We all look at prominent career figures like Elon and Gates and wish daily to attain the heights they’ve been able to reach.
But the harsh question reality often throws at us is ‘can you be like these guys?
Popular opinion demands that we talk about the reasons behind their successes and proffer tips on how to succeed like these individuals.
But Nah!
Today, I am going to take a different twist to the topic.
We are going to be talking about those things you do that may most likely never allow you to be as successful as these guys.
These are the top twenty reasons why you may never reach the apex of your career.
As usual, I’ve got a brief rundown of these reasons for all my glimpse readers out there.
They are;
- I’ll do it later syndrome
- 12 non-productive hours on social Media basically every day
- High food budget
- Too much love for luxury items
- Way too many expectations from education
- Avoiding Mentorship
- Staying idle consistently
- Insatiable love for gaming
- Avoiding books
- Way too much love for clubbing
- Même love syndrome
- General laziness
- Short-lived focus
- Financial constraints
- Poor drive (determination)
- Family background
- Quitting prematurely
- Jumping into career lines without proper research
- Peer Comparison
- Religious sentiments.
If I’m allowed to do so, I think I can list up to 100 reasons why I think you might not achieve those career goals. But let’s just stick to these few for now.
This post may be getting a part 2 based on popular opinion.
We have a long road ahead of us, let’s jump right into it.
1. I’ll Do It Later Syndrome
Well, I don’t believe this needs to be debated. There’s basically no hypothetical universe where procrastination ever does anyone any good.
You sit all day with your day’s task staring you in the face, but you find it soothing to postpone, continuously, everything you have planned to do.
As much as I deeply despise saying this, I had a hard time fighting off procrastination. It took me quite a while to fight off procrastination.
If you ask me, I think this issue deserves an entire post of its own. I will see to it that I tackle the issue of procrastination in detail.
For now, here are a few tips to help you solve your procrastination problems
TIPS:
- Learn how to use your calendar to set reminders for events. It will help you plan your day better
- Your alarm is your friend. Use it.
- Get a whiteboard in your room, and write down the things you need to do. It will give you a little boost
- Try just a little bit of exercise every morning before you start the day. It gives you a little boost
- Stay off caffeine. That stuff can kill your morale over time.
2. 12 Non Productive Hours On Social Media Basically Every day
Social media houses great potential for business opportunities and a tendency for beneficial information to be passed across.
However, what really is the percentage of people who benefit from social media when placed in comparison with those who are being benefited from it.
Every single social media site collects data and sells this data for a profit.
A lot of people know how to profit from this but do you?
Do you go online every day to earn a living or to waste 12 hours of your entire day chatting, liking, and subscribing to a bunch of random things every day?
If you keep this up, you may not only end up without the apex of your career, but you may also end up abandoning your actual physical life for a time with mostly fake friends who don’t care about you.
TIPS:
- Time yourself so you spend less time on social media
- Take some courses on digital marketing. It will help you convert that harmful habit into a money minting machine
- Spend more time on educative content than on entertainment.
3. High Food Budget
As hilarious as this sounds, this is actually a problem. A lot of people are living with too much love for food.
Imagine spending 60% of your earnings on food…
It’s necessary to have good nutrition quite alright, but it’s better to get this nutrition, but not at the cost of other important things that you need your funds for.
I have this friend who spends more than $500 2 weeks on food. His average earnings round up to around $1500 each month. This clearly is a terrible case of food love.
If this guy is ever going to end up as anything reasonable, he clearly needs to work on his food expenditure and save a little more.
I mean you have light bills, water bills, transportation bills, and education bills to handle. How do you compensate for these needs with limited resources when all you think about is food?
Haha
Let’s just get right to the tips
TIPS;
- Plan your food budget every month.
- Don’t spend more than 40% of your earnings on food alone.
- Avoid expensive restaurants if your earnings are low.
- Three meals a day is perfect. What are you eating almost five times a day for?
4. Too Much Love For Luxury Items
Hey! Have you heard of the new iPhone? The maxed-out version costs roughly $2k. I’m currently using the previous model of the iPhone, and I sure could use an upgrade.
Stop right there!.
What in the world do you need it for?
You’re not a cinematographer who needs upgraded camera features.
Even if you are, don’t you think you should invest in more professional gear for your craft?
There is really no go excuse to keep changing your phone every now and then apart from the fact that you just love the new iPhone.
This is the same thing that applies to basically every luxury item.
You want to get a million-dollar car?
What happened to the cheaper and still efficient variants?
An expensive lifestyle is… well… expensive.
Most of the time, these luxury items you throw money on, are things you most likely don’t even need.
I have a Samsung galaxy watch that cost me a little below $200, and I honestly don’t use it that much.
Before you get started on the “you’re not a tech person” argument. I love collecting tech items, but the truth of the matter is most of these techs will only be used once in a blue moon.
Apart from my laptop and my phone, I rarely use any other device for my nature of work, but I still buy these things. So why?
Alright let’s get down to the tips
TIPS;
- Buy things you need not everything you want
- Cut down on the credit thing. Like really, cut down on it.
- Have a budget, and don’t exceed it for useless items
- Only use your savings when you absolutely need to.
5. Way Too Much Expectations From Education
Remember when your teacher told you that the key to success is education? Well hehe… Spoiler alert! I think someone must have changed the key handle when your teacher wasn’t looking.
I believe, a more accurate description of the usefulness of education is the attainment of enlightenment.
When you get an education, you get access to a specific set of arranged information.
This information can then be used for other purposes.
So is education useless? Of course not.
But don’t get your hopes way up, thinking that once you get an education, you’re going to Bill Gates in a couple of years.
There are other keys to success. I believe education is just a channel that shows you a path to follow.
TIPS;
- Get a good education. Don’t let anyone deceive you by saying; “education is useless”.
- Get a skill alongside your education.
- Ensure that you don’t read for exam sake alone. Or for the sake of the certificate alone. The knowledge is way more useful than the certificate.
- Read practical courses. Some courses have little to no use in real life.
- Try to read a computer-related course. They always tend to be more practical.
6. Avoiding Mentorship
As much as this generation prefers to be independent, it’s still important to note that there are people who have crossed the road you’re about to journey on.
It doesn’t hurt to get tips from them every now and then. I personally follow several influencers and successful personalities. It helps me a whole lot.
Don’t let anyone make you feel that getting a mentor is an outdated practice. It works wonders.
TIPS;
- Get a mentor who is in your field or a related field.
- Learn to take advice
- Follow mentors who make their revenue from legal, and verifiable sources
7. Staying Idle Consistently
There is a popular saying; the idle mind is the devil’s workspace…
Usually, boredom, heartbreaks, and several other reasons can be responsible for your inability to find the motivation you need to get up and do something for the day.
As much as your emotional well-being is important, you have to understand that the success of your career path, is at stake.
Staying idle for too long, makes you use up valuable time on absolutely nothing.
This time you use in staying idle could be used to read a book, write a piece, watch your favorite TV show…
TIPS:
- Try to stay busy
- Read a book in your free time
- In times when you’re too down to do anything, take a stroll, you should be just fine.
- Use your free time to plan for the next day.
- Set up a freelance account. It will help you channel your free time elsewhere.
8. Insatiable Love For Gaming
Now, this is the problem that the male gender will never want to accept. I have to confess at this point that this is one of the problems that I have battled with for a quite long time now.
`This is not to say that gamers waste their time on games. After all, there are a whole lot of individuals who earn a living off gaming, but, these gamers have to work extra hard to get good content to display to their audiences.
Some of these players are also excellent video editors. They record gaming content and showcase it on various sites.
According to Statistica, there were over 547 thousand gaming youtube channels. Now some of these channels don’t make way too much to be called big, but most do make an income from it.
According to playscounter.com, there are over 400 million players who have ever played pubg mobile alone. Just for the sake of comparison, you see the number of gaming channels that are likely to make a living off gaming, compared to the number of players.
This tells you that majority of people who play these games, don’t make money from them. They rather spend money on premium items.
This obviously tells us that a lot of people burn hours of their time, gaming.
So how do you make your career work that way?
TIPS;
- If you must play games so much, try to earn a living out of it
- If you won’t earn, reduce your gaming time
- Map out a schedule that should also include gaming time.
- Don’t play games for more than 1 hour 30 minutes at a stretch or more than 2 hours a day.
- If you still love your gaming, make research on how to earn from a gaming channel
9. Avoiding Books
Books are materials that dish out the author’s wealth of knowledge, but somehow also manage to scare off almost everyone from this current generation.
Reading is a huge task and to be frank, is highly underrated, especially in this current dispensation.
Despite the fact that the proverb; “if you want to hide information from a fool, write it in a book”, we still see some “averagely wise” individuals who want to have nothing to do with a book.
If I were to be completely and utterly honest, I’ll say that reading is a lengthy discipline that requires so much concentration, brain energy, and time. It’s not the easiest thing to do.
However, a lot of successful career persons have some of their career secrets stored up in a book. If you want to be completely successful in your career, you have to learn to read a little more.
TIPS:
- Develop a reading culture … this is a huge must.
- If you cannot read because of timing, try getting audiobooks. It is a more efficient way to read on the go.
- Learn to use the google calendar to plan your day. Ensure you have a few hours to read something every day.
10. Way Too Much Love For Clubbing
Unless you actually own a club, or you have business meetings in a club, there’s basically no tangible reason why you should spend so much time in the club.
Now the club is a good place to let off some steam, but it’s also a very good way to spend money you would have used for more useful purposes.
I wouldn’t want to bore you with the details of how much money is made in that industry, but I can tell you this; that money isn’t showing up in your bank account.
Apart from the money effect, you also need to talk about things like health hazards, especially with the new covid pandemic. Don’t even get me started on the various kinds of risks, alcoholics put themselves in anytime they attempt to drive home after having a good time.
TIPS:
- Get a new hobby
- If you must club, Have a budget for clubbing
- Reduce the number of times you frequent the club in a month. Ideally, in my opinion, you shouldn’t do it more than 2 times a month
- Don’t spend all night in a club. Your night hours should be used for more productive ventures like sleeping, or getting creative.
11. Même Love Syndrome
Alright, now this is one thing that even I need to watch out for. The general public loves memes. To be honest with you, I think the main reason why I am on social media 70% of the time, is to hunt for already created memes.
Let’s be honest here, memes are great. I mean why won’t anyone love memes?
Memes help you lighten up your day.
You shouldn’t be so uptight all the time. However, we should as a matter of necessity, know when to draw the line.
TIPS:
- Develop more beneficial habits. Memes are mainly just for fun
- Find a way to earn indirectly from them
- Build a fan page where you can create and share your own memes.
12. General Laziness
So laziness is a lack of a driving factor to do work. Basically, you are said to be lazy when you can’t get up to do said work sometimes even in the presence of motivation.
As much as online marketers will tell you about working from home and the less amount of work you actually need to make it work, it is important to note that a whole lot of effort is needed from your end to make an online business work.
Most work-from-home jobs may have you thinking “hey, this job is for lazy people. All I need is a laptop”. The harsh reality of the extent of work you need to do will definitely hit you pretty soon.
Working online is hard work, even if you have a bunch of workers doing all the ‘heavy lifting for you.
Even the Billionaire; Elon, tells you about the amount of work he has to put in to make his several businesses work.
You begin to wonder if a man who has theoretically achieved the apex of his career still tells you about how hard he needs to work, that tells you that you cannot achieve anything with laziness.
TIPS:
- Try to exercise a little; it builds motivation to do work especially when you are doing warm-ups only
- Find a motivating factor… I mean you don’t want to remain poor do you?
13. Short-Lived Focus
Now, this is a problem that affects every young person with aspirations and dreams. You try out something and assume that it’s either too hard, or completely impossible. Sometimes you even tell yourself “this is not my thing”.
As much as I would advise people to keep trying until they find what works for them, this can also be quite dangerous as well. You may end up sad, broke, and unfulfilled if you keep living your life that way.
You need to get something that can stand the test of time, and stay focused on it. If you cannot learn to stay and grow with one thing, there’s a tendency that you may most likely never make any actual progress in your career.
TIPS:
- Try new things but don’t switch so often
- Put a lot of effort into anything you do.
- Ensure you have a vision when starting up anything.
- Stay faithful to your business
- Find out more ways to do your said business.
14. Financial Constraints
Money is one factor that leads to the ultimate demise of a lot of small-scale start-ups. It prevents you from doing a lot of things.
Imagine starting a restaurant and all you can afford is just the basics. As much as people want to eat in a decent place, and you can do your best under a good budget, A higher budget (well managed) can always get you a more classy and more luxurious restaurant.
People generally tend to move towards ostentatious products and services rather than their cheaper counterparts. This has been proven time and time again.
People want to be associated with class. How do you give something classy when you have no funds to run it?
As a matter of fact, With $0 and a low-paying job, I doubt any bank would want to issue out a loan to you unless you have a pretty impressive collateral base.
In a nutshell, low finances can impede your growth. This is not career-specific.
TIPS:
- Learn to initiate partnerships with people who are above you class-wise
- Make friends with basically anyone possible. It might come in handy later on.
- Get financially stable family members onboard your idea if you need to.
15. Poor Drive (Determination)
Your drive is basically the reason why you want to wake up in the morning and do something about your dreams and aspirations.
Your drive is that phenomenon that most times cannot be explained, but eventually prevents you from giving up.
Everyone has a drive. It could be your vision, it could be the end product of your career, or it could even be a person.
What drives you basically matters less. What truly matters is the fact that your drive is strong enough to make you get up in the morning, and do something about your predicament.
I can basically go on and on about this, but I think you get the picture here.
If you have a high drive, there is a higher tendency for success. If you have a low drive, there is a lower tendency for success. This is basically how the whole thing works.
TIPS:
- Know your drive and fuel it.
- Avoid attaching your drive to another human being. It could be devastating if things go south.
- Take lessons from prominent mentors about your driving factor
- Seeing a therapist will bring many results.
16. Family Background
I must be honest, I feel a little indifferent about this particular point, but the reality is that your family background/status, has a major influential role to play in your career.
Many who aren’t fortunate enough to be born into influential homes, end up with fewer chances of reaching the apex of their career.
It’s also arguable that a lot of successful career persons never had aid from their families. Despite this being a fact, it cannot be completely established that people without family help do better than those with family help.
In simpler terms, Elon’s descendants have a better shot at life than mine. No questions asked.
Sad when you think about it, but this is the reality we live in
TIPS:
- Try to make a difference. Don’t let your kids have the same background you do. That’s if you’re not so fortunate to have a super-rich background
- Maintain a positive mindset. It works wonders
- Do all you can to change the status quo
17. Quitting Prematurely
Starting up a business or starting a job may not be as fun as some people make it seem. It’s difficult and very demanding. In order for you to stand the test of time, you have to go through a series of failures.
During these attempts at success, you may hit points where you say to yourself “this is just impossible”. And then you may contemplate giving up.
To be quite honest, I feel that way all the time. Sometimes I start an article and just want to give up after the first few paragraphs.
But how do I ever succeed at anything if I keep this up?
Quitting is something that should be far away from your list of options. I mean if you quit, what then happens to your career or business?
Let’s get to the tips
TIPS:
- Know that you only truly fail when you stop trying altogether
- Define your end goals and allow it to be your motivating factor
- If you’re religious, pray about your goals. Sometimes, praying about something could make you feel better.
- Divide your large vision into little short-term goals that are easily achievable.
18. Jumping Into Career Lines Without Proper Research
Well hello, crypto traders and tech analysts.
Sorry, I don’t mean to make a stereotyped statement but …
I just couldn’t resist.
Making proper inquiries before going into a particular line of business, is something that shouldn’t even be up for debate.
Most people just see their friends making a profit from a particular line of business and assume that they can do well in it.
They basically forget that every business or career line has its ethics and secrets. If you don’t know these secrets, chances are, you may end up as a monumental failure.
I keep reading stories of how people sold their houses to buy crypto and ended up losing the money.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to make fun of anyone, but sometimes people need to be more careful.
Crypto trading is not as easy as it seems. You need to spend money on premium courses or pay a good private teacher to teach you else, you might just be on your way to throwing away money.
TIPS:
- Study, learn, get knowledge, get understanding, and then get wisdom.
- Don’t make decisions out of sentiment
- Engage in a series of research before you get started.
19. Peer Comparison
When you have a bunch of friends who seem to be more successful than you at the face value, you are sometimes tempted to wonder why you aren’t doing well enough.
This may seem like a harmless thing, but the reality is that this feeling can push you to ruin a lot of things in your life.
For Example,
- comparison can make you shift focus
- It can make you change your entire career line
- It can make you think ill about your friends
- It can even make you lazy.
A lot of people cannot do well at work simply because they think their friends are way better than themselves. So they end up getting poorly motivated.
So how do you deal with this particular issue? Let’s get to the tips section.
TIPS:
- Don’t get envious
- Learn to be content with what you have
- Work hard so you can go higher than you are
- Don’t use anyone as the measurement of success for yourself.
20. Religious sentiments
Now I personally wouldn’t want to dwell on this because of how people take their belief systems and structures.
The truth of the matter is that if you spend more time hoping on your God figure to help you with things you can help yourself with, you may end up remaining stagnated for the rest of your life.
Religion is a beautiful thing. I mean it gives purpose to life and humanity as a whole. It is one of the reasons why a lot of people around the world strive to be alive.
Even with this knowledge, we have to be very careful about the level of importance we attach to religious sentiments.
I mean you don’t even need to be religious before your business or career works well.
- Don’t judge everything from a religious point of view
- Learn to make good judgment regardless of your religious beliefs
Conclusion
I hope you were able to learn something from this particular post. Don’t forget to drop a comment or your questions. If you do so, I will ensure that your comment is attended to.
This post talked about several reasons why you may have difficulties in reaching the apex of your career.
Don’t forget to check out our related posts.
Stay safe.
Also feel free to read up on reasons why low-income earners may never reach the apex of their careers
