Before every entrepreneur starts their company, it begins with a crossroad decision. Mine lead me to develop this 20 year principle. It is not new — nothing under the sun is ever new. It was told to me by a friend, while waiting for the tube in London.
Every 20 years, pick a skillset to hone.
Everyone I know is spoilt with choices. Should I be a lawyer or doctor or computer scientist? Do I choose Harvard, Oxbridge or Stanford? Do I move to New York, London or Singapore next? All the choices are fantastic, and the options are only marginally better, it is impossible to compare.
Back in 2017/8, I was in this crossroad. I had a bunch of choices laid out on the table, of which they are only marginally different. It was impossible to make a decision, and I had analysis paralysis. Of all the first world pains, as an economist, I’d argue that is one of the hardest pains and decisions to make. (And today, being an entrepreneur for years now, analysis paralysis is still a weakness of mine.)
And I concluded this: if the options are indifferent, pick any one. Spend 20 years on it. That’s it.
Sometimes, life can just be so simple. And maybe that is the axioms that I found. No one is born a genius — you can have a head start, but it is the continuous compounding of knowledge, effort and wisdom application that results in actual intelligence. So it doesn’t matter what skills I pick, since I like them all. I choose one, at random, and pick another after 20 years is done. It gives me the timeframe to specialise, to learn, to make an impact, but not enough to bore me or bore my friends because I can only talk about 1 topic.
So obviously this 20 years is about economics. And I’m hoping that the next 20-year period will be astrophysics. I know nothing about it. And I think that’s where the fun begins! 20 years is plenty of time to know something about it.
The first 20-ish years of life is to build foundations, principles and axioms of one’s life. The next periods of 20-year chunks are about honing a skillset. The first 5-year period is about foundations. The next 5-year period is about exploring and creating a new breakthrough. The third 5-year period is about exploiting. The last 5-year is about cementing. (Book recommendation: Algorithms We Live By)
1 skillset at a time.
Love,
L