When it came to being a great person, I always was on the positive side of that train of thought. My life was great and all but recently I've been thinking of ways to be more helpful when I'm online, since I could remember being helpful at provided website help because a good trait of mine but lately I've been wondering and asking is this useful?
The day I woke up with the idea that I could make money in my sleep is maybe the day my dreams died because later I realized making income in the most active way possible is the best. Here's one very deep train of thought I've been thinking about lately, I hope you go down this rabbit whole with me.
1. Focus on one skill for an consistent period of time until your useful at it.
That means if you have no skills right now it's better you start looking at what you like to do, and finding the most high leverage variation of that thing and learn it. For example, if your into music, what kind of music are you into? If you want to get into music maybe learning to create music is a good first step or going more into the business side of it is another step.
In web development, software engineering is a high level role or title to be given to specific people who actually have specific computer science of a higher tier then web developers are. They are mostly the same but software engineers get payed more then web developers just because of that. They studied the topic deeper and thus are payed more.
But for me to Focus on something, it may look like its this blog right now creating posts and publishing content to attract people to my blog, and so if Elon Musk looked over my shoulder and he might say I've using youtube differently since It looks like I need to do this about 100 times and the top 10 posts study them and see what worked and keep doing it.
But about Elon, what would Elon think is maybe I'm wasting my time because AI can generate blog posts on demand all sounding different, but is that a good way moving forward, for AI to generate 100% of my blog posts without me adding any style or vibe or flavor to it. Just for extra credit I'm adding Elon Musk looking over my shoulder as number two: what would he really say about me being useful.
Extra credit: If Elon Musk looked over your shoulder at the work you where doing, what would he think? Is it useful or not?
So where does all of this actually leave me?
It’s pretty simple: being “useful” isn’t about chasing some magical passive income scheme or trying to impress an imaginary Elon Musk watching over my shoulder. It’s about picking something that matters, committing to it long enough to get genuinely good, and then using that skill to help real people.
Right now, for me, that looks like this blog—showing up, writing, hitting publish, learning from what works and what doesn’t, and slowly getting better. AI can help, sure, but it can’t replace my voice, my story, or the weird little angles only I would think about. That’s the part that actually makes me useful.
If you’re reading this and wondering about your own path, maybe your next step is just:
- Choose one skill that feels meaningful.
- Stick with it long enough to become truly useful.
- Keep asking, “Who does this help?” instead of only, “What does this earn?”
If Elon really was looking over my shoulder, I’d want him to see someone who isn’t just consuming, dreaming, or overthinking—but someone who’s building, learning, and trying to be a little more useful every day.
That’s the work. And for now, I’m okay with that.