Welcome!
This is an email I send to keep in touch with people and share a bit about what I'm doing and thinking about.
This month, I'm:
- Quitting a pointless habit
- Staying accountable
- Being kicked out of my home
You're receiving this monthly email because you signed up for it at robdix.com, or you opted in after reading my book The Price Of Money, or I added you manually because we've spoken one-to-one.
If you don't enjoy it, feel free to unsubscribe at the bottom – I won't be notified and I'll never even know!
🦉 The over-power of habit
The other day I completed my 1,000th consecutive day of Duolingo. But in truth, I've been wanting to quit since before day 600... and I probably should have done.
"Streaks" are insanely powerful – and in my case, often too powerful. My wife and I once did a 30-day meditation challenge that we refused to let go of until day 100.
At their best, they create cornerstone habits. For example, you could say that 5 minutes of Spanish per day (just enough to keep the streak alive) kept the goal warm while I was focused on other things.
But they can also be a trap: am I still learning, or just maintaining a number? For me, with Duolingo it was the latter: I wasn't giving it enough focus to learn much, and it was sheer fluke that I ended up coming back to learning Spanish more seriously.
I've taken it as a reminder to challenge the belief that consistency is always a good thing. It has its place, but I can end up being too rigid in my thinking and resistant to change.
Anyway: I'm relieved to have hit the 1,000 days, taken the screenshot, and now I can say adiós to my pointless daily obligation!
Yeah and I was doing it at 5am – if this morning routine doesn't guarantee me becoming a future billionaire I don't know what will
🙌 Everyone needs their own hype squad
For my new book I came up with (OK, stole from entrepreneur and author Noah Kagan) the idea of a "launch team" – a group of people who wanted to get involved and lend their support early in return for some goodies.
And I'm so glad I did. I'm accountable for sending weekly updates, which forces me to do what I'm supposed to be doing so I have something to update on. It also gives me a ready-made focus group to test new ideas.
This was the insane level of engagement from the first update I sent:
If you're planning a project of your own, I strongly recommend doing something similar. Even if it's just 5 friends in a WhatsApp group who can cheer you on and chip in ideas, it's so much better than slogging through alone.
(And if you want to join my launch team, it's open for another few days until I "go public" and kick off the pre-order campaign in earnest. You can pop in your details here and I'll follow up with you personally. As part of the deal you get an autographed bookplate, an invitation to my online launch party, and some other bits and bobs.)
I was interviewed by two of the world's tallest podcasters for the Making Money show (episode coming out in January)
🙃 The downside of renting
I talk a lot about the joys of renting rather than owning, so it's only fair that I share the downsides too.
Our landlord has been trying to sell for ages, and seems to have found a buyer who wants to live here – so we'll probably have to move out if/when it goes through.
This is, one can't deny, the downside of renting: we'll have all the expense and aggro of a move through no fault of our own, on a timeline we didn't choose.
It's the first time we're moving when it hasn't been our choice, so it's a good test of whether it'll make me rethink the whole lifestyle. And I'm pleased to report that so far, after a day of being a bit miffed, we're approaching it as an opportunity.
We're currently in a 3-bedroom flat. But would we rather move to a 2-bedroom (giving up my office), and spend the money we're saving on other things we value more?
Are we happy on the development we live in now? Is there anywhere new and exciting out there that we could try?
These are the kinds of conversations we're having – and the great thing is, any decision we make is reversible. If we owned, we'd have pretty much no choice but to buy the biggest possible place we're likely to need in the next 10 years (which could be 4 bedrooms as our kids get older), because the transaction costs are so enormous.
As I always say – I'm aware that we have an unusual view on this topic, and I'm not suggesting that this would be the right option for most people. I just like to talk about it (and share the rough as well as the smooth) because it's not a choice you tend to see people make too often.
🔗 Odds and ends
- This video about how one of the biggest investment funds in the US is tied to the fate of 11 random people is a brief and super interesting watch.
- Andrew Craig, who wrote the UK personal finance classic "How To Own The World", has just released his new book Our Future Is Biotech. I haven't read it yet, but it's a fascinating sector and Andy massively knows his stuff. (I bumped into him the other week and I can exclusively reveal that as well as being knowledgeable, he's also annoyingly tall.)
- Ooh look at me trying to sound all cultured, but the Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery is seriously worth a visit if you're passing through London. His style is even more striking close up. And I didn't realise that pretty much all the masterpieces of his that you'd recognise were knocked out in a two year period while he was simultaneously (to not use the correct modern terminology at all) going bonkers. If you fancy the cultural double, the Portrait Prize next door at the National Portrait Gallery is also excellent.
That’s it for now! Feel free to write back and let me know what you've been up to.
Cheers!
Rob
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