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Intro: Software Developer Looking for a New Path

wordwarrior

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Feb 16, 2019
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After reading Millionaire Fastlane a week ago and setting up my account, I've been perusing the forums for a week before my first post (aside from replying to the "I've read Millionaire Fastlane " thread). Now it's time to introduce myself.

I'm a software developer in Montreal, Canada in my mid-40s. In fact, I'm nearing the 20 year mark as a dev, and I've recently been given team lead responsibilities. The software industry is doing well and with the next recession still ahead of us, job opportunities are abundant in my field. Still, I'm clearly in the slowlane, and I'm definitely part of the rat race.

Since my IT career stared, I've believed firmly in continuing education. However, that continuing education consisted solely of learning new programming languages and other IT skills. Then a couple of years ago, I started learning about topics outside my comfort zone: psychology, persuasion, media, and politics. I stumbled upon Twitter accounts from highly motivated and successful people. The wisdom of Fastlane was fed to me one 280 character block at a time: scattered...incomplete. The seeds were planted in my mind, but they would not yet bloom.

Still, I was very much lacking in motivation to make any meaningful changes in my life, and spent most of my free time in a most unproductive fashion either watching streaming video or playing console games. My finances, while solid, were sub-optimally managed. A minority of my free time was spent on books, educational YouTube channels, and a non-IT creative project.

Then in the last year, two events happened that guided me towards the Fastlane:

The first was witnessing an event that allowed me to see firsthand the disastrous consequences of letting things slide in one's life. It had a tremendous impact on me, as I was cured of the procrastination that had afflicted me for so long. I was able to focus more on personal activities outside work hours.

The second event that happened was this speech by Arnold Schwartzenegger, and it shook me to my core:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNDA-o9yJNw


How? It made me re-evaluate my beliefs. If an immigrant who could barely speak English could come to the United States with a few bucks in his pocket, win Mr. Universe, become a millionaire from starting successful businesses, become a Hollywood superstar, and then become governor of California, well...anything is possible.

This primed me to start on a new path. I came across a Charisma On Command Episode that recommended the Millionaire Fastlane :

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwFw51Gn2to


At first I was skeptical, but I had to admit that there was something magnetizing about the idea of financial freedom. This was intriguing.

After the sample, I bought the book and start reading it at a fast clip. I overcame my natural aversion to reading books and read two to four chapters during my weekday commute and more on weekends. Despite being fatigued at the end of each work day, I found myself less motivated to indulge in mindless entertainment and more motivated to learn more from this amazing book.

Which business am I looking to get into? Well, that's the subject of a future post. Let's just say that it has definite pros and cons, in the context of CENTS, that I'm looking to flesh out.
 
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MJ DeMarco

I followed the science; all I found was money.
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Jul 23, 2007
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Welcome my friend, thanks for the intro, and for letting me know how you found TMF !
 

pashka

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Jun 24, 2018
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welcome @wordwarrior!
Your story is much alike mine, except that I'm 26 (but still feel like I've wasted so much time).
Being in IT for 10 years at least (7 of which freelancing) I've worked for people who were building their businesses and of course often times the idea to create something myself stroke my mind many times.

I noticed that negative motivation works better than positive one and seeing people in IT who're 10, 15 20 years older definitely didn't look like desired future.

The biggest impact that MJ's books made on me was realizing that I don't have to build "the next big thing" (i.e. startups & VC funding, silicon valley and other crap people in IT often talk about) in order to live the way I dream. Instead you can create a system that delivers value to customers.

And more important, there is no requirement to be any special to do that. Don't need to have wealthy parents, great education or be 6'9 of height.

The point of being an immigrant especially resonates as I'm one of them. I personally feel like it's such a polarizing thing: some people get discouraged by it, some are the opposite.

Anyways, good luck with your endeavours, this forum is so great (I'm still exploring it) as it gets different angles on how to approach fast lane, there definitely should be one that fits you best.
 

AppleUnited

Contributor
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Jan 26, 2019
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Hi @wordwarrior!

I have worked as a software developer for about 10 years and an IT lead for 5 years. Despite the attractive salary package, I am living a life dictated by my immediate superior and sometimes a few unreasonable customers. Most importantly, I don't feel any value in the software I developed under the companies I worked for. Thus I decided to work on my own and thus far, I am fairly happy with my decision.
 

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