Heres something nobody teaches you, you miss opportunities all the time. I remember when I was 12 in 2014, every day I’d come home from primary school at 3pm and watch channel 24 news (yes, on satellite TV, yes, I was nerdy). And I remember one piece was on this new thing called Bitcoin. It caught my attention because of the funny name and how it was a big deal. I ended up asking my parents about it and we bought $2000 of it for fun. Thats how we became millionaires.
NOPE. I just forgot about it like a normal 12 year old kid and went about my business playing games on my iPad Air.
I also remember back in 2022-2023, this time as a 20 year old adult watching Techlinked on Youtube and hearing about the anticipated ram shortage due to AI data centres. I got minorly annoyed at the news but went about business as usual. It is now 2026 and RAM manufacturer SK Hynix has approximately 30x in value. I’m using investing examples here because they are the most straightforwardly illustrative, but the same applies in all walks of life. Dating, career, friendships, gaming, sports.
All the time, this large and complex world we live in is opening and closing doors, big and small.
Keep an eye out!
If there’s an opportunity or target you are trying to reach, keep upgrading and running your best radar. If you want money, look for the next big thing. If you want the love of your life, keep an eye on people are attracted to. Keep an open mind and be ready to catch anything that comes your way. You will almost certainly miss or fumble as I have done many times. I had a Jane Street technical interview that I didn’t prepare for and completely butchered. Needless to say I didn’t hear back from them. But that’s okay! When you are young, you don’t even know what you are looking for. You’ll watch, learn, hear real stories from real people and over time you’ll both figure out what you want and how others have gotten it.
Some opportunities will work out, some won’t. Suppose you take the leap of faith and act on it, it can go very well or horribly wrong. Take my thesis project on a state of the art photonic hydrogen sensor. It seemed like the most awesome project in every way. Run by USYD professors, backed by a government fund, strong and hard working team. In fact, the semi-conductor fab downstairs from our lab can fab 2nm grade designs and is the most advanced fab in Australia. I enjoyed working on it and got along with the team. But the project just kind of fizzled out. Missed deadlines, incomplete deliverables and I suspect lack of further funding as photonics equipment is extremely expensive (a few of the machines on the benches are 500k and 200k was pretty common). Now it wasn’t a bad project by any means, but it just didn’t work out. Things often just don’t. In this case I suspect it was a case of academia failing to run venture projects like a commercial company effectively but I’m not in the loop enough as a honours student to know for certain.
Most of the time, you just don’t even know. Maybe you want to buy a Labrador puppy and your neighbour wants to sell their one for cheap as they turned out to be allergic. Knowing and doing the right things at the right time is largely up to chance. So I say don’t obsess over it. You can’t win them all. Whatever happens, happens. Let it be. The cliches go on and on but it’s true. Retrospect is powerful and survivorship bias is real. Everyone loves to point at the winners and envision themselves in their positions. But there are far more people who just didn’t know, or have access, or failed, or just plain preferred a different lifestyle.
I often look at those 20 year old tech billionaires and feel deeply inadequate in comparison. But that’s not fair to yourself. If you find yourself doing the same, try to be kinder to yourself. Sometimes you can just change and use it as an opportunity to learn and improve yourself, but more often, if you did the best that you could with what you knew, it’s good enough. Contentment comes from within.
Try to think a bit outside of the box, be proactive. If you miss it, there’s always more to come and no one thing can define your life.