Do you want to become a billionaire?
Well, here are some tips…
Be ‘in the right room’.
Go and put yourself in the room with billionaires and stop reading now.
Still reading? Ok, don’t blame me if you are not a billionaire by the end of this article.
I did warn you…
For anyone interested in personal development, and NLP in particular, they well understand that our mental constructs determine our actions.
What then are some of the tech moguls mental constructs?
Let’s explore just a few, and maybe along the way you’ll open up your own thinking too.
Hard work
Let’s start with the obvious mentality many super financially successful people have – you are going to have to put in the hours.
In one interview Elon Musk, who sold Paypal and then started Tesla and Space X, says he works around 100 hours – that’s about fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.
| Elon Musk: Work twice as hard as others |
These guys work really hard.
Invest what you earn back in
It is a lot easier to make money when you have money.
When Elon (first name terms) had a huge payout from Paypal he invested it back into Tesla and Space X. In other words, don’t expect you can extract your ‘winnings’ and sit on a beach for the duration.
(although you will probably get to own a nice beach somewhere near Sir Richard Branson)
Look to positively influence the lives of a billion people
This is one from Peter Diamandis.
If you can think big enough, you can have an affect on enough people’s lives, and in turn you can ‘turn that into money’ (mwhahahahah…)
| Can You Change The Lives of 1 Billion People? – Peter Diamandis – Singularity |
Ok, leave the jokes aside, this is going to be one way. And the Singularity University, with Diamandis in a lead role, is opening up people’s minds to this thinking.
Which leads me on…
Open up to exponential thinking
Things are picking up pace, quicker.
Source: https://scalometer.wikispaces.com/singularity
This is probably best explained by Ray Kurzweil, the author of the Singularity is Near.
| Ray Kurzweil: The Coming Singularity |
If you look back 10 years and compare to how smartphones have developed, and become integral to our lives you will get a glimpse of how this works.
Pushing this out further, and knowing Ray Kurzweil works at Google on their AI project, some tech moguls are working toward a Technological Singularity in our lifetime.
What that means I am not sure, but what it suggests is a mental construct of some form of eschatology – or rapture of the nerds, as a fellow named R.U. Sirius once put it in an interview we did.
Back to basics with First Principles
“I think it is important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [When reasoning by analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done or it is like what other people are doing — slight iterations on a theme.
First principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world. You boil things down to the most fundamental truths and say, “What are we sure is true?” … and then reason up from there.” Elon Musk
| The First Principles Method Explained by Elon Musk |
In relation to Space X we can see the thinking unfold:
Can’t afford to waste rockets? Land them on a ship, and re-use them.
Don’t want to pay the price of batteries? Make them.
Back to basics.
Higher level of abstraction
Some of the Tech Billionaires are encouraging a higher level of abstraction by exploring the possibility this world is a simulation, and maybe one of billions that are running.
Without indulging this too much and focusing mainly on ‘mindset’, if we are one of billions of simulations, then we have to firstly:
Conceive of multiple simulations on the same level – which is actually the same idea as the Multiverse, then
Imagine the scenario by which one breakthrough race makes it through to a point where it can create the technology to be able to create such simulations
I.e. you have to make this reality an ‘object’ instead of being embedded within in.
| The Matrix – Deja vu |
(Anyone else get the feeling that Musk let the cat out of the bag?
And now it is meowing and strolling down the hallway, twice.
Waking you up, just a little. Maybe, maybe not…)
The one guaranteed benefit of being bonkers is that you hold of perspective that is outside the norm.
On the fringes, swimming into the safe shores of consensus reality (which really doesn’t exist), allowing normality to lap over you, before retreating to a more open view of the world and humanity.
“Culture is your enemy.”
The next culture is built by the actions stemming from non-normal, or bonkers, thinking.
This is why Elon Musk is brilliant. He has broken free of the shackles of conventional thinking, even when that convention could be advanced within consensus realms.
Elon then acts unfettered by the constraints.
Look and listen to Larry Page and Sergey Brin too (Google founders) – they are unfettered by expectations and social norms, or at least they appear to be to a large extent.
Knowing ‘we’ make up reality together – creating this thing called ‘culture’ – and through our laws, systems, as well as associated behaviours – we can see through the constructs more easily.
And it was another tech billionaire that felt on the outside too:
“Growing up in Wales made you understand what being an outsider is like.”
From the outside, from the edge you are able to see the cultural constructs ‘we’ operate within:
| Mystery Jets – Bubblegum |
As Terrence McKenna says, the price you pay for sanity though is isolation.
Model building and probabilities
If something is possible, then it is just a question of probability as to whether it is likely to happen. And to assess this, you often create a model of the world to understand that likihood.
Models are created by people. And you can either make them, or follow those that are made.
You ‘work out a model’ that flies, then it tends to become linguistic/conceptual currency that ‘sticks’.
Access to machine learning and AI
When I was last in San Francisco earlier this year, machine learning was hitting mainstream. You’d see it mentioned on billboards from Google and Brighterion.
But it was when I heard an AI program named ‘Aladdin’ (within machine learning being a subset of this, in general terms) was managing (loose language) the risk of almost 7% of the world’s $225 trillion of financial assets…well then you have to think what this means.
If you have access to ‘the best’, then you can win more. If you don’t have a) the money, or b) the smartest of the smart working on your behalf, then you may not win so much.
But what do you do if you cannot access this? Look at access to information online.
Four years ago, for instance, I got plugged into a matrix of information from people far smarter than myself – and still learn everyday.
“Play is just another version of work”
― Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
Putting it simply, the more access to the latest tech whether it is machine learning algorithms managing financial risks, or futuristic ‘neural lace’ that plug us into the cloud more directly, the further ahead we may well be on the ever growing wave of tech.
Conclusion
After this playful excursion into a new realm, let me leave you with this one from Bill Hicks – it’s just a ride…
| It’s Just a Ride — Bill Hicks |
“We could explore space…”
The ability is understand people, the meaning behind the words, facial expression and all the other subtle cues that express what they are thinking, are essential skills that won’t go away as the way we communicate alters.
That, dearest readers, is where we will go next time…
