Key Ideas

• We’ve all heard about the magic of compounding interest. Something equally powerful is mental compounding interest.

• Here’s some advice from the investor Charlie Munger that I read in the book, University of Berkshire Hathaway:

  “He (Munger) got the idea to add a mental compound interest as well. So he decided he would sell himself the best hour of the day to improving his own mind, and the world could buy the rest of his time.”

• When do you improve your mind?

  • As long as you can tune out all the distractions of the world, I consider it a good morning.
    • Improving my mind means improving my key skills: Writing, persuasion, decision making. I read books, make notes, and try to connect the dots between everything I learn. When I try to improve my mind, I only want to learn. The doing comes later. That’s how I do it.

• What’s your best hour of the day?

  • One day you might feel good, another day, you might feel tired. It’s just like the stock market. And that’s why I’m not a fan of morning rituals. It’s simply unrealistic to expect you to feel the same way every single day of your life.

• Adopt a “Water Mindset”

  • Give yourself the best hour of the day. And your best hour might be in the morning one day, and it might be after dinner the next. But it must be your best hour
  • When it comes to improving your mind, you want to be in a relaxed, more flow-like state. You want to feel good, energetic, and rested.
  • When you improve your mind a bit every day, that results in mental compounding interest. It will become very hard to fail at anything in life that way.