The name itself says how we must live a life that is not scripted. It addresses the scripted life that we live, meaning we go to school, college, and workplace, get married and retire. This recipe works for successful people but not for the ones thinking beyond it.
The latter group calls it a scripted life full of slavery. So, this book wakes the former group. The author, MJ DeMarco, explains how to switch to the unscripted life from the scripted one through an entrepreneurial framework.
The book aims to help people make scalable and successful businesses and, eventually, get rich and financially independent. The author explains how he invested his money to get passive income from stocks, bonds, dividends, and more. This income can get invested further in a field that provides more money, just like a cycle or a machine. This book has five parts.
The First Part: Dissonance
This part addresses the problems people have been struggling with since they were old enough to start earning. Here, we come across the road taken by everyone. For instance, everyone must go to the university, get a job, keep working for the coming decades, fight against inflation, retire, and die.
The Second Part: The Greatest Con
The second part contains being an ideal citizen, temporal prostitution, teachings, and distractions. The families, friends, workplaces, Wall Street, media, government, and universities force the people to go according to their teachings. However, one can break this bond after knowing the hyperrealities as follows. People are expected to get educated to provide value to society.
But, it is not true. The companies exist to create unnecessary demand for consumption. Similarly, they want their employees to work for specific days. These are the entities working under governmental rules to protect the employees if they break the rules.
Games (virtual reality) are considered stupid in this book. People think they are free, but they are not. People invest in entertainment and suffer losses. One day, even the money loses its value. The value of money decreases with time. The money you spend today had a greater value in the past. So, it is worthless to spend it on unnecessary things. People must split the money from time.
The next chapter talks about the two types of people. The first type lives like there is no tomorrow. They spend more than what they have and keep borrowing. The other type saves a lot and lives in the hope of getting more in the future.
They keep ruining their present for the sake of an unpredictable future. The first type is termed as ‘Sidewalkers,’ and the latter ‘Slowlaners.’ We have Chapter 12 that addresses the MODEL (Mediocre, Obedient, Dependent, Entertained, and Lifeless) citizens that live under several burdens.
The Third Part: Getting Free No Matter What
It focuses on independence from the routine, hyperrealistic influence, dependence, hope, work, frugal constraint, and scarcity. There are no awards for being in the bonds. Do and purchase whatever you want, and do not depend on the market or boss for your income.
Similarly, do not be at only one place to get spontaneous. It is too difficult but will change one’s behavior forever. It will help one overcome ego, responsibilities, pride, fear, and mediocre comfort.
The Fourth Part: The Scams
Part four focuses on market feedback, leveraging, market scaling, magnitude, kinetic execution, planning, marketing incest, and SEO. It also reveals the passive income methods that do not require one to work. Talking about the scam, scripted people fall prey to several scams, such as poverty, luck, money, consumption, frugality, special, compound interest, and shortcut scams.
The shortcut scam deals with the secret weapon that can hide the necessity of hard work. The Special scam addresses our fixed mindset of improving according to our current abilities. However, our improvement does not depend on them. The consumption scam makes you a consumer or a producer. But you can deny both. The money scam means people do not chase their dreams due to a lack of money.
The poverty scam occurs when people purchase unwanted things. It talks about creating more impact to earn more. People also fall prey to the Luck Scam by believing in luck. But, the author says that income depends on the applied stimulus, not luck.
A frugality scam means people live poor and practice expense reduction. It won’t work. So, years of hard work is the solution. Compound Interest Scam makes people believe more in the stock market. But failures are a part of it. So, saving early and often is a solution here.
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The Fifth Part: Personal Finance
The fifth part focuses on the problems and the final solution. People that get discouraged, greedy, indisciplined, and scammy will not succeed, according to this book. The corporations will provide the paycheck but not freedom.
The methods to live an unscripted life are:
- Go for rent when you invest your money in some dividend.
- Invest in the bigger banks, instead of smaller ones, that do not scam their customers.
- Keep ETFs, REITs, and other assets to be sold during a financial crisis.
- Do not fall prey to phishing in the market.
- Sell your stocks after every three months and get a profit (if it gives enough profit after three months).
- Check whether the entity you invest in has a future to safeguard your future.
- Do not go for a fund that takes more than 1% of management charges.
Unscripted Book Review
It is good, too long, and too difficult to read, but it contains several secrets of life. It better acts as the follow-up book after reading Millionaire Fastlane. It looks like the author is biased against the pre-defined status quo of society. However, he frames his passion intelligently. It can be revolutionary but not sophisticated.
But, it feels saturated when we realize that the author is more inclined towards the use of equations to frame the content. It is the complete guide for the people inclined towards business and stocks or those who want to get out of the 9 to 5 job cycle.
Instead of teaching how to be on track, it teaches how to avoid going off track. So, this book is indirect. Instead of advising how to save money, it shows the consequences of not saving money. Part four contains the real essence of the book, while part five acts as a bonus to it.
Still, they have different concepts. So, we strongly recommend going through part four. Though this book addresses the pain points of entrepreneurs, it does not mean that teenagers must stay away from the book.
Teenagers will shape the world someday. So, it will be better if they read this book and free themselves from the fake bonds created by society. Unscripted by MJ DeMarco helps entrepreneurs and all other individuals who want freedom.
Our Verdict
Unscripted by MJ DeMarco acts as the follow-up to Millionaire Fastlane. However, this book has a unique identity. It contains the secret to a free life. The problems and solutions addressed in this book work for entrepreneurs and the common people who want to break the bonds. It emphasizes living an unscripted life, and it is not difficult to achieve.
Our Rating: ⭐ (4.2/5).
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