Invest In People: 3 Steps to Invest in Yourself

In my first post of the "Invest In People" series, I talked about why the concept of investing in people matters. And of course, the first person you should consider investing into is you yourself. To follow it up, I'd like to point out three steps that can get you started.

1. Make Serious Investment In Your Hobby. A hobby, by definition, is something we love to do but don't spend a lot of time doing. Because we don't spend a lot of time on our hobbies, we usually are not very good at them. A profession, by definition, is something we usually dislike to do but spend a lot of time doing. Because we dislike our professions, we usually end up not perfecting them even though we spend a lot of time on them. To remedy this, it will require you to spend more time in your hobby. But you say, "we only have 24 hrs a day." I then say to you, "I think we have 1,440 minutes in a day." No, the idea is not to trick you to think we have more time by converting hrs to minutes; the idea is to give you an admonition: stop procrastinating and utilize every minute. Block several hours during your alertest tint for your hobby/the thing you most love/most important to you. Squeeze errands to the discrete minutes slots. It is the same idea as paying yourself first. We hear people talk a lot about asset allocation, we can use the same idea to allocate our time. Of course, if you can afford spend less time on your disliked profession (I suggest you do this strategically), you then can spend the time on your hobby. The same idea as taking out money from a low interest account and depositing into a high yield saving account. The ultimate goal is to turn your hobby into a profession, and moreover, to perfect your hobby. The resulting benefit is that you can generate income by sharing/teaching your hobbies to others. To give you an example, I've been learning Tango dancing for 8 months. I do it on M, T, F, Sat, with at least 2 hrs each day. It is like pursuing a degree. People joke about it when they hear it. "Yeah, it is like pursuing a master degree." I usually tell them that, not only because I love Tango, but also because I know it can generate a stable income after I become good at it. Besides investing more time in your hobby, it is necessary to invest money in them as well. If you want to turn your hobby into a profession, you will have to pay your due first, meaning spending money learning it from the best teachers out there. What if you don't have a hobby? Find one. Pick anything and just do it. Find out later whether you have the passion for it or not. If not, simply stop doing it and find something else.
2. Get a higher degree from the top schools. This is true especially if you are like me, 20 some year old, just out of college. Don't settle for a job even the job appears to pay you a huge amount of money comparing to the old school years. Don't let this fool you. Start preparing for the GRE and grad school applications while you are at the job. Don't waste your youth and talent on the minor petty tasks at work, aim high. Actually, that's why I was absent for a week. I was busy with getting myself in the track of getting into grad school. After considering my undergrad education, my academic interest, and money prospect, I came up to this clear goal: a finance PhD in Columbia. Once your goal is set, the rest is just to work for it.
3. Learn how to negotiate. This is something that I discovered just recently. The truth about human beings is that we all want things are going according to our wills at all times. Often times, our wills are in conflict with others'. When this happens, if you are smart, you will have to ask yourself what the most important to you, and comprise on the things that are unimportant to you. This is the art of negotiation. It is an art as well as a skill, and like many other arts and skill, it requires both inspiration and practice. One may need lifetime to keep perfecting it. The benefits it hence brings will be huge.