How does your mindset affect your financial success?
My mindset probably limits my financial success as much as it enables it.
I have never been strongly motivated by the simple accumulation of money. To want to earn a great deal, I would need the money to come as a consequence—or perhaps as the reward—for something else: a business, a creative idea or a project that caught the imagination. A novel, music, performance, a film or television series. In 1999 I spent a year drafting a novel about the competition to create the first auto-drive car. The possibility that an idea might take off excites me far more than the possibility of becoming rich.
“Enough money” means pretty much what it says: enough to live modestly, cover the bills and retain some independence. Earning is also a reason to remain active and engaged with the world. But pursuing money through a conventional career has never particularly suited me.
I found large organisations—from advertising agencies to universities as career destinations—too institutional. The fewer people involved, the better. Just me is ideal. A couple of people working with me, perhaps. That preference brings obvious limitations. Large organisations offer scale, capital, networks, specialist skills and the ability to turn a successful idea into something much bigger. Working alone gives me freedom, but not necessarily leverage.
And this pattern was established very early. I began writing at eleven, and by my early teens I was already happiest alone with my ideas, making things because I wanted to make them. That instinct has remained remarkably persistent.
So my relationship with financial success is slightly paradoxical. Independence matters to me enormously, and money can provide independence, but I am reluctant to surrender independence merely in order to make more money. I am much more likely to devote myself obsessively to an idea than to a financial target.
Whether any particular idea eventually produces value, income or even riches is another matter. That possibility is welcome. It just isn’t the reason I begin.
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