I recently watched a YouTube video the algorithm recommended, from some random guy from Sweden, I believe. His channel has a lot of videos about how having a job is a kind of slavery, and I don't know if I agree with how much he seems to repeat that same content. However, the video YouTube showed me had a lot of things that reflected how I've been thinking and going about things.
I don't think we should outsource our thinking or decision-making to AI, but I have been asking AI some questions about my life and my career, just to see if it mentions something I haven't thought about before. And this guy did the same. I usually use a combination of three AIs: ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. This guy did it with seven, and he said he asked how to escape the nine-to-five, which is something very, very similar to what I've done.
In the end, he got a very similar result to mine: I have to start my own business, my own side gig, and eventually grow that.
The one thing about that, which again I knew I didn't like, is the same answer I also got. I need to learn how to sell. To sell my skills, to sell whatever it is I'm going to do. I think I mentioned this before in a previous post, but selling my skills, my abilities or my services sometimes feels a little bit dishonest for some reason. Like I'm taking advantage of someone. I don't think that's the case, but I cannot shake that feeling. Either way, that's probably why I hate selling, why I hate sales. That, and I'm also an introvert, so I just don't like putting myself out there.
And yet, I'm going to have to do it. There's no way around it.
When it comes to financial health, I think there are no shortcuts either. Even with AI, and with how many of the things I do can now be outsourced to AI, or at least sped up by it, I believe that in the end the biggest factor that will determine career success, or advancement, or progress, is going to be the amount of effort I put in and how efficient and effective that effort is.
It's the same with physical health. We keep looking for shortcuts, like I wrote about in my last post, but I don't think there are shortcuts for the real things that are worth it. It even reminds me of Naruto at the very beginning, how they say there's no shortcut to becoming Hokage, because it's all about the work.
There are no shortcuts. Even if it's your biggest dream, even an impossible dream, you just have to put in the work: for your business, for your finances, for your relationships, for your health.