1: Getting better at getting better is what RiseWithDrew is all about.
Monday through Thursday, we explore ideas from authors, thought leaders, and exemplary organizations. On Friday, I share a fresh perspective on living.
This week, we’ve been exploring some of Sahil Bloom‘s ideas on Mental Wealth from his book The 5 Types of Wealth. Today, we share a selection of “Mental Wealth Hacks I Wish I Knew at Twenty-Two,” which he wrote in collaboration with Susan Cain, the New York Times bestselling author of Quiet.
1: Choose one creative project at a time and do it as well and as deeply as you possibly can.
2: Reflecting on the past is a good way to fuel our growth, but dwelling on the past is a good way to inhibit it. Most people are inclined to either reflection or action. But we all need some of both.
3: If we want to get better at anything, do it for thirty minutes per day for thirty straight days. It’s easy to over-engineer progress; a little dedicated effort each day is all you need. Nine hundred minutes of accumulated effort is enough for you to make dramatic improvements in literally anything.
4: When we’re trying to learn something new, attempt to teach it to a friend or family member. See what questions they ask and how those questions expose the gaps in your knowledge. Study more to fill in those gaps. The act of teaching is the most powerful form of learning.
5: Take ourselves out for a meal alone once each month. Carry a notebook and pen, bring our favorite book, and leave our phone in our bag. Let our mind run free.
6: The quest to transform pain into beauty is one of the great catalysts of artistic expression.
7: Stop trying to remember things and just write everything down. Use your phone notes app—or, better yet, carry a small pocket notebook and pen. The old-fashioned way still works wonders.
8: Write down three things we’re grateful for every single night before we go to bed. Say one of them out loud every single morning when we wake up.
9: Don’t consume the news unless you’re highly confident it will matter one month from now. Consuming more news has become a reliable way to understand less about the world. Focus on smaller doses of high-signal content, not the constant drip of Breaking news! that has become the standard of the industry.
10: Turn whatever pain we can’t get rid of into our creative offering. Creativity has the power to look pain in the eye and turn it into something else.
11: We may read thousands of books in our lives, but there will be only a few that deeply change us. Reread them every single year. Our experience with the book will change as we do—we’ll get new perspectives. And doing this will remind us of how we can fall in love with the same thing (or person) over and over again.
[To see the complete list of 20 ideas, read The 5 Types of Wealth.]
More next week!
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Reflection: Which one or two “mental wealth hacks” resonate most with the season of life I’m in right now—and what might change if I practiced them consistently for a year?
Action: Pick one mental wealth hack from this list, schedule a 30-day experiment on my calendar, and track my experience in a simple daily journal so I can see how small actions shift my inner life over time.
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