Let me say something extremely biased: if your annual income is under 100,000 RMB—that’s about $14,000—you should stop spending so much time on “improving your cognition.”
I know this sounds counterintuitive. Every self-improvement guru is yelling at you to read more books, listen to podcasts, take courses. “Upgrade your mind, and your bank account will follow.” That’s what they say. But here’s the thing: you’re not at that stage yet. You’re far from it.
The real problem isn’t that you don’t know enough. It’s that you don’t do enough.
Let me explain.
The cognitive trap.
I’ve noticed a pattern among people who are stuck earning peanuts. They are obsessed with “learning.” They buy courses on critical thinking, study behavioral economics, and memorize the 7 habits of highly effective people. They can tell you everything about cognitive biases, but they can’t finish a simple sales call. They know the theory of compounding, but they never start a side hustle.
This is what I call “cognition as a hobby.” It’s a way to feel productive without actually producing anything.
Look, I’m not saying cognition is useless. It’s extremely useful—but only after you have something to think about. If you’re earning less than 100k a year, you don’t have enough real-world experience to apply high-level concepts to. You’re trying to run before you can walk. You’re trying to play chess while you’re still learning checkers.
What actually works.
The one thing you really need is not more knowledge. It’s repetition of basic actions, over and over, until you get results. Salespeople don’t succeed because they read a book on persuasion. They succeed because they make 50 calls a day and learn from the 48 rejections. Freelancers don’t win by studying “personal branding.” They win by sending 100 proposals, even if 90 of them get ignored.
The money follows the action, not the thinking.
If you earn less than 100k, your job is simple: find a way to provide value that people are willing to pay for, and then do it relentlessly. Don’t optimize your workflow. Don’t design your ideal schedule. Don’t write a mission statement. Just do the damn thing. Do it badly at first. Do it ugly. But do it.
Why cognition becomes a trap.
There’s a psychological comfort in learning. It’s safe. You can watch a video about negotiation without ever negotiating. You can listen to a podcast about investing without risking your money. It feels like progress, but it’s just consumption dressed up as growth.
Meanwhile, your bank account stays flat. Your confidence doesn’t grow. And you get more frustrated because now you think you “know” what to do but nothing changes.
Real cognition is forged through action. You don’t learn how to swim by reading about swimming. You jump in the water. And when you’re drowning—that’s when you actually start to learn.
The brutal truth.
Most people in the under-100k bracket are not short of information. They are short of discipline, short of courage, and short of the willingness to do boring, repetitive work for 6 months without seeing a big payoff. They want the shortcut. They think “cognitive upgrade” is that shortcut.
It’s not. The shortcut is doing the work.
So here’s my advice: if your income is low, don’t try to become a philosopher. Try to become a doer. Pick one skill that people will pay for—it could be writing, selling, coding, cleaning, whatever—and do it 1000 times. Forget about “insight.” Focus on output.
After you’ve earned your first 200k, then you can start upgrading your cognition. Because by then, you’ll have enough real problems to think about. Your mind will have something to chew on. Until then, keep your hands dirty and your mouth shut.
It’s not glamorous. But it’s the truth.