#85: How the System Failed Some of Us
Let's not judge people harshely
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Hey Friends,
Welcome to the 85th edition of my newsletter.
As it’s December 1st, and the Holidays are right around the corner, the next few newsletters will be more personal, and not that technical.
But before that, I want to present my Black Friday offer to you!
If you subscribe to my paid annual plan, you get 50% off; that’s 35$ for one year.
And, I give you access to my “Agile Productivity Course”, for FREE.
(The offer is only available until Dec 8th)
PS: I will make this available to current subscribers too.
Course Content (Over 3 hours of video)
Module #1: Measure
Introduction
What is productivity?
The Wheel of Life
Grading your Wheel of Life
Tracking our Time
Module #2: Vision
Long-term Goals
Warren Buffett's System
Pareto and your ONE Thing
SMART Goals
Seinfeld Method
Module #3: Your Second Brain
What is a Second Brain?
Areas
Projects
Tasks
"Someday/Maybe" List
Resources
Module #4: Plan
Parkinson's Law/Student Syndrome
Your life in Sprints
The New Year Plan
Quarterly Review and Plan
Weekly Review and Plan
Your Ideal Day
Module #5: Execution
Why do we procrastinate?
Solutions for Procrastination
Focus/Deep Work
Avoiding Interruptions
The Pomodoro Technique
Time Blocking and Task Batching
Theme Days
Sleep and Move
Meaningful Breaks
Eat/Drink Water/Meditate
Module #6: The Digital Era
Email Strategies
Inbox Zero
Gmail Tricks
No distractions
Tools and Automation
A final word
You’ll also get
Course slides
Time log Google sheet
Wheel of Life Measurement sheet
Full Second Brain template in Notion
Just so you know – the only thing you need to do is subscribe and send me an email at leo@leoalexandru.com, and I will give you access to the course.
The System failed some of us
Today, Dec 1st, is the National Day of Romania. It marks 106 years since the Great Union.
It is also general election day, and there is a big risk that the new government will be formed by far-right, so-called “souverainist” parties.
Romania is currently in the middle of a full-blown political and societal crisis based on the fact that the first round of presidential elections was won by a gentleman unknown to the public, who was polling at 5% and got 22%. Thanks to TikTok.
He is also someone who is anti-EU and anti-NATO, but I won’t go into more details, and you can get a better picture here.
And at the beginning of the week, I was amazed about why people would vote for someone like this. And I would see people in my list of Facebook friends talk about him and praise him and so on, and I just didn’t understand what was going on.
But after having discussions with my friends and my colleagues and thinking more about it, I realized something. And it’s something quite uncomfortable.
In most countries, for the first time in history, the new generation is living worse than their parents’ generation.
When someone at work told me this, I couldn’t believe it, and I looked it up.
If we measure it on many criteria, from health and longevity to work-life balance, and economic stability, people who are now in their 20s are living worse than their parents, in their 50s, used to live.
Here’s what ChatGPT gave me after prompting it for a while.
And this struck me, I always thought people were doing better and better.
But this might not be the case. And there’s another reason for this, and I will get into that a bit later.
And it makes sense. If you have friends living in different capitals in the EU, the US, or Australia, you should already know that it is almost impossible to buy an apartment these days. For example, the price per square meter increased in London from 1,000 pounds in 1995, to more than 7,000 pounds in 2024. In the UK, the "Bank of Mum and Dad" has become a significant economic factor, with 36% of first-time homebuyers in 2022-23 receiving financial help from family and friends, up from 27% the previous year.
So, yes, we can travel more, we have access to better health systems, and to the latest technology, but we lack some basic needs (and property is one, for most of us).
Studies show that older generations in Western Europe often report higher life satisfaction compared to younger individuals, whereas in Eastern Europe, younger generations tend to have a better quality of life than their elders.
What is interesting, is that the overall average wealth of the developed countries has significantly increased in the last decades. But it has done so by creating a bigger and bigger income gap, and many view traditional political parties as complicit in enabling this inequality.
The governments failed a big part of the population, by deregulating and favoring corporations and high-income individuals with tax cuts.
It has also failed to address the housing crises that hit most developed countries.
From an educational point of view, while the system has improved in terms of access and technological integration, it has also restricted access to the poor.
For example, UK universities, including Cambridge, did not charge tuition fees for domestic students in the 1980s. In 2025, the tuition fee is scheduled at 9,535 ￡.
In the US, it’s even more dramatic, as tuition at Harvard was around $5,000 per year in the 80s and has increased 10 times by 2023, with the total cost of attendance at $76,763. You needed 1.5 years of the median household income to fund a four-year degree in the 80s, and you need more than 4 years of income to fund it in 2024.
On the other hand, the private sector has not done too much to fill the social gap either. The CEO-to-Worker Pay Ratio measures the disparity between the compensation of a company's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and that of its median employee. Over the past several decades, this ratio has increased significantly, reflecting a growing income inequality within organizations.
In 1965, it was 20-to-1, so the average CEO earned 20 times more than the average worker in the company. In 2021, that ratio went to 324-to-1.
In 2021, Amazon’s ratio was 6,474-to-1.
Final thoughts
It is clear for me that the capitalist system is the best one (the others proved to be even more damaging). But it is also clear that greed will always be a big part of this and any system.
Politicians have failed the many. Especially in countries like mine, corruption is a very serious topic.
The companies are interested in making profits, and only few of them are involved in giving back to society.
Things can change and need to change. There are ways, and I will express my opinion on how they can be implemented in a future newsletter.
Until then, let’s refrain for a bit in judging people based on political views and try to understand their context, their frustration, and their desire for change.
I’m curious about your opinion:
Why do you think people live better or worse than the previous generation?
Recommendations:
I restarted my daily meditation practice in the last couple of weeks and I think it’s important to take care of our mental health during these times. I am now using Headspace but I can also recommend Calm, which I’ve used in the past. They both have 50% of their annual plans for Black Friday.
This week I finished Steve Jobs’ biography, by Walter Isaacson, and it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read, I cannot recommend it enough, especially for people who are working in tech.
This infographic about the age you peak at everything, according to science.
Well, I hope you liked this edition.
Thank you for reading, and join me in the comments section for further discussions!
Leo
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Thank you so much for being here!
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