This list links to another one in the same spirit: "How to Trade Money and Time."[1]
To be totally honest, all lists like these make me think of young male friends who went through a distinctive weird phase in their early 20s. For a period of 1-2 years, they would scour books ranging from self-help to moral philosophy in order to build a Simplistic System for Living. Maybe it had to do with getting their first engineer salaries, because a central tenet of my friends' philosophies somehow always ended up being "time and money are interchangeable."
Of course, it is naive to think that just because many things can be bought, all things can be bought, at least reasonably. And as my friends got older and acquired adult responsibilities, families, roles in the local community, they dropped their philosophical regimen and just tuned into typical affluent suburbanites.
But it's that glimmering realization that still strikes me as kind of fascinating to watch: "I can buy... things!... with money! That means I can buy... anything!"
In particular, I'd love to know what exactly the person in the post I linked to was thinking when writing this sentence:
> Spend more to go to events where you will meet exactly the people you want.
Everything that comes to my mind feels either niche or unreliable. An expensive professional conference? You're either already part of that professional community, or going to an event like that is kind of a mixed bag. Paid dating services? Maybe I don't understand that world. A fancy party where you get to mingle with VCs? That's very specific. Are there meetups where the cost of attendance is a significant filter?
My experience in this arena has been that you need serendipity, and it's hard to buy serendipity.
>For a period of 1-2 years, they would scour books ranging from self-help to moral philosophy in order to build a Simplistic System for Living. Maybe it had to do with getting their first engineer salaries, because a central tenet of my friends' philosophies somehow always ended up being "time and money are interchangeable."
I went through this too. It,s a result of pressure to Do More, Faster, which comes with that engineer salary and long work weeks.
You have 1-2 hours free per day, max, and feel an enormous pressure to do something worthwhile with that time. It,s chasing meaning while already having given away most of your time to build someone else,s meaning.
I interpreted that "Spend more to go to events" quote as being with regards to travel, rather than exorbitantly expensive meet-and-greets. If I have some kind of hobbyist interest and there's a convention for it in another country, I'd probably enjoy travelling for that and meeting people I'd never meet otherwise.
Of course that might not be the greatest advice right this moment... But generally speaking I think it's fairly sound.
> I interpreted that "Spend more to go to events" quote as being with regards to travel, rather than exorbitantly expensive meet-and-greets
On that note:
- While on vacation, buying event tickets short-notice on auction sites (if you care more about going to the event than the inflated price)
- After attending a theater performance, realizing that you can still almost make it in time to $other_event if you grab a taxi right now, grabbing the taxi, then calling the venue ahead to ask if its okay that you'll be late by 5 minutes (it was no issue, they didn't exactly start on the minute anyway).
What kinds of activities have international events, though?
- academic conferences, but these are generally not relevant to the public, and if they are relevant to you, you're already attending them because you're an academic for the sake of your career
- premier fan events like San Diego Comic Con, but most people don't go there to make friends
- trade events like the Milan Fashion Week, but, again, you
already know if you belong there
- international sports competitions, if you're a world-class athlete
- technical conferences for programmers, but in my experience these have been an extraordinarily poor value for the money as a normal attendee
The ones that sort of make some sense to me are:
- if you're a bird-watcher, you could pay to go on an international bird-watching trip to the Galapagos or something
- if you're a young and rowdy party-goer, you could travel to one of those mega beach parties in the tropics
Doesn't have to be international. It's enough if it's in the language you know. Can even be in the same country.
My little moment of enlightenment here came when I realized that I really can attend that event I was really interested in that's happening on the other side of the country. All I need is to travel. Oh, other side of the country is far and travel time will take as much as the two-day event itself? I can always fly there. Domestic air travel is a thing, and isn't that expensive (which may be obvious for people in the US; it's less obvious in Europe).
I ultimately ended up not going to that event for personal reasons, but planning it made me re-evaluate the possibilities I have, and how many of them appear once I reframe the question as "how much money am I willing to spend to get there?".
The original claim I'm investigating is that you can spend more money to meet exactly the people you want.
The point isn't that you can spend money on travel. Everyone knows how to book plane tickets. The interesting (and dubious) claim is that you can pay money to hang out with exactly the kind of people you prefer.
To be totally honest, all lists like these make me think of young male friends who went through a distinctive weird phase in their early 20s. For a period of 1-2 years, they would scour books ranging from self-help to moral philosophy in order to build a Simplistic System for Living. Maybe it had to do with getting their first engineer salaries, because a central tenet of my friends' philosophies somehow always ended up being "time and money are interchangeable."
Of course, it is naive to think that just because many things can be bought, all things can be bought, at least reasonably. And as my friends got older and acquired adult responsibilities, families, roles in the local community, they dropped their philosophical regimen and just tuned into typical affluent suburbanites.
But it's that glimmering realization that still strikes me as kind of fascinating to watch: "I can buy... things!... with money! That means I can buy... anything!"
In particular, I'd love to know what exactly the person in the post I linked to was thinking when writing this sentence:
Everything that comes to my mind feels either niche or unreliable. An expensive professional conference? You're either already part of that professional community, or going to an event like that is kind of a mixed bag. Paid dating services? Maybe I don't understand that world. A fancy party where you get to mingle with VCs? That's very specific. Are there meetups where the cost of attendance is a significant filter?My experience in this arena has been that you need serendipity, and it's hard to buy serendipity.
[1] https://meteuphoric.com/2014/03/25/how-to-trade-money-and-ti...