✒️ Becky Isjwara
‹ Back to the Library
epicPOV 02 · defensibility: medium-high

The Conveyor Belt

The conveyor belt is a trap, and money is the cheapest currency to optimise for.

The "standardised happy meal" of full-time employment looks like ambition on LinkedIn and a conveyor belt in practice. I can't pay for dinner with curiosity — but the ultimate currency I want to optimise for is my life. A full-time job in the AI era is a bad trade because it caps the growth rate of skills that compound weekly.

Inscriptions
1,807
Sources
761
Became
4
Last fed
15d ago
Inscriptions — the highlights that fed it
“On compensation, OpenAI had a major disadvantage: It couldn’t offer equity into the organization, which many Bay Area tech workers viewed as necessary to afford the steep cost of living.”
Empire of AI
Karen Hao
books
my note[[essay idea]] new living rules beyond salary
“Jacqueline Jensen, a successful tech founder, to create a “structured sabbatical” to untangle her identity from her work. She asked herself, “What if I took work … working for a paycheck, what if I took that out of the center of my life, what would my life look like?””
The Pathless Path
Paul Millerd
books
my noteWhat if money wasn't part of the decison-making framework?
“Maybe the same applies to civilisation. Is it a good idea? Too soon to say.”
Humankind
Rutger Bregman, Elizabeth Manton, and Erica Moore
books
my noteEverything, cost benefit analysis etc is hard because we don’t have the benefit of hindsight. It’s all too soon to say. Like that “maybe / we’ll see” story about a farmer whose son got hurt and then couldn’t join the army and neighbors were like “oh you have such good/bad luck”
“With the fortune he made on his bestseller, Heyerdahl was able to bankroll an expedition to Easter Island.”
Humankind
Rutger Bregman, Elizabeth Manton, and Erica Moore
books
my noteLike a CEO raising money for his or her startup
“What actions or decisions are you making in your life right now that are driven by scarcity?”
⏳ You Have Enough
Ali Abdaal
articles
my noteShift from scarcity to sufficiency. We have sufficient resources. We are enough. We don't need more of anything.
“If you are rich, you have money in the bank that allows you to buy the stuff you want. If you are wealthy, you have a level of control over what that money does to your personality, your freedom, your desires, ambitions, morals, friendships, and mental health.”
The Art of Spending Money
Morgan Housel
books
“Time Wealth is the freedom to choose how to spend your time, whom to spend it with, where to spend it, and when to trade it for something else.”
The 5 Types of Wealth
Sahil Bloom
books
“As a rule of thumb, you want to ensure that your income is growing at a higher rate than your expenses. This will create a larger investable gap over time and lead to strong financial compounding and an accelerated path to financial independence.”
The 5 Types of Wealth
Sahil Bloom
books
“People love to gawk at the power of compounding when investing their money. It’s much harder to think about the value of compounding memories you get by trading money for time, but the results can be just as incredible.”
The Art of Spending Money
Morgan Housel
books
What this taught me to write — receipts
01
Stepping off the conveyor belt
Beck At It · 15 Apr 2026
↗02
Contentment fits in a carry-on
Beck At It · 8 Apr 2026
↗03
The New Poverty Line Is $100
Beck At It · 10 Jun 2026
↗04
Everything is affordable
Beck At It · 18 Mar 2026
↗