It’s tempting to spend your time figuring out how to get a greater percentage of the pie.

But your time is better spent trying to grow the whole thing.

Stay out of the muck.

Pie thieves get caught eventually.

You can think of it like the last and most annoying task.

Or, you can think of it like Friday.

Friday!

Your call.

Get a side gig.

Tutoring or speaking or ushering or vending or bartending or promoting or coaching or Lyfting.

Diversification aside, side gigs are, more than anything, fun.

Say yes more.

So much more fun (and likable) than “no” or “well” or “maybe” or “okay, so” or whatever other disagreeing, contradictory, or apathetic response you have.

Yeah?

You’re gong to have a couple of life-changing learning experiences at or during your first real job.

These experiences will become the moral fabric for the rest of your working life.

You’ll know if you’ve already had yours.

And if so, use it in all of your future work.

You’ve seen it work before.

But perhaps it’s not the rule?

Maybe it’s the exception.

Want admiration and riches and joy?

Ignore intuition.

Be generous with your money and stingy with your time.

Think about the times you’ve been the happiest. And think about the times when you made other people the happiest.

• Is it selling lemonade?
• Is it playing piano?
• Is it fixing computers?
• Is it writing about what you learned?
• Is it telling jokes in front of an audience?
• Is it hosting parties?
• Is it that thing you enjoyed doing before you needed to pay your own bills?

Do that.

Do that forever.

The life plan of thirds:

Spend the first third of your life learning, the next third making money, and the last third giving it all away.

This is nice at first glance.

But why not spend the entire life learning?

Then, the other two things will come naturally.

People don’t like hearing about the future.

You might be right.

You might be wrong.

But everyone would rather you come back to today.