I’m excited to finally getting around to starting a blog. I’ve tried a few times I always would let myself get caught up in the excitement of something new, spend a bunch of time fiddling with making a website I was ‘happy’ with, and failing to produce anything substantial. I’m still not completely sure what I hope to get from this, but I hope that with time and content I’ll be able to figure out what I’m comfortable putting out, and what I actually want to do longer term. Last night I was talking to someone on Discord who asked why I studied economics and finance and what I was hoping to do with it and I really struggled to come up with a good answer. I fumbled talking about how much I enjoy macroeconomics, and that I really consider myself a more conservative investor so being able to see larger macroeconomic trends helps me protect myself and my capital over longer time periods. That slight edge will pay off in dividends (literally) down the line.
I’m watching Martin break down different companies right now, it looks like he’s making a list of all of the largest market cap companies in the world, then dividing them up by industry. I titled this post Focus because I was going back through some archives of his and found someone who asked a pretty simple, but common question.
”What is the most common trait cross people with great success?”
The unfortunate answer is the most common answer, and hopefully the answer that should be common sense to most. Focus. Focus is one of the most powerful tools that humans have, but it’s also one of the most difficult tools to properly channel and manage. I don’t think any other animal or creature is able to spend as much time focused on one single task as humans (as I wrote this I thought about oysters making pearls… Are there any other animals with extremely slow growth/development characteristics?) All Most things great require time and pressure to develop… And that’s real time, not a year or two and calling it quits. It takes years of failure to get to true success, and like Josh Answers was saying yesterday it’s a key component to making sure that your success isn’t hypocritcal or a fluke. Staying power is the divider between the great and the adequate, and this week I made up my mind that I’m staying where I’m at until I hit success.
The Distractions
This is where I really start to crumble, but the challenge is that I feel like I’m being productive, but just struggle to complete the first task I’m supposed to be focusing on, because I feel like I found a new thing that will serve me better than whatever I was focusing on originally. Sometimes this has to be true, but a majority of the time I know I would be better off just sticking with the original text first. I’m 160 pages into the 600 page book, “The Intelligent Investor”, and I really am enjoying the book and feel obligated to finish it, but I’ve just learned about these new finance classes available free online that I want to dive into. I’m torn by wanting to begin a true Fundamentals of Finance class finally, but like I said I want to finish this book. I should probably get back to reading instead of writing anyways.
The Purpose of This
I’m here to try and find how I can provide journalistic value to the public. So many news sources and writers are heavily biased, willfully ignorant to their biases, or not willing to write about things that clash against their beliefs. I want to be intellectually honest, and not willing to compromise my morals or perspective when presenting a story. If those things are important to you please let me know, and ask about any topics you’re more interested in learning about. I’d love to learn it with you.