I’ve spent a lot of time trying different diets. I’ve experimented with high fat, low carb, meat and fruit only, and much more. And while I enjoyed seeing how different diets affected my mood, energy, and body composition, I learned a much bigger lesson along the way: If what you do isn’t sustainable, then it doesn’t matter if it works.
The problem with most diets is that the word “diet” seems temporary in nature. Diets are pitched as something that you can do for now and then afterwards you can go back to eating whatever you want.
This is fine if you’re a professional bodybuilder getting ready for a show. In that case there is a specific goal with a specific time frame in mind. But, for most people, this kind of diet-is-temporary thinking is a recipe for disaster. Because as soon as the diet ends, so does your progress. For a diet to truly work in the long run, it has to be permanent. It has to lead to an actual lifestyle change.
I’ve found the same thing applies outside of nutrition as well. When trying a new exercise program, I know that if there’s a part of the program that I dread too much, I’ll eventually quit. To counteract this, I replace those difficult parts with something slightly less difficult. This leads me to stick with that routine for longer, which provides better long-term results. Small increases in convenience can lead to large increases in adherence.
The same thing is true when it comes to building wealth. If you can’t find a sustainable way to add to your investments and stick with those investments over time, then you’ll have problems down the road. You might stop investing altogether or you might quit on your investments at the worst possible time. Moving to cash during a panic is one example of this, but I can think of many others.
For example, I’ve previously discussed my attempts at buying individual stocks and random cryptocurrencies. And neither turned out well. Why? Because I wasn’t doing something sustainable. I thought I would be able to stick with these for the long run. However, at the first sign of panic, I got out. I didn’t have the mental justification to hold these investments indefinitely. I didn’t have any sort of thesis on when to sell.
Fortunately, my thinking is quite different when it comes to owning a diversified passive index fund/ETF. I understand exactly why I am buying them and why I will continue buying them regardless of current circumstances. Even during the darkest days of the COVID crash, I didn’t sell any of my stocks and actually increased my equity exposure. While this was partially luck on my part, my justification for owning a diversified basket of stocks isn’t. If stocks (as a whole) fall 50%, I know I will just keep buying them. I can play this game indefinitely.
But that’s not true when it comes to most crypto, individual stocks, and a host of other asset classes. I am not saying that you should never buy these. But if you are buying them, do you know why you are buying them? Do you have a sustainable way of owning them?
I didn’t and I learned that the hard way. That’s why it’s easy for me to pass on these kinds of investments now. I have no inclination to own them because I know what’s going to happen when I do. I know I won’t be able to stick with them. This removes all the temptation for me.
Maybe you know you can stick with them and that’s great. Either way, the key is understanding yourself and what you can do day in and day out. What can you sustain in terms of your workload? Your relationships? Your diet? Your exercise? Your investments?
All of these questions take time to answer. However, the quicker you can figure them out, the quicker you can focus your attention elsewhere. Because once you have a sustainable way of living, then the rest of your life becomes much easier. You don’t have to second guess your decisions. You can keep making progress.
Of course, you may find that what’s sustainable changes over time. And that’s natural. You’ll never have everything perfect in your life. However, making small steps toward that long-term sustainability can work wonders. I think this partially explains why people like Steve Jobs ended up wearing the same outfit every day. They “solved” one problem in their life so they never had to spend time thinking about it again.
While wearing the same outfit everyday can be a bit extreme, the logic holds. The fewer conscience decisions you have to make throughout your day, the more you can focus elsewhere. Jeff Bezos wrote something similar when discussing the importance of his decision-making process:
If I make, like, three good decisions a day, that’s enough, and they should just be as high quality as I can make them. Warren Buffet says he’s good if he makes three good decisions a year, and I really believe that.
By designing systems for many of the basic decisions in your life, you can spend more time focusing on the more difficult ones.
This is why I, and many others, have had success with Just Keep Buying as an investment philosophy. Because it provides a relatively simple solution to a complex problem. And, once you implement it, you can work on more important things in your financial life like raising your income. My point isn’t to plug my book. It’s to explain how these sustainable systems can give you the mental freedom to work on more difficult problems.
Ultimately, the path to lasting success in any area of your life isn’t in quick fixes or temporary solutions. It’s about finding the actions that you can maintain and that also align with who you are. Once you’ve done that, then you can truly transform your life…one sustainable choice at a time.
Thank you for reading.
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This is post 409. Any code I have related to this post can be found here with the same numbering: https://github.com/nmaggiulli/of-dollars-and-data
