It has happened with me a lot of times that I had a very deep interest in something but sometimes I lose interest and it feels as if it was never there and this is what makes me fearful. I fear that one day I will lose interest in something which I cannot afford to lose.
I believe interests play a very crucial part in our lives as it could help us find purpose.(I have expanded on that in my previous article)
So, let me tell you my story:
Stage 1: High School
When I was in my Grade 9, I started developing interest towards Calisthenics and fell in love with it so much that I became obsessed about it.
Everyday my mind used to be occupied with thinking about how I could improve my performance. I had also surrounded myself with people who were also obsessed about working out. By Grade 11 my obsession became so big that I started thinking to build a career around it. But suddenly this obsession vanished after my in Grade 12 final exams.
Stage 2: Gap between High School & College**
As soon as my final exams were over I got into the habit of reading books, especially self-help. I used to spend my days inside my room reading self-help books.
The first book which I grabbed was was The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma. I feel that self-helps books are good to read but only to a certain limit.
After reading 2-3 self-help books you start realizing that its all same in all the books. Even if self-help books are good, I think its only a few pages which are worth your time and carry the main argument of the book, rest is just filling up of pages.
I got so engrossed in reading self-help that I forgot the most important part that is the execution. I started enjoying self-help so much that maybe I didn’t want to solve the problem itself. For example: I read many books on financial independence. All of them recommended some methods to create assets which would generate income instead of buying things which creates liability. But, I never implemented it.
I started getting a sense of accomplishment by reading such books that I never actually reached the execution part as I was feeling good whenever I used to add a book into my ‘Books I Have Read’ list.
But thankfully this changed.
One fine day, when I was talking to my cousin over phone and I was telling him how I finished reading so many books in a month, he asked me about my plan of action. I replied that I had ordered another self-help book. This conversation made me realize that I was stuck in a bubble. I was wasting my time gaining multiple opinions from these books while never working on myself.
Stage 3: College – Freshman Year
As I started going to college I lost interest in self-help and got inclined towards investing. There is no correlation between me going to college and the growth of my interest in investing. The interest started developing because I had dived more and more into reading stuff about investing.
While reading about investing I bumped into Warren Buffet. Reading about his achievements, his story, etc. motivated me to pursue investing further. Then as you start indulging in a topic you get into a chain. The chain leads you from one material to another and you keep on reading and gaining knowledge from it.
Another interest of mine which started growing during this period was my interest towards startups. I think development of this interest could be related to my going to college. As I came to college I was exposed to information about placements and job opportunities. Through which I came cross the term ‘Corporate Slave’. Reading about startups made me understand that working for yourself could be one of the most beautiful things you can have in life.(I might expand on the above topic in an another essay, so lets keep the explanation of the benefits aside for now)
The motivation for my interest into the startup world is of two types:
- People who inspire you to do something great
- People who teach you how to build something great
So, Elon Musk is the person for me who falls into the first category and Paul Graham is the person for the second category.(I strongly recommend reading Paul Graham’s Essay on his blog. Here is a link to it.)
Stage 4: Current Situation
What I believe, to continue with an interest we have to see immediate results. People lose interest when they take action for some days and if they don’t see any short term results they end up giving up on that interest. This is one of the main reasons why people give up on things. This type of mentality can cost you huge amount in the field of investing as your greed for short term gains might lead you to lose what you already owned. Much simpler way to understand it is by this quote:
“It’s Insane To Risk What You Have For Something You Don’t Need“ – Warren Buffet
So this is what I fear, that as investing takes a long time to show results of your efforts, it comes with the risk to lose interest in it.
(Thanks to https://lazymarxist.wordpress.com for reading drafts of this.)