TREE NEWS reports: Why would someone who already has enormous wealth still want to go to work?
In a conversation with Allen Shao lasting over four hours, Justin Sun mentioned that he wants to work at a top AI company. By his explanation, the reason isn’t the salary: he has long viewed companies from the perspective of an entrepreneur and boss, but lacks firsthand experience of working inside another company.
This matter is more worth pondering than the grand judgments about wealth and the future in the interview.
Many people want to make money so they can finally stop working. He, however, is explaining why, after becoming rich, he still needs to enter an environment he is unfamiliar with.
Money can buy many things, but it cannot buy a perspective that a person has not yet acquired.
The interview ranged from fitness to AI, from career choices to financial freedom, and finally back to life experience. The topics seem scattered, but the same question repeatedly emerges behind them:
When the world keeps changing, how does a person avoid being trapped by their own past experience?
For ordinary people, this may be more useful than “where is the next big trend.”
01 The truly useful part of AI is hidden in the unglamorous everyday
At the beginning of the interview, Justin Sun talked about his approach to health management.
He records diet, training, and sleep, hands the relevant information to AI to organize, and then adjusts based on feedback. He also mentioned keeping records in his own documents, making them easy to use continuously and to continue processing after switching tools.
What is most noteworthy here is not which model he used, but what he kept.
Most people still use AI in an ad-hoc Q&A way:
Today they ask how to improve efficiency, tomorrow how to improve life. Each time they get a seemingly good suggestion, but a few days later they return to their original state.
The problem often lies in the fact that the suggestion lacks real context and has no follow-up results.
You say your work efficiency is low, but is it because there are too many tasks, unclear goals, or constant interruptions from messages? You say you want to change careers, but what have you already tried, which skills are transferable, and which constraints cannot be changed for now?
If this information is not recorded, AI can only give a generic answer around a vague question.
A continuously updated real record is closer to the starting point of changing your life than a hundred vague questions.
Putting this method into work holds true as well.
Writers can save topics, first drafts, reasons for revisions, and reader feedback; salespeople can organize customer questions, deal obstacles, and follow-up results; people seeking a new career can record job requirements, interview feedback, and their own skill gaps.
Over time, what you get is not just a database, but also the ability to see recurring patterns:
Which problems always slow you down? Which practices actually work? Have the things you always thought were important really produced results?
AI can help organize and analyze this information, but it will not automatically complete the change for you. What really works is the continuous process of recording, trying, feedback, and adjusting.
Ordinary people don’t need to start with “AI-ifying their entire life.” Pick one specific problem that repeatedly troubles you, and first get this process running—that alone is meaningful.
Figure 1 Recording and Feedback
Start from a specific problem, and let each attempt provide information for the next judgment. The illustration is an original conceptual diagram for this article, not an original interview image or statistical data.
02 What comes before effort is seeing clearly what problem you are solving
One very vivid phrase in the interview is “scouting the map.”
Justin Sun used a strategy game as a metaphor: some people immediately frantically build troops in their base, while others first send out scout units to see where the resources are and what the opponent is doing, and only then decide how to invest.
In reality, we can easily become the former type.
Want to change careers? First sign up for a course. Want to start a business? First rent a space and make a product. Want to do self-media? First imitate popular accounts and post dozens of pieces of content in a row.
Action is fast, investment is large, but an earlier question has not been answered:
What demand actually exists here? Who will pay time or money for it? What makes me able to do it better?
Effort can increase the speed of action, but it cannot confirm the direction for you.
The value of “scouting the map” lies in making investment happen after more sufficient understanding.
Suppose you want to enter a new industry. Rather than rushing to buy a “masterclass,” first read a batch of real job postings to see what companies actually need; talk to a few practitioners to understand what is most time-consuming and hardest to solve in the work; then do a small project to test whether you are suited to it.
AI can help you organize materials, compare paths, and prepare questions. But when it comes to income, market size, and industry prospects, you still need to return to original sources and real scenarios.
Otherwise, the map may look complete, but you won’t know which roads in it don’t exist at all.
Of course, scouting the map has its limits.
You cannot wait until all information is complete before starting to live. Constant research can also become a more respectable form of procrastination.
A better rhythm is: for high-cost, hard-to-reverse decisions, do more investigation; for low-cost, correctable attempts, act as early as possible.
Understand first, then verify in small steps. Let the next judgment be built on the information gained from this action.
In this way, investigation and action will drive each other rather than replace each other.
Figure 2 Scouting the Map and Verification
Materials, interviews, and small projects complement each other, and investment gradually increases with evidence. The illustration is an original conceptual diagram for this article, not an original interview image or statistical data.
03 So-called freedom must come down to what choices you still have
In the interview, Justin Sun once again explained his understanding of financial freedom: freedom first, wealth second.
This sentence is easily turned into an inspirational quote, and easily misunderstood as “as long as you figure it out, you can have money.”
But in ordinary people’s lives, there is rent, children, parents, and income that cannot be easily interrupted. Cognition cannot change all real constraints.
What is more worth learning from is another concept he discussed at the same time: mobility.
He used “following water and grass to live” to describe his own choice—wherever he can better realize value, he considers going there.
This does not mean everyone should quit their job, move, or reject marriage and buying a home. For different people, family, stability, and long-term relationships may themselves be important values.
The question is: when making a decision, do we see the opportunities it will bring, as well as the choices it will close off?
A well-paying job may let you accumulate abilities, or it may gradually make you lose the habit of contacting the external market. A seemingly respectable purchase may improve your life, or it may increase ongoing expenses and make it harder for you to withstand career changes.
The cost of a decision includes not only the money paid, but also the possibilities you give up because of it.
For ordinary people, increasing options can often start from very small places:
Keep expenses within what you can afford; continuously maintain a skill that can be taken elsewhere; build connections outside work; occasionally test whether your skills are still in demand in the market.
These things are not as exciting as a “comeback,” but they will play a role when change arrives.
You may not immediately leave your current life, but knowing you still have other paths will affect how you negotiate terms, how you face loss, and whether you are willing to try.
Freedom therefore has a more concrete meaning:
You can seriously choose to stay, and you also have the ability to leave when necessary.
Figure 3 Preserving Options
Ability, expenses, connections, and experiments together affect room to adjust; it does not mean everyone needs to leave their current life. The illustration is an original conceptual diagram for this article, not an original interview image or statistical data.
04 The hardest update is admitting that the methods you are familiar with are no longer enough
In the interview, Justin Sun and Allen Shao repeatedly talked about the “small self,” that is, minimizing self-defense and being willing to accept new information.
This point is especially worth placing before “cognitive upgrading.”
Because accessing new knowledge is usually not difficult; what is difficult is allowing it to change you.
Someone who has done traditional business for many years may think AI-generated things are not professional enough; someone who previously gained returns from a certain experience may interpret new changes as temporary noise; someone who has long been good at something may be unwilling to experience the clumsiness of a beginner again.
These reactions are normal.
Past experience helped us build abilities, and also built identity. Admitting that a new method is more effective sometimes feels like admitting that what you were once proud of is no longer so scarce.
But the environment will not stop changing just because we are uncomfortable.
Past achievements prove that you once adapted to an environment; future performance depends on whether you are willing to learn again.
This also reminds us that when reading interviews with successful people, we should retain our own judgment.
The fact that a person has achieved results in business does not mean his understanding of medicine, scientific research, or family relationships is equally reliable. You can seriously learn his method of observation while also checking his specific claims.
Similarly, using AI requires this attitude.
In the interview, Justin Sun expressed a high degree of trust in AI. But for ordinary people, a more practical approach is to let AI help propose plans, find loopholes, and organize evidence, while you yourself bear the final judgment.
Especially in health, investment, and major life choices, a fluent answer cannot replace professional evidence.
True openness is being willing to let evidence change you. It includes both accepting new tools and adjusting promptly after discovering that a tool has made an error.
The ability to update must ultimately be reflected in behavior.
Knowing that a method is good and actually doing something differently next time are still a long distance apart.
Figure 4 From Learning to Action
Turn new information into practice, then use actual results to judge whether it is worth keeping. The illustration is an original conceptual diagram for this article, not an original interview image or statistical data.
05 Why did a conversation about opportunities end up talking about the body
The interview spent considerable time discussing fitness and health.
Some of the numbers about lifespan and deterministic judgments about training results should not be directly taken as medical conclusions. But one layer of meaning is worth putting back into ordinary people’s lives:
We always treat the body as a tool for achieving goals, but rarely count it as part of the goal itself.
To increase income, stay up late for a long time; to avoid missing messages, attention is constantly interrupted; for the sake of future life, continuously overdraft the present state.
Then we expect to make it all back at once after reaching some income milestone.
The problem is that even when the opportunity arrives, you need to be in good enough condition to recognize it, take it on, and continuously complete it.
A person’s usable time cannot be calculated only by hours; it also depends on how much energy in those hours can truly be invested.
This is also why the body deserves to be included in long-term plans.
It is not a requirement that everyone pursue the same physique, nor is it saying fitness can guarantee longevity. It is about starting to take seriously the habits that continuously affect quality of life: sleep, activity, diet, as well as the professional checkups and treatments that should be accepted.
Income is an easily visible result, but condition determines how we use that result.
Having more money while finding it increasingly hard to concentrate, enjoy relationships, and try new things is not the life most people originally wanted.
The significance of health management lies precisely here: giving the choices you fight for a chance to be truly used.
06 Don’t live life as an infinitely postponed payday
In the latter half of the interview, the topic shifted from how to obtain wealth to how to live after obtaining wealth.
Justin Sun described himself as a player still exploring. He did not give a final answer to the meaning of life, but emphasized experience and understanding the world from different perspectives.
This echoes the earlier “entrepreneur who wants to go to work.”
Many people’s lives have a payday that has not yet arrived:
After earning enough money, then do what you like; after you are less busy, then take care of your health; after you are ready, then try a new direction; after you have completely figured it out, then decide how to live.
But some answers can only be obtained through action.
If you have never done a real job, it is hard to know from an introduction alone whether you like it; if you have never served a specific client, it is hard to understand so-called market demand; if you have never continuously created something, it is hard to judge whether you are willing to turn it into a long-term career.
Information can help you get closer to a scenario, but experience will tell you how it feels to be in it.
Part of life’s direction is walked out.
But experience does not have to be expensive, and even less does it need to imitate someone else’s route.
Doing a small project, seriously interviewing someone in an unfamiliar industry, learning a new skill, or trying to publicly express your judgment can all bring new understanding.
At the end of the interview, Justin Sun also talked about the need to balance creation and consumption. He did not ask people to work all the time, and acknowledged that rest and enjoyment can help recovery.
For ordinary people, a question worth asking is:
In the past period, besides having seen many things and agreed with many views, what have I left behind?
An article, a work, a service, a verified method—even if very small—will give you feedback from reality.
It may not succeed, but it will leave experience that can continue to be used next time.
Final note: Turn an interview into a real change
After reading a conversation of over four hours, there is no need to accept every judgment of Justin Sun, nor to copy his life.
What is more worth taking away are several methods that can be verified on yourself:
Record real problems, so that advice has context; before making important decisions, understand the choices first; leave a little room for trying new directions; when facts change, allow your methods to change with them.
If you want to start today, you can do just one thing.
Choose a problem that repeatedly troubles you and write it clearly: what is the current situation, what have you already tried, what limitations exist, and what kind of improvement do you hope to see.
Let AI help you organize a few plans, verify the important evidence in them, and then choose an action with controllable cost to do.
After some time, come back and record the result.
This step will not guarantee wealth, nor will it immediately solve life. But it can let “I understood” begin to become “I made a change.”
One ability ordinary people are worth accumulating is continuously turning new information into better next actions.
When this ability gradually forms, an interview, a book, or a new tool will not only bring brief excitement.
They will enter your life and leave traces.
This article is based on the “Allen Shao × Justin Sun Four-Hour Podcast Transcript,” with a conversation length of about 4 hours and 22 minutes. The extended analysis of action methods for ordinary people in the text is the author’s interpretation, not the guest’s verbatim words.
