Warren Buffett said that the best investment you can make is not in the markets, but instead, in yourself.
That’s pretty deep and until today I had no idea what he meant.
Yes, you could learn a new skill like data analysis and translate that into more money at work or something, but I think Buffett meant something slightly different.
He’s big into the power of compounding. Remember Einstein said that compounding is the eighth wonder of the world. To get the full power of compounding, you have to start something (like investing) early, and do it for a long time, so that you start making money on the money you make.
Imagine that you learned a new skill like touch typing early in life. Think on just one variable, time-saving, just how much that would have saved you. Imagine that I had done this at 19, and not at 39. That’s 20 more years of touch typing wizardry I would have had, and 20 years of faster typing. It isn’t just this variable that would have been impacted. Faster typing would mean that I could have typed at the speed of thought and not had to slow my thoughts down every time I two-finger typed. Think about all that lost thought. That’s a loss of a return on a return.
Invest in yourself now. Now is as early as you can do it. And the earlier you invest in yourself, the longer you can compound the investment.
What would you do? How would you invest in yourself? Would you get fit? Learn a language, learn to code, learn to cook delicious meals, parachute, sell things well, paint, write better, memory training, conversation skills etc? Imagine you learned all of that in the next 2 years. Not crazy or ridiculous. Imagine compounding all that knowledge, all that interweaving of new and old knowledge? And then compounding all of that with new skills, knowledge and experience? Now that would be an incredible investment.
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