An Economic View on Personal Development
By Konrad Probst
When was the last time you actually read a book? Not for the purpose of entertainment, but also to broaden your knowledge and abilities — in other words: to develop yourself personally. This is what I try to emphasize on in this article. Of course, personal development is not only about knowledge, but also about your integrity, your ability to work hard and ultimately about your health. Personal development can be really anything that puts you forward as a person. And ultimately, this will trigger your economic growth.
A lot of people I know care about all kinds of topics. What items recently got into the trendy shops sale section — Who their favorite sports club will face in next weeks game — and whether this new app will be the new Facebook in five years — virtually any topic you could think of, but themselves.
This lack of focus on their own development is due to two reasons. First, people will always choose the easy way when that is an option. Why? The easy way is freaking convenient, that’s why! Secondly, their mindset is focused on the short-term. This means they would rather trade in one hour of TV at any given evening than to work on something next to their job. Something that adds value to their life — something that gets them ahead of the game.
“[…]95% of the people who read this do not actually put in the work. Maybe for a couple of days, but it will never get to the point where the hustle becomes a habit.”
So why is personal development that important? I have seen friends who are laying in bed three quarters of the day, waiting for the golden ticket. Guess what? It won’t come that easy. Most of the time it’s not even enough to work regular hours as the majority of employed people do. The point I’m trying to make is therefore the following. Why do you deserve to hold the golden trophy if your ambitious peers outrun you — if they work harder than you? No one ever won a gold medal from watching YouTube videos on how to win the Olympics, they trained for it every day.
The above holds for my points as well. It is easy to read them, but to actually turn things into reality is a different story. I make the clever assumption now that 95% of the people who read this do not actually put in the work. Maybe for a couple of days, but it will never get to the point where the hustle becomes a habit. The stage in which you are so eager to learn and work towards your goals that you trade in the only spare minutes of your day for additional readings on topics that boost your intelligence.
“[…]First lesson: stay healthy in both ways — physically and mentally!”
I started my gym membership four years ago. After two years I realized that the results were not what I wished for initially. The problem had two reasons: I neither had the knowledge nor did I put in my 110%, it was more like my 65%. Additionally, I figured that most of the things I ate were not supporting my health in any special way. I did not realize how easy this part of life could be. I started to educate myself on how food will have different effects on a persons health. Don’t get me wrong here, I do not demand you to eat healthy and clean 365 days a year. But if you eat well six out of seven days a week this will result in a great boost of your mental and physical performance. At that time, this was my first lesson: stay healthy in both ways — physically and mentally!
Doing this adds value to you as a person. Whether you are an employee or self-employed doesn’t matter here. What’s important is that you get way more attractive than the guy you compete with for this new job or this new idea that you want to make money from. You get attractive for the market. For employers, potential business partners and, as a nice side-effect, to the opposite sex. You know more than others, you are healthier than others and you can certainly put in the extra hours, too.
“Learn to work hard.”
During University I’ve learned my second and probably my most important lesson. Learn to work hard. This includes your whole week. You should not even have a problem to wake up at 6 AM and start right away. You do this for you and ultimately also for the people you love. Take small breaks from time to time, but work efficiently in the mean time. Work on yourself, everything that contributes to your personal performance. Learn how good it feels to become the person that gets things done. Regardless of the fact that most projects one works on are perpetual and can’t be completed or regarded as ‘done’, you shouldn’t stop after you actually completed smaller scale projects either.
As you get used to this life, you will see that there is actually more time than you had before. This is due to your ability to learn and work efficiently in a faster way. You now stick to the rules of efficient and hard work. The rules of self-improvement. That’s where time for new projects is created! What type of projects you focus on in this time is up to you. Start a company. Write a book. Learn something that adds value to your persona. Add a part-time profession. Virtually anything can be done with this time as long as you stick to the rules and strike a good balance. Finding the balance is up to you.
“Start a company. Write a book. Learn something that adds value to your persona.”
You might be smart now and think that there is obviously more to personal development than what is written here. You are absolutely right. I will certainly focus on more details in further articles on Medium, as I reviewed the whole topic in a rather broad way this time. However, I genuinely hope that you will apply the basic idea of this on your everyday life in order to progress instead of moving on one and the same point all the time.
