Success often comes from doing what most people won’t.
There’s a straight path for advancement by not permitting distractions to obstruct your view.
The average person, to put it kindly, has a lot of issues. The upside, they can be a slingshot to forge your own path.
I came across this the other day. There’s an influencer named Alix Earle. Evidently, she has 8.7 million followers on TikTok and nearly 6 million on Instagram. Not bad for a 25 year old.
As far as my opinion on Alix is concerned, to paraphrase Michael Corleone from 1974’s The Godfather Part II, “I don’t this Earle. I don’t know what she does. I don’t know what she lives on.”
She did say something fascinating for all the wrong reasons according to the NY Post.
“I’ve never read a book,” the 25-year-old said without embarrassment, curled up in a bathrobe in Milan. “Like, maybe Dr. Seuss.”
She’s not alone.
In 2025, the American Time Use Survey analyzed 20 years of data from almost a quarter of a million people and found that the percentage of Americans who read for pleasure on a given day has nearly halved in recent decades, from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023.
Even so-called elite schools are joining the fun.
Columbia University that obnoxiously brags of a 5% acceptance rate, cut Crime and Punishment out of the syllabus because of its length.
More videos are being assigned then ever as a replacement for the classics.
Self improvement is outsourced at an alarming rate.
Tim Denning clearly sees the market opportunity. He targets the quality of competition at the top of his thesis.
Most of the issues are found in the average person’s robot like existence enabled by handing over control of their brain to smart phones and AI platforms like Claude and Chat GPT.
Denning believes the opportunity arises in doing the opposite of 99% of everyone else.
If the average person is your competitor for a job, here is where to find the opportunities to crush the market,
Notice we aren’t talking about the stock market. Good luck beating that. With about 4% of all stocks responsibility for 100% of all gains since 1926, this is a bridge too far.
Most stocks don’t outperform risk-free treasuries. The majority of stocks have a negative return over their lifetime.
Outperforming the indices is problematic.
Stick to low cost index funds and concentrate your energies on a very achievable goal, beating the people market.
This will enable you to earn a bunch of income to invest in boring investments that build wealth. There’s no wealth without income and there are a myriad of opportunities to exponentially increase yours.
Instead of trading against high powered algorithms preying on every market inefficiency 24/7, there’s another path.
I would rather take my chances against the aforementioned Ms. Earle’s 8 million plus followers who think it’s cool not to read.
Your competition is chasing dopamine spikes, while glued to their phones and measuring the long term in minutes, not decades.
It’s a great time to be alive if you properly apply technology like AI and smartphones to improve your position without letting them control and distract you.
Your competitive advantage is the ability to learn and grow. As a sidenote, I am not sure how that’s accomplished without reading.
Questioning everything is a superpower.
BTW, Dr. Seuss doesn’t have all the answers.
