Feel like you are not doing enough to make more money? Saving not getting you anywhere? These are the few I always ask myself. Reading countless motivation and self-help books, I realize that the reasons I am poor can be summarized into 5 reason. Although I may still be far from better improving myself from these negative traits, I have found ways to get over them. So in this article, I will be sharing the top 5 reasons why you may be stuck financially and how you can get yourself out of it.
Doing too much Fake Work
Have you ever thought to yourself that you’ll never have enough time to make more money? You make excuses why you can’t start a side hustle, you can’t get a raise. And it all boils down to this. The work that you are doing doesn’t produce good enough equity results.
Here’s a great example, if you are working as a receptionist. The main purpose of your job is to greet visitors, answer phone calls, and run errands while maintaining professional composure throughout interactions with customers or potential clients. While the work can be plentiful, however, the reason why these kinds of jobs do not enough a high salary is that they do not directly impact the equity result of a company.
Here’s the distinction. If your boss goes off to you and says this task needs to be finished in four hours, then you’ll probably cut out all the fluff and take the most direct path to get to your goal and ignore all the extra stuff. And doing real work sucks more than stubbing your little toe on a piece of furniture because the stakes are higher and there’s a greater risk of failure. Fake work is comfortable because it feels like you’re doing something productive when you’re not.
What you can do
And before you say you don’t have enough time to do a side hustle or find ways to make more money because you’re too busy. Studies show that office workers actively work less than three hours a day and they still accomplish what to do, which means you still have multiple hours of possible opportunity, during or after work to use to produce real work on other stuff, helping people with money. You need to understand that you will not become wealthy from just working your day job, which is why most millionaires have on average seven income streams.
Let me be clear, it’s completely okay to just do your regular job as long as you’re happy with where you want. What you need to focus on is looking at how to increase your potential earnings per hour or the work you are contributing.
Chasing Shiny Objects
When you’re starting in anything school career or business, every opportunity looks great! Whether it is that you want to join a student organization; do an internship, or you want to help with this and that but there are two major problems. One, the more stuff you take on, you will become focused on each thing. And two, you’re paying the price for the decisions you don’t take.
When I first started HustleVentureSG(Edmund; Founder of this company😁), we only wanted to raise awareness of financial literacy. Over time, as the traffic of our website grew, we were chasing after different types of market reach(writing books, creating multiple social media accounts) instead of focusing on writing quality content. This affected quality of my content ultimately making our traffic suffer.
What you can do
Most of the time, these shiny objects that you are chasing would result in no or limited results. As the saying goes “grass is always greener on the other side”. There will always be the next big thing or the latest opportunity. However, if you want to develop good skills to build wealth, you need to take things slow and learn fundamentals strong.
Hard work isn’t equal to more Money
I learn this important lesson during my first experience interning in a corporate job. My mentor(an electrical engineer expert) who has been working for over 20 years in the industry, was not able to make more money than the sales team in your company even though the years of experience in the sales team pales in comparison.
“Isn’t it right”, I ask myself. Why even though my mentor who had the longest experience in the job not be able to earn more than a salesperson with barely 3 years of experience? It was only at the end of my internship that I had a final dinner meeting with the boss of the company. He was kind enough to let me in on this secret.
“The reason your mentor isn’t able to grow his income fast is that he is not able to sell himself well”, he jokingly laughed. It was only after a few years down the road that I finally understood what he was saying. Money comes to the person who can market him/herself well. In whatever industry you are in, hard skill gets you the job but soft skill gets you the raise.
What you can do
The biggest misconception is hard work gets you wealth. The truth is that you only have a limited time of 24 hours in a day, and no amount of additional work hours is going to increase your salary. At some point, you will still need to rest. If you want to build a business, a side hustle, or make more money. You will need to focus on ways that can make you money while not spending a lot of your time. You can do that by either finding a low-maintenance side hustle or learning how to invest your income.
Striving for perfectionism instead of taking action
One of the big issues that prevent you from making more money or starting something is that you think you don’t have an original idea you believe you need to find the perfect thing that no one else has done. And then you can start working on this when in reality that’s completely wrong. You need to understand that nothing comes from nowhere.
All creative work builds on what came before and nothing is completely original. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel when there’s already something out there that’s proven to work. So whenever I see something that I like online, whether that’s a video, a blog, a podcast or a business idea I collected, I put it in my inspiration. And whenever I’m in a creative rut, I would examine it and ask myself, what can I do how can I incorporate this into my stuff?
What you can do
Now to be clear, I’m not copying what other people are doing. Rather I’m getting inspiration from multiple sources and transforming it into something new with my processing style. Focus on starting and constantly improving and don’t stop unless you experience fine. Nothing is sometimes better than something you’ve been taught your entire life to always humbled that you must work insane hours if you want to make it and this message sounds like grades.
Trying too hard
It’s very inspirational to see people work hard or talk about their success stories. So admittedly I also subscribe to this hustle mentality ever since I was in high school. And I started my first vending machine business. I don’t know where it originally came from, but I always felt like I had to be doing something otherwise I don’t feel good and productive.
It’s weird for me to be so money drove and a workaholic, I was so deep into trying to be productive that I ended up burning out. In just 6 months, my vending machine business came to a halt and I wasn’t able to commit to the business. So I asked myself what I did wrong and it all boils down to this, I am trying too hard without proper planning.
What I can do
Over time I learned the brain is just another part of our body. And just like any other muscle, if you overwork it, it will get exhausted and no matter how much force it until you let it rest and repair itself. It will not be at its peak performance. That’s why taking breaks and getting proper sleep is vital because if you’re doing the same thing every single day, you’ll get into this monotonous rut, which stops you from thinking outside the box and might learn to feel that it’s okay to sacrifice a little productivity or money for some peace of mind which admittedly is very hard to do in this day and age.
So learn to set checkpoints throughout each day and aim to reach your goal one step at a time. As the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day” .it takes time to create great work, and that while you cannot expect success to come right away, it will be achieved with continued persistence.
You are bad at it
It feels like everyone is perfect. You’re scrolling on Instagram or LinkedIn and it appears like everyone has their stuff together. People showcase their new skills or talent that they supposedly learn in a matter of hours or days. So when you do try something new and you suck at it, you get uncomfortable, discourage, and then you stop. Does that sound familiar?
Whether it is starting a new hobby or learning something new, everyone is a beginner at something. However, some skills can be brought over by past experience. If you are good at netball, chances are you will do well in basketball because some of the skills are transferable. Skills are the important lesson people need to learn and build it, which will take time.
What I can do
You need to know that sucking at something is the very first step of becoming sort of good at something. If you plan to start a side hustle, chances are you may not be making a decent income at the start. Worst still, you spend hours reading and researching it in your own free time. However, you have to think that all skills you learn require a certain amount of time to master. Gladwell’s research shows that on average it takes 10,000 hours of commitment in something is what differentiates and helps to master a skill.
Another great lesson you need to understand is surviving the Valley of Disappointment. Most people have the impression that learning and implementing new skills is an easy process. However, they will soon fall into this Valley of Disappointment where their dreams do not meet their expectation and they would give up.
Most people give up too soon! If you would like to build wealth and get out of the poor mindset. It will take some time before you see the result. Until then, learn to wave through the Valley of Disappointment.
