Life is unpredictable, even though humans are bent on always looking for predictability within systems and functions.

This explains why we ask our children questions like “what do you want to be in the future?”

Although we don’t expect their answers to be perfect, yet we believe that they should have an idea of what they want to be.

From their answers, we tend to try and carve a way for them. We say you go to Art class and you go to the Science class since this is what you want to become.

Largely, that strategy has been proven wrong and ineffective. Because we all grow up almost always to do something entirely different from those childhood dreams.

Some motivational speakers leveraging that childhood says things like “where’s that your childhood dream? 9-5 has stolen it from you. Wake up and follow your passion”

Well, you and I know that that’s almost always bullshit. Childhood passion was a dream of naivete, cluelessness and gullibility about the happenings of the world.

But how can we help children make important decisions early on in life when they suffer from gullibility?

The answer I found is interesting and simple but can be difficult.

You see the problem with childhood dreams is not just that it is deprived of the happenings of the world and overwhelmed with gullibility. It is also that it is limited in scope and imagination.

Scope in the sense that it doesn’t fully understand the array of possibilities. As a child, we weren’t aware of all the possible problems and active solutions tackling them. When we dream, the best we could do was to extrapolate from our parent’s career or pick cues from the movies and literature we’ve been exposed to. That’s the best. Let me say, unfortunately, some adult still suffers from childhood limitation. That may explain why they are where they are. But this is not about them.

Scope and imagination.

Let’s talk about imagination.

Children’s imagination is limited because of a lack of exposure and non-existence of something (yet).

If you are 20 and above today, there’s no way you would have dreamt of becoming a blockchain developer who wants to build applications on the Ethereum protocol. Absolutely no way. That’s what I mean by limited in imagination.

You see, it’s impossible to dream some dreams until you leverage on those things that are in existence already. And there’s no way you can do that except you know they are in existence.

Things get even more tricky when the things that will end up enticing you were not in existence yet when you start to dream.

This explains a favourite quote of mine: “Don’t look for your passion yet, it might not even be in existence as of now”

If blockchain technology happens to be your consuming passion right now, all the hours in the past spent on asking what’s my passion would have been an effort in futility.

Okay, so what can we do?

Do hard things!

Do things that increase your options!

Do things that give you leverage!

That’s to say when directing your children when making decisions on their behalf, help them to choose things that will do any or all of 3 things.

That’s the ultimate leverage.

That’s tricky and simple but difficult as I said earlier.

Hard things

Everyone will run away from it, but if your child can run towards it, it will differentiate them and help them stand out. Standing out comes with an advantage from the early years. But most importantly, when grown up, such knowledge that very few possess will mean less competition and high rewards for them.

Hard things are hard for a reason. And society will reward anyone with a commensurate value who knows and can do what the majority can’t do.

Things that increase options

The best of life comes when you have the best of things to choose from. Yes, there is a paradox in having too many options, which sometimes mean you tend to not settle on one thing. But that’s a better problem to have. Not having an option is paralyzing.

So directing your children on a path that increases their option may be the best career choice you made for them.

How does that work?

I will use both an extreme and my favourite example. Studying Mathematics gives anyone more options than studying Accounting. And yes the former is more difficult.

You see, for a mathematics graduate, pivoting into accounting, finance, computer science, physics, and a host of other disciplines is quite easy. That’s because of the nature of the course.

The same can’t be said of someone who studied accounting.

I studied accounting but no one will employ me as an engineer. I have a few things that I can dabble into but not as many options as one who studied mathematics.

That’s about an option.

When options and hard things are combined, you have leverage.

However, one should not be small-minded when thinking about the subject of options.

The greatest career gift

The greatest career gift you can give your children is the gift of CURIOSITY.

Curiosity is an option and leverage multiplier. In fact, if they studied mathematics and curiosity is lacking, there won’t be any difference between those who did hard things and those who didn’t.

You see, curiosity is that light that keeps guiding them no matter what they have as a background.

The background would only count as a multiplier of their curiosity.

As I write this, someone reminded me that I’m a Data Scientists despite having an accounting background. That’s just a tip of who I am / what I do. I have developed a website, I’ve done marketing, I’ve done content marketing, I’ve done SEO, I’m a writer, I’m an educator, I am quite a lot of things including yes, an investor (startups, stocks, crypto).

Does background not matter again then? It does but curiosity amplifies and awakens other real potentials.

Background matters because there are some things I can’t dream of taking on today because I wouldn’t stand a chance (for a lot of reasons). Yet, with the help of curiosity, one can transcend the limitations of background at least enough to satisfy oneself.

Curiosity is built on exposure

Don’t shut yourself up on your questions, look for the answers. And don’t stop your children from their inquiries rather point them in the direction where they could go to find the answers.

Exposure informs the kind of questions you will imagine or ask. If you are not aware that something exists, your thinking will be limited to the universe of only what exists in your mind. And so does your curiosity.

The best exposure comes from books, documentaries, movies, science fiction, geographical adventure, and many more.

Find the one you can afford and give them to your kids.

While this has been about kids and their upbringing, I am fully aware that some youths and adults who were not privileged with exposure growing up still lack exposure as of now.

It explains why some who studied English will still be looking for a way to get a job as an “Englishian”.

As I’ve always said here, your course of study is only to provide you with a framework of thinking, it is not meant to dictate what you must think. What you must think should be driven exclusively by your curiosity.

Where does curiosity come from for an adult? I used to be clueless with no expectations at all for the future. All that changed when I started reading and feeding myself with noise-free knowledge.

We are all the summary of the kind of information that we consume. Not consuming anything means your head lives free of possibilities and you are bound to repeat mistakes that could have been avoided.

Once you are grown and you make your decision, you need to be deliberate about building your curiosity and exposure chest. No one can do it for you anymore. It’s all on you.

The best place I know you can get it from is also from books, blogs, and the contemplations of your heart. 

What you think about matters.

It’s a self-reinforcing circle and the more you attempt to satisfy your curiosity, the more curious you become and the more options you will see that are available to you.

Adults, be curious!

Curiosity can also come from picking interest in fixing or building something.

When the thought of my website started, the first thing I told myself was this is an opportunity for me to learn how to build one, I’ve always wanted to. Well, I ended up doing it.

Last year, I was interested in helping people think for the long term. That attempt will later contribute to my new adventure building “wealth from ground up“

You should do hard things, things that give you options and leverage.

The good thing is that just by being curious, you can get everything on a platter of gold.

Think about all this!

I believe knowledge and understanding is leverage for anyone who has it. I tend to think about a lot of things at different times. My last week’s newsletter made this clear as well.

For about 3 days on a roll, I’ve been thinking about the idea of God as a scientist. The truth is that this hypothesis has been in my head for more than 2 years.

This tweet from 2018 reminded me of where it all started from

https://twitter.com/DavidAlade__/status/1065246053191073796?s=19

Now I have a developing idea to share with you. It’s interesting so please read it to the end.

You were created to be a scientist

God gave 3 instructions when he created man: multiply, replenish and SUBDUE the earth.

The instruction to subdue had to be broken down more to mean dominate.

(The process of) science is the only way in which man has been able to fulfil the instruction to dominate.

With science we have dominated the earth, we went on the moon and we will soon be landing men on Mars.

With science, you are reading this. With science, you fulfil your purpose.

The science here is more of a scientific process than chemistry and biology.

Scientific process birthed the double entry principle in Accounting. With science, we learn to understand humans and the understanding of human behaviour has informed our politics.

Science is a way of thinking.

Its foundation is doubt, not dogmatism.

Its building block is curiosity.

Its oil and grease is imagination.

In fact, the wise King Solomon would later say in Proverbs, “if you are curious about anything, pursue it.”

Because that’s the only way in which you can unleash what’s hidden in you and what you are capable of. It’s a God-like attribute.

God-like attribute because I believe it is the same curiosity that led God to say “hey Trinity, come. What do you think about making something called man? And we will have to make the man in our image”

He wanted to see the extent to which something similar to him can go in terms of their ability to dominate and subdue. In terms of bringing existence out of no-life. 

So in His master plan, he hid electricity in the wind, some in water and some nuclear rubies.

He hid furniture in the tree, but he also had a paper in the same tree.

He hid clothing in the wool but some were also hidden in the animal skin.

But all these we can only find out and discover through the scientific process of doubt, curiosity and experimentation.

You see, the same King Solomon would later reveal to us in Proverbs 25:2 that it is God’s glory to hide things, but it is man’s glory to discover the hidden things.

It’s like a game between both God and man. God hid a lot of things, and man is meant to search those things out.

We’ve searched out a lot already and we are just getting started. Because God Himself will be like “man, you’ve not scratched the surface of what I hid on this planet”.

God is a scientist himself

Out of nothing at creation, he made something, by the words of his mouth of course. But so have we also brought a lot to existence by the words of our mouth.

Right from the contemplations of Aristotle about the substance of the universe to the landing on the moon and next to the colonisation of Mars.

All of God’s creation is scientific.

That’s why science can search it out.

If we are yet to search it out it’s because we are yet to, period. It’s not because science can’t explain it.

And I know with time, we will. See how far we’ve come, we will go further.

What are the ramifications of that new understanding?

The ramifications of accepting God as a scientist and yourself as one is a lot (in my mind I know some).

1. When scientists talk about the Big Bang theory, I see God saying “let there be”. Between the period of “let there be” and when there was, our explanation for what happened is what we call the big bang (for now).

We will know more.

2. Very few if any of us, will find absolute peace and happiness until we are involved in a creative process. The art of bringing new things into existence. Practising science.

9-5 is usually boring because routines tend to be much. But when you are unleashed to call into existence those things erstwhile which were not, you feel you are YOU again and won’t mind the long hours of work. That’s just you being in your natural state.

I challenge you to do something creative, I challenge you to be scientific and bring new things into life which were not before you.

You’d feel more peace and a sense of purpose than any other thing you may be involved in.

I know what it feels like to write, to create davidalade.com (this blog), and many more I’ve done. Most importantly, when you have a child it is a different feeling and satisfaction entirely. We are scientists deep within us. That thing that yearns to be part of something bigger than us is the scientist within us begging to be unleashed.

Just to emphasize again, science here doesn’t mean biology or computer science nor does it connote astronomy. Rather, it’s the creative process in us that yearns to bring to existence that which was not, to search out what has been hidden by God.

One of my ways of doing this is by writing. Everything that I write didn’t exist until I wrote them. I brought them into existence. And you know what, they’ve made many more lives better.

You need to search for your way. What works for only you. And from which you get peace and happiness.

More so, it doesn’t have to be one thing. God created a lot and we can search things out from a lot of places. And also get that deep peace and happiness from numerous places. One of such as I’ve mentioned before is birthing a child.  

Accumulating material wealth has never been easier. Historically, you need large capital or land to start with. Now you can start with nothing and make something out of it.

A few examples:

• You can learn a skill, and sell your skill leveraging the internet 
• You can develop capability, and with the capability to get a job with Google in the US
• You can network better now that will open otherwise closed door for you.

The example abound.

If I should ask you, do you know at least two things you can do to be materially comfortable and financially free? I’m sure a few things would come to your mind. It could be that someone taught you those things or you saw it from someone else. Yet, until today, you’ve not any of them.

My concern about wealth heightened when I started explaining all these possibilities to people and their default response to me is always “that’s taking too long”

For instance, as you are now if you start saving from today, let me assume you are 20 years old, and you have to work for 30 years. Somehow you managed to save an average of N30,000 per month. Now imagine that you are earning a 10% return on that capital yearly.

At the end of 30 years, that amount would sum up to be about N65m. Now your 30k monthly contribution is only about N11m of that.

Maybe you are also even saying 30 years is too long already.

Another example I like to give is this. Take a skill and it doesn’t matter per se what the skill you take. Learn that skill religiously for the next 1 year and leverage the internet to tell the world about your knowledge of that skill. I bet that within that one year, you would have been well paid for your knowledge.

Well, truth is you won’t do it. I mean you won’t do any of the two things I put up there neither will you do any of its variations.

Well, that got me worried.

• Why are we hurting ourselves?
• Why do we see the path to what we crave but refuse to thread the path?
• Why do we make decisions today that will hurt us tomorrow?

There could be several answers for that and I found quite many answers for that in my search. But two resonated with me among all.

The two explanations came from Physics and Neuroscience.

Physics 

2nd law of thermodynamics talks about entropy- the movements of things from orderliness to disorderliness. From riches to poverty and poverty to more poverty. In order words, the state of nature is for things to move from “make sense” to “not make sense.”

How does this affect you? It also implies that the natural tendency of the environment you live in is to take your from riches (if you were born with it) to poverty. Or from poverty to more poverty. That’s about your environment. 

When I learnt that, I realized how the environment you find yourself in can immediately tell if you will remain poor or be committed to being wealthy.

Also, I learnt that you have to consciously cultivate your environment to optimize for wealth.

And when I say environment, I mean that in all ramifications. Both online and offline. Imagine what you have learnt from reading different articles on this blog since you discovered it. Now imagine you didn’t discover it. What’s the difference between both worlds? And I bet there might be other blogs you read as well that are keeping you in the state of perpetual decline. Get out of there now.

Just so you know, I relocated to Lagos because I knew what I needed wasn’t in my previous environment. Well, that was the lesson from physics. Things move good to bad in a state of nature. When you don’t act, you will decline from poverty to more poverty or from riches to poverty.

Neuroscience

I didn’t stop there in my search for answers to my questions. Because I know a lot of people still find themselves in the right environment yet, they are not materially wealthy. Why? I continued to ask.

By the way, neuroscientists are those that study the workings of the brain and the nervous system.

So imagine you are in the 3rd week after you received your monthly allowance or salary. You know how that can be right? Just doing a count down to when the next fund will come.

Now imagine someone you’ve never met before walked up to you and ask you to give them money (a sum that is so uncomfortable for you to give). You can imagine what your reaction will be like right?

Now, here’s what neuroscientist found while researching similar questions as mine.

The same reaction that your brain would give to a stranger is the same reaction it gives whenever you are making decisions today that will cause you pain today but benefit you massively tomorrow.

In fact, they found that the longer you look into the future, the stranger you become to yourself.

And that explains why you will do things today that will harm you in the future. Your brain perceives your future self as a stranger and just as you wouldn’t go out of your way to give that stranger the money they are asking for in the 3rd week of your monthly allowance, you also won’t go out of your way to do things for your future self.

I was amazed at finding that out.

What conclusion did I draw from both findings?

I was designed to be poor and remain poor. My environment is governed by entropy and my internal system’s default settings are designed for me to make decisions that keep me in perpetual poverty. Gosh!! 👎

Well, not entirely bad (yet).

Knowledge gives light not darkness 

As I’ve said when I was talking about entropy that governs our environment, the best way to optimize against that is to design your environment consciously. If you aren’t conscious about it, it will revert to default – disorderliness or poverty.

What does the knowledge about the workings of our brain tell us? 

Since you know your default settings is to do things that will hurt you in the future, here are 3 things you can do: 

• Convince your Present Self that your Future Self is, in fact, still You. If the central problem is that we think of our Future Selves as other people — people we clearly don’t mind screwing over — it follows that trying to identify more closely with our Future Selves will encourage us to make better long-term decisions. Instead of saying 1 year, if you frame it as 300 days, it can make a difference. I am doing this for the next 30 days may get you closer or doing it than saying 1 month.

• Forget about your Future Self and use your Present Self’s love of instant gratification to your advantage. While the tactic above can be effective in making better long-term choices, in the end, you’re still struggling against human nature. However, Our brains are hard-wired for instant gratification. Instead of fighting your Present Self’s need for immediate rewards, why not use it to your advantage?

• When most of us set goals, we focus on long-term results we want to see — e.g., losing weight, getting a promotion, retiring in comfort, mastering your craft, etc. While those visions of our Future Selves can be inspiring, when it comes to actually doing the day-to-day work it may be more effective reframe activities in terms of their immediate (or at least very near-term) rewards.

Alright!

Now you know what forces are against you and what you must do to wage war against them. 

Your environment is against you except you consciously choose it.

Your internal systems are against you except you consciously prime them.

But if you do, you can be unbounded.

This article isn’t to teach various ways to make you money but to highlight for you why you will still not have financial wealth or any wealth even if you know how to make it.

In my opinion, expect you to fight these tendencies, every other thing you learn will just go under.

Our wealth as individuals is intricately tied to our environment. The sooner we realize this, the better for us. In our last instalment, we established that humans do “default to the truth” with an anecdotal account of the Bernie Madoff scandal.

If you are reading this, it is either you are a HENRY (High Earners Not Rich Yet) or on the way to becoming one. If you are not or don’t aspire to be one, it could be that your “village people are calling you”. Wealth is built intentionally and progressively, you must start from somewhere. Our earlier assumption as it relates to income categorization still stands (earners of 2 to 10 million naira per annum are classified as HENRYs).

There are so many ways to build wealth; the first is through the principle of compound interest-arguably one of the most powerful but underrated tools for building wealth. Ceteris Paribus, if you save religiously and consistently over a period of time and you could build wealth. For example, let’s say you save 5,000 naira every month at 5% per annum for 20 years. This would amount to N1,983,957.24, that’s quite a lot of money if you ask me- that’s the mystery of compound interest. Simple, but yet very powerful and true. Compound interest doesn’t only apply to wealth but knowledge and competence as well.

The second way to build wealth would be “leverage”. We must learn to optimise our leverage. Peter Thiel in “Zero to One” wrote about the power of “network effects”, mostly applied to businesses but I believe it can be applied to our personal lives.

Network effects simply refer to the impact that the number of users of a platform has on the value created for each user. How does this apply to our individual lives? Our value quotient grows the more people can perceive our value thereby attracting more people to our perceived value. This determines how much we get paid to render a service or our assumed worth in the eyes of the public.

The chief locus for wealth creation as earlier stated is mostly environmental. The limiting factors in our environment can drown the noblest of dreams but with every ineffectual system comes an opportunity. Identify, maximise and optimise your leverage, everybody has one. The inefficiencies that inherently exist in our market structure is an opportunity. I am a firm believer of “beauty in chaos”.

Finally, access to information and the speed of execution. My years working in one of our nation’s apex banks has made me realize information is powerful, most importantly, the right information. As a result of currency risk, HNIs (High Networth Individuals) and UNHIs (Ultra High Networth Individuals) for years have been saving a portion of their income in dollar-denominated bonds even before it became a fad. Today, with the recession on the horizons, most already have economic buffers.

There is nothing new on the face of the earth. Investment vehicles over the centuries have evolved but the basic tenets of money-making remain the same. Create and identify value, then sell that value. Poverty might be necessary if we fail to realize how the world works. Money flows to where the value is. Financial education like all other forms of education must be studied and related to our lived reality.

We can’t explain away our inadequacies to lack of comprehensive due diligence or limited financial education. At least if you are putting away money, do the hard work, find out how the investment vehicle operates and why the investment requires your funds. Invest in value, not hype. Always follow the money.

Don’t make poverty a necessary evil in your life.

In “Talking To Strangers”, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about our tendency to “default to the truth.” Humans have a proclivity to believe the best in outcomes even when facts say otherwise. The facts are glaring but we fail to admit them. Our tendency to default to truth might be as a result of limited financial education or maybe nothing more than sentimental reasons, but we sure do default to the truth.

Harry Markopolos in the financial thriller “No one would listen” wrote extensively about Bernard Madoff, the Wall Street financial Czar responsible for the 50 billion dollars Ponzi scheme. Let’s take a deep dive into the Madoff story. Madoff was a man many would regard as ” the prince of Wall Street” in his heydays. He served on the board of some of Wall Street important industry associations, moved within the monied circles of New York. He was imperious, reclusive and charming, one who could do no wrong.

His Hedge fund; Bernard Madoff Investment Securities LCC continually beat the NASDAQ industrial average for years leading many Corporates, Foreign banks, High Networth Individuals(HNI), charities to invest in the fund. Madoff’s hedge fund was alleged to have about 4,800 clients with an estimated value at 64.5 billion dollars.

If you are like me, you must be thinking, how did he pull off such a heist? Unlike other Ponzi schemes, this lasted for over twenty years. Wall Street firms employ some of the smartest people on the face of the earth, how did this escape their attention. One of the firms that invested in Madoff’s fund was Renaissance Technology. RenTec, as it is fondly called, was founded in 1982 by James Simon’s, an award-winning mathematician. As of June 2019, they had 110 billion dollars Asset Under Management (AUM)

RenTec has a large retinue of individuals with PhDs in mathematics, finance and economics from ivy league universities. You can’t argue about their brilliance and sophistication, but how did they miss this? The answer lies in our tendency to “default to the truth” in the face of glaring facts. RenTec trusted the system above basic facts.

In Kalu Aja words, “Ponzi Schemes are like musical chairs, when the music stops, don’t be the investors without a chair.” What does the above quote remind you of? Our present-day cryptocurrency referral and forex scams. They guarantee investors high-interest rates for their investment. It is important to state clearly, cryptocurrency trading for all intents and purpose is not a scam but any scheme or platform that guarantees a fixed rate for an instrument that is hugely subject to volatility is a scam.

Poverty is necessary is an attempt to understand Investors behaviour in a third world country like ours. Why do seemingly highly educated folks fall for the sophisticated shenanigans of Ponzi Scheme merchants? If Rentech with its sophistication fell, why won’t you? Could it be the allure of massive gains? I think so. What would constitute as due diligence in investigating the authenticity of investment vehicle?

Shaun Tully at Fortune Magazine nearly 20 years ago coined the term “HENRYs “(High Earners Not Rich Yet). HENRYs are Millenials who earn between 100,000 to 250,000 dollars per annum. That’s supposedly high given out current reality as a country. For the sake of this piece, I will adjust the parameter to relate to our reality. An honest assumption would be folks who earn between 2 to 10 million naira per annum.