I have two junior reports on my team, both with less than three years of experience in the industry. As part of my role, I make a conscious effort to instill good work habits in them while helping them steer clear of some of the bad practices common in our field.
A while back, to accelerate their growth, I gave myself a task: I would study a leading industry course right alongside them, ensuring they were exposed to the most advanced knowledge and trends in our domain. I discussed the idea with them, and they were thrilled. We scheduled a time and booked a conference room to learn together.
When the time came, we started the session. The course I had chosen was DeepLearning.AI's "Generative AI for Everyone," and I asked one of my colleagues to play the video. This is where we hit an unexpected snag. In China, many foreign video platforms are blocked and require a VPN. The VPN my colleague was using had a terrible connection speed; the video would buffer for two minutes just to play for ten seconds. After a few failed attempts, I asked the other colleague to try, but she replied sheepishly, "We're using the same free VPN. My connection is just as slow."
In the end, I solved the problem with my own paid VPN subscription.
After the session, I asked them both to stay behind for a few minutes to talk through what had just happened.
I explained my thinking. This course was the most cutting-edge material they could get their hands on. Their learning process was already facing two significant challenges: first, the novelty and difficulty of the subject, combined with their limited existing knowledge, meant they wouldn't be able to grasp 100% of the content. Second, their English proficiency wasn't high, creating a language barrier that would further hinder their comprehension. With these two factors combined, the course was already going to be a steep climb for them.
On top of that, the time we wasted wrestling with the poor network connection ate into our already scarce and valuable group study time—time we could have used to cover more material, and time I could have used to mentor them. The fact that I was the one who ultimately had to solve the "buffer for 2 minutes, play for 10 seconds" problem meant that when I wasn't around, they were effectively blocked from learning independently.
With all these negative factors piling up, the quality and pace of their learning would be severely impacted. It was highly likely they would eventually just give up. This is because most people, when faced with obstacles, revert to a primal instinct of avoiding difficulty. When things get too hard, retreat is the default biological response.
My point to them was this: You should ruthlessly eliminate any obstacle that you can foresee and control. By preparing properly, you reduce the probability that you'll quit when things get tough, allowing you to focus all your time and energy on the core task.
In this case, their core task was to understand and master the course material. The bad VPN was an entirely unnecessary, self-inflicted obstacle, and one that could be easily avoided by paying for a quality service.
To save a few dollars a month, they chose a free, low-quality network service. In the short term, they did indeed save a few bucks. But relative to their salaries, this amount is negligible—saving a few dollars a month for twenty years won't even add up to a few thousand dollars. In the long term, however, they placed a major roadblock on their path to information and personal growth. The compounding cost of this friction on their careers is likely far greater than they can possibly imagine.
What's scarier is that they probably never even realized this trade-off was happening.
I thought that after I had clearly laid out this logic, they would take action. But in the following days, I noticed that despite my breakdown of the costs and benefits, they still hadn't changed. At first, I was tempted to say nothing more. Some lessons in life, I thought, have to be learned by falling into the pit yourself.
But then I reconsidered. It might not be that simple. In many situations, it's incredibly difficult for people to feel the loss of something they never had—the experience, growth, and benefits they could have gained if they had only done something differently. And if you can't feel the loss, you have no motivation to act.
Think about it from their perspective. They saved a few dollars this month. That is a tangible, immediate "win." The cost—the lower efficiency, the lost opportunity for better output, the slower rate of growth—was an invisible, long-term cost. Because they've never experienced the seamless productivity that comes from good tools, they have no baseline for comparison. They can't see what they're missing. So, of course, they have no incentive to invest. Without an external push, this behavior pattern could continue forever.
So I spoke with them one more time. My message was simple: You don't build wealth by pinching pennies on essentials. You build it by strategically investing in things that generate a return.
I used a personal story to explain. I spend over $1,000 a year on information—journal subscriptions, paid communities, streaming services. If I canceled everything, I'd immediately save $1,000. But I would never consider it, because that investment brings me returns that are orders of magnitude greater.
For example, I'm in a paid community that costs a little over $100 a year. I initially joined just to learn a bit about finance and risk management, or even just to see how other people analyze things. I had no expectation of a direct financial ROI. But in 2020, through the analysis and discussions in that group, I became convinced that US-listed Chinese concept stocks were facing enormous risks. I began selling off my holdings at the end of 2020. In early July 2021, the bubble burst. It was common to see those stocks lose over 50% of their value. I had perfectly avoided the crash.
If I had tried to save that $100 subscription fee, the loss I would have suffered in a single month could have been dozens, or even hundreds, of times that amount.
The power of that monetary example was immediate. As soon as I finished, they asked me, "Where should we be spending money? On what things is it a mistake to be cheap?"
My answer was that I couldn't give them a universal rule. I've wasted money on plenty of things, but my successful investments were born from the lessons of my failed ones. Spending money foolishly is sometimes unavoidable, but you have to be willing to experiment.
For most people, they need to see the benefit before they're willing to act. As the Chinese saying goes, "Some hunters will only release their falcon after they see the prey." But the paradox of reality is that, in many cases, you can't see the prey until you release the falcon. You can't see the benefit without first taking the action. And so, people get stuck in a loop: no benefit, no action, no benefit.
Sometimes, life is just that cruel and absurd.