Choosing a career: J. K. Rowling or baker

 

A profession that is scalable is one in which you are not paid by the hour and thus subject to the limitations of the amount of your labor. It is a very simple way to differentiate among professions. Some professions, such as dentists or massage professionals, cannot be scaled: there is a cap on the number of patients or clients you can see in a given period of time. You work by the hour and are (generally) paid by the hour. .Furthermore your presence is necessary for the service you provide.  Your revenue, no matter how highly paid you are, depends on your continuous efforts. Moreover, this kind of work is largely predictable: it will vary, but not to the point of making the income of a single day more significant than the rest of your life

 

Other professions allow you to add zeroes to your output (and your income), if you do well, at little or no extra effort. This is an idea person who sells an intellectual product in the form of a transaction or a piece of work and the former is a labor person who sells you his or her work. On Wall Street, a trader does the same amount of work while buying hundred or a million shares. J.K. Rowling does not have to write each Harry Potter book every time someone wants to read it, while a baker needs to bake every single piece of bread to satisfy each additional customer

 

The idea person’s job sounds like a better choice than the labor person’s job but is there a downside. Most dentists, massage professionals and bakers (labor types) can do reasonably well, or even very well, over a thirty years career. They will never get rich in a single day. Hard to find a dentist who is consistently without patients. It’s a totally different story (pun intended!) with the ideas types like authors. For every J.K. Rowling, selling millions of books, thousands upon thousands of wannabe writers have tried and failed.

 

This is not to discourage bold choices but to know the odds. About twenty five years ago, my two kids were in their teens and we were living in India. They were both in school and getting good grades. They were also were good at their favorite sport, tennis.  Good enough to play in India’s junior national circuit. I dreamt that I would find the resources so that, someday, one of them would hold the trophy on center court Wimbledon! Then one summer, I took my wife and kids to Mumbai for our summer vacation. There, we visited an outlier friend. He had quit school to become an entrepreneur and became so successful that his brother and he are extraordinarily wealthy. Conversation turned to plans for my kids and I expected him to encourage me to go all out to support my kids becoming the next Federer or Serena.  After all he did not get to where he was getting paid by the hour! Instead, he said “Consider the odds of their becoming the champions you are hoping for. They are very good students so focus on their studies.” I took that advice, we migrated to America, and today they pursue successful careers in computer design and medicine.

 

Do dream and pursue those dreams. Just be smart about it. How about having your cake and eating it too! Pivot to being an idea person writing a book, after securing yourself financially by working as a labor person?

This post was mostly an idea from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book The Black Swan

66,800 people in 65 nations, What They Think

 

TIME recently reported the results of a Gallup International poll. The following were the top five concerns

1.      Corruption Not surprising, since most of the countries surveyed have weak democratic institutions, rule of law and civil societies   

2.      Rich Poor Gap Dominates current political conversation in America. This concern is top of agenda for President Obama, Pope Francis, Warren Buffett. The divide is very visible in America and India, countries I live in and travel to. Some wealth distribution and reduction of inequality is needed to buffer the next few years of job destruction and evolution. 95% of all new wealth created in the US recently has gone to only to 1% of the population

3.      Unemployment Technology and population growth drive this concern. We’re in a race between computers and people – and we need to make sure the people win quoting Google’s Eric Schmidt. 230 million white collar jobs will be transformed or eliminated in the next ten years

4.      Environmental issues  Reached a crisis and yet there are uninformed but influential opposing forces. In a recent interview, the Dalai Lama when asked to name what issue the US could be paying more attention to he named climate change

5.      And finally Religious Fundamentalism Shia-Sunni in the Middle East,  Muslim- Christian in Africa, to name just two, resulting in millions of refugees

What happens when overachievers turn to self-help books to try and achieve more? First, you've helped someone's lucrative book contract! Next, those books often talk about flat abs that are so difficult to attain unless you are an Olympic swimmer or under the age of 10! They are just markers of inadequacy that you will never be or, importantly, need to be. They mock you just like the fancy cookbooks with recipes for things like coq au fin that you will never learn to spell, much less make. This could be bad for self esteem. Take care of that first. ..... adapted from an article in TIME by Kristin Van Ogtrop, editor of Real Simple and author of Just Let Me Lie Down

Wealth since the dawn of civilization

The 75 richest people since the dawn of civilization makes interesting read: Here is a selection of names including rank, wealth in recent USD billions and source of wealth. And off course my wisecracks! 1st John D. Rockefeller, (oil), 318 billions. 2nd Andrew Carnegie, (steel), 298 billion. 3rd Nicholas II of Russia (monarchy), 253 billion. Is not Putin richer? 5th NIZAM OF HYDERABAD, (Ruler), 210. I was his neighbour before I moved to US (kidding!). 7th Henry Ford, (motor car), 188 billion. No surprise his successor has not asked for federal bailout money. 8th Marcus Licinius Crassus, (Roman Senator and contemporary of Julius Caesar), 169 billion. What happened to JC, Brutus and Mark Anthony ... were they busy either writing speeches or chasing Cleopatra instead of raiding the mint? 9th Basil II, (Byzantine Emperor), 169 billion again. 12th Amenophis III (Egyptian Pharaoh), 155billion; think some is still there in the pyramids? 15th Elizabeth I (House of Tudor), 142 billion. 16th John D. Rockefeller, Jr, (oil), 141 billion .... how did he blow 180 billions that his # 1 kin started out with ? 17th Sam Walton (Walmart) 128 billion ... imagine how much more if he did not offer everyday low prices! 20th CLEOPATRA (ancient Egypt/Ptolemaic inheritance), 95 billions; dream mix of beauty & wealth! 27th Sultan of Brunei, (Ruler), 80 billion; yeah, I've seen pics of his fancy jet! 31st. Carlos Slim, (Mexican telecom tycoon), 72 bil. 37th BILL GATES, (Microsoft), 58 billion. 40th MUKESH AMBANI, (Reliance/India), 55 billion .... wow ! to be on the same list as Cleopatra. 41st Warren Buffet, (Berkshire Hathaway), 52 billion; good job Warren for joining Bill in the world's biggest charitable endowment. 42nd LAKSHMI MITTAL, (steel/India), 51 billion. Looks like that mega shaadi (wedding) for your daughter did not make a dent! 48th ANIL AMBANI, (Reliance Communications/India), 45 billion. 55th Paul Allen, (Microsoft co founder), 40 billion. His recipe for success: Room with a dude like Gates and don't waste time at Harvard. 68th K.P. SINGH (DLF/Indian builder), 32 billion 75th Prince Al-Waleed bin Tal, (Saudi ruling family), 29 billion.

Source of information: "Outliers", by Malcolm Gladwell