I had personally been using thought process the author describes, before I read this article.
The way I would describe this is that my "goal" in life to improve my everyday habits, the way I work, the way I manage priorities, how I structure my lifestyle, the broad direction in which I am taking my career, the kind of people I am meeting and attracting in my life (which is a result of my overall lifestyle, priorities etc.) etc.
You constantly tweak these things to take your life in a broad direction that you want to take it towards.
As a few concrete examples, if you are not meeting enough women in your life, or the type you want, the answer is not to go out to a bar. The answer if to change your lifestyle in a fundamental way which makes meeting women of the type you want a natural outcome.
If you are not happy with your health, fitness etc. the answer is not necessarily (in this approach) to join a gym or hire a trainer for 3 months. It is to understand what makes a healthy lifestyle, slowly change your dietary habits, figure out an exercise scheme that makes sense for you, figure out how in your current lifestyle you can get plenty of sleep etc. Basically something that would make being healthy and fit a natural outcome.
A necessary condition for this to work is that because it is such a systemic approach, the system has to be congruent with your overall lifestyle, and you have to be happy with executing the system. This is a big reason, why I feel, most dietary plans, or hobbies don't pan out enough. It is very short term goal drives and not something which is seamlessly integrated in a systemic way in your life.
These are two examples where I have applied it (with a reasonable degree of success). I am using something similar for my overall work life, but whether it has succeeded or not is something I guess I will only know in another 10 years or so :)
> These people struggle (or think that they do..) for so long in the rat race that they forget that they have risen above it and gone far beyond that.
India definitely makes you feel this. I know this one senior guy who lived for a very long time in New York (~10 years) after his grad school and moved a few years back to Mumbai. He is very rich but he says that he feels poorer in Mumbai than he ever felt in New York, even compared with the time when he working in his first job, fresh out of grad school.
"Most people do not have a need to hire 3-4 people. Growing up it was common to have a maid who helped with household chores due to the absence of amenities like a dish washer or washing machine. As these services become available there is no need to hire folks to do such work."
I completely agree with this. When I was living in New York, I rarely felt a need to "hire" someone to do stuff for me. Apartment didn't get dirty so easily. Clothes didn't get dirty so easily. Very easy and convenient access to laundromats. Dish washer at home. Easy access to fairly high quality groceries. Lots of places to eat around which had healthy food options at reasonable prices (relative to your salary). Anything you wanted could be ordered online.
If on top of all this, you just hired a maid by the hour, for a couple of hours, to come clean your house like once in two weeks, you didn't need anything else.
Here in India, it's hard to get by without a maid. Clothes get dirty fast, house gets dirty fast, no laundromats, no dishwasher, no space to keep a washing machine at home, poor availability of healthy food options, groceries sellers have bad quality of food and vegetables so you need to spend time picking them out, supermarkets have massive checkout lines etc.
I too am definitely confused by LinkedIn. I feel the key value addition there is having a professional profile on the internet. The other things they keep doing like endorsements, news, mentions, I feel they don't really add significant value.
This is one the reasons I quit as well. Even though work is interesting, the general sense I got was that there are too many players trying to chase the same little pot of gold. Also, it is getting fairly easy to setup a basic execution infrastructure and the barriers to entry have reduced quite substantially as a result.
The way I would describe this is that my "goal" in life to improve my everyday habits, the way I work, the way I manage priorities, how I structure my lifestyle, the broad direction in which I am taking my career, the kind of people I am meeting and attracting in my life (which is a result of my overall lifestyle, priorities etc.) etc.
You constantly tweak these things to take your life in a broad direction that you want to take it towards.
As a few concrete examples, if you are not meeting enough women in your life, or the type you want, the answer is not to go out to a bar. The answer if to change your lifestyle in a fundamental way which makes meeting women of the type you want a natural outcome.
If you are not happy with your health, fitness etc. the answer is not necessarily (in this approach) to join a gym or hire a trainer for 3 months. It is to understand what makes a healthy lifestyle, slowly change your dietary habits, figure out an exercise scheme that makes sense for you, figure out how in your current lifestyle you can get plenty of sleep etc. Basically something that would make being healthy and fit a natural outcome.
A necessary condition for this to work is that because it is such a systemic approach, the system has to be congruent with your overall lifestyle, and you have to be happy with executing the system. This is a big reason, why I feel, most dietary plans, or hobbies don't pan out enough. It is very short term goal drives and not something which is seamlessly integrated in a systemic way in your life.
These are two examples where I have applied it (with a reasonable degree of success). I am using something similar for my overall work life, but whether it has succeeded or not is something I guess I will only know in another 10 years or so :)
I hope that answers your question.