Question on long-term investments:

What would you invest in today assuming you had to hold the investment forever?

Short-term thinking is abundant, long-term thinking is rare. Those who can think long-term will always stand out and find a way to win.

Whenever I find myself wandering, I use this question to center my thinking:

What would I invest in today and happily hold forever? These are the things I want to focus on, because they are all long-term in nature.

Some of my answers for my forever investments:

• Purpose-Driven Work: Investing in building my personal platform is a forever hold for me, because it will allow me to reach and positively impact millions (maybe even billions!) of people in my lifetime. That is my higher order purpose, to help people live healthier, wealthier lives.
• Relationships: Investing in my relationships with my son, wife, family, and close friends is a forever hold for me, because these are the people that I want to live my life with.
• Physical Health: Investing in my physical health, by exercising, eating well, and sleeping, is a forever hold for me, because I don't want to regret allowing my body to atrophy when I'm older.

What I've found: When I focus my energy on my "forever hold" investments on a daily basis, my life feels in flow.

What are your forever holds? How can you focus on them daily to reap the rewards forever?

Quote on creating space:

"A man is about as big as the things that make him angry." - Winston Churchill

When you create space between stimulus and response, you create power in yourself.

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Framework to avoid reality distortion:

Survivorship Bias

During World War II, the U.S. wanted to add reinforcement armor to specific areas of its planes.

Analysts examined returning bombers, plotted the bullet holes and damage on them, and answered that adding armor to the tail, body, and wings would improve their odds of survival.

But a young statistician named Abraham Wald noted that this would be a tragic mistake.

By only plotting data on the planes that returned, they were systematically omitting the data on a critical, informative subset: the planes that were damaged and unable to return.

• The "seen" planes had sustained damage that was survivable.
• The "unseen" planes had sustained damage that was not.

Wald concluded that armor should be added to the unharmed regions of the survivors. Where the survivors were unharmed is where the planes were most vulnerable.

Based on his observation, the military reinforced the engine and other vulnerable parts, significantly improving the safety of the crews during combat.

Wald had identified a cognitive bias called "Survivorship Bias":

The error resulting from systematically focusing on survivors (successes) and ignoring casualties (failures) that causes us to miss the true "base rates" of survival (the actual probability of success) and arrive at flawed conclusions.

We see Survivorship Bias all around us:

• We read books on the common traits of successful people, but fail to consider all of the unsuccessful people who possessed those same traits.
• We applaud the belief when we hear that an entrepreneur took out a second mortgage and succeeded, but fail to consider all of the entrepreneurs who did the same and went bankrupt.

When we fail to consider the range of outcomes and the hidden evidence, we develop a skewed (and often incorrect) view of reality.

It cannot be avoided altogether, because the vast majority of books and history are written by and about the survivors and victors, but wherever possible, consider the unseen evidence.

What is unseen often has just as much value as what is seen...

Tweet on the most creative ads:

This account that breaks down some of the most interesting and creative ads is becoming one of my favorites. Surfacing some fascinating stuff and definitely worth your time.

Article on attributes of greatness:

​14 Attributes of Greatness​

This article is a distillation of wisdom from a 1986 book called Sporting Excellence: A Study of Sport’s Highest Achievers. The book was based on in depth interviews that the author conducted with 62 of the highest achieving athletes in history.

Neat insights on some surprising common traits:

• Sensitivity to the opinions of others
• Late specialization
• Introversion

Worth a read if you're interested in the habits and mindsets of high performers.

P.S. How many of you had your "Survivorship Bias" alarm go off? If you did, you passed the test! You always have to consider how many athletes adopted these same habits and mindsets and didn't achieve at these levels. That said, this is still a great article with some non-obvious insights that I enjoyed!