EP. 6 Navigating Unconventional Pathways ft. Career Coach Glavis Loh

Is the conventional pathway of life in society not for you? In this guest episode, I discuss with career coach Glavis Loh from Singapore about navigating unconventional pathways. The first half of the episode talks about the pressures to conform and the limitations of the system. The second half talks about how one can go on unconventional pathways today. Glavis addresses the common misconceptions that hold many young adults back from a life that they truly want and gives advice on coping with the mental pressures of going on an unconventional pathway.

Xin Lei: Hello everyone! Welcome to the 6th episode of the Unbox Your Life podcast. It’s been a while. Today we have another guest, and he’s Glavis from Singapore. He’s a career coach, and today he’ll be sharing his insights with us on the topic of navigating unconventional pathways. Hi Glavis, how are you?

Glavis: I’m great! Thanks. Thanks for having me today.

Xin Lei: So Glavis, can you introduce to our audience what is it that you do as a career coach. Well, for myself, when I use the term career coach, I don’t necessarily see myself as a career coach in terms of how people see it. But I see it as more of like trying to help young people to get their dream career and to do what they really want to do. The things that I teach and the methods that I use are just not the same as how conventional career coaches are. So I think we will dive more into that later in the podcast.

Xin Lei: Hmm. Fun fact, right, about Glavis, he is 27 this year, same age as me. So yeah, it’s actually rare to see a career coach in his 20s, right? Like, I think the career coaches that I know are usually older. So I think Glavis is a rare example of that. And it’s really great to have him here because actually both of us have a common mission of trying to empower the young people of our generation. So yeah, we hope that what we’ll be discussing today, you guys will find relevant to your situation. And Glavis, how is it that you came to do what you do now, especially like I mean you are also a young adult yourself, right? Like, trying to navigate this, this pathway of adulting. What led you to do what you’re doing now?

Glavis: Yeah, well, before this, I started off as a failure, and I do still see myself as a failure today, but that’s actually great for me because that means that I learned from my mistakes and I always reflect on what would I do. Well, I grew up in Singapore, and you know, in Singapore, we have a very hyper-competitive system, and you know, every peer is groomed to compete with each other. So, it’s a very hyper-competitive system, and in this system, I was the worst. If you look at like a marathon, I’d probably be the last one running it because it’s just not a race that I want to run. And so, what happened was that I failed my GCE O Levels, so I remember looking at my certificate, I was probably amongst the last in the whole year of O Level students and I had like three failed subjects and it’s just a very terrible grade on my O Levels. And then later on I dropped out of Polytechnic as well because I wasn’t an academic person so that was also another failure that I went through as a student.

But I think these bad experiences just kind of give me the idea to write and to help other failures and other young generation out there who are often mocked and ridiculed by their relatives and family members who say that they are not doing well in the conventional pathways. I just want to use my failures and my bad experiences as a way to inspire them and to help them become a better version of themselves. So one of the things that I heard the most was that everyone, especially young people, kept telling me that I wish I had someone who could guide me through as someone who doesn’t want to follow the conventional system. And my job is to be that someone for them.

Xin Lei: Ah Glavis, I think you are very inspiring, like yeah definitely not a failure. Yeah I can tell you that it’s very inspirational that you managed to transform your struggles into lessons and ultimately into your purpose. Yeah, and I believe you will help so many people because for sure not everyone wants to follow this conventional system, conventional pathway. Yeah, so that’s actually the topic that we will be addressing today, talking about unconventional pathways.

5:25

I think we first have to define what actually is the conventional pathway in Singapore. So, the conventional pathway is study hard, right? Like from young, we are told to study hard, like the moment we go into school, I think that’s what’s been told to us, by all the adults, our teachers right? That’s seen as the kind of successful thing to do in your educational journey. Then, after getting a degree, get a good job. By that, it usually means, a stable and high-paying job, like office job, and then after that, a good life. I mean, there are more other milestones probably like buy a house, marry, or have children. But yeah I think so far we’re not there yet, like we’re not at that life stage yet. But what we have gone through is for sure the educational part, right? And the finding a job part. So yeah, did you resonate with this? Is this what you think is the pathway that has been told to you?

Glavis: Yeah, the reason why we can actually resonate on this podcast is because we went through the same experience as well, and I think we are all put through this conventional system that’s meant to fit us into boxes to run the economic machine. So, if you look at how it works, it’s that most of the time, it’s like you’re born and you get to play a bit when you’re young, but the minute when you enter like probably like primary school or something like that, they start to tell you to study hard and to grind as hard as you can and to memorize all the textbooks which you don’t use later on and then when you finally get your diploma or your degree and then you start entering the workforce, they tell you that you take the job that’s the most stable, take the job that’s the highest pay, take the job that is the most lucrative for you, have the best job title. And so you take those jobs and then when you take those jobs all you have, all you’re doing is just waking up at 5, 6 a. m. in the morning, trying to commute in a subway heading to the office, having your lunch in a super crowded canteen and then you reach home at 7 to 9 p. m. later on or probably you might even reach home later in that for some workers who are probably into the overtime culture. And you’re doing all this just for a monthly salary to pay for things that people think are actually enjoyment, like could be, I don’t know, could be anything, could be a vacation, could be a mortgage house, could be a car, could be luxury, could be anything. And I don’t know, from the start till now, as I describe this whole thing, it sounds very much like a rat race to me. So yeah, I think that’s the conventional system that we are put into.

8:50

Xin Lei. Ah, rat race. I once talked about the rat race in one of my previous episodes. So yeah, like I feel you on that. I think you start to realise it’s a rat race when you get older right, like for me it became quite clear somewhere when I was in uni and about to graduate. Yeah, I realised that there is this rat race that is not actually gonna lead us to where we want to. We’ve been promised some rewards if we follow this system, but I think what we realise when we are older is that no one actually asks us what is it that we even want. So when you don’t really know what you want, I think the default pathway they assume is to go down this pathway. Like earn money. Do you agree that it’s hard to not conform to this thing as a Singaporean?

Glavis: Well, yeah, I think it’s very hard because like you know, one of the favorite Singaporean sayings is Monkey see, monkey do. So you look at what everyone’s doing and then you just follow along, and whoever that wants to break away from that crowded pathway, that you know, some people will start to challenge you. And I mean, the system is already challenging you to give up your identity and to fit yourself into categories to probably maintain the system or to grow it. And at the minute when you want to move away from that, they make it very hard for you. One of the most common things is, as what we mentioned, it could be like your friends or relatives. like criticising you and judging you for making certain decisions that they deem is bad and it makes it hard, yeah, to not follow the conformity.

Xin Lei: Yeah, I resonate with the part on the friends and relatives. Do you suppose that it also comes from our racial background? Because we have an ethnic Chinese background right, it is known that there are certain expectations that the Chinese tend to place on the individual to succeed…

Glavid: Yeah, I mean, uh, I can say I grew up reading Chinese wisdoms and philosophies and one of the things that they always talk about is doing your due diligence. And the word due diligence, I think, is very vague. Like what do we know is actually the due diligence, right? Is your due diligence supposed to be working a nine to five job and paying the bills and growing a family and passing down the same cycle again and maybe also expecting your children to take care of you for your retirement? So those are what they call due diligence. But to me, it can be something else. It doesn’t always have to be that way.

But I guess what you said, I think probably also particularly due to Confucianism. And Confucius, he always teaches about family values and having a hierarchy and respecting the hierarchy and who’s on top of you. So, I think it’s this very, uh, top-down approach kind of mindset that affects how our culture is today. And it’s a total opposite from what we see in the West. Like they they probably have a more bottom-up culture and they focus more on the individual and not so much about the whole collective group.

Xin Lei: Yeah, like your duty, right? I think the element of duty adds a lot more pressure, because now it becomes like more of a like a moral thing, like to not conform could be seen as kind of like you’re not being moral. So I think that actually has very serious limitations on individuals.

Glavis: Yeah.

Xin Lei: And what do you think about the other factors like maybe tied to our historical development?

Glavis: Yeah. So I mean, I believe everyone here learn about this theory called the Maslow hierarchy of needs. So it’s like, basically, you have certain needs, you start moving up the pyramid structure. Right? So I think every generation have different needs. And so if you look at probably, like, in our grandparents’ generation, they were mostly farmers, coolie workers, labor workers, construction workers, factory workers maybe. And for the ladies, they might actually do sewing and all these jobs. So it was very manual kind of jobs, and it wasn’t pleasant to say, because it was a lot of hard work and it was physically intensive. And if you then you start moving down to our parents’ generation, they start to have some education. And so the dream changed. So it changed from making a living to wanting to work in a glass tower, tall structure tower in a corporate setting and having an office job and having that corporate ladder to climb. So that was the new dream that probably our parents’ generation had or probably the upper millennials are having. And then we moved down to us, which is probably from Gen Z and so on. And then the dreams changed again. Uh, now we do not want to climb the corporate ladder and to enter the hustle culture and compete with everyone. What we want is that we want to start realising our individual dreams, and we want to do what we are passionate about and what we love. And we want to make the most out of the short life that we have right here. So I think every generation has different ones, and I think the friction and the problem starts when the generations above us try to put their dreams on us and that creates a lot of problems.

Xin Lei: Yeah, indeed. The experiences of the older generation are so different, right? Like their needs were different. Their values were different because of their circumstances back then. I feel like in Singapore right, like we are known to be a country that experienced an economic miracle, and it has changed so much just in the span of like perhaps two generations. And that’s why I feel this, even during my family gatherings right, I feel like we are not on the same page. Like my generation is not on the same page with with the older generation. Like they think that we should be doing something with our life now. And we are like, no, that’s not what we want. Yeah, so I think it’s really difficult, isn’t it?

Glavis: Yeah, yeah.

17:22

Xin Lei: It just seems like there are many factors. It’s like the odds are quite stacked against the individual in light of all these. Um, and you mentioned before that you had a hard time in the conventional system, especially in the education system. Can you elaborate more on what was it about the education system that was really difficult for you?

Glavis: Yeah, so if you just kind of look back to what we went through in education, we were mostly told to do things that are deemed as a need. So they said that you should study all kinds of subjects: geography, literature, history, social studies, everything math, science. And so you just follow the instruction and just study these subjects without knowing what’s the purpose behind it. And then after you finish studying it, then you realise that, hey, actually, I don’t need to use it. And that’s exactly what I experienced in my job. So I used to work as a mechanical designer. And so we studied all kinds of theory, physics, and mathematical formulas to do certain calculations. But when I was doing the job itself, I did not have to use all this because the software could do the calculations for me. Like the software could do the mathematical formulas and get me the answer straight away without me having to write down with a piece of pen and paper. So I guess that’s the struggle that I see. And also for people like me, I’m not a very academic person. So I’m not good with memorising, I’m not good with studying complex theories and all. But I’m very good at creating ideas, I’m very good at designing, I’m very good at coming up with ideas that are not usually seen around. So those are my strengths. And I think the education system doesn’t really emphasise on that strength. They emphasise more on how to follow the instructions and to never question the answers that they gave you. So I think those are some of the biggest struggles that I see in education.

Xin Lei: Yeah, I totally relate to that. I also felt like I didn’t know what I was studying. I think I asked my parents before. I asked them why do I have to study these things? Then why do I have to study it so hard? Then they actually couldn’t really answer me. They just said, oh, if you don’t do this, then what can you do? Then to me, that was not a satisfactory answer, like obviously. Then also there wasn’t any room for curiosity, right? Because you just to study what would be tested in the exams. If you do anything more than that, it’s unnecessary. They would rather you drill more questions to prepare for the exam, but not to go and dig further out of your own curiosity.

Glavis: Yeah, and probably I could just add another two more experiences. One of the experiences that I had was that I remember I was reading this book series called True Singapore Ghost Stories…

Xin Lei: Oh, I also read that! (laugh)

Glavis: …which was the favorite book for most of the people at a young age because it was like part fictional, part fantasy. Yeah, it was interesting. I remember one, there was a very bad experience that I had. It was in the morning assembly in school, and we were told to read the newspaper because they actually created assignments to test us on the newspaper. So, if you don’t read it, you can’t answer the assignment, and I felt it was a waste of time because I was enjoying reading the books. The purpose that they created this newspaper assignment was actually to make us read, and so I felt that, I was already fulfilling the purpose of reading. Although what I was reading was fictional. And my teacher came over, she saw me reading True Singapore Ghost Stories, and she actually confiscated my book and told me to read the newspaper. So, yeah, it was a very sad experience for me, and it was because of that that I lost my interest for reading because I felt that there’s no purpose behind reading anymore. But you know, decades later, reading is one of the most powerful tools that helped me to do what I’m doing today.

Then the second experience that I had was I had a hobby of painting miniatures figurines. So it was like these tiny little soldiers that I would paint them and use different colours and tones and everything, and I was very skilled at it. I even went to join competitions to try and get the award for this, and I was so engrossed in it that it started affecting my grades. My teacher actually came over to me and said Hey, you know you gotta stop this hobby and I asked why and she said because it’s affecting your grades, and if you don’t do well for your grades, then what will happen to your future? It was also another very bad experience for me because I’ve been pulled away from what I really love to do to do something that is expected of me, but I don’t want it.

23:30

Xin Lei: Ah… that must be so tough. Yeah, like we’re not really given, we’re not really encouraged to explore our interests, right? So Glavis, can you tell me about the pathway you took from your schooling experiences until now? I’m sure it was pretty unconventional. Could you share with us about that?

Glavis: Yeah, so for myself, I have a messy pathway and so the first 12 years of me was just trying to complete my PSLE and then at age 17 I failed O levels and after that I went to ITE to do a NITEC course and I made a huge jump to poly because I did well in my NITEC. And in the poly, as I mentioned before, I dropped out later on because I felt that I wasn’t really academically inclined, and that was probably one of the worst experiences for me because 99% of people around me were basically judging and criticising my decision to drop out. But you know, I went back to ITE again to do my technical diploma and that was probably the best decision I made for my education life. Then I went to join different companies later on as a mechanical designer and I went ahead to explore teaching and freelancing and that’s pretty much my pathway from school till now.

Xin Lei: I heard you have tried many jobs. Can you tell me what jobs you did?

Glavis: Yeah, so I tried many different jobs before. I tried being a fast food worker and I tried working as a retailer or a worker who prepares food in the night market. Then I also tried less physical intensive jobs like a librarian or like a graphic designer. And yeah, I can’t remember every single job title I had because I had like over 20 different jobs in my whole lifetime until now. So I was a, probably people will call me a chronic job hopper, but I see that as a compliment because when you job hop, you try a lot of different things. It kind of widens your perspective on what you could actually do in life.

Xin Lei: Yeah, you have a lot of experience. I don’t even have that many experiences. I’m sure you learn a lot from that. That’s why you’re able to share with people right, and do career coaching. Okay, so let’s dive into what our audience might want to know for today. It comes to navigating unconventional pathways. So, yeah, after all that’s been said about the conventional pathway and how it certainly doesn’t suit everyone, I’m sure that there are those who are really struggling because they want to stay away from this, but they face so many obstacles to do this.

I can observe some of these around me, namely that people, a lot of my friends, I feel they are being pushed towards things that they don’t actually like, like it’s not aligned with them. For example, I remember when I was choosing major in uni, l think many of my friends were just pressured by their parents to pick the more prestigious careers, so-called prestigious majors, based on the cut-off point. So you know, there’s this grade cut off point that we reference for courses. So I guess this is one of the mentalities or one of the things that steer people towards a certain way. It is this mentality that you have to go for the best one based on your score because you work so hard. Then it’s like a waste if you go and do something else. So for example, I saw people who actually are more creative, but they ended up doing something like, let’s say, accountancy. Okay, no offence to people from these majors, but they are clearly more talented in certain areas but they forgo those areas because it’s seen as not stable for a career, like the arts, creative things, social-related things. Although they are actually very meaningful things to pursue, but yeah, there’s this kind of pressure.

And also I think the other consequence on young people is the fear. There’s a lot of fear, right? I feel that a lot of people’s decisions are guided more by fear than inspiration. That’s why they are fearful to take a gap year. Like, for example, personally, I took a gap year after I graduated, but no one else I knew around me took that. Because there’s this fear that if you take a gap year, you’ll lose out. You’ll lose out in the job search, you’ll lose out in potential income. So yeah, I know that there’s a lot of fear regarding taking career breaks or something. And I don’t know if you feel me on this one. Do you feel like a lot of people feel like they have no choice? They think that’s what we have to settle for, there is a sense of powerlessness about the whole situation, while in fact that might not actually be true. So yeah, these are just some of the consequences that I observe, and I think that our audience listening to this might actually be struggling with. So yeah, I’m very curious to hear from you. Do you think that these fears have a real basis? it Are they true or is the reality otherwise?

30:20

Glavis: I can confidently say like 95% of all these fears are false. If you just look at it this way: in the past, when we didn’t have this modern economy, we had a very limited set of jobs to choose from. So, as I mentioned, our grandparents they were probably coolie workers or just some laborers who were working physically intensive jobs. But as the economy started running, they started creating many different jobs. Like, for example, one of the data they had from Singapore is that we created 54,000 jobs from 2019 to 2022. So that’s within just 3 years of time. You just think, in just 3 years, if we could create that amount of jobs, what would happen in 10 years? That is going to be a huge number of jobs to choose from.

And I think young people especially, they should not have this fear that they are being confined to a certain option. Because you’re still young, and you don’t have that much responsibilities on you yet. So definitely, you do have the chance to take this and to try different jobs. One of the examples that I can give is my client. So I remember helping her out with her resume. She had only like maximum 2 years of experience in research of her job. So that sounds very much like a job hopper, but she still got the career that she wants. And I think it’s an old-fashioned advice that you need to stay in a certain job for decades in order to succeed, which I don’t think is true anymore. I think the better way to succeed these days is to try different pathways. And ironically, from my experiences of working with recruiters, they actually told me that the hiring pay is higher than the retention pay. So companies are actually paying less to retain a good worker, but they’re actually paying more to hire a good worker. I’m not sure if you can make sense of that, but this is how it is right now; how the hiring market is like. So that means to say if you were to job-hop often, your pay actually increases and you get to try different options as well. So, to me, I think that most of those fears are false, and you definitely have the options to. Yeah, I think most of the fear is coming from the mind, not so much about the job market. And there’s always this old saying that the job market is always bad, right? To me, it’s like the job market is always bad, so you just have to make the move.

Xin Lei: Oh yeah, I guess there’s a lot of fear mongering going around, right? Like when you look at the news, oh, job market is bad, then it paralyses you, and you tend to make certain assumptions. Okay, so what about for those people who don’t actually want to conform to the conventional pathway? Let’s say they want to do a kind of unconventional career, that is maybe passion. I guess we can call this a bit unconventional because going back to our previous definition of the conventional pathway, it is that you go for a job that you don’t necessarily like, but it’s high paying, it’s stable, and you need a high qualification to do so. (pause) Okay, let’s address it step by step. What if someone, let’s say, does not really like to study or is not that academically inclined? Is it necessary that they have a high paper qualification, you think?

Glavis: Well, if you talk about like traditional industries like doctor, lawyer, engineer, or probably you would have to go have a degree, but would you want to limit yourself to just those options out there? Like right now, as I mentioned, there are so many options. I think Naval Ravikant, who was the co-founder of AngelList, it’s just not possible. But because in the age of technology and the internet that we live in, it has, like what Naval said, massively broadened the possible space of career. So if you’re into like YouTube for example, you could like create content and probably sell like software products. Or if your audience is huge enough, you could even get a sponsorship from a company who wants to advertise their product. And that’s if you look at what most YouTube creators are doing these days, it’s most of what they are doing. They are taking on sponsorships, they are selling, teaching whatever that they know. So, we have already entered a creator economy and most people haven’t figured it out. Or probably another example would be gaming. So, probably a lot of people see gaming as like a waste of time, right? I mean, of course, there are people who are extreme, do gaming as a way to maybe run away from certain problems or whatsoever. But I’m talking about the real gamers here: people who actually are professional e-sports players, or gaming coaches, or game designers, or it could be even they have a diploma in game design. And there are different jobs for gamers, and there are even jobs where they hire you to test out games. There is what we call beta testing in games. So, they hire you to test out those games and to try out the game engine and all. So, I think those are the many pathways being created, that most of our parents’ generation they don’t realise it yet.

Xin Lei: Hmm. Is it? It seems like there’s so many more opportunities today due to the growth in technology, like Internet and the entertainment industry. Yeah, the gaming thing is true. At my last job, I was working at a startup for gaming, actually. So, I was quite surprised. I mean, I’m not a gamer myself, but I was quite surprised that there exists this whole industry that I didn’t know about.

37:40

So, hmm, what about someone who might want to have more time for themselves? Maybe they don’t want to work for someone else. They value autonomy, they value perhaps mobility or freedom. Then it seems like a standard career pathway would have a lot of limitations for them. So what options would you suggest for them?

Glavis: There are probably two different options that they can take, which I talk about a lot in my posts. So one of the options would be to pursue something that they are passionate about and where the time just doesn’t feel like a concern anymore. So if you look at, and this is probably what I experienced, most 9 to 5 job workers, they are constantly looking at the clock. They come into the office and hopefully the clock hits 5pm and so that they can go. And that’s the kind of life that they have from Monday to Friday. But if you’re working on something that you love and you are genuinely curious about it, then the time doesn’t feel too much of a concern anymore. You will probably be so busy getting involved in your craft that it might just hit 5pm, and you may not actually realise it. So that’s actually one way to do it, instead of trying to do a normal job that you don’t like and then trying to free up some time to do whatever you’re passionate about in your free time, which is not a realistic option because most of the time you’re tired after work. So that would be one option: to do a job that is really what you love to do, number 1.

Number 2 would be you could save up probably six months or even one year, if you want, of savings and to use that savings to act as a cushion for you to go and do what you want to do. So, for myself, for example, what I did was that I saved up probably one year of savings and I used that to go and do what I want to do, which became what I’m doing on Instagram and my business today. And you know, the worst thing that can happen from this approach is that you fail and you lose probably six months to one year of savings. And you know, you could always go back to the 9 to 5 world and save up for that amount of savings again. And I think also another concern that young people have is that what will happen if, let’s say, there is a gap in my resume. So, let’s say I go unemployed for six months just to work on my business and it fails, then there’s six months of gap. What am I going to do about it? The easiest approach that you can come to answer to that gap is to say that you went into freelancing. So you just say that, I went into freelancing to do whatever that I thought was great for me. And then after six months, I realised that it’s not for me and I want to come back to my job again. And I can say that through my experiences, 99% of the time, employers are okay with that.

Xin Lei: Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s a great insight for me because this was a relevant concern for me as well. When I quit my job to go on a working holiday in New Zealand, I did have this concern of a gap in my resume because I took a gap year before, and then now I have another gap. But actually, in these gaps, I really have an aim to try new things but I don’t know how I could try to justify it to employers. So after listening to what you said about that, I feel like that’s actually a very doable thing.

Glavis: Yeah, yeah. There’s always a way to, uh, what I love to call it as transferable skills. So that means to say that whatever that you’re doing may not be in people’s eyes a legitimate career, but you know the skills could be transferable. I can give you an example. I have another client who did a career switch. So prior to that, she was working as a security officer and she wanted to do a career switch to being in sales. So those are like complete two different things, right? Completely two different industries, but she still got in because there were transferable skills. Whatever that she was doing in her security job were actually transferable to the sales and that actually helped her. So if you look at it this way, whatever that she’s doing in security actually is a gap because it’s not even related to what she wants to do. Or another example that I can also give is that a friend of mine, he was from IT, informational technology, and he went into becoming a railway technician. So, he was actually fixing up the MRT trains, and it sounds so unrelated because, IT is like coding, wiring, and then all of a sudden you are going into a mechanical industry which is fixing trains. But, the one transferable skill that he had was the electronic part, the part that he knew how to do wiring. And it so happened that in MRT trains, you need to do wiring as well. So that became his transferable skill, and he made the jump. Yeah. So there are ways to justify the gap.

43:52

Xin Lei: Oh, I see I see. Then that makes sense why you would encourage job hopping as well. And conventionally, I think people do have a lot of fears about how all these would affect their chances of being employed. But yeah, now you’ve addressed those concerns, then perhaps there might be another objection. What do you think about someone who might say, what if me trying to do all these things like experimenting and doing lots of jumps and trying new things caused me to not reach my financial goals? Because I think there’s this kind of mindset that I observed around me which is that in your 20s you ought to be hustling, just go all in and because this is the time where you have the most energy right so you have to go ahead and work just go for the money first and don’t try so many weird things. They’ll think that you can do this at a later stage of life or something. So what would you say to them?

Glavis: Yeah well you know there’s this famous movement called FIRE, Financial Independence Retirement Early?

Xin Lei: Yeah!

Glavis: So I think that’s a little bit exaggerated on social media, but everyone is talking about FIRE movement on social media and I think that’s really exaggerated because I mean if you look at it this way, the reason why they want to hit FIRE by age 30 is that they want to be able to do what they like. So they want to have a lot of money in passive income and then hopefully that passive income could pay their bills and then they could have the free time to do what they like. But you know, if you could do what you like right now, then that to me is actually a form of retirement. Because what is retirement? Retirement is a period of time where you no longer have to work for money, and if you are doing what you really want to do, like for yourself, maybe you were doing the working holiday, and probably for other young people, they want to do what they are really passionate about. And if you get to do that and it’s not for the money anymore, then that is actually retirement for you. So that’s how I see it, and I think it’s quite silly to actually put off your dreams just because you think you need the money. And yeah, I think that doesn’t make sense.

Xin Lei: I love how you redefined the whole concept of retirement. There’s an assumption there behind retirement. Actually people what they want might not be the money. It’s better to address what you actually want. Like I’ve heard this saying that what people want is not a million dollars, it’s the lifestyle of a millionaire.

Glavis: Correct yeah. I could just add in 1 age-old story that’s been passed down many years ago. So there’s this story of a businessman and a fisherman. So there’s this businessman who was probably just stressed from work. He went to a fishing village and he saw this fisherman catching a few fish and bringing it home, selling it, making enough income for the day, and then resting and playing with his children and spending time with his family. And this businessman goes to him and says, hey, why don’t you use this money to buy more fishing boats so that you could get even more fish and sell it even more, and then you have more profitability? And then that’s where the money comes in. So then the fisherman asked him, okay, then what after that? Then the businessman said you could use all that money and then create an IPO, initial public offering, and put your company up on the stock market, and you’re going to get even more money from that. And you probably, in no time, you’re going to own a whole fleet of fishing boats, and you’re going to be a huge millionaire and a multinational corporation. And then the fisherman asked again, okay, then what after that? Then the businessman said, after that you could sell your company off, okay, and then use all this money to retire, and then spend time with your family and play with your children again. And you know, it’s like going back to the square one where he was actually doing that in the very first place. So I think that kind of explains how we seem to exaggerate money.

48:43

Xin Lei: Yeah, it is better to just clarify what you value and what you need right. I think there’s a lot of wisdom right there. So maybe the last one that I will ask you about: Where do you think we are headed towards, like the whole job market and the economy in the next 10 years or something?

Glavis: Yeah, I think personally for myself I do feel that we are heading towards the era of technology. If you look in the past, we used to belong to the industrial age where we were mostly working in, and that’s where the nine to five schedule starts. You come there, you come at a certain timing, you perform what you’re supposed to do, and then you go home after that. So that was the industrial age. In the technology era, things are actually quite different. For example, there’s remote jobs where you no longer have to go to a certain place and all you have to do is just open up your laptop, have a fast internet connection, and probably a smartphone. And then that’s all you need to do your work. You no longer have to be physically there. And if you look at many of the companies these days, they are experimenting with some hybrid and remote working schedules.

One of the ways for me to explain the difference between an industrial worker and a technology worker is in this way. For example, an industrial worker would need to operate a certain machine to produce textiles. If he were to work 8 hours a day, he would be able to produce 500 textiles for example. But for a remote worker who probably uses AI or code, a certain technology or software, all he has to do is to write out the coding program, program the software and get the robot or the machine to produce the textile on its own. So he doesn’t have to be physically there to put in the hours as how the industrial worker is doing. So that is the shift from industrial age to technology is that there is an untie of the hour like for industrial work for the industrial workers there is a very deep, very close, tight knot between the hours and the output. But right now in the technology age, the output from the hours that you put in is no longer tied to the output. A piece of code could actually massively create a lot of output from the machine itself. So I think we are shifting towards that and I think the young people are realising that as well. That’s why they are reluctant to take on old-fashioned jobs that are closely tied to the hours.

Xin Lei: I see, I see. Then that makes a lot of sense for why we say millennials or Gen Z now are very… umm…

Glavis: Lazy? (laugh)

Xin Lei: …uncompromising when it comes to work-life balance. Yeah, the criticism might be lazy, but is that really so? No~

Glavis: No, no. I think their definition of lazy is that they are not willing to put in the hours. But that, to me, is not lazy. That, to me, is being smart. That, to me, is being resourceful and using whatever that you have on your hands, which is what the technology era is offering.

Xin Lei: Umm. Work smart, not hard.

Glavis: Yeah, I mean honestly, to me, working hard is still important. You still have to work smart but I think that’s all usually exaggerated. I think what you work on, who you work with, and how you do the work, that to me is a lot more important than just working hard.

Xin Lei: Like not working hard in the sense of dedicating a lot of hours, the suffering kind of mindset, right.

52:59

So it seems like the options are out there. There are actually many options for young people now, right? Like we are actually quite blessed to live in this era, but somehow it’s like all these struggles that we are facing are coming more from just pressures. Like it’s hard to escape these pressures so long as we are social creatures, right? And I would say the young people definitely struggle with that. So, do you have advice for coping with the mental pressures of going on an unconventional path? Because they may know that, yeah, this is a path they want to go on, and there are ways to realistically achieve that, but it can’t be denied that they will still face the pressure just because it is not what the majority would do. And they would most likely get questioned or even maybe criticised for it. So, can you share some advice for maybe how you personally cope with that?

Glavis: Yeah, so I think when you want to pursue something that is out of the conventional pathway, it’s a struggle. And it feels very lonely because not many people are actually doing what you are doing, and it can be a very huge mental struggle. Two of the philosophies that I apply myself, one of them is actually Buddhism. I was recently inspired by Buddhism, and I think there’s this philosophy that the Buddha said: Do not suffer the second arrow. So, what he meant is that when someone throws you a certain criticism or sort of mental pressure to want you to go to a certain pathway, that’s actually like a first arrow shot towards you, and it hurts you because it hurts your mind, hurts your heart. And that’s the first arrow. But the minute you start to react to it, you start to dwell on it and exaggerate, then that’s like you trying to stab a second arrow on yourself. So now you’re suffering two arrows, and the Buddha said, do not suffer the second arrow. So that’s philosophy from Buddhism.

And the second one that I can also apply to myself is the Stoics. So you know, the Stoics are pretty well known for their philosophies. And one of the famous sayings from Marcus Aurelius, who was a Roman Stoic emperor, he said something like, you think of yourself as you’re already dead, and right now you’re alive again and your job is to make the best of what you have left. And that, to me, it means so much because if you look at the whole existence of the universe, it’s probably been around for billions of years. And our life is only like 60 to like 70 years old. And it’s just like a tiny short speck in the dust. And if we don’t make the most out of it, then I think it’s a waste. So yeah, those are the two philosophies that I cope with mental pressure.

Xin Lei: Wow, that’s very profound. Yeah, I think this is very potent advice. A change in perspective. It really helps to like connect with that the bigger perspective at times.

Glavis: Yeah, to me, it’s like I mean, if I were to just go back to what the Buddha was teaching. In Buddhism, we always talk about enlightenment, but when you are in peace with yourself, in peace with what you do, in peace with how you think, in peace with what you have, and having that gratitude and being grateful for whatever you have, and being grateful for the freedom that you have to do whatever that you want, that would be a form of enlightenment for you.

Xin Lei: Yeah, I love how you address the inner aspect. Ultimately, it’s also a very inner thing, right? Okay, thank you so much, Glavis, for your sharing. It was very, very insightful. Yeah, I’m so glad that I have the opportunity to have you share with us these insights, and I’m sure our audience has taken a lot from this discussion and might find themselves inspired now to have courage and just go for it. Okay, so if you are interested in Glavis’ work, he puts out very good content on his social media and his newsletter. Glavis, how can our audience find you then?

Glavis: You could find me on Instagram @glavislohzh, and then you could find me on LinkedIn as well, just my name, Glavis Loh. You could also sign up for my weekly newsletter, which I post every Tuesday. It’s called the Tuesday Young Adult, so it’s basically a newsletter where I offer bite-sized advice and ideas for the young generation regarding careers, personal finances, and of course mental models as well.

Xin Lei: Okay, thank you so much, Glavis. Thank you for being on today’s episode.

Glavis: Yeah, thanks for having me. I hope this podcast kind of, I mean, if there are any people listening to this out there, I just want you to know that you can do what you want to do right now, so don’t wait.

Xin Lei: Yeah, let’s go! Okay, thank you and bye bye everyone.