“Anti-fragile structure” to solve the “35-year-old crisis”
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “The gods and gods together” (ID: tongyipaocha), the authors and gods work together.
01 Anti-fragile occupational structure
Last week’s article “Anti-vulnerability: Why the more stable the work, the more vulnerable it is to life, I Introduced Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book Anti-Vulnerability and left an unresolved question about how to use the “anti-fragile structure” to solve the “35-year-old crisis”?
First review the concept of “anti-fragility”, which proposes three states:
Fatty: The glass is very hard, but it falls to the ground and is easily broken;
Strong tough state: The plastic cup is easily deformed, but it falls to the ground and is generally intact;
Anti-fragile: Imagine a cup made of material that turns into two small cups when it falls to the ground.
Simply, the ability to resist external risks, called “tough structure,” the ability to profit from external risks, the author calls “anti-fragile structures.”
The essence of the “35-year-old phenomenon” is “fragile state”, because some industries and occupations that have gained advantage by age, when they are 35 years old, the vulnerability will increase greatly. The bigger risk of the “35-year-old phenomenon” is not unemployment, but psychologically vulnerable ability, which leads to the phenomenon that “the 90/95 can only be boasted after 70/95, and it is easy to squat after 70/80”.
Everyone wants to resist external risks through a “lifting ability” approach, but there is always a “black swan event” that exceeds your risk resistance. Therefore, the best way to “35-year-old phenomenon” is to “drug-to-drug” and establish an “anti-fragile occupational structure” for yourself, so that you can always expose yourself to risks, improve the “volatility” of your life, and use “fluctuation” to balance risks. Even profiting from risk.
These are the main contents of the previous article. This article introduces a typical “anti-fragile occupational structure.”
(The strategy of this article is only for those over 30 years old. Before the age of 30, the most important thing is to improve professional ability, from “fragile state” to “strong state”)
02 “Slash Youth” is just the first step
The most familiar “anti-fragile structure” is insurance.
Add a portion of your insurance premiums to your daily expenses. When you are experiencing big risks, let us not have the opportunity to turn over.
The “anti-vulnerability” of insurance allows us to “benefit” in risk – this is a bit strange, so to put it another way, the core of insurance is to divide expenditure into two parts, most of which can be controlled by itself. Another part of the event has a stable expectation, and the other part is used to resist uncontrollable risks. The most important thing is that after the two parts are hedged, there is a positive return, that is, under normal circumstances, it is profitable. Under extreme risks, Not to fail completely.
So, the core of the “anti-fragile structure” has two points: the right to choose, the positive return.
The author sums it up as a “barbell strategy”. In terms of career development, it is to abandon a single moderate career, so that he can always retain the “most conservative occupation” and “the most radical career” two options, and The return is positive.
A lot of such examples: Einstein studied relativity while working in the patent office; Kafka worked in the labor accident insurance during the day and went home to write at night. He never published any works because he had a good career in these years. From the assistant to the general secretary; and Liu Cixin, who completed all his sci-fi works while working as an engineer in the power plant…
These are the typical “barbell strategies” of the “most conservative” and “most radical” combinations. One is the choice, the life is bet in both directions; the second is that the income from work is higher than the career particles. The risk of receipt is positive.
The author points out the misunderstanding of most people in career choices – choose “moderate”, for example, think that in large companies, the risk is small. But in fact, the stability of large companies makes most people lose their ability to resist risks, and when most people choose this, your cost-benefits are likely to not match.
The last article of the article Many people mentioned the “slash youth”, yes, the “slash youth” meets the first condition of the “barbell strategy” – optional. However, the standard mode of “slash youth” is “survival occupation + interest occupation”, which solves the problem of “what is the current job not interested in?”, just because the occupation based on hobbies can let you endure the problem of no return in the early stage. There is plenty of time to wait for interest to be converted into income.
But most “slash youths” can’t develop a “barbell strategy” because they don’t match the latter element – positive returns.
If Einstein is a white-collar worker in a highly competitive company, then he will spend time studying relativity, which will definitely affect his company. These two forms a “zero-sum game” with no positive benefits;
The reason why Liu Cixin can work while working in a strict power plant is based on the professional characteristics of power plant engineers, requiring personnel to be on time to prepare for emergencies, but most of the work hours have no specific work. , the time cost overlap between the two, in order to produce “positive income.”
The former is just a “slash youth”, the latter is both a “slash youth” and a “barbell strategy.”
So, like Kafka, because the work is too successful, and there is no pressure to take out the work, the “slash youth” is not considered a “barbell strategy”? same with. Although he did not develop his writing into a profession, he retained this option and guaranteed that the total return was positive, just as the person who bought the insurance did not want to have an accident. This is also a very good “barbell strategy.”
The “slash youth” wants to develop into a “barbell strategy”, and must have the expected return, and the cost of the investment is deductible. Most of the young people who work stably are only “slash youth” at night. “Barbell strategy.”
The above example shows that a key condition for achieving “positive benefits” is that the costs of the main and sideline industries can be shared, especially the most expensive time cost after the age of 30.
For example, if you are engaged in the sales of large customers and often travel, you can combine them with some personal businesses with the same characteristics, and you can combine them into a “barbell strategy”; professional technicians and industry self-media V can be combined into a “barbell strategy”. Full-time wife and scriptwriters can be combined into a “barbell strategy”; even a person I know who works in a suburban real estate company uses the two-hour study on the subway every day to pass the extremely difficult CPA exam. It is also a “barbell strategy.”
In addition, the “conservative end” and “risk side” are not static. I was asked before, why is it a full-time writing, not writing while working. In fact, I have been in the state of writing while working on the shift. I have been insisting for nearly two decades. From comments and novels to scripts, it is only after the appearance of the public number that I can rely on writing to support myself before I resign.
So, for me, the diversity of writing income sources has changed it from “risk side” to “conservative end”, and “professional investors” have become my new “risk side”.
A lot of people may not agree, what “anti-fragile structure”, what “barbell strategy” is not the second occupation? In fact, this is not the case. As long as the two conditions of “selectability” and “positive income” are met, many professions themselves have the possibility of developing an “anti-fragile structure” on their own.
For example, civil servants.
03 Civil Warrior’s “Barbell Strategy”
In the previous message, some people questioned that the civil servant’s income is stable and there is no risk. There is no need for any “anti-fragile structure”.
In fact, civil servants have two occupational risks, one is hard risk, civil servant crime is high occupational risk (because there is no public statistics, other channels are inconvenient to say); another psychological risk, this power in officialdom In the system, when the player is not