For the past few years, I’ve tried to maximize the amount of good decisions to make now that will pay dividends for years to come.
I invest. I read books. I exercise.
Is that enough to guarantee a fruitful future?
I’m not sure.
You are only young once and you only get one shot at starting things early.
You can’t make a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.
I’m 21. I can’t turn back and become 18 again. I can’t redo high school. I can’t turn myself into a child prodigy programmer.
I can only focus on now.
When you start to realize the importance of your choices, you start to consider things more seriously.
What do most people look back on and wish they had started earlier?
Building assets.
The most important lesson taught in Rich Dad, Poor Dad is to build and acquire assets and to avoid liabilities.
For our purposes, an asset is anything that brings rewards over time. A liability is anything that incurs cost over time.
A dividend stock is an asset. You own it and every so often, you are paid for owning it.
A cable subscription is a liability. You have to pay to have it. You lose money every month because of it.
It's that simple.
What excites me about this concept in 2020?
The internet has created new asset classes.
Blog posts are assets. Podcasts are assets. YouTube videos are assets. Designs are assets.
You produce them once and over time they continue to bring value as long as the internet exists.
In high school, I made a few punny stickers inspired by Speech and Debate humor. I put them on RedBubble and called it a day.
I’ve never marketed them. I sell them on an anonymous account. I still sell a few a week.
These stickers are assets. I produced them once and over time I get rewarded for them.
Last summer, I wrote an article explaining all the software I used for staying disciplined and focused.
It still gets read a few times a week by random people all over the world.
Work I did over a year ago continues to benefit me and provide value for others.
In the world of the internet, you don’t need to buy real estate, music licenses, or stocks to acquire assets. You don’t need to invent and obtain patents.
You just need to create.
Share what you are learning about, thinking about, or doing. Talk about it. Write about it. Make art. Teach it.
My next goal is to reach the first real tipping point for content creation.
After you’ve made enough content between videos, tweets, designs, podcasts, articles, you’ll reach a point where at almost any moment, someone is interacting with something you produced.
You are able to provide value for people while sleeping, eating, or working out.
That's a powerful place to be and I'm not there yet.
I have a lot more to produce before getting there.
To motivate myself, I keep the following rule handy: produce more than you consume.
If you don’t find a way to make money or provide value while you sleep, you will work for money until you die.
Nobody wants that.
Produce more than you consume.
Don’t watch 30 minutes of TV before bed. Write for 30 minutes instead.
Creation is an act of learning. Consumption is a temporary remedy for boredom.
Produce more than you consume.
Bias toward action.
Make good decisions now.
Produce more than you consume.