Is the goal to get rich or stay rich?

The Sunday Essay ☕️

Nov 19, 2023

∙ Paid

There is a lot of emphasis these days on rest and recovery. Endless newsletters and podcasts that share the importance of healing and being “kind to yourself.”

And I agree - rest, recovery, and a good debrief are important - as long as you have something to rest from. The problem is that most people skip the hard work and go straight for the rest.

Most people spend their life rolling downhill - taking the path of least resistance.

When you peruse the people that surround you in life, it is not hard to determine whose situation is a consequence of vision, strategy, work and discipline and whose situation is a consequence of comfort, complacency and settling for less than they dreamed.

The evidence surrounds us - when we see a super fit person walking down the street, we notice them - because they are an anomaly.

Becoming super fit is a path of hard-core resistance. Most people aren’t going to do that.

So is building a career you truly love and that rewards you favourably.

Google whichever employee satisfaction survey you want; the consistent theme is that people work jobs they don’t enjoy, for companies that don’t inspire them, in exchange for pay they feel is insufficient.

But they settled. Rolled down the hill.

“Most people die at 25, but aren’t buried until 75.” - Benjamin Franklin

I think about this in the context of social media distraction.

When sitting in a waiting room or standing in line, how many people are going to stoically sit with their thoughts and resist the urge to pull out their phone to scroll for a quick dopamine hit?

It is the same muscle - discipline. Most will pull out the phone—the path of least resistance.

There is danger in this. We are all armed with brilliant little devices that help us escape our thoughts and disappear down the rabbit holes of “scroll culture.”

We know social media platforms are designed to pay attention to everything we look at. Their revenue model depends on us staying on their platform. So if we stop to look at one post longer than another - or heaven forbid, click or engage with something, the algorithm will feed us more and more of the same.

When you see the faces of the people around you unconsciously bent toward their devices, the vast majority are tumbling down a unique path, becoming surrounded by more content that affirms their convictions, biases and fears.

People settle for being out of shape. They settle for careers they don’t love. And when they open their phones, they settle for the cultural and political beliefs that are served to them.

They have no agency. No sovereignty.

This is why it is so important to plan, strategize and execute a process.

Most people want to be wealthier than they are. Most want to be fitter than they are.

Far fewer people want to do the things that make you wealthy and fit.

So focusing on the goal, although fun - and important, is not as important as focusing on the process.

If I want to run an ultramarathon, I can focus on the ultramarathon - or I can focus on running every single day.

One of these is more productive than the other.

“Success is not meant to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.” - Jim Rohn

If I want to become wealthy, I can focus on “becoming wealthy” - or I can focus on building and protecting wealth every single day - how can I increase my cash flow, how can I leverage my savings better, what can I do to increase my skills and build my competitive advantage?

The little things we do every day transform us into the person who can run further and earn faster.

Focusing on the little things - the boring and laborious process, should be the goal.