Change Your Destiny by Changing Your Production Mode

You're on the hunt for a direction that makes you willing to stay up late and put in long - term effort.

This is an answer I got from a conversation with ChatGPT today. I asked it to talk to me as a life - advantage coach, and I provided my Gallup strengths report, along with some basic information and ideas.

There were no fancy prompt words in the whole process; it was just a pure conversation and exchange.

One little trick is to make the AI ask you questions. During the process, it asked a really interesting question: Can you find something that you'd be willing to keep doing for ten years, even without income, feedback, or profit?

I couldn't answer right away. Tennis counts, but it's far from the business world. Although I could be a tennis coach, the compound effect of time is too small. Reading and writing are basic skills.

There were also a series of similar questions that were really hard to answer.

The so - called "know yourself and your enemy" essentially means that in our whole lives, we're constantly looking for ourselves, or rather, finding what we truly want.

Most of us are pushed forward by schools, society, families, and the whole environment. This is what we call the "social clock." At a certain age, people around you will tell you what to do. For example, in your twenties, you're supposed to start making money to support yourself. As you're approaching thirty, people will say it's time to think about getting married.

These suggestions aren't without reason. What is the social clock in essence? It's actually the greatest common divisor, a relatively safe solution formed by society after years of development.

Following this path will bring more stability and certainty. It's a neutral and conservative approach, but it doesn't mean other paths won't work.

It's just that if you choose other paths, there will be more risks and uncertainties.

It's like there's a big road ahead, and many people are walking on it. This road is more certain. But there might also be some small paths, or even paths that haven't been opened up yet. It's not that you can't take these paths. It's just that if you do, you may have to bear more unknowns and risks.

Your family or people around you will often advise you not to take risks from this perspective, because few people have taken that path, or some who did have failed.

So, they'll prefer you to choose the path that seems safer and more certain.

This is the rationality behind the "social clock."

We often say that to find the life we want, we can't do without production and consumption.

Production refers to how you make money, and consumption represents your lifestyle.

A person's lifestyle largely depends on their production mode. Many people get the order wrong. They only focus on the lifestyle they want but ignore the underlying production mode.

The production mode you choose will affect or even determine your lifestyle.

For example, if you're an office worker, you don't have much free time. You're restricted by the company in many ways. It's not easy to take a leave, and you have to arrange your major life events according to your work. You don't have much freedom, and it's hard to consume as you like, let alone take a spontaneous trip.

But if your production mode changes, for example, if your income is no longer restricted by the company, location, or time, your lifestyle will naturally change too.

So, if we want to achieve our ideal lifestyle, we first need to clarify that it's just a goal. To reach this goal, the key is to change our production mode.

For instance, if you want to take a spontaneous trip at any time and visit many places, certain careers aren't suitable for you, like working in the public sector or a private company.

Instead, you need to be a freelancer, start your own business, or accumulate enough wealth to get passive income from investments.

When planning your life goals, you must consider the match between your lifestyle and production mode. Only in this way can you truly live the life you want.

Once you start thinking seriously, you'll find your direction becoming clearer. You'll realize that you need to adjust your production mode and optimize your income structure.

For example, if you only have one main job now, can you consider getting a part - time job? Let's not talk about passive income for now. Instead, let's see if you can add a part - time income.

This is still trading time for money, and it's hard to achieve large - scale growth. Next, you can think about whether you can expand this part - time job. Instead of just trading time for money, can you make the same amount of time bring in more income?

Maybe you can try making products, building an online following, or doing sales. See if you can increase this part of your income, or even make it exceed your main job and keep it stable.

Of course, these are really difficult to do, and it's not easy for most people. But it's definitely a path worth trying.

In contrast, if we just stay at the level of thinking about the so - called lifestyle, like what kind of life we want to live or where we want to go, these ideas may seem more vague.

Another thing is to make yourself answer the question "What do I want?" If this question is hard to answer, then ask yourself the opposite: "What don't I want?"

Most people can quickly tell what kind of life they don't want.

You can have a conversation with yourself or let the AI tell you what common lifestyles there are now. Then, you can see which ones you definitely don't want and rule them out. What's left are the options you can accept or are interested in.

Next, you can further filter and try these options, or summarize their commonalities and think about the corresponding production modes behind these lifestyles.

In this way, you can gradually figure out what you need to do to achieve your ideal life.

It's not hard to draw this conclusion. To be honest, there aren't that many real options, and many paths are quite similar.

The key lies in what you do and how much you yearn for a certain lifestyle.

Some ideas may just be complaints when you don't want to go to work for a moment. They haven't reached the level of extreme desire or extreme disgust with the current situation.

People usually only make changes in extreme situations - either they like something so much that they're willing to go all out, or they hate something so much that they don't want to continue.

Most people are in the middle. They don't like it, but they can still tolerate it, so they just muddle along. That's the norm, and I'm the same.

So, we need to actively and clearly recognize our predicament and consciously make changes.

Daily Reading & Writing by Xiaolu 08/15/2025 [Day 710]