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Back to Basics

 

A few basic ideas which I wish to reiterate to myself as they contain wisdom to think and become better.

Embracing lifelong learning: If there’s one thing that should not stop no matter what situation you’re in, it is learning. Could be through reading books, watching videos, etc. The day we stop learning we almost stop growing. Reading opens up your brain, gives you a larger repository of knowledge to take information from, and a better reference point to think about.

Time with Self: You’re going to spend the most time in this world with yourself, in your mind. You have to make sure it is a good place to be otherwise you won’t be happy. Things happen so effortlessly when you’re happy that nothing feels like a task. The way to improve your time with yourself is through reflecting on your thoughts as they eventually turn into actions and habits. Needless to say, it will help you know thyself better.

Routine: One of the most important traits of any successful human being on earth is they have a routine of good habits. Pick anyone you admire and observe their day. Routine need not be a rigid timetable but a rough idea of how you would spend your day. This frees up your mind from having to make endless decisions of what to do time and again.

Consistency: We overestimate what we can do in the short run and underestimate what we can achieve in the long run. 30 mins a day spend reading each translates into 900 mins a year ( assuming you read only 300 days). On a 2 min/page average that is 4,500 pages in a year, that is more than 10- 400 page books in a year. Not bad for a beginner. One of the major causes for not being successful in tasks we set out to achieve is inconsistency, we simply don’t do things for long enough to see the success.

Thinking Long Term: When setting new goals think long term. Longer than what you can achieve in 2,4 or 6 months, more like 2- 5 years. This gives you more time to practice, creates a good base of efforts, and allows some benefit of compounding to show up. Playing for the short term puts you at an inherent disadvantage because a lot of people are already running that race. Long term, not a lot of people even think about it forget applying it.

What does investing have to do with all of this you might wonder? Well, all the above things help you become a better decision-maker. Decision-making is like a muscle gets exhausted as you use it more throughout the day. You have to become better at it to be successful in investing. The abovementioned are few big ideas that are basics but timeless and lay a good foundation. In investing you don’t need to do extraordinary things to do better than the average, you just need to avoid ruin which the basics can help you with.

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