For those of you, who are optimizing for impact (aka dream of changing the world), you have to adopt a very simple yet extremely powerful value: Patience. There is nothing wrong with spending 10 years having a seemingly less successful life, in order to craft your own unique niche and put yourself in the right position. Doing shit that matters takes a long time, and setting yourself up for a challenge the right way is a foundation that goes a long way.

In Hong Kong, I see a lot of brilliant-minded people going into banking and finance. To make it clear, there is nothing wrong with doing so. I personally believe that finance is a great enabler of potential impact for young people, but only if you play your cards the right way. The problem is — many young people don’t.

A long-term oriented mindset dictates that when you know what your north star is, you are supposed to take a number of consecutive steps that collectively have the highest chance of bringing you closest to the ultimate goal. If you are someone with such a mindset, congrats — you probably already know what I am talking about. Most fresh grads I see, go to finance not because they are looking to build deep relationships with powerful people in a particular field, learn technical skills that would enable them to build their own companies, or refine their mindset to be able to uncover non-obvious insights. But because they are just settling down for a good pay, prestige, and are only marginally interested in a field that they choose. Looks like short-term orientation, huh? To be fair, if stars align in your favour, there is a chance that by taking a bunch of random decisions with short-term attractiveness, you will also end up at the top of the success ladder. However, if you want to take a shot at changing the world, you’d better MAXIMIZE THOSE FUCKING CHANCES.

For many of you, it would mean to follow a leader, mentor and coach, or to choose a mid-stage fast growing startup to learn the process of building a successful company from scratch, or even work on your own independent projects or businesses. However, often times these actions do not result in tremendous short term returns. And this is where patience becomes so extremely critical.

Taking actions that do not immediately result in attractive returns and are by no means warranties of potential success, is mentally tough. But if you do it right for long enough, you start having a chance to achieve something much bigger than simply a comfortable life, something that you can leave behind and be proud of for the rest of your days, something that can engrave your name in the history books. So the bottom line is: if you dream big, STAY PATIENT, young professionals!