Caleb Matheny

15 ways to stay poor: (I’ve personally used all of these.) 1. Do the bare minimum I wasted years thinking I was going above and beyond… But the truth is: I was doing the bare minimum because I didn’t REALLY understand how much effort goes into doing great work. A good rule of thumb: Take your current output and multiply it by 1,000. Now you’re in the ballpark of what it’ll takes. 2. Wait to be told what to do Here’s a lesson my younger-self would’ve done well to learn sooner: You have very little value to the world if you’re waiting to be told what to do. 3. Expect praise Nobody cares. Work harder. 4. Turn everything into a transaction The poorest people I know (and I don’t just mean monetarily), treat everything as a tit-for-tat. Do this for me and then I’ll do that for you. No more, no less. This is how I operated throughout my 20s. My thesis was simply: If you want me to work harder, pay me more. As a result, I got passed over for countless promotions. When you treat everything like a transaction you get exactly what you give… And the people who treat everything like a transaction tend to not give very much. This is a great recipe for staying poor. 5. Spend more than you make Wealth is the ratio between what you make and what you keep. Unfortunately, for most people, their lifestyle grows as fast as their income, which means they stay forever poor. This generally occurs because people are more concerned with playing Status Games than they are with winning the Money Game. But ask yourself this: Is your goal to look like you have money… or to actually have money? These are very different things. 6. Stop learning Humans are like that myth of the shark: If we’re not moving forward, we’re drowning. Might not be true for sharks, but it certainly is for humans. The day you stop growing is the day you start dying. 7. Trade your time for money As Buffett said: “If you can’t find a way to make money in your sleep, you will work until you die.” 8. Take advice from poor people Don’t take advice from somebody you wouldn’t trade places with. That means: Don’t take fitness advice from an unhealthy person. Don’t take relationship advice from a single 19-year old. Don’t take financial advice from a poor person. It’s shocking this even needs to be said. 9. Surround yourself with people who tolerate mediocrity There are no prizes for being the smartest, most driven, or most focused person in the room. Every room reverts to the mean. Which means you’re only ever getting pulled up… Or down. Choose your rooms wisely. 10. Overthink and Underact Nobody’s ever been guilty of Overexecuting. Overthinking? All the time. Overexecuting? It’s actually impossible. 11. Wait until you feel “ready” before getting started Spoiler Alert: You will never feel ready. So might as well get started. 12. Quit when things get hard If you’re out there feeling like you’re screaming into the void and nothing you do matters… Just remember, this is what hard feels like… and it’s why most people give up. Don’t be most people. 13. Complain about how easy others have it Winners focus on winning. Losers focus on winners. They competition DOES NOT matter. 14. Break the promises you make to yourself If you can’t discipline yourself, then the world will have to do it for you. 15. Blame Luck as the reason you aren’t where you want to be Hell, it might be true… You might be the unluckiest person on the planet. It’s not your fault, but it is your problem. And no problem was ever fixed by complaining about it.