Saturday Success: monotony's benefit, FinEd power & 9 truths for success
Making life & money work for you.
Welcome back to the Saturday Success Series email!
This week we have:
Master Yourself: The surprising benefit of monotony
Master Your Money: The power of financial education
The Weekly Special: 9 hard truths that come before success
The goal here is maximum value, so let’s get to it.
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Master Yourself
Monotony gets a bad rap.
And I get it.
It can be boring.
It can make life speed by.
It can make you feel less alive.
But…
When all of your days are built roughly the same, you can build a lot of life into that schedule.
A lot of random life.
Scheduling your time is freeing. Routines are freeing.
Example time.
Every morning I wake up around 6:30 which triggers me to chug lemon water which triggers me to put my shoes on which triggers me to workout which triggers me to sit down at my laptop and get to work.
Each step triggers the next step.
A virtuous cycle.
I get so much done by 9 or 10am that I’ve already won the day. I can spend the rest of my day relaxing, having fun and enjoying my family.
When your day is planned, you get to decide what goes where. When you wing it, everything gets away from you. It’s stressful.
Aim to build out a Groundhog’s Day morning.
This way you can have a Livin’ La Vida Loca afternoon and evening.
Master Your Money
The Power of Financial Education:
My god, to imagine how I was living before I started learning this.
It gives me heartburn.
I spent years learning about credit score calculation, stocks vs. ETFs, real estate, budgeting and more.
Now my attention is on learning more about crypto and NFTs (they’re not dead).
School isn’t going to teach you this. And there’s a chance no one else in your life knows much about it either.
Financial education is the difference between always being stressed and relaxing.
Weekly Special
9 Hard Truths You Have to Understand Before You’re Successful
The default setting of the human brain isn’t great.
It’s sort of lazy. It likes being set in its ways. It likes lying to itself. It chatters a lot. It makes you doubt yourself often.
My life’s goal is to override my basic brain biology.
One of the first keys to hacking the default setting is to come to grips with some hard truths.
I share them here.
Hard work gives you a shot at success. It doesn’t guarantee it.
My grandparents worked hard as hell in a factory for 50+ years.
It bought them a modest home and a Cadillac.
The lower middle class American dream, sure. But far from the lavish excess you aspire to. Or even the freedom you seek.
I prefer to focus on smart work these days.
Stop looking for shortcuts, there aren’t any.
You’re wasting your time. Just start putting the work in.
If you put as much energy into your work as you do looking for the quick, easy way then you might actually have something built by now.
Learn! Learn every day. But also, take action. Every day.
Show up every single day and watch your results follow.
Fun things get done.
If you don’t enjoy the process, you won’t stick with it.
I gamified my diet. Color coded the healthy and the junk. I try to hit on 80% green (healthy). It’s surprisingly fun. I also keep a habit tracker. It’s fun to see the boxes checked off.
Make what you have to do as fun as possible. Because you never have to fight your brain to finish fun things.
No one cares about you.
I mean, yes, some people actually do care about you. But most do not.
Most people care about what you can do for them.
If you start solving other people’s problems, wealth becomes a byproduct.
Life is not fair.
It’s full of random luck + smart work.
There are 2 camps. 1 one that believes if you’re successful you’re just lucky. And one that believes all of their “luck” is created by solely by them.
They’re both wrong.
You’re plenty lucky. Being born in modern times in a first world country. Good luck. Remember, 90% of the world lives worse than you do.
The rest is up to you though. Good luck alone won’t get you far off the baseline of those around you.
Life is short.
Make good choices, but have fun.
In the past 2 weeks I’ve spent entirely too much on two dinners out on the town.
They were both 100% worth it. Cost to value ratio was 100% there.
But damn, stop wasting so much time watching Netflix.
You will never get stronger if you always avoid the hard things.
Discipline is a muscle that’s built every time you get up early, or skip dessert, or finish your work when you don’t want to.
You build resilience and character when you face trouble head on.
I had a boss that tried to bully me. I stood up to her and squashed the problem. Great, found my solution. Even better? It built my self confidence.
If you can’t figure out how to manage yourself, you’re toast.
Learn how to mange your time, energy, focus & dopamine or you’ll never be successful.
It’s really that simple. If you waste your time, spend energy on useless things and chase cheap dopamine hits, you’ll always be average at best.
You have to understand the patience/impatience formula.
Short term: impatient with bias toward action.
Long term: patience as you wait to see results.
Nothing is built in a day, but you must build out each day.
Thanks for reading! If you found this valuable, please share with someone who could use it. See you next Saturday!
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Here’s a picture of the fam from my birthday dinner last week. Have a great upcoming week!