This has not been my personal experience.

I'm sorry to hear that. What kind of coding were you trying to do? Were you open to getting comp sci jobs in every industry or just one?

Chinese manufacturers are opening factories in US because shipping costs (including comp disadvantages associated with shipping time) are becoming greater than labor cost savings as manufacturing becomes more automated and standards of living in Asia rise.

"Manufacturing" jobs of the future are better described as "services" of various sorts where people huddle around computers to design new products and figure out how to program the robots to minimize costs.

I have always noticed that I would burn out quickly. I could be social and get along for 1-2 hours, but then I want to be alone. Probably to do with introversion? Like the part of my brain that does socializing has low capacity batteries. Doing sales would be a nightmare for me.

Honestly investing should also be in your list. If you had at least moderate success with poker (like at least 6 figures in lifetime winnings). You are already ahead of the curve because you are better at process oriented thinking. And you are probably more analytical and intelligent than the average person. if you have $50k in savings from poker and add $5k per year and generate a 5% return you will have about $1 million 40 years from now. If you can get a 10% return by making some effort yourself (by spending 15-20 hours a week on it), you would have $4.5 million and can probably retire 10 years earlier. That is $88k per year extra from something you can probably do part time as you get better at it. I don't think it is for everyone, but if you happen to enjoy the process it could potentially be enormously +ev over your lifetime. Even if you do not invest a dime the first 5 years and just read up on it part time it will probably be a good investment of your time. It will require long term thinking though and that is where the process oriented mindset will come in handy.

If you have a basic college degree the office jobs are even better. You don't have to deal with hordes of cranky flyers that way. You get to do 1-2 hours of work a day and surf reddit the rest of the day. Arrive on time and leave on time every day. Great benefits. It's ridiculous.

just become a product manager and deal with the sales people and the coding people.

I was a professional C#/ASP coder. Maybe I'm just bad at interviews.

I'm a fairly introverted person though have always excelled at sales. I would recommend B2B and sell a product or service you believe in - it will come through when selling. Learn the product inside and out, and most importantly, learn to speak the target customer's language. Speak in benefits, not features.

Recommend B2B for those who feel guilty about people giving money for something they don't need.

Find the Venn overlap between "something people need" and "what I would naturally do for free".

Add another dimension:

"What I am (or can be) good at."

Ideally all 3 overlap somewhere. If not, it's time to make some hard decisions.

Maybe elaborate on hard decisions? I feel like besides maybe trading/angel investing theres no overlap anywhere. Problem with those things are capital reqs. Selling things to people makes me feel like ****, its not how i want the foundation of the relationship with another human being to begin. Programming is depressing being too introverted of an activity and just doesnt interest me intellectually. Most run of mill jobs bore me to death, i probably go crazy after a few months. Basically im super cursed in that everything i enjoy doing is either super hard to make money at or it does but im terrible at it (golf)

Hmm if most people hate their jobs.. and they spend most of their waking life doing them.. how is everyone not depressed?

GMYS' Venn Diagram is:

"Need" (I think he means can make money) + "Naturally Do for Free" = A Viable Job that I'd like to have.

He was missing:

"What I am/can be good (enough) at" to get and keep the job.

Need+Free+Good=a viable job you love to have and can keep. <<== these are people who love their jobs and their jobs pay well.

Need+Free-Good = jobs you want but can't get/keep <<== sports pros, artists, and so on.

Most people end up in

Need + Good - Free = jobs you do for money to live. <<== basically work to live. In a lot of cases, one can live really well with relatively little misery. (code word: work life balance)

Hmm I feel like jobs require at least 40 hours a week (plus commuting time and meal breaks which are usually unpaid). I don't see how it's possible to have much time for anything else except work. Doesnt seem balanced to me. Maybe I just sleep too much?

Solid summary. I left out the [good] component as I think people over-focus on what they are already good at rather than what they would be willing to spend the time on becoming good at. (Summarized well by Mark Manson here)

For [need] I was more thinking global/local impact which might overlap with $ but possibly not. Sometimes one career won't check all boxes and need to cobble together (high impact and fulfillment jobs like non-profits or music rarely pay well, might need to make bread and meaning wearing two different hats).

I find poker players tend to come at the problem of "what to do after poker" trying to solve for [full autonomy] + [earn in top 1%] + [uses current skillset] = investor/trader (not picking on spiro this is the initial conclusion of basically everyone I talk to, including my former self) when really there is a buffet of options out there if you think about what you would do if money were no object.

Yeah boom era poker was probably a once in a lifetime gig for a lot of people. That doesn't mean you can't make the same money again, you totally can... But you'll probably never be able to make it as quickly and easily again. That's because it was a brief period of market inefficiency. An efficient market for poker looks a lot more like today with poker being an incredibly grindy job that is really hard.

That video is non-sense. Tons of the stuff in there (surfing, skydiving) require money to start and master and most people will never earn enough and get good enough at those "jobs" to earn a decent living. Best most of them will do is to become an instructor of some kind.

I think smartest thing to do if you do not have a load of natural talent, combine several skills that might be useful together. And look in area's that no one else is looking. So no 'sexy' jobs. The jobs that look good will become a grind anyway after a while.

I heard that tutoring is in demand. Learn some skill that already interests you that is useful and build up a clientele. Learn to code or learn some math and go to wealthy area to tutor rich kids? Can charge $50-100 sometimes if you get good. Richer people really pay up for this if you got good references.

In the new information economy knowledge is important, and there are a lot of uneducated idiots out there. Supply/demand is probably out of whack, plus you get to take money of the 1% if you play it right . You need to have at least some knack for explaining stuff though.

If you are into fitness, figure out how to get rich lazy clients, can be very profitable as well. Know of someone who did this, getting the first rich one is key. Then it gets easier. Helps a lot if you can get good healthy (and tasty) food advice as well.

This probably requires a bit of hustling skills to get the right clientele though.

Another thing that is relatively easy to get into is to be an interpreter. If you like languages, and don't mind being around people. It pays like 40-60$ per hour. And that is only after 2-3 years of training. You have to perform though, or else it gets a lot tougher to get work very quickly. It is also very mentally taxing (so hard to grind out 40-50 hours a week).

The video is pretty typical idealistic philosophy bs. "Living a short life is better than living a long one where you hate what you do". Would it actually be better to starve to death at 30? Maybe I am way off but that is what I took from the video.

If you had to start from scratch, IE:no poker money, no poker connections, would you still think it was viable to be a productivity coach? Not trying to pick on you just pointing out that money is literally no object to you. Its a pretty different frame to think "What should I do to not be bored" vs "What should I do so that I can live"

Fair enough. Definitely idealistic, and a lateral approach which by definition won't be for anyone. Just making the point that the search space doesn't need to be [other legible zero-sum careers that make 250k].

(since you asked, don't want to divert thread, let's continue over PM)

I started coaching because I had been studying productivity/personal development for years (i.e. doing it for free) and realized that my current trajectory would leave me far short of my life ambitions, primarily due to a lack of taking decisive action.

Coaching struck me as a great way to:
1) convert my consumption into production, creating a forcing function to perform at peak
2) accelerate high potential people in achieving their own ambitions, creating ripples in the world
3) have a high leverage skill that could add value to any future person I met, creating future optionality of opportunity.

The coaching will never make much money in poker terms but it's very fulfilling and puts me back on the path towards making a dent in the universe. Have lived a $2k/mo burn rate and a $20k/mo burn rate with negligible difference in happiness.

If I was starting from scratch without either any successes to point to / distill [no reputation or transferable skills] or a network to draw upon / collaborate with, my move would be to focus on building those first.

As a rule I personally dislike people who try to teach for a living. The best teaching method I've seen is practicing the activity under the watchful eye of someone who has gobs of experience doing EXACTLY what you're trying to do. Someone who has a long verifiable track record of being very good at exactly what you're trying to do please.

That said it's good work if you can get it. If people are paying you to talk to them about achieving their ambitions that's great.

I've personally used coaches many times in my life, I think some people think the point of coaching is to solve all your problems but that's not really true. You're paying someone who has specialized in thinking about one subject. What you get out of it will heavily depend on how you utilize it.

For example, when I was learning to program I'd occasionally pay a guy for an hour of time to just go over all the problems I was stuck on. Typically these problems would take me 4-8 hours to get unstuck and I could cover about 5-8 problems in an hour. Money very well spent.

I did the same thing when I found some good Razz action, played a bit, recorded about 10-20 questions on lines, math, etc and paid a 2p2'er $200 or $300 to talk to me about them for an hour. Made $20k in Razz that following month.

I think great coaches:
-Have ideas and methods backed by research and statistics (85% of people tend to have children...)
-Can customize their interpretation of how to leverage the research based personal conclusions ("I know for a fact I don't want children..," drawing out the implications of being in the minority)
-Produce on the first session, if you've ever been to a psychologist you'll probably understand how they try and draw everything out, don't ever stand for that ****. If I'm going to pay for your brain you better show me some **** in the first hour.

I think you should also realize that good coaching is going to cost money. If you paid someone $50/hour, well why is someone who is sophisticated willing to accept $50/hour? There better be a really good answer to that. I've typically paid $150-$300/hour.

I think the best way to start is if you have a very specific problem and you can literally track it. Something like, I'm being a slacker I want to produce 40 hours a week of good work. That's a great type of problem to find a coach to help with.

I also do some limited coaching on occasion in full disclosure. It's not a substantial part of my income though.

Nice response. When I re-read what I said, it definitely seems a bit aggressive and that isn't what I was trying to convey, so thanks for taking it in stride.

In general, I share your skepticism. The world is overrun with self-proclaimed gurus at the expense of practitioners. I'm particularly critical of life coaching as it is too broadly-focused, prone to magical thinking, and unfalsifiable.

Like any field, the majority of people claiming the title of "coach" are not all that impressive. Important to judge on an individual basis rather than by the average (i.e. just because hedge funds do not outperform on average does not mean that an individual fund will not outperform).

Clearly, having a "mentor" who is one/two levels ahead of you in the same field is the optimal scenario. I will say that teaching does not fully overlap with execution -- it is rare that the best executors in a particular field are as talented at codifying and teaching the necessary tacit skills to others.

Basically this. When you pay an expert you are paying for information compression -- someone who can summarize years of experience in a few words. You're investing to time shift your learning curve to the right. In the case of productivity coaching, the ROI is leveraged on the marginal benefit of having an additional hour of output. Gains are compounded with shortened feedback loops which are dependent upon measurement and regular reflection.

No sweat, no offense taken. I do think one of the dangers of becoming hyper-specialized is a loss of perspective so any reminders to stay humble and empathetic are appreciated.