't have personal experience with this.

In India, 6 months worth of savings is around 50,000 INR. My advice is slightly (but hopefully not very) biased towards Indian context because a lot of people I encounter are from here. It's possible there are unique challenges faced by people of your country that I'm unaware of.

Consider finding a job that provides you with a lot more savings. Making more money may reduce your anxiety of the future. Making more money may allow to make less compromises on your moral values. Also you might get more free time to devote to something or someone you care about.

I understand you might be happy not trying to increase your income, and that is also fine. Don't let me ruin your happiness. Depending on how much free time your job gives you, you may also choose to start a side project or hobby around things you care about. This is great, although I would usually recommend starting it part-time and not quitting your job.

(If you are very ambitious, you can also read the section after this section.)

How?

I will update this section once I have more data or spend more time thinking about it.

If you have atleast 5 years worth of savings - career advice

In India, 5 years worth of savings is around 10 lakh INR. The exact number varies a lot by country.

I assuming you have the skills and credentials to make this money yourself, i.e., you didn't inherit it or win it in a lottery or something.

(If you are very ambitious, you can also read the section after this section.)

Misc advice:

Making another 5-30 years worth of savings might or might not be a good goal

Proof: I don't have personal experience with trying to make 1 crore INR. Consider getting the opinion of people who have tried this.

This section is a bit country-specific, sorry.

If one of your main life goals is to make > 1 crore INR and you believe this will make your life more happy/peaceful/meaningful/etc than it is today, I strongly recommend you try the following experiments. I don't think I'll be significantly happier with 1 crore, and my guess is there are many others whose brain is wired similar to mine in this regard.

Experiments to run to test if you really want 1 crore or not:

For me personally, things I don't consider major benefits of 1 crore INR, assuming one already has 10 lakh INR:

For me personally, things I consider major benefits of 1 crore INR:

If you still conclude at the end of these experiments that making this money will make you significantly happier, feel free to do what as your heart desires. Ignore my advice and any social pressure I might be providing.

Making $1 million might be a good goal

Proof: I have some experience trying to make this amount and failing at it. I don't have personal experience with having this much money. Consider getting the opinion of people who do have this amount.

For me personally, main benefit of $1 million:

For me personally, not a benefit of $1 million:

How? Most stable career paths in India take too long (>10 years) to make this amount of money. If this is your goal, you are much better off doing one of the following:

Pursuing either of these requires you to quit your current job in India and not worry too much about leaving the "low risk" path.

There are a few other edge cases, for example you could marry someone with money or network with them and become their consultant or become a sex worker or something. I won't discuss them much here.

Not making money might be a good goal

Proof: I have over a year of personal experience with this.

The important thing is to measure your money not in number of lakhs but in number of years it buys you. Assume a frugal lifestyle and write down this number of years for you personally. If this number exceeds 5 years, you have a good reason to not focus on making more money.

Personally I realised I would be miserable trying to start a tech startup with sole goal of making $1 million, hence I gave up on this goal. (I'd probably be happier once I had the money. I'm talking here only about the process of acquiring it.) I'd much rather work on projects I care about. Figuring out which projects are worth doing takes time. I am still in the process of figuring this out for myself, but I'm confident I'm better off this way compared to when I tried to make money.

I might still take a job at some point, but atleast I'm clear the primary reason I chose this was not money but instead learning or social connections or something else. This is a huge privilege and I'm grateful to have it.

I don't recommend my current life path to everyone, but I recommend atleast considering it as an option.

If you have $1 million - career advice

Proof: I don't have $1 million. Consider getting opinion from those who do.

Consider reading my advice on the other advice page.

If you are sufficiently ambitious, I would generally recommend considering not living in your home country. There are probably better opportunies available outside of it. The main exception I can think of is if you have already built a lot of country-specific knowledge that gives you an edge in business or politics in your country.

Business cultures vary a lot depending on country, based on my limited experience. Consider experiencing business cultures in multiple countries, no matter where you finally settle.

Becoming a major politician or a billionaire might be a good goal

Proof: I don't know much about this. Consider asking someone who does.

If you want significant influence over society, this is an option. You will have to work very hard, in order to acquire the required attention or capital. Also you will have to learn some of the behaviours of a socioeconomic class different from yours. You will definitely lose some of your current family and friends in the process, so it will be socially isolating. Also there may be an aspect of luck, many self-made billionaires admit to the role luck played in their success. (Although most people who do report luck as a factor report odds like 10% or 30%, not something unlikely like 1%. So don't let the luck factor dissuade you.)

I don't have a lot to say because it isn't something I know enough about yet. But I am interested in studying this, whether or not I ever seriously pursue this myself.

Advice apart from career advice

Advice for everyone - Make notes

Proof: I make lots of notes and it benefits me a lot. I have also observed this in a few people around me.

For almost everyone on Earth, I recommend making more notes about your life.

Why?

How?

Advice for everyone - Learn from the internet

Proof: I have learned as much from the internet as my entire formal education.

Why?

How?

Advice for (almost) everyone - Make a website

Proof: I have previously benefitted from this in terms of my career. For instance when working in cryptocurrency space. Even more recently (as of 2025-05) I benefit as putting content publicly forces me to think clearly and keep me motivated.

Why?

How?

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name yourwebsitenamegoeshere.com www.yourwebsitenamegoeshere.com;
    root /var/www/Website/;
    location / {
        autoindex on;
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

Advice for people who publish content online

Proof: Some of my older data is effectively inaccessible because of incorrect file formats. I regret this.

Please consider keeping plaintext (txt, not json, docx or whatever format) backups of your work.

Why?

Using AI to accelerate learning

Proof: I use AI a lot while learning anything.

Why?

How?

Some specific tricks using AI to speedup learning:

Trading and investment advice

Proof: I have personal experience. I have invested and traded my money, and worked at trading-related companies.

Why?

How?

Investments

Proof: Just look at historical price charts of all the assets you're buying, and study basic financial concepts like expected value, variance and tail risk.

How?

Trading

How?

If you are a software developer

Proof: I have personal experience as a software dev.

Every development in how information transmits - be it printing press, semaphore, radio, television, telephone, and now smartphones and internet - has brought significant changes to how war and politics are practised. Consider studying the political implications of your own work. I only recommend studying this if you genuinely care or are genuinely curious.

You might have some influence on where your work finally ends up being used.

If you want to learn software dev

Why?

Net revenue = number of customers * (profit per customer - cost per customer) - initial investment

How?

If you want to build a social media following

Proof: I have not run a social media channel with significant attention. Go get advice from someone who has.

This section is especially relevant to professions such as journalists or online therapists, as they are more financially dependent on building a large following of the general public.

A useful mental model: There are 3 types of leverage - capital, attention and products that can be copied for free on the internet. You are either competing for people's attention, or you are competing to build products that are copied for free on the internet (i.e. blogs, videos) by many people.

You should decide whether the goal of your channel is to:

Both of these are interrelated, usually doing 2 also gets 1 as a byproduct. But never lose track of the fact that these two are different.

A direct parallel to this is starting a business. A business can produce capital for you (which you can later use towards some goal) and provide useful products to other people. Doing 2 can get you 1, but you should always be aware of the difference between the two.

If you want to build a social media following there's IMO three routes:

  1. Enter the competition of top 10 / top 100 YouTubers on earth. If you win you can basically form the government of your country yourself.
  2. Pick a niche and then become top 3 YouTubers on earth in that niche. This is profitable enough to survive.
  3. Go work for someone doing 1 or 2. This way you won’t be the public face that earns trust or attention. But you’ll get income.

Attention on the internet is power-law distributed. Each person has not more than 10 channels they are paying attention to at any given moment. (They might follow >100 but they are not paying attention to them enough for those channels to affect their life.) If you are not in anyone's top 10 follows you effectively don't exist. "Better to be loved by few than liked by many." is a general rule of thumb for acquiring attention on the internet.

I recommend youtube over other channels because you can earn people's trust by showing your face on video.

In order to become top 3 social media channels on Earth in any niche, you'll have to run multiple iteration cycles where you will see zero reward. You'll have to manage your psychology as get zero reward for a long time.

Make sure to get direct feedback by asking people (using video call or in-person meeting, not just through comment section) what they would or would not like to see in your videos.

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