I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
Experiences > things
Hi Reader,
You’ve probably heard of the famous Marshmallow Test:
A child is presented with a marshmallow on a plate and told the researcher needs to leave the room. If they wait until the researcher returns, they can have two marshmallows.
How long the child waits was seen as an indication of ability to delay gratification.
More recent studies have shown there may be a weaker correlation between childhood delayed gratification and later achievement than previously thought—and that socioeconomic factors tend to be better predictors of success.
Delayed gratification
But regardless of whether one’s chances of succeeding in life can be determined at age five, the importance of delayed gratification has been drilled into our heads for decades.
And it makes sense: by investing today, you can get greater returns tomorrow.
Warren Buffet is a great example of this. He’s undoubtedly a smart investor, but a huge part of his success is due simply to how long he’s been investing and how consistent he’s been over such a long period of time.
His ability to invest in the future, and delay gratification, compounds over time.
Of course, you have to ask yourself: what is the end goal? It’s easy to take this to the extreme.
Many people delay, and delay, and delay gratification until… they’re dead.
But what’s the point? If all you’re doing is investing in the future, you just might forget to live.
A system for fun
Having a strong ability to delay gratification is almost always praised as a positive thing. For good reason! There are certainly many benefits.
But you might find it difficult to live in the moment if that’s you.
I know for myself, if I’m not careful, I can easily get caught up in my work and forget to enjoy the process.
You might even feel guilty about indulging in little pleasures and constantly debating with yourself over whether something is worth the splurge or not.
What I’ve found works well is to create a system for myself. You can try this too:
First, set up a system on autopilot that ensures you’re hitting your savings and investing goals—whatever those are.
Above that, take a percentage (it could be 5% or 10%) that has to be spent on fun.
If you don’t automate this, you’ll never do it, but if you set up systems that take the thinking out of it, you’ll be more likely to invest in having some fun now and enjoying life.
Experiences > things
Your first inclination will be to spend this “fun” money on things.
New gadgets can be nice, and they can increase your enjoyment for a little while. But more often than not, you’ll find investing in experiences to be much more meaningful.
What is the value of attending a concert?
It’s hard to quantify. But I recently spent more than I care to admit on a couple of Taylor Swift concert tickets, and it was one of the best experiences I’ve had.
Maybe it’s a trip to a theme park with your family, or a vacation in the mountains, or a trip to a foreign country.
Experiences are just fun. And they create much more lasting memories than things.
You only have one life. Don’t forget to live along the way!
SPONSORED BY HEDONOVA
One Fund for All Alternative Investments
Ready to take your investments to the next level? With Hedonova, you can now access a highly profitable market of alternative investments. Invest in equipment finance, litigation finance, real estate and more with their state-of-the-art platform, backed by Morgan Stanley and the Royal House of Oman. Investors enjoyed 32% returns in 2022, plus Hedonova has a AA+ Moody's rating and 4.8 customer service rating on Trustpilot. It's like having a mutual fund for all your alternative asset needs—all within one fund! Don't let this opportunity pass you by and join Hedonova today.
PODCAST
Future Billionaires Will Come From Social Media
I was recently on The Pomp Podcast with Anthony Pompliano.
We talk about being a billion dollar creator, building companies from scratch versus buying them, how the greatest minds on the internet have built audiences, and how they think about monetizing them over time.
(Note: The intro music is a bit loud the first 2 minutes. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.)
JOBS
ConvertKit is hiring a VP of Engineering
Want to help us build ConvertKit?
We're hiring a VP of Engineering who will be a strong leader for the company, a terrific collaborator for Product, and an excellent people manager who can guide the team to ship high-quality, reliable and scalable software quickly.
Here's a link with more details on the position (feel free to share it with someone you know would be a good fit):
Learn more about the position »
Inside the Twitter algorithm (what makes tweets go viral)
Did you know Twitter made it's algorithm open source?
This thread breaks down some of what we now know about how tweets are promoted on the platform.
For instance, your follower-to-following ratio matters (meaning if you follow way more people than follow you, it hurts).
Have a great week!
—Nathan
Nathan Barry
I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
Hey Reader, If I could solve only one thing in my business, that would have the biggest impact, what would that be? This is the question every great entrepreneur obsesses over. Rather than trying to do everything at once, you look for the bottleneck and focus on solving that. There’s a book called The Goal by an Israeli physicist named Eliyahu Goldratt. It’s a 1984 business novel that business systems nerds love. However if you’re not a business systems nerd you probably… won’t love it. It’s...
Hey Reader, Have you ever spent money on something and immediately felt guilty afterward? Will Guidara spends his money foolishly on purpose. And he thinks you should too. He once bought an entire barrel of whiskey and put it in his basement. He also put a skee-ball machine in the office. Is he going to get a monetary return on either of these things? No. But that’s kind of the point. He calls it the 95/5 rule: Manage your money and time like a maniac 95% of the time (no expense is too...
Hey Reader, Have you ever spent a whole day on something almost nobody saw? It's painful when the whole reason you worked hard was because you wanted to reach people. If you teach a workshop in person, you reach the 20 people in that room. But if you record that same workshop once, you can keep teaching for years on autopilot. This is the concept of leverage, and it's something I talk about in my upcoming book, The Ladders of Wealth (you can pre-order it now). A lot of people will look back...