The information you choose to consume impacts every aspect of your life.

Choose wisely. Improve the quality of your “diet” to improve the quality of your life.

Brain:
• Information you consume
• People you interact with
• Meditation you perform

Body:
• Food you eat
• Exercise you perform

Wealth:
• Investments you make
• Income streams you build

An idea that I can't stop thinking about:

The Capability Gap

Alabama coach Nick Saban refers to the Capability Gap in this clip from a discussion with Holly Rowe:

"We oftentimes talk about what someone's potential is, but I think to put it in better terms...the Capability Gap is what you're capable of relative to what you're doing...if you understand the truth about that, you can actually take information that can help you close that gap."

The Capability Gap is a simple idea with powerful implications across all areas of your life.

It requires an understanding of:

1. Your full capability
2. Your current delivery

In my experience, I would argue that most people underestimate their full capability and overestimate their current delivery.

In other words, they think their Capability Gap is very small, when in reality it's much larger than they realize.

Having mentors, coaches, friends, and family members who help you see the truth about your full capability and keep you honest on your current level of delivery is everything.

This isn't about sports, this is about your life:

Do you have people in your life who help you think bigger about what you're capable of?

Do you have people in your life who tell you that your current delivery isn't good enough?

We all need those people in our lives.

We need people who push us to get uncomfortable, to think bigger, and to be better.

We need people who push us to be better partners, parents, friends, siblings, colleagues, community members, and leaders.

Find the people who tell you the two truths:

1. What you're truly capable of
2. What you're currently delivering on

Identify your Capability Gap and then work relentlessly to close it!

If you enjoyed this or learned something, share it with others and follow me @SahilBloom for more in future!
A framing that has helped me:

Collect more Intellectual Sparring Partners.

These are people who:
• Call you on your BS or excuses
• Question your assumptions
• Push you to think bigger

Intellectual Sparring Partners help you clarify your Capability Gap (and close it).

Here's a running list of some of my favorite questions to spark interesting conversations. “So, what do you do?” is where my soul goes to die.

If you know who you are, you'll never waste energy worrying about who others think you are. I spent most of my younger years worrying about what everyone thought of me.

Tons of anxiety about it.

The reality was that I hadn’t done the internal work to be firm in my own values, to figure out who I really was.

My ABC Goal System

(how to make progress in any arena)

Establish three levels of daily goals:

• A Goal: Ambitious, perfect case.
• B Goal: Middle, base case.
• C Goal: Minimum viable level.

How and why it works:
Imagine this scenario:

You're working towards a big, ambitious goal.

You start to struggle. You realize you aren't going to hit the goal.

What happens?

You fall completely off track.

I just co-hosted a retreat with a group of multimillionaire entrepreneurs in Cabo.

10 learnings (that everyone should hear): 1. Insecurity is a natural human condition.

These entrepreneurs have built incredible wealth, but all open up about their insecurities.

The feeling that we aren't doing enough is natural.

Opening up about these insecurities is the key to managing their influence on our lives.

A mathematician shockingly rejected the $1 million prize.

The reason why (and what you can learn from it):

Grigori Perelman is a mathematician considered to be one of the smartest humans alive.

He became known around the global mathematics community for his work that made previously impossible proofs appear obvious in hindsight.

In 2006, he was awarded the prestigious Fields Medal for his contributions to the field.

But in a crazy twist, Perelman declined to accept it.

"[The prize] was completely irrelevant for me. Everybody understood that if the proof is correct, then no other recognition is needed."

Later that year, he formally walked away from professional mathematics and moved to a small town outside Saint Petersburg, Russia, to live with and look after his elderly mother.

In 2010, Perelman was awarded the Millennium Prize, which came with a $1 million cash prize.

But yet again, he declined to accept it.

In a world so focused on external achievement and recognition, Grigori Perelman was a unicorn:

An individual who had completely eliminated the need for external validation. He was fulfilled by the process—by the joy of working on the complex problems—not by the reward at the end of that journey.

While none of us should reasonably aspire to this level, there is a powerful lesson in his story:

A life devoid of the need for external validation is a life lived on your terms. It is a life of true freedom.

Conflating money and freedom is the mistake that people seem to make—they incorrectly assume that more money equals more freedom, and wind up disappointed when it does not.

Money is a tool that can be used to gain freedom, but more often, it becomes a tool that keeps us running for more.

Once you’ve achieved a certain level of financial success, everything becomes about a quest for freedom. The ability to do what you want, with who you want, when you want is what everyone prizes above all else.

Freedom is the real goal.

Grigori Perelman realized that. It's time we all did as well.

***

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True freedom is rare, but incredibly apparent.

There are very few people who are truly free.

Those rare few have clearly been intentional about building this freedom into their lives.

They’ve avoided status traps that would have placed them back onto the treadmill.

One of the most significant lies we tell ourselves:

"If I get [X], then I'll be happy."

It's easy to convince yourself that your happiness is contingent upon some external milestone:

• Money
• Promotion
• Fancy stuff
• Recognitions

But these "if, then" traps are a dangerous mirage:

You climb to the top of that mountain, only to see the happiness you thought you'd find melt away and reappear in the distance.

If you convince yourself that your satisfaction is contingent upon the next achievement or milestone, you'll never find it.

Real satisfaction and happiness is an inside job:

Find it on the journey—or you won't find it at all.
The Arrival Fallacy is the term used to describe the false assumption that achieving a big goal will create lasting happiness or fulfillment in our lives.

You think you’ll be happy when you’ve arrived…

The reality is that achievement is not a durable source of happiness.

No one remembers your worst moments quite as much as you do. There are two common cognitive biases at play here:

1. Negativity Bias: We have a tendency to register and dwell on negative events (more than positive ones).

2. Spotlight Effect: We think everyone is staring at us, but in reality they're just thinking about themselves.

This hit me hard:

"20 years from now, the only people who will remember that you worked late are your kids."

The responses hit me even harder:

"The graveyard is full of 'irreplaceable' and 'important' people."

"I don’t remember what I was working on, I can’t tell you why it was important. But I can tell you how my not being there made my kids feel."

But I am of two minds here:

1. Being present with your kids is the most important thing.

2. Having your kids see you work hard with a clear purpose is a principle they'll remember forever.

It's easy to focus on the first point and lose sight of the second.

Understanding, navigating, and balancing the tension across the two is how I believe you ultimately "win" the game.

The reality is that not everyone has the luxury of building a life where they are going to be constantly present with their kids.

Some have to work two jobs or long hours to provide for them.

Some are working long hours to build towards some ambitious future.

Focus on what you can control:

1. Include your kids in the WHY: Make sure they know why you're working hard, why you're away, and why it's important.

2. When you're around, be present: Say yes to play and give them your full energy and attention. Time and energy are not the same thing. Your energy is what counts.

My dad's ability to navigate the tension is something I will always remember:
I saw him work extremely hard on things that lit him up intellectually, while never allowing them to consistently get in the way of what was most important to him (his family).

He would come home for dinner, play catch with me outside, then work late once I went to bed.

When he did have to miss dinners or games, I always felt connected because he took the time to explain the things he was excited about—why he was working hard on them and what he hoped to achieve with them.

I always felt included in the WHY and I always felt his energy and presence when he was around.

My dad controlled the controllable. I am forever grateful for it.

The entire narrative of work-life balance is flawed:

It's less about balance, more about harmony.

It's about how your work can flourish within the context of your entire life—how you can include your kids in the journey, how work and life can support each other (rather than fight each other).
In the end, I'd distill it down to three key points:

1. Ask better questions.
2. Embrace the imperfection.
3. Act according to your values.

If you can do that, you'll stay in the game long enough to win.




Recent learning:

Embrace the uncomfortable YES.

I work at home, so when my son would come bang on my office door right when I was about to sit down, I’d have to choose between him and the work.

I’ve learned that embracing 5 minutes of the uncomfortable YES is always worth it.

Harsh Truth: Your quest for perfection is hurting your progress.

In Excellent Advice for Living, Kevin Kelly proposes an interesting idea:

"When you have 90% of a large project completed finishing the final details will take another 90%."

The idea here is that closing out that last 10% of any big project is actually a significantly larger undertaking than anyone anticipates.

Many large projects are known for taking just as long to get through the final details as they did to get through the bulk of the actual work.

Marc Randolph, the co-founder of streaming giant Netflix, recently commented on his own adaptation of the 90% Rule:

The example he uses is around Netflix's early decision to not ship DVDs to Canada, writing, "we reasoned that even though it seemed like low-hanging fruit in terms of revenue, dealing with different currencies, languages, and other complications would serve as more of a distraction than a net positive."

Concluding the point, Randolph says, "You have to recognize that what looks like low hanging fruit rarely is...Freeing yourself up from worrying about all that lets you allocate more time and attention to the important stuff."

I'd distill these thoughts down to a single idea:

Good enough is often the optimal solution.

Ambitious, high-achieving people are more likely to get caught up in the perfection of that last 10% (which takes another 90% according to Kelly) than accept the good enough outcome and move on to the next important thing.

Training yourself to identify when perfection is getting in the way of your goals is a key skill to develop—in business as much as in life.

So, where are you allowing perfection to slow your progress?

***

If you enjoyed this or learned something, share it with others and follow me @SahilBloom for more in future.
This is a basic derivative of the 80/20 theory of Vilfredo Pareto (made famous by management consultant Joseph Juran).

That 90% is getting you most of the value, so if the last 10% is going to take forever (and not add much), you should skip it.

Applies so broadly to life.

I recently attended my 10-year Stanford University reunion.

10 lessons I learned:

1. Identity is the real thing we're searching for.

Everyone thinks they're looking for money or success, but what they're really looking for is identity. The search for identity is the common thread that connects everyone. Identity is fluid—embrace it in the present, diversify to lower your risk, and seek out new perspectives to challenge yourself.

2. Your daily habits show up on your face after 10 years.

When you're young, you can get away with treating your body and mind like crap. But you can't hide forever. 10 years later, your good (or bad) daily habits show up on your face.

3. The Medici Effect is real.

The Medici family's funding of the arts created a talent and idea density in Florence that gave rise to the Renaissance. College campuses are mini versions of 15th century Florence. Many had left campus and never experienced anything like it again. Conversely, those who made an effort to frequent high density locations had experienced the benefits.

4. Insecurity tells, confidence shows.

People who are crushing it rarely feel a need to tell you that they’re crushing it. Insecurity is loud, confidence is quiet.

5. Plans are great, but life will generally laugh at them.

Those who are thriving had kept their compass pointed to the north, but learned to take the blows and pivot on the fly. Laugh at your plans and keep moving forward.

6. Fighting the Zebra Effect is hard (but worth it).

Researchers struggled to study zebras because the stripes blended together in packs, so they placed a red dot on the side of zebras they wanted to track. They were quickly eaten by lions. Blending in is a survival mechanism. But it's only by taking risk to stand out that you accomplish remarkable things.

7. Freedom is rare, but incredibly apparent.

There were very few people who seemed truly free. The rare few had been intentional about building freedom into their lives. They weren't the richest, but their energy was infectious.

8. We get more embarrassing with age.

I used to wonder why parents were so embarrassing. Now I know, we get more embarrassing with age—or we just mature enough to be comfortable with ourselves. At the class party, we danced poorly and sang off tune. Proudly embarrassing.

9. Shared struggle builds unbreakable bonds.

My baseball teammates and I crawled through the metaphorical (and literal) mud together. Those bonds were forged through suffering, and they are not easily broken. Find the people you'd crawl through the mud with.

10. Life is much more fragile than you think.

Since 2013, we've lost several classmates and loved ones. But amidst the sadness, real beauty has come from it: Everyone is much quicker to smile, hug, and say "I love you" to an old friend.

***

Those were 10 lessons learned at my 10-year Stanford reunion.

What were your favorites from the list?

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Related to the Medici Effect:

This from @paulg makes a similarly beautiful point.

A monthly ritual that changed my life.

The Think Day

(bookmark this and try it later)

In the 1980s, Bill Gates began an annual tradition he called the Think Week.

Gates would seclude himself in a remote location, shut off communication, and spend a week dedicated to reading and thinking.

The radical approach became essential to his process:

"Think Week is a time when I can be creative and push my own thinking. It's a time to step outside the day-to-day demands of my job and really focus on the big picture." - Bill Gates

I first read about the Think Week a few years ago and knew I wanted to give it a shot.

I didn't have an entire week to dedicate to it (early career demands, family priorities, etc.), but figured I could adapt something with a similar core vision.

The Think Day was my creation:

Pick one day each month to step back from all of your day-to-day professional demands:

• Seclude yourself (mentally or physically).
• Shut off all of your devices.
• Put up an out-of-office response.

The goal: Spend the entire day reading, learning, journaling, and THINKING.

By doing this, you create the free time to zoom out, open your mind, and think creatively about the bigger picture.

My essential tools for Think Day:

• Journal and pen.
• Books/articles I've been wanting to read.
• Secluded location (at home, rental, or outside).
• Thinking prompts to spark my mind.

Six thinking prompts I've found particularly useful:

1. Are you hunting antelope (big important problems) or field mice (small urgent problems)?

2. How can you do less, but better?

3. What are your strongest beliefs? What would it take for you to change your mind on them?

4. What are a few things that you know now that you wish you knew 5 years ago?

5. What actions were you engaged in 5 years ago that you cringe at today? What actions are you engaged in today that you will cringe at in 5 years?

6. What would your 80-year-old self say about your decisions today?

I aim for an 8-hour window split into 60-minute focus blocks with walks in between.

You have to slow down to speed up.

In a speed-obsessed world, the benefits of slowing down are extensive:

• Restore energy
• Notice things you missed
• Be more deliberate with actions
• Focus on the highest leverage opportunities
• Move slow to move fast.

The Think Day can help. Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

***

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P.S. If you discounted this because of your perspective on Bill Gates, with respect, you're missing the forest for the trees.

The Think Day has nothing to do with Bill Gates.

Whatever your opinion on him, I'd suggest you to put it aside to consider the big picture of the idea.

I love the concept of the Life Force Pyramid.

(bookmark this for the next time you're in a rut)

The Life Force Pyramid is a foundational tool that Dr. Phil Stutz—the subject of the Stutz Netflix documentary—uses with his clients.

It consists of three levels:

• Body: Your physical health.
• People: Your relationships with others.
• Yourself: Your relationship with yourself.

The central idea: If you work on these three levels of the Life Force Pyramid, your life will improve.

1. Body

Taking care of the physical self through exercise, sleep, and diet is essential to driving yourself forward in life. When you're moving your body, sleeping well, and eating whole, nutritious foods, you immediately start to feel better. You start to identify as a winner, which has powerful ripple effects.

2. People

Strengthening and focusing on the relationships you have with others in your world. Healthy, supportive relationships give you the hand and footholds to climb higher and back from the depths. Importantly, this level requires you to take the initiative to foster and cultivate these healthy relationships.

3. Yourself

Strengthening and focusing on the relationship you have with yourself. Use journaling or walking self-reflection to connect with your thoughts and state of mind. Getting things out on paper is often therapeutic, so journaling can be a healthy practice to start.

Next time you find yourself in a rut, use the Life Force Pyramid: Start at the base and work your way up.

If you enjoyed this or learned something, follow me @SahilBloom for more in future.


Most people will tell you it starts in the mind, but I'm a big believer that everything starts with the body.

My first piece of advice to anyone trying to improve their standing:

Wake up early and work out.

There's no such thing as a loser who wakes up at 5am and works out.

Come hang out with @awilkinson and me in Vancouver on November 3!

I’m a big believer in the power of in person, human connection, which is one of the reasons I’m thrilled to be hosting this event.

It will bring together awesome people ready to learn and grow.

We’ll be having a live conversation on a range of topics:

- Daily systems for success
- Businesses and startups
- Things we wish we knew earlier
- and much more

I promise I’ll stay and meet every single person who attends.

Get your tickets and come join us!




P.S. I don’t want cost to be the reason any hungry young person is unable to attend.

If you aren’t able to afford a ticket, please DM me with a short message on why you’d like to attend.

I’ll happily sponsor a number of people!

Harsh Truth: Status games are impossible to avoid.

The Key: Focus on EARNED status, not BOUGHT status.

Earned status has depth, it has texture, it’s real.

Bought status is just another stupid chase.

When you focus on what must be earned, you find growth and fulfillment. “Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.”

A cheat code I wish I knew at 22:

The 4 Types of Luck

In 1978, a neurologist named Dr. James Austin published a book entitled Chase, Chance, & Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty.

In it, he proposed that there are 4 types of luck:

(1) Blind Luck
(2) Luck from Motion
(3) Luck from Awareness
(4) Luck from Uniqueness

Here's what they are:

Type 1: Blind Luck

Completely out of your control:

• Where you are born
• Who you are born to
• Base circumstances of your life
• "Acts of God"

These are the truly random occurrences of the universe.

Type 2: Luck from Motion

You’re creating motion and collisions through hustle and energy that you are inserting into an ecosystem.

You increase your luck surface area through simple movement.

The increase in collisions opens you up to more lucky events.

Type 3: Luck from Awareness

Depth of understanding within a given arena allows you to become very good at positioning yourself for lucky breaks.

Naval says: "You become very good at spotting luck."

You can “spot luck” from a mile away because of your knowledge and experience.

Type 4: Luck from Uniqueness

Your unique set of attributes attracts specific luck to you.

“[This type] favors those with distinctive, if not eccentric hobbies, personal lifestyles, and motor behaviors.” - Dr. James Austin

Type 4 Luck actually seeks you out.

The Stages of Luck

I personally think of Types 1-3 as coming in stages as you grow up:

• Type 1 dictates your early years
• Type 2 as you hustle in your 20
• Type 3 as you gain experience in your 30s+

Type 4 is unique—it’s dislocated from age.

Always remember the Luck Razor:

When choosing between two paths, choose the path that has a larger LUCK SURFACE AREA.

Your actions put you in a position where luck is more likely to strike.

It’s hard to get lucky watching TV at home—it’s easy to get lucky when you’re engaging and learning.

There are lots of simple ways to increase your luck surface area:

• Talk to more new people
• Send more cold emails
• Write/share in public
• Participate in digital communities
• Spend time in rooms where you feel like the dumb one

To recap the 4 types of luck:

• Type 1: Blind Luck
• Type 2: Luck from Motion
• Type 3: Luck from Awareness
• Type 4: Luck from Uniqueness

If you enjoyed this and learned something new, follow me @SahilBloom for more in the future!
Always remember my Luck Razor:

When choosing between two paths, choose the path that has a larger LUCK SURFACE AREA.

Your actions put you in a position where luck is more likely to strike.

A young statistician saved their lives.

His insight (and how it can change yours):

During World War II, the U.S. wanted to add reinforcement armor to specific areas of its planes.

Analysts examined returning bombers and plotted the bullet holes and damage on them (as in the image below).

Based on this analysis, they came to the conclusion that adding armor to the tail, body, and wings would improve their odds of survival.

But a young statistician named Abraham Wald noted that this would be a tragic mistake.

By only plotting data on the planes that returned, they were systematically omitting the data on a critical, informative subset:

The planes that were damaged and unable to return.

Abraham Wald recognized a key fact:

• "Seen" planes had sustained damage that was survivable.
• "Unseen" planes had sustained damage that was not survivable.

Wald concluded that armor should be added to the *unharmed* regions of the returning planes (the areas without bullet holes on the image below).

His profound logic:

Where the survivors were unharmed was actually where the planes were most vulnerable.

Based on his insight, the military reinforced the engine and other vulnerable parts, significantly improving the safety of the crews during combat and saving thousands of lives.

Abraham Wald had identified a cognitive bias called "Survivorship Bias":

The error resulting from systematically focusing on survivors (successes) and ignoring casualties (failures) that causes us to miss the true base rates of survival (the actual probability of success) and arrive at flawed conclusions.

We see examples of Survivorship Bias all around us:

1. We read books on the common traits of successful people, but fail to consider all of the unsuccessful people who possessed those same traits.

2. We applaud the belief when we hear that an entrepreneur took out a second mortgage and succeeded, but fail to consider all of the entrepreneurs who did the same and went bankrupt.

3. We study the cultural strategies of the most successful companies, but fail to consider all of the companies that followed those same strategies and fell apart.

When we fail to consider the range of outcomes and the hidden evidence, we develop a skewed (and often incorrect) view of reality.

It cannot be avoided altogether, because the vast majority of books and history are written by and about the survivors and victors, but wherever possible, consider the unseen evidence.

Remember: What is unseen often has just as much value as what is seen.

***

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An example of this that always stood out in my mind:

After many failures, James Dyson put up his home as collateral for a loan to take control of manufacturing and sales for his product.

"He bet on himself and made billions!"

But how many did the same and lost it all?

Harsh Truth: Your big goals are destroying your happiness.

3 reasons why (and what to do about it):

1. Extrinsic Focus

In a meta-analysis of 105 studies covering over 70,000 participants, researchers found that valuing and prioritizing extrinsic goals (over intrinsic goals) is a recipe for lower well-being.

My observation is that Big Goals tend to be extrinsic in nature:

• Promotion, title, or raise
• Financial achievement
• Hitting a specific follower count

These Big Goals become how we define success for ourselves and our lives.

Achieving the last Big Goal is never enough, as we simply reset our scoreboard and need to achieve the next Big Goal to feel like a success.

By defining our success on the basis of these extrinsic goals, we are setting ourselves up for unhappiness.

2. The Arrival Fallacy

How many times have you assumed that your lasting happiness was on the other side of some Big Goal (a promotion, a pay raise, another degree, etc.)? How many times have you been proven wrong in this assumption?

The Arrival Fallacy is the term used to describe the false assumption that achieving a Big Goal will create that lasting happiness in our lives.

It's a "When, Then" psychology that says "when I achieve X, then I'll be happy." The reality is that achievement is not a lasting source of happiness.

3. Purpose Dissipation

When you are hunting a Big Goal, you wake up with a clear purpose.

After you achieve it, you wake up with no clear reason to push yourself. You feel a bit lost, as you may not know what you're working on or towards that day.

The focus on a singular Big Goal creates a purpose, but also destroys it once the Big Goal is achieved.

Ok, so what can we do about it?

Set direction with Big Goals, but focus on Micro Goals.

Micro Goals are small, incremental growth and development targets. They aren't the giant leaps, but the small steps that happen along the way.

Micro Goals solve the three main pain points of Big Goals:

• More intrinsic by nature—partially because they aren't big enough to share publicly for clout or external affirmation. They refocus you internally.

• Small enough that you don't tie some grand happiness assumptions to their achievement. They keep you motivated to grow, without the pressure that they will individually change your life.

• Continuous vs. discrete. There is no big purpose let down, because there is always another Micro Goal on the near-term horizon that you can use for motivation.

My go-forward approach is as follows:

1. Establish Big Goal to set direction.

2. Establish Micro Goals to set daily focus.

3. Adjust and course correct based on evidence.

Balancing the Big with a focus on the Micro is where I plan to thrive. Small is beautiful. A lot of small wins add up to something spectacular.

Remember: Ordinary becomes extraordinary.

***

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It sucks to miss a goal.

But when we hit it, we’re supposed to feel great.

Then you wake up the next day, and think, "Ok, now what?"

You should feel great, but you don't, which makes you feel worse.

No one wants to hear your champagne problems, so you keep them to yourself.

Steve Jobs had his best ideas while walking—this Stanford study explains why...

In 2014, a team of Stanford researchers examined how creativity levels were impacted by walking.

They conducted experiments with 176 participants that placed them in different situations:

• Walking on a treadmill facing a wall
• Walking outside
• Sitting inside facing a wall
• Sitting outside

In each situation, the participants were asked to complete a range of tasks that are typically used to measure creative thinking. For example, a test of "divergent thinking" asked the participants to come up with as many uses as possible for a set of objects.

The results were incredible:

Participants were dramatically more creative while walking than sitting.

In fact, one group of participants who took back-to-back tests, first sitting inside and then walking inside on a treadmill, saw a 60% improvement in creative output while walking vs. sitting!

Walking, indoors or outdoors, had a similar robust positive impact on creative thinking.

The authors concluded, "Many people anecdotally claim they do their best thinking when walking. We finally may be taking a step, or two, toward discovering why."

Many of history's greatest thinkers, entrepreneurs, artists, and athletes have believed in the power of walking.

It's a simple, free tool we can all use to dramatically improve our lives. Schedule more walks into your weeks.

Simple challenge for all of you:

Go for a 30-minute tech-free walk every single day this week.

• No phone
• No music
• No podcasts
• No articles
• No audiobooks

Just you, your thoughts, your gratitude, and the fresh air.

It’s a simple reset that will unlock new creativity and shift your perspective.

"Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it." - Søren Kierkegaard

If you enjoyed this or learned something, follow me @SahilBloom for more in future!
Apple's headquarters pay homage to their founder's love of creative walks.

There are over 4 miles of walking trails and over 9,000 trees on site.

If that doesn't spark your creativity, nothing will!

A 25-year-old follower recently messaged me asking how to build financial wealth.

I shared my three core principles:

1) Build Your Income

Focus here first.

Invest in building marketable skills (sales, design, copywriting, coding, etc.) that will allow you to build strong primary employment income and establish secondary income streams in the future.

Build the income engine before worrying about anything else. You can’t cut your way to a financially wealthy life.

2) Manage Your Expenses

Never let your expenses grow in line with your income.

Live below your means for a period of time in your early years and you will reap the rewards in the future.

This doesn’t mean giving up on everything fun, it just means being disciplined and making sure there’s a growing gap between your income and expenses.

3) Invest in Compounders

Invest the gap between your income and expenses in long-term compounders.

Unless you have an actual edge (hint: you probably don’t), keep it simple. 90% of my investable assets are in diversified index funds. I buy every week and hold. I don’t think about timing the market.

A lot of people waste time thinking about how to generate a higher investing return when they would be much better off thinking about how to generate a higher income.

Keep it simple and let your investments compound for the long-term.

If you are looking to establish yourself financially, these three principles are a good place to start.

I hope this helps someone else out there make forward progress on their journey.

🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
Avoid the difficult:

It’s much harder to outperform the market over 10 years than it is to 3-5x your income.

Focus on what you can control:

- Build skills
- Leverage skills

Generate returns the easy, controllable way.