In the 2010-2020 window I did a very costly experiment where I wasted the best years of my life in order to 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘺 determine that money is the most important thing that you can lack in life.

Be smart, learn from my mistake, not from your own wasted decade. https://twitter.com/JuliusBranson/status/1351209743092740096

Especially if you are young and male, when someone suggests that you do something, ask them how much money they are going to pay you to do it. The answer needs to be at least equal to the average wages of someone with your skills.

You have an IQ of 130 and a good degree, but someone wants you to take a job for £10k/year because it's for a good cause?

Tell them to pay up or GTFO.

Someone suggests that you should study English, Literature or Philosophy at university because it's cultured and has a warm fuzzy feeling of niceness and virtue?

Tell them to stick that up their ass.

The landlord only takes money. Nothing else; I tried. They don't accept virtue, they don't accept erudition, they don't accept niceness. Niceness is worth 0 to providers of shelter and other essentials, currency is worth everything.

There are some people who don't need to hear this advice. There are people who are already making £60k/year, already have £100,000 in personal wealth, etc. These people actually do need to think about being kinder/more interesting.

Each of you knows which category you are in.

See this excellent Slatestarcodex post on the relationship between advice and the group of people who hears that advice: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/24/should-you-reverse-any-advice-you-hear/

I should also add that doing interesting things has value in networking, but especially when you are young it's important that you extract value (meaning: money) from that networking rather than spending all your effort on virtue signalling.

I don't want to be overly negative about this: the solution is to find win-win games.

That means you provide greater than average value to someone, and they PAY you a greater than market-rate wage. PAY. In MONEY. Not in virtue signalling points.

Yes, being jobless/poor/indebted/miserable takes up a LOT of your time. Years. https://twitter.com/DonyChristie/status/1351294842299703296