1 Habit Which Will Increase Your Wealth & Provide You Mental Peace
And yes, it can be adopted easily!
Everyone knows Warren Buffet. If you follow the finance world, you will also know others like Peter Lynch, Howard Marks, Bill Ackman, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, etc. The list of such successful investors is endless.
All of them have their unique investing styles. But there is one 1 habit all of them have. Can you guess what is that habit? The answer is they are all extremely lazy.
I know you won’t believe me. You must be thinking “He is kidding man! That can’t be right!”. And trust me, I am not kidding! Being lazy is necessary to become a successful investor.
And although it sounds ridiculous, being lazy is a simple but not an easy task when it comes to investing.
Read on to know more!
What Does Being Lazy Mean?
So first things first, what do I mean by being lazy? Am I suggesting you spend time sleeping or binge-watch the latest Netflix series on your couch? Absolutely not (although I wish that was the case)!
I am talking about the other kind of laziness where you choose to not react to new events purposefully. In today’s world of highly addictive social media apps, the problem is not the lack of information but rather of information overload.
Every minute of every day we get seemingly new important information. The livestock price tickers, the new tweets on Cryptocurrency, the new Reddit posts & the list goes on.
Ignoring this information is the laziness I am talking about.
But why should I stop reading the new information, won’t I miss the critically important updates?
If you have read my previous posts, you know I have always advocated buying & holding great businesses for a long period as the safest way to create astronomical wealth.
With that background, suppose after doing a thorough research you have created a diversified portfolio of great businesses. Then the daily information you will receive will actually be noise for you & may lead you to wrong decisions. News that actually won’t matter in the long run may lead you to some decision that you will regret later.
Let’s take a recent example to illustrate this point. Recently Suez Canal had gotten blocked. You get to know that it supports 30% of global shipping freight. Now imagine you own shares of a company which exports its products to other countries.
Your natural reaction to this news will be of fear & you will most likely sell your shares. But let’s take a step back & think through. Since you bought the company after thorough research, it must have some pricing power & it must have the capacity to suffer so clearly it won’t collapse because of this.
And after 5 years, would the company be materially affected by this blockage or will it be a temporary event? The answer is probably the second one.
Having thought through like this, you will realize this is actually a great opportunity to buy the company at lower prices because of panic selling.
This was just taken as an example, it is very difficult to always make the correct decisions while remaining emotionally detached.
But by this logic, I should stop reading the news altogether!
Well no, that will lead to even missing the critically important information! We need to read the news but only the important ones. But how to decide which news is actually important?
I follow a simple trick to solve this problem. In my not-to-do list (It is a very interesting concept will write about it in later posts!), I have added not visiting any financial sites/forums except during 9–9.30 PM & not visiting brokerage website except during the last 15 minutes of the stock market (that too only if I want to place an order).
By limiting time spent on reading news only to a specific time slot, it allows me to focus and to think deeply about the impact of the news (if any). This helps me avoid any wrong decisions that I could make.
Also, since I have only 30 mins, my mind quickly determines whether it is an article worth reading or is it another click-bait article. It helps to focus on the really important news.
Okay, so tell me what to become lazy!
Well, it’s really simple. Just don’t check your portfolio every day & read all the news & related stuff only in a single 30 min slot at night. That’s it! You have mastered the laziness habit & are one step closer to achieving awesome returns & inner peace!
