I recently went through a tragic event and lost a big chunk of money, which might have nudged me into listening to the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.
In the book, Robert offered a great educational course on how money and finance work, and offered a simple and straightforward solution to build up wealth - acquire assets.
Assets generate compounding interests for the rest of our lives, they should be automatic (with minimum maintenance) and just working quietly in the background.
I think the idea of assets also applies to life itself, and we should be thinking about what qualities or skills we can build up, that would make us a better person for the rest of our lives.
James Clear talked about the same idea of compounding and investing in yourself in his best selling book Atomic Habits, and Sam Altman wrote a blog How To Be Successful, in which the first thing he mentioned was “Compound yourself”.
Sometimes I would avoid/ procrastinate to do things or face some challenge for so long, and by the time I finally handled it, usually through gritted teeth, a huge load of struggle, discomfort, unwillingness, anxiety and self-blame, I would feel this huge relief and think:
Man, I should’ve done this earlier.
I think it’s a good practice to ask myself once in a while: what are the things that in 5 years, I’d be looking back and say, man, I really should’ve done it earlier?
Those are probably things I should start working on now.
Here are several things that I want to grow in my personal asset column, that I think can compound and serve me for the rest of my life.
(Hopefully I’ll come back to elaborate them 🤞.)
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Patience.
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Courage.
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Hope and generosity.
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Information, knowledge and mindsets.
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Attention.
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Patience + focus attention → one step at a time. Hold on. Endurance.
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Infrastructures and foundations for growth. Habits like One blog a day.
A quote from Tim Ferriss’s book Tools of Titans.
Winners has systems, losers have goals.