Learn: Purchase behavior, pay yourself, founding Pennsylvania 

Read: 3 mins

Greetings from Austin,

Happy Black Friday Thanksgiving. Hope your stomachs are full and your carts are empty. 

Here are 3 desserts to sweeten your week.

🧠 Purchase vs Purchaser

We say a lot when it comes to our purchases. 

But more interesting, is what our purchases say about us. 

• I bought a Blinkist subscription for 75% off! (purchase)
• I revisit core concepts of my favorite books because I enjoy learning. (purchaser)

Use this as a quick test before purchasing to see if you actually want something.

💸 Pay Yourself First 

A well-known personal finance tip is to “pay yourself first.” 

This means setting aside savings before paying bills and other purchases. 

Otherwise we overspend—since humans are really bad long-term planners. 

Pretty obvious. 

Less obvious is the same concept, but applied to our TIME. 

The same way we may misspend our money, we often misspend our time.

I loved the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, which explains this eloquently: 

"If you try to find time for your most valued activities by first dealing with all the other important demands on your time, in the hope that there’ll be some left over at the end, you’ll be disappointed. So if a certain activity really maters to you – a creative project, say, through it could just as easily be nurturing a relationship, or activism in the service of some cause – the only way to be sure it will happen is to do some if it today, no matter how little, no matter how many other genuinely big rocks may be begging for your attention."

One example of “pay yourself first” for me is working out first thing in the morning. Sure, it's similar to the trite advice of doing the hardest thing first.

But here’s a major difference...

When we pay ourselves first with money, we EARN INTEREST on that payment. 

A similar thing applies to our time.

When I work out first thing in the morning (pay myself first) I reap the benefits (the interest) the rest of the day by improved mood/focus/energy.  

That’s a small micro example. But the same thing applies to our macro activities (skills, relationships, hobbies).

Whether playing basketball, learning a skill, volunteering, or anything else we want to do... These pay future dividends toward the type of person we want to be. Start today.

🕤 Founding Time

Today we admire entrepreneurs founding companies. 

But back in the 1600’s, it was the Quakers founding colonies. 

Such as the OG William Penn (yes, founder of Pennsylvania) who famously quipped: 

 “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”

So we’ve struggled with this whole time management thing for centuries.

Seems there is only one solution…

Pay yourself first.

Salud,

Mitchell