Modern society tends to severely overemphasize money as the optimisation goal. This is an emergent behaviour of our good capitalist system. Your time is precio

Modern society tends to severely overemphasize money as the optimisation goal. This is an emergent behaviour of our good capitalist system. Your time is precious. You spend it once and you can't predictably get any more of it. I suggest you choose your optimisation goal function very very carefully to suit the outcomes you want (money is only an intermediate step). It's hard to decide what we really want. Money is the default game that we see our peers playing (and it's easy to gain moderate success at the money game). It requires more attention to find and learn from people that have had success playing less common games. Cynically (or even conspiratorially) investigate the suggested life defaults for you by your society as though they were dark patterns designed to mislead you. I like what Naval wrote about status games (money is only one aspect of status). Paraphrased: Status is a zero-sum game, not a positive-sum game. There’s always a subtle competition going on between status and wealth. For example, when journalists attack rich people or the tech industry, they’re really bidding for status. The problem is, to win at a status game you have to put somebody else down. That’s why you should avoid status games in your life – because they make you into an angry combative person. You’re always fighting to put other people down and elevate yourself and the people you like. Status games are always going to exist; there’s no way around it. Realize when you’re getting attacked by someone else and they’re trying to look like a goody-two shoes. They’re trying to up their own status at your expense. They’re playing a different game. And it’s a worse game. Disclaimer: I've had moderate success at chasing money. I've had less success at optimizing for other goals (work in progress in my 50s). Money has no maximum so it's a weird goal to try and reach. I wonder why Warren Buffett waited until 95 to decide to retire? He would easily be the richest man in the world if he hadn't charitably given so much away. Another relevant paraphrased snippet from an interview about better lives for the elite: https://archive.ph/kF0YR https://archive.ph/kF0YR There’s this study called the American Freshman Survey [edit:snip] In the 1960s, 50% of students said making as much money as possible was a really important goal. Today, that’s 80% to 90%. That change shows that this is not human nature. It is culture.