On Twitter I follow the endlessly entertaining Ryan Kulp – an American entrepreneur turned K-Pop performer (seriously).
You might not be a fan of all his views, but it’s hard to take issue with the wisdom of his life philosophy:
Examples of each might be:
Stronger:
- Go to the gym
- Run
- Take the stairs instead of the lift
- Walk or cycle instead of driving
Smarter:
- Read books
- Learn a language
- Seek out great conversations
- Practice generating new ideas
Richer:
- Create assets
- Run a side-business
- Manage your investments
I took a quick inventory of my own habits and was pleased to see that I fare pretty well: every day I study flashcards and read quality articles (smarter), lift weights, run or at least walk a good distance (stronger) and work on growing a business and making investments (richer).
Ryan’s philosophy lines up nicely with Peter Kaufman’s definition of compound interest: “dogged incremental constant progress over a very long time frame“.
He points out that most people go wrong by not being constant. When you interrupt constancy you lose the compounding effect, putting you back on a linear rather than exponential path. It’s like waiting years for £100 to turn into £150 with compound interest, then withdrawing your £50 rather than allowing the effect of the compounding to accelerate.
In other words, a small, consistent effort every day leads to far better results than a herculean effort every so often.
Maybe Stronger/Smarter/Richer isn’t the most meaningful triad for you. Maybe it’s Happier/Calmer/Wiser, or something else entirely.
But if you identify what matters most to you and work on it just a tiny amount every day, over a long enough period of time it’s impossible to fail.