When we grow up, we slowly expand our knowledge and start connecting the dots. At some point, we’re shaped enough to have a worldview and self-aware enough to recognise its limits.
The other day we had a parents’ day at my one-year-old’s daycare. I ended up chatting with another dad who asked me what I do. I told him that I sold my fintech company and that I’m working on the next thing.
He went on to tell me he finished university, got hired by a large corporation, and now commutes two hours every day to work. He seemed genuinely happy. Then he asked me what my background is.
I told him I don’t have any formal education in tech or finance. Actually, no university degree at all.
That’s when his worldview cracked. He was shocked, truly shocked, and a stream of questions followed:
“But how can you work with technology without an education?”
“How can you work with finance without education?”
Somehow his path through the Danish school system had created a worldview where every person followed more or less the same path as he did. Where learning only happens in school.
So, naturally, I told him about my new startup, that we’re creating a medical device for type 1 diabetes.
His jaw literally dropped to the floor and the conversation ended shortly after, but the interaction stuck with me because it was such a clean example of two very different worldviews colliding.
This got me thinking about a Steve Jobs quote that has helped me see that most boundaries in life are entirely imaginary and that you can redraw them whenever you want.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you — and you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use.”
Go change the thing that annoys you.
Invent the thing that needs inventing.
Expand your worldview, and bend the world a little in your direction.
