Invest in yourself and increase your value
To invest in something is to spend money on it with the expectation of achieving a profit.
The same rules apply when investing in yourself, but this time your capital is your time: You are spending time on something in order to increase your value.
Why investing in yourself?
Investing in yourself is a sure investment, and it comes with a higher ROI. (BINGO!)
Investing in yourself isn’t something hard. It’s all about developing good habits. Some simple habits can increase your value, and can make you a better person.
How can you invest in yourself?
In one sentence: Try to develop yourself everyday, even with 1%, no problem! In a year, you’ll be surprised how much you’ve developed yourself.
Not convinced? We can do the math if you want. 365 days a year, and we suppose that you are 1% better than the last day, this is:
Yeah it’s right, you are 37x times better in a year.
On the other hand, if you didn’t develop, you will lose your value everyday. You can’t have a constant value (ie 1), the world is moving so fast, and you should move too.
Let’s do the math once more, suppose your value decreases by 1% every day, in a year:
Yep, it’s 0, but I prefer another term: 0 means extinction. Yes, you are extinct, may the force be with you.
How to increase your value?
Your value is increased by your knowledge (not only academic one), and you can gain knowledge from anything. The only rule is: Do something that you love. You don’t need to feel that you are forced to do something to gain knowledge. (Watching movies or browsing 9gag do not count)
For me the most obvious ones, and the ones I do myself are:
Reading
Reading is nutrition for your brain.
Try to develop a reading habit. Start small, 20min a day, for a month. And keep increasing, but don’t go below 20 mins, it’s the red zone. And remember, our goal is to increase our value everyday, and not the inverse.
Read whatever inspires you, start by articles or dive directly in books. There are plenty of free resources online if you don’t want to spend money. Use Pocket to save articles for offline reading, which is very handy if you commute to work, or if you are waiting in a long line without an Internet connection.
Writing
Writing will help you to better express yourself, in a clear and expressive way.
Expressing yourself will help you in your presentations, talking to your clients or maybe explaining something to your child.
Maybe you can’t see the benefits now, but it will help you in the long term. Read other’s success stories and get inspired to start writing.
Learn something new
The internet is full of material if you want to learn something new. From Coding (CodeCademy, Udacity…), Design and UX(Uxpin, Tuts+…), or if you want to take a course online, you can try edX, Coursera, Udemy and others.
It’s easy now, more than ever, to learn something new. Learn and start applying.
Teach
Teaching is the best tool to test your comprehension.
Talk to your friends about the article you just read yesterday. Try to explain to them, try to express yourself in a clear way.
They are interested in hearing from you, everyone is interested to know new things. (Do this instead of spoiling the latest episode of your favorite serie)
TL;DR
You need to invest in yourself and to increase your value. It’s the only way to avoid your extinction. The world is moving so fast, and you need to move fast also.
Still reading? There is a full book about investing in yourself by Reid Hoffman, check it out: The Start-up of You
