Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi on helping friends break from convention. Lead by example, invite them to try small experiments like outsourcing a task, and accept when they're not ready. Pushing rarely works.
Here's a good question and I'm curious to hear what you think. Do you. This is from one of the readers. Do you have any practical advice for how I could help the people I love to actively create their lifestyles in a way that's best for them instead of accepting what they assume are their only paths? In other words, this reader, they're kind of, you know, they feel like their friends have kind of just given up and taken what's given to them.
There are a few things you can do. So the first is leading by example. Honestly, coming out of Princeton, a lot of my friends went directly into management consulting and investment banking and resigned immediately to hating their lives. Hating their lives, working on Christmas, working on just awful, awful existences. Not everyone has that experience, but they just viewed that as paying their dues. They had to work 80 to 100 hours a week for the next five to 10 years. And that was just, that was the.
Hand that they had been dealt.
And when I started actively traveling around the world, sending them updates, saying, dude, you have enough money. Or they said, well, you know, if I work another five years, I could be making 2 million a year. And I'm like, what the hell would you do with $2 million a year? And they're like, I do this, I'm like, I can do that for $1,500. You're just being an idiot. And just very persistently and in a good natured way, ribbing them for the inconsistencies in their thinking and moreover, showing them what's possible is a very good way. Secondly is invite them to experience some of the alternatives. And an example of that, when people.
Are very.
Resistant to testing, let's say personal outsourcing. And personal outsourcing is actually a very small part of the four hour work week, people just tend to obsess on it. But what I say is don't start with something important. Start with something ridiculous. I mean, like have somebody in Bangalore set like lunch appointments with your best friends for you. Just the shits and giggles of it. I mean, really start with something like that so that you have the positive reinforcement of a good experience, a fun experience, and that you're able to get some rehearsal in with things that don't matter. And then you can, once you're past that first threshold, it's really easy for yourself or for other people for the them to see the possibilities once they've had that taste. That's what's important.
I love that that laddering strategy is really good for just starting off on something that's unimportant. Let's see here. Oh, I will just say that in personal finance, this is a big thing as well. Some of my readers, they really have automated their finances. They've gotten it all together and they're like, my friends don't do this at all. And I will tell you from my experience, I used to try to drive, try to really push it on my friends, like, just manage your money. It will only take you a few hours, and they just didn't want to do it. And what I've realized is the best I can do is let them know that I'm available, and when they're ready, they're ready. But no amount of me pushing them is going to get them to change. I've tried. They know I've got a book. They know I've got a blog. But yet many of them don't come. They're just not ready. And that's okay. But there's almost no better way to get people to resist you than to tell you, I'm better than you. Let me help you with your money. Because people get really defensive about that.
