当花钱开始问“对我有没有用”，很多事就变了

When You Start Asking “Is This Actually Good for Me?”, Everything Changes

Have you noticed this lately?

When you spend money or time,

there’s an extra question that shows up in your head:

“Is this actually good for me?”

Over the past few days, I’ve been reading Accenture’s consumer reports comparing 2021 and 2025.

On the surface, a lot of changes seem easy to explain—

housing prices, the economy, cost pressure.

But if you look closer,

you realize consumption itself isn’t the real issue.

What’s really changing is this:

In a world with rising uncertainty,

we’re rethinking where our time and money should go—

and who they should be spent on.

For a long time, most of us directed our resources outward.

Holiday gifts.

Spending money to maintain relationships.

Paying for appearances.

Trying to please other people.

At that stage, those investments made sense.

They felt like they worked.

They offered relatively clear and predictable returns.

But now, things are different.

Jobs, the economy, global conditions, industry structures—

and especially the impact of AI—

have all become harder to predict

and largely outside our control.

When external returns become unstable

or simply harder to see,

it’s natural for attention to move back toward

something more certain:

ourselves.

And that’s when a very real shift starts to show up.

More people are choosing to please themselves.

Buying flowers for themselves.

Paying for new experiences.

Doing small things that make their current state feel better.

Honestly, staying at this level is completely fine.

There’s nothing wrong with it.

It’s simply a way of pulling attention back inward.

But some people take one more step.

On top of that, they start realizing that

long-term investment in themselves

might be the most stable option.

They return to things they once wanted to learn

but never had time for.

They build interests that can stay with them for years.

They intentionally develop skills and deeper understanding.

Because over time, one thing becomes clear:

This is one of the few investments

that’s truly controllable—

and very hard to get wrong.

This reminds me of something I heard Wu Jun say

when I first returned to China.

He said that in the internet era,

there are simply too many choices.

And instead of overthinking every option,

you only need to become

one of the top 20% hardest-working people in your city.

If you do that,

you don’t really need to worry that much about housing prices.

That idea still holds up today.

When you invest externally,

you can choose the wrong direction

or the wrong target.

But when you invest in yourself,

failure is unlikely.

And if, on top of that,

you’re willing to take one small step further—

by sharing your learning process,

your thinking paths,

your reflections,

even your real confusion and uncertainty

through writing or video—

something interesting happens.

Your time and energy start to get quietly amplified.

Your learning, thinking, summarizing, and output

no longer exist only for you.

They begin to create connections, feedback, and accumulation.

Over time, you naturally attract people

who are at a similar stage,

with similar goals,

walking in the same direction.

And as I’ve continued down this path,

I’ve come to realize something:

When you consistently improve yourself

and are willing to share the process,

your personal brand is already forming—

often without you even trying to “build” one.

And in this era,

this path actually turns out to be a more stable one.

At least,

that’s been my honest experience so far.