For most of my life, I thought the goal was to get a good job. Get on the career ladder. Stay loyal. Get a promotion, if I work hard. Build a pension in the process. And retire with a decent payout. Just before I got the right "job," I changed my mind. The people closest to me were surprised. I decided to "productise myself." I did that after a difficult conversation with a few friends who were ahead of me. It turned out the "ladder" mindset didn't work out for them. I took a calculated gamble and "chose myself." Also, Thomas Merton's wisdom got me thinking. He said, "People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall."
I was terrified of the "wrong wall."
The career, as a concept, is dying. Go to school. Get a stable job. Climb the ladder. And the retire comfortably. That model made sense when wealth came mostly from labour. But's it's not working for many people. Even more so now. The logic that once held it together is falling apart. The ceiling is fixed. And you don't control a lot of the options. You have 24 hours. One body. One job. No matter how hard you worked, you couldn't multiply yourself. The boss knew this. The system knew this. And it used that knowledge to keep wages predictable and your options limited.
Your leverage was basically zero.
But something has changed.
The gates opened. And most people didn't notice. Technology didn't just change what we do. It changed the physics of work. For the first time in history, one person with a laptop can reach millions of people, build a product that runs while they sleep, or write something that changes how a stranger thinks about their life. That was new. But the people addicted to wages didn't care. They had leverage that didn't exist for most people a generation ago. But no, why would they choose the path with little or no certainty? Fast forward to today, right now.
Technology has intelligence.
And most of it is still free. Balaji was right. "Technology is the driving force of history. To be against technology is to be on the wrong side of history. You can't put the genie back in the bottle."Now you can write once and reach people across the ocean. Build an app once and sell it forever. Record a lesson and wake up to sales. But people are still only trading time for money. Playing by the rules that used to be unavoidable. They are not anymore.
"If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die," says Warren Buffett. Right now, you can own capital. Money that works while you rest. Not just for the wealthy now. Capital is accessible, however small, through index funds, digital assets and micro-investing. Capital can compound even when you're not watching. But people are still not taking advantage. Wait, there's more. There's code. A product you build once that scales effortlessly. An app, a template, a tool. You make it at 2am on a Tuesday. And then ship it. Get it out and get feedback.
In the hands of the right users, it can spread on its own, while you sleep. There's also media. Ideas that spread infinitely. A newsletter, a video channel, a thread that gets shared. Words and ideas don't get tired. They don't ask for overtime.
You could create leverage media right now. Zero barriers to entry. Leverage now exists for ordinary people in a way it simply didn't before. And if you're still only trading your time for money, rethink your approach to life and living it. I have invested in all three. Diversification has been the best approach for me from the beginning.
You are the product.
Productise yourself.
A job pays you for hours. A product pays you for value. Naval once said, "If I had to summarise how to be successful in life in two words, I would just say: productise yourself." It means treating your knowledge, perspective, and your skills as something you can package, distribute, and scale. You turn what you know into something that works without you standing next to it. A course. A tool. A book. A newsletter. A niche app. A framework. Something specific. Something useful.
You don't have to rent your time to one employer at a time. If you've spent years becoming good at something. Understanding something. Seeing patterns other people miss. That's not just useful inside one company. That's a thing. And things can be packaged. A consultant who only takes one-to-one clients is still trading time for money. But a consultant who turns their method into a course? Into a book? Into a framework someone else can license? That's productising. They didn't work harder. They changed how their knowledge spreads in the world. You don't have to go big to start. Or quit your job to productise yourself.
A teacher can start writing a weekly email about learning strategies. Two years in, she could have 5,000 subscribers and a small paid community. She still teaches. But she also has something she built. something that doesn't require her to be in a classroom at 8am to exist.
The hardest part for most people is finding specific knowledge to productise. "Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now," says Naval. "No one can compete with you on being you, and most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most," he once said. Your specific knowledge is the thing you know can't easily be trained for. It's your genuine curiosity, your unusual combinations of interest, your weird obsessions. Specific knowledge doesn't look like a job description.
It looks like you.
It's the person who is obsessed with both behavioural economics and design. And sees connections nobody else does. It's the former nurse who understands healthcare systems from the inside and starts writing about her personal experiences. And lessons for the average person. It's the amateur historian who explains history in a way that makes people want to pay attention. Specific knowledge also hides in your own frustrations. Your lived experience. That's where product ideas come from. It's hard to outsource because it's built from your interests, experiences, and weird combinations. You plus coding. You plus writing. The mix matters.
Generic skills compete.
Specific knowledge compounds.
The keyword here is genuine. What makes you come alive. Not what's trending. Or what someone told you would be valuable. The thing you would happily do without being paid to. This is a more concrete way to find it: what do people ask your opinion on? What do you know that feels obvious to you but seems to confuse everyone else? That gap between what's obvious to you and invisible to others is your specific knowledge.
Start paying attention to what you know.
And better still, productise and make it a career option. But returns don't come at the beginning. "All the returns in life — whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge — come from compound interest." That means play iterated games. Be consistent with what you start. Let things build on each other. A newsletter issue isn't worth much alone. But 200 issues, over three years compounds trust and audience. Make it an infinite game. Compound interest only works if you stay in the game. When you productise yourself, you're building assets. Assets stack. Skills stack. Even audience. And reputation.
Year after year.
You're not trying to win once. Stay in play long enough for compounding to do its work. Most people quit too early. They try something for six months, see modest results, and assume they were wrong. But compounding barely works in the first few months. The curve is flat, flat, flat, and then it bends. This is also why "what's hot right now" is a trap. By the time something is obviously hot, the strong path has already been taken. The person who followed their genuine interest three years ago now has a three-year head start.
That's almost impossible to catch.
The goal is the freedom to work on things that reflect who you are. To not need external permission to pursue what matters to you. To design your work around your life, rather than your life around your work. Wealth, if it comes, is a byproduct of that alignment. It comes from being so genuinely yourself. So specific, curious and consistent that the world eventually pays attention. That's what you want. From employee to owner. From disposable to irreplaceable. And from renting your time to building things. Right now, you have leverage. And enough technology to test things out. Don't ignore what you know. What you've figured out. What feels obvious to you. Pick one medium and experiment. Write. Record. Teach. Build. Design. Or create. Do things that scale beyond you.
You'll find your voice by using it.
You don't have to feel ready. Think in years, not months. Most things that matter take longer than feels comfortable. Give your work time to compound. And remember: the goal is do work that feels like yours. The goal is freedom. Freedom means you choose how to spend your Tuesday afternoon. It means you don't need permission to take a week off. Freedom also means your work reflects how you think, not just what someone else needs done. It means replacing external direction with internal direction. I like what Seth Godin said, "Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don't need to escape from."
You are not doing this to escape work.
We all have to work. But if you do it from a "specific knowledge" angle, you will set your soul on fire. That's what you want. The transition from labour to leverage, from job-holder to person who has built something. On your own terms. The question isn't who is going to let you. Who is going to stop you? Specific knowledge pays the best interest.
You don't have to quit your day job.
But you can start your "leverage" experiment. Pick one area of genuine curiosity. What you know and find in public. Turn useful ideas into small products. Repeat. Start tiny. A short guide. A niche newsletter. A simple tool that solves one annoying problem. You're not trying to become famous. You're trying to become leveraged. The job market will keep changing. Right now, people are terrified of losing their jobs to software intelligence. Roles will disappear. Titles will change. But if you own specific knowledge and know how to package it, you're not just employable. You're independent. And in control of the direction of your life and career.
"Earn with your mind, not your time." — Naval