“You don’t contribute enough.” That was something my parents once said to me, and in that moment, it hurt me a little. But how can I blame them? They are 100% right… at least for now. We obviously can't focus on contributing to society if we’re focused on contributing to our own growth. And this is when most people will call you egotistical and stamp you as a bad person. But I think that’s where we have messed up. Of course, ego in the sense of not contributing to society in any way, I think is a bad thing. But here’s an interesting thought: in what ways can we contribute to society? We contribute by bringing value to the table (image of The Value Equation↓) But in the Value Equation, there is only one thing we’re all born with: time. So, if we can save someone time, that becomes valuable. And what most people choose to do is to exchange their time for money and do labor for someone else (employer). However according to the Value Equation, “time delay” is not the only way of creating value. The other way is to work on yourself, to the point where you can provide more value than what your time used to do. Which then makes your time more valuable. And because money flows where value goes, you’ll also receive a much higher financial return. So with this, you can actually scale your value, unlike your time, which is limited to just 24 hours in a day. The trade-off is that you contribute drastically less at the beginning of your self-developing journey. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” - Abraham Lincoln Think of “sharpening the axe” as working on yourself, and “chopping the tree” as contributing to society. If you constantly “sharpen your axe” you will never get to use it. But if you constantly “chop down trees”, you’re “axe” will become dull and end up being useless, until you sharpen it again. This is how I’ve been balancing responsibilities and self-development to work towards creating immense value.