Raymond's User Manual

A Map of Life Stages (22–32 / 32–40 / 40+)

5 min read

The “Map of Life Stages” is a career-planning framework Raymond Hou presented in the closing unit of The Super Individual’s Way of Working. It divides a person’s working life into three age ranges, each with a different focus for accumulation: first expertise, then assets, and finally a second passion. It is the concluding synthesis of Raymond’s course methodology and was fully presented publicly when the course was crowdfunded and launched in 2025.

The Premise: Companies Have Shorter Lifespans Than People

The map is built on a reality gap Raymond often cites: people are living longer, while the average lifespan of a company is getting shorter. He refers to external reports that put the average lifespan of Taiwanese companies at about 13 years and that of Fortune 500 companies at about 20 years, with both figures declining. His conclusion is that modern people are unlikely to depend on the same organization for their entire careers as the previous generation did. They are more likely to experience the rise and fall of several companies and may even watch their own positions disappear. Planning should therefore focus not on “which company to join” but on “core strengths that can travel across organizations.”

Borrowing a breakdown attributed to Gu Dian, Raymond orders the five Chinese characters in “core competitiveness” by priority: first understand the rules of the game (competition), identify the people to serve (contending), confirm direction (core), and only then consider effort. This order is the map’s underlying logic: all three stages focus on accumulating in the right direction, rather than neatly doing the wrong things.

The KIT Model: The Inner Engine of the Three Stages

The map corresponds to the course’s “Life KIT Model,” whose three letters represent three systems:

  • K — Knowledge system: Extract knowledge and accumulate expertise.
  • I — Influence system: Communicate business value so more people are willing to pay.
  • T — Time system: Manage tasks and energy to find what is truly important and loved.

The three life stages are described as the direction of movement among these systems, rather than as separate checklists.

Three Stages

Ages 22–32: Build Expertise and Income (Time → Knowledge)

The focus is first to establish systems for managing time and tasks, actively direct attention, avoid diluting it with irrelevant entertainment and gossip, and test whether the things one loves can generate income. Raymond recommends investing spare money in further education, finding the right collaborators, joining high-quality communities, and building a portfolio. The goal is to find a niche one is willing to cultivate for more than five years and make something one loves valuable.

Ages 32–40: Accumulate Assets (Knowledge → Influence)

This stage assumes that income has become relatively stable. The focus shifts to making professional assets “accumulable and leverageable”; related practices are covered in the course’s unit on developing a side business. Raymond particularly emphasizes spending discipline: expenses should not grow in proportion to income, or one will fail to retain capital that can compound. He illustrates this with fixed income and low, stable spending: invest part of the difference regularly in a broad-market ETF, and, more importantly, let professional knowledge and financial assets compound over time together to form a business-model flywheel. The purpose is summed up in one sentence: “Accumulating assets” is a way to gradually regain freedom over one’s time.

After Age 40: Build Physical Health and Find a Second Passion (Influence → Time)

Once income and assets have accumulated and money is no longer the biggest concern, the focus returns to the time system: look for a new, yet-undiscovered experience to love, pay closer attention to health, and use money to buy time back for projects that are fun and free, without considering their financial return. This stage brings the map back to “time,” connecting it to the starting point.

Position and Meaning

Raymond explicitly says these age boundaries are not definitive answers; the framework is meant to offer direction, not prescribe a schedule. He closes with a line attributed to Gu Dian: “Most of the character ‘I’ is made up of ‘searching’,” treating the exploration of life stages itself as a process of completing the self. In his broader framework, this map is an actionable version of the Super Individual (Super Individual) concept: the goal is not to become an employee of a particular company, but to do “something people need and that you love,” arranging the accumulation of expertise, assets, and passion by life stage. It reinforces Raymond’s own path from freelance worker to business owner and then to the self-employed era, and gives students a concluding framework for action.

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