Many people hope that the factories where they work can work overtime. What do these people think?

I saw a piece of news a few days ago. In a factory in Dongguan, Guangdong, an employee stood on the third floor of his dormitory and wanted to commit suicide. No matter how others tried to dissuade him, it was ineffective. As long as someone approached him, he would jump down. Later, with the help of the police, the man gave up committing suicide. Many people were surprised when they heard the reason for the man's suicide. It turned out that the man wanted to work overtime that day, but his boss didn't agree, so he threatened to jump off the building.

When many factories in the south, especially factories like Foxconn, are recruiting, their job advertisements will say "More orders, more overtime" to increase the recruitment rate.

There is nothing wrong with working overtime and selling more of your time in exchange for higher pay. Because everyone wants to earn more when they come out to work so that they and their families can live a better life. But is it a cost-effective thing to just make money by selling time? Is it okay to work overtime all day long, especially in your 20s?

The rewards you get are not directly proportional to your hard work, but proportional to your irreplaceability

The work most people do in a day is just repetitive mechanical work. It is highly substitutable. For example, those jobs on the assembly line can be learned even if you don't do them for a day or two. Even if you work for more than 10 hours a day, you are just repeating a certain skill and using the same method to solve similar problems. Day after day, year after year. In addition to salary, you receive very limited other benefits.

So you will find that although you have been working in the company for 7 or 8 years, your salary is not much different from that of your colleagues who have just been here for half a year. Because there is not much difference between what you do and what he does, and there is not much difference in the benefits to the company. Moreover, you are getting older and your physical strength, energy and reaction ability are not as good as before, and you have to take more time off after getting married and having children. If the company wants to lay off employees, the probability of you appearing on the layoff list will be very high.

At that time, you realize that although you have been busy for so many years, you have no skills. I don’t know what I can do. If I want to find a job, I can only find a mechanical job like before. Even if you are over 40 years old, it is difficult to find such a job.

People who work all day have no time to make money - Rockefeller.

A friend of mine works in a logistics company, and he sends and receives goods in the warehouse. The company operates two shifts, with two days off per month. Although he dislikes his current job, he doesn't know how to change it and doesn't have the energy to study. I’m so tired after get off work every day that I just want to lie in bed, scroll through TikTok, and watch TV to relax. The older you get the harder it is to change.

When you always sell your time in order to obtain more income now, then you have no energy to think about how to obtain more wealth in other ways. You don’t have time to research and discover the development trends of this society. When you see that your friends, classmates and even people much younger than you are better than you and earn more than you, you feel as if you have been eliminated by this era.

If you are still young and if you are not under too much pressure now, then don’t think too much about the immediate gains and losses, and instead accumulate some future capital for yourself. Plan a long-term route for yourself. That is to take advantage of what economists call the "flywheel effect."

The "flywheel effect" means that it is difficult to push a stationary flywheel, but as long as you keep pushing it round and round, it will become easier and easier. Just like when you pedal a bicycle, it is very difficult at first, but it will become easier and easier after a few laps. It may be difficult for you to learn PS at the beginning. It takes a long time to edit a photo, but as time goes by, you will edit it faster and faster, and it will become more and more beautiful.

There are three key points in using the "flywheel effect" to design a long-term path for yourself.

1 Find your own flywheel: that is, find the areas that you are good at or interested in. It takes a long time to push the flywheel, maybe half a year, a year or even longer. If you are not interested, you will not be able to persist with willpower alone.

2 Find the first driving force?: The reason why we value immediate interests. It’s because our brains like short-term certainty. Only if the goals you set take a long time to achieve will you be able to make a profit. The brain doesn't like this kind of long-term uncertainty, and you will easily give up midway.

So you have to set many small goals in the process of implementing your long-term goals.

For example, if you want to learn PS and become a master in your small county, and become a popular person in those photo studios, this may take you several years, so before reaching your goal, you can first edit some photos for your classmates and friends, and get They approve and boost your self-confidence. Get your flywheel moving first.

3 Perseverance: This is the simplest one, the most difficult one, and the most important one. Think about how much you have learned since you left school and how much you have given up. The Internet has greatly reduced our learning costs and allowed many people to start learning, but not many have achieved anything. It’s not that most people can’t learn it, it’s that they learn this today and that tomorrow, and whatever they do is a matter of three minutes. How can I learn anything?

When you change from the mindset of selling more of your time to get higher rewards to the mindset of “accumulating future capital”. Your perspective on things will also change.

I hope you will be grateful to you today three years from now.