Most of us live our lives by some predefined patterns. We tend to do default things only because we’re taught that’s how it should be. Our parents, our teachers, most of our guides teach us these default things; we’re always told we have to do them. They are never tagged as default things, instead they are tagged as normal things because everybody does them.
Starting from childhood, we’re taught by our parents that we have to go to school; in school we’re told we have to get good grades to get to a good high school; in high school we have to get good grades in order to get to a good college; in college we have to study hard and specialize in some field; we keep hearing that if we’re good enough we might have a chance to get a good job in an important company and for a good salary. We accept these default things as normal things and they become our way of life; we do them without question and then we start our own family, we have our own children and we teach them the same default things.
Ok, so let’s recap. We study hard in school, we get a well-payed job, we go to work and get payed for this. We’re taught that that’s the way the society works so we have to follow the rules. We’re taught to work for money. We’re even taught that the harder we work, the more money we get.

Let’s analyze these default things one by one.

Go to school

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not stating that our children shouldn’t go to school. They should, but it’s important why do they go to school. Most educational systems teach the children a lot of things. Which is good in primary and secondary school. But starting from high school, we should focus on what we need to do next. And when we go to college we should know what we want to do and what we’re good at. I met people who went to college because that’s how it should be. They didn’t even chose the college, their parents did. And they didn’t like what they were doing, but for them it was impossible to drop out and start something else. It’s ok to go to college, as long as you are aware that you can do anything you want. The default path is to go to college, study hard, then get a well payed job and work for others. Start another path. Go to college to meet new people, go to college to learn new things, go to college to find your path. But don’t go to college just because everybody says you should.

Get a job in an important company

Starting from high school most of us dream of a good job, with a well known company. Working in a big company might be very helpful. We can get in touch with new technologies, we can learn faster to interact with people, we can learn how to manage people or projects, we can learn how to interact with customers. Working for a big company might help us learn faster a lot of things. But most people remain in companies even after they stop learning, even after they stop enjoying what they do. Most people stay with their jobs for safety. Leaving a well payed job might be hard and it might be risky. Though, if you stop enjoying your job, if you stop learning and evolving with your job, why stay? Most of us prefer working for a company because it’s safer than starting our own startups. But starting a family business might be a lot better on all aspects. Ok, you might have to allocate a lot more time for doing a startup, but you’ll certainly learn a lot more. You won’t be frustrated with being payed a lot less than what the project you’re working for is worth. You stop complaining about your boss or about the company because you’ll be the boss and the company will be your own company.

Don’t go to work because everybody else goes to work, don’t look for a job in a company because everybody else does it. Get a job if you don’t want to start your own business or if you feel not ready to start your own business. But if you want to start your own business, why wait? Start it right now. It might not work from the beginning, it might be hard, you might fail several times before you succeed, but you’ll learn a lot more than you’ll learn in a regular job. Unless you’re a CEO, right?

I’ve faced the idea of doing a startup. And I kept saying that I have to wait for that genius idea for a great startup. And I kept waiting and I kept waiting. And after a while I realized that a great idea might come after 10 or 100 small ideas. So there’s no point in waiting for that great idea. Try small ideas first, and each of them will be a step toward that great idea

Work hard for money

This is one of the defaults that we all hear every day. Most people say that you can’t have money without working. But there are a lot of people around which work hard and are always in debt. Ask around you what do you have to do for more money and the answer you’ll get is “work harder”. So the harder you work, the more money you’ll have. Actually that’s not entirely true. How come there are a lot of people who make money very easy? Most of them are rich people. And they’ve probably worked hard to get rich. But being rich is not really having a lot of material money, it is in fact a state of mind. All rich people who worked hard to get rich worked hard to believe they’re rich. They worked hard to see themselves rich. They didn’t work hard for the material money. They worked hard to come to believe they’re rich and they worked hard to understand what wealth is all about. The faster we come to understand what wealth is, the faster we’ll get rich. When we get there we’ll understand that working hard for money is just a big lie.

If you can think of other default things, add your comments here.