Lots of things, of course. We live in a world of

scarcity. We cannot get everything we want at zero price.

We can barely get anything we want at zero price.

But these same sorts of things are holding back

everyone else, too. So, why are a few people so far ahead

of you?

The fact is, almost everyone is ahead of you in

something. That is the great gift to society of

specialization. In a free society, each person is legally

free to pursue his interests, using his skills and capital

in an attempt to achieve success as he or she defines it.

The rest of us are just not interested in matching most

people in their pursuit of happiness, excellence, or money.

"Do your own thing," Americans say, and they generally mean

it. "To each his own." They mean that, too.

I am speaking about your thing. What's holding you

back?

Let's round up the usual suspects.

INSUFFICIENT MONEY

The bills come due each month. You have to hustle to

pay them. "Money doesn't grow on trees!" (True enough; it

grows in the computers of fractionally reserved banks.)

You are out there buying money. You buy it with your

innate skills, your time, and your years of experience.

You trade time for money.

Almost everything in life is a trade-off between time

and money.

If you are short of money in modern society, you are

long on time if you're in the middle class or higher.

In the allocation decisions between time and money,

you must conserve the resource that you value most highly.

Most people say they worry more about money more than they

worry about time. But if they kept time stubs the way they

keep check stubs, their records would testify against them.

They are profligate with their time far more than they are

profligate with their money. They waste more time than

they waste money.

The great time drain today is television. Radio

preceded television, with similar results. I think of Jack

Benny's running gags about money. "Your money or your

life," the radio thug told him. "I'm thinking! I'm

thinking!" was his legendary reply. He got rich kidding

about his obsession with money. He got rich because so

many people allocated so many hours listening to him, and

then went out to buy the products his sponsors promoted.

Jack Benny was a net gainer in the transaction. So

were his listeners, or else they would not have listened.

But they, unlike Benny, put a low price on their spare

time.

There ain't no such thing as free time (TANSTAFT).

It's our only unrenewable resource. We should allocate it

wisely.

If Americans had skipped "The Tonight Show with Johnny

Carson," had gone to sleep 90 minutes early, and had gotten

up 90 minutes earlier to work on their businesses and

careers, the American economy would have grown by an extra

10 percent per year -- minimum -- for three decades. The

Tonight Show was expensive. I can hear Ed McMahon. "How

expensive was it?" I can hear Carson: "It was so expensive

that. . . ." I just can't think of anything funny.

Television is a time-sucking monster. It should be

treated as an addictive drug.

If you have a problem with money on the expenditure

side, you need help with budgeting and self-control.

If you have a problem with money on the income side,

start managing your time better. You are letting time

dribble away. Time is money.

In the time-money trade-off, the ignored issue is

time-preference. It's about how you value the future in

comparison with the present.

We all value the present more highly than the future

because we live in the present. But some people value the

future more highly than others do. They are future-

oriented. If there is one characteristic that marks the

highly successful person, it is high future orientation.

Harvard's political scientist Edward Banfield a

generation ago called this outlook the upper-class

mentality. Class position has more to do with a person's

outlook on time than the amount of money in his bank

account. Present-oriented people are lower class.

Economist Ludwig von Mises called this orientation high

time-preference.

Three features mark present-oriented, lower-class

cultures and societies: high interest rates, high

illegitimacy rates, and low economic growth rates.

So, your lack of money is not your biggest problem.

Look elsewhere.

INSUFFICIENT EDUCATION

You don't have a college degree. Or you don't have a

master's degree. You don't have a license. You don't have

a certificate.

You are like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz before

the witch was dead.

In the good old days, there were fewer degree-granting

institutions. The result was greater legal freedom to

enter a new field. Only a few fields were closed to

outsiders by degree requirements: the ministry, law, and

medicine. This exclusion began early: the twelfth century

for ministry and law. It took longer for medicine.

Today, the main barriers to entry are institutional:

formal certification by one or another government-licensed

trade monopoly. Call it restraint of trade.

But because the screening system is widespread, there

are lots of loopholes. If you can't get into one school,

you can get into another. Decade by decade, the minimal

performance standard moves ever lower in almost every

field.

In very few fields is an above-average IQ the primary

screening factor: nuclear physics, chemistry, and a few

other narrow professions. In most fields, the ability to

endure years of mental drudgery is primary.

Money is not necessarily the main barrier. Ignorance

of alternatives is. It is possible to earn a bachelor's

degree in four years for under $11 per hour on a part-time

basis. But not many people know this. They needlessly pay

retail for college.

If you are willing to give up television for four

years, you can get through most of the hoops that bar your

upward move. But most people are unwilling to do this

after age 25. That is their barrier to entry. It need not

be yours.

If you lack certification, you can get it. The cost

is mainly time. Blame something else.

INSUFFICIENT SELF-CONFIDENCE

I think this is the biggest single restraining factor

in most people's careers.

People tend to assume that they have a minimal

competitive advantage. They think, "Everyone knows what I

know." They do not recognize the nature of specialized

knowledge. They assume that knowledge is widely shared.

Access to knowledge in a free society is widespread. The

Web has made it even more widespread. But a specific

aptitude isn't. Specific experience isn't.

Employers pay for specific performance that enables

the company to produce whatever it is that specific

consumers want to buy at specific prices.

What is your specific advantage? You have one. If

you didn't, you would be working at the counter of a fast

food restaurant. You would by pressing illustrated buttons

on a computerized cash register. The cash register would

make change.

"Anyone can do what I do." This is not true. Hardly

anyone can do it. Even fewer can do it better than you

can.

If you were to put in an extra two hours a day on

learning how to do it better, you would gain a far greater

advantage within three years. But there is a better way.

Most people are more comfortable burrowing deeper into

their niche than they are learning how to market their

skills. They focus on polishing what they already know.

They do not learn the techniques of broadening the market

for what they already know.

This is why so few people climb to the top of their

field. They become technicians. There is a market for

technicians, but employers know that technicians have

tunnel vision, especially regarding employment

opportunities elsewhere. Even if technicians have

knowledge of the market outside corporate headquarters,

they lack the knowledge of how to exploit this demand for

their own advantage.

Because technicians lack self-marketing skills, they

are fearful of being cut off from the umbilical cord of a

predictable paycheck -- predictable as long as the company

doesn't go under or get swallowed up in a merger.

People lack self-confidence because they lack the

following: (1) knowledge of the job market; (2) knowledge

of how the techniques for increasing demand for their

specific skills; (3) knowledge of what motivates consumers;

(4) knowledge of where to start learning what they don't

know. All of this adds up to a lack of self-confidence.

Start working on this. It is probably your #1

problem.

But how? By dealing with subordinate problems.

INSUFFICIENT COURAGE

We speak of having the courage of our convictions.

The courage of most employees is minimal because their

convictions are minimal. They think: "I'm mediocre.

Safety first."

In my first full-time job, I saw the handwriting on

the wall within months of being hired. The pay was never

going to be great, although it was the best offer I had.

In the region where I lived, wages were high. I was going

to fall behind if I stayed.

The job demanded little, but it offered only one path

to advancement: replacing the boss. The boss said he was

going to stay on until he died, which he did a dozen years

later. I knew I had to get out.

I spent a year trying to find a way to get out.

I eventually found a way. That escape hatch proved to

be a mirage. I quit again, with no alternative employment.

I immediately got another offer. It turned out to be more

of a dead end than the first job, but it allowed me to

launch my newsletter, "Remnant Review," which I still

publish. "Remnant Review" was my life preserver. Its

income let me take more chances. I did not spend it. I

saved it.

By the end of the decade, I was making twenty times

what I had made when I began. But the pace was faster, and

the risk was greater.

If I had kept that initial job, you would not be

reading this. I would also not be rich. I would not have

written 40+ books. (Ten, maybe.) However, I might not

have white hair.

When you perceive that you are facing a dead end,

start looking for an off-ramp. If necessary, drive off the

highway and go looking for an on-ramp on another highway.

If you can stay on the dead-end road long enough to

find a paved off-ramp, that's best. But it's not always

possible.

I did not leave my first job in search of wealth. I

left it in search of significance. I knew I was in a

cocoon. Butterflies want to get out. I had spent too many

years in graduate school as a caterpillar. It was time to

break free.

Most people are unwilling to break free. This is why

they become contented with a caterpillar's life. But they

see the sky and long to fly.

Are you afraid of heights? Look for a landing pad

close to your cocoon.

INSUFFICIENT MOTIVATION

Motivation is internal. It is based on an internal

assessment of external conditions. You compare where you

are with where you could be, given your skills and

opportunities.

At the beginning of a career, most people don't know

their limitations. Most people think they are more limited

than they really are. What they lack is experience. This

is why the military requires boot camp. It is also why it

has ranks. Within the ranks are significant barriers: non-

commissioned vs. commissioned officers, captain vs. major,

full colonel vs. brigadier general. To get beyond each

barrier, men must abandon their comfort zone.

The tyranny of the comfort zone is mild but ruthless.

Beware the comfort zone.

The most effective period for breaking through a

military career barrier is during a war. The enemy

produces holes in the chain of command. It is easier to

become an officer in wartime than in peacetime. You get

promoted if you survive. There is a lot of motivation to

survive.

Profit-generating employees rise rapidly in a company

that is facing tough competition. College degrees count

for less than black ink. It is when market competition is

replaced by government licensing that advancement depends

on certification.

People say, "I want to be successful." Yes, they do:

at zero price. They want success on their terms, not the

market's terms.

When people say, "I want to be successful, even if it

costs me everything I own," they are serious about success.

Most people are somewhere in between.

Where are you?

If your goal in the future is big enough (external),

and if you don't discount the future steeply (internal),

then you are likely to be highly motivated. If your

present array of talents and capital is minimal (external),

but you are emotionally committed to achieving your goal

(internal), then you are highly motivated.

It is problematical to say that positive internal

motivation will overcome external circumstances in most

cases. Frankly, I suspect that it won't. But this kind of

internal/external motivation ratio is a common

characteristic of people who are successful. I see it as

analogous to running the race. Most competitors don't win,

but all would-be winners must run.

The main inhibiting factors are these: (1) a minimal

goal; (2) minimal capital; (3) high time-preference. In

such circumstances, a lack of courage, money, and self-

confidence produce paralysis.

I think most people who are not internally driven to

achieve a significant goal blame their failure to achieve

much on their lack of capital. What is inherently an

internal problem is blamed on external circumstances.

When people are not highly motivated, the other

inhibiting factors take over.

It boils down to this:

The larger the goal, the more the effort is required

and the more time is required to compensate for minimal

capital.

I believe from my observations that capital is less

important than the size of the goal, unless a person is

close to the end of his career. Yet even here, no one

knows for sure. Ludwig von Mises arrived in the United

States as a refugee, almost penniless, in 1941 at the age

of 60. Over the next quarter century, he established his

reputation here, although it never matched his reputation

in Europe in 1930 during his lifetime. Today, a generation

after his death, he is better known than he was in 1930.

CONCLUSION

Something is holding you back. The question is: How

can you overcome the premier inhibiting factor in your

life?

It would not be a bad idea to spend the weekend

reassessing your capital, your top goal, and the time you

probably have remaining to you.

How steep a discount do you apply to your goal? The

lower the discount, the more likely you can achieve that

goal.

Think back to your decision to get married. Talk

about a leap in the dark! How much money did you have?

How much education? Not much. But you were highly

motivated. You were self-confident -- just this once. You

showed courage -- just this once.

Considering the permanence of that decision, and the

high cost of escaping from it, career decisions are minor.

Yet men seem paralyzed when facing a career change. They

prefer to burrow deeper into their niches if they are

willing to do anything extra at all. Worse, they bide

their time. This used to be called punching the clock.

They inserted a time card into the clock, which stamped the

card. The card recorded their physical arrival and

departure.

Their mental departure took place long before they

stopped punching the clock.