A Dumb Phone, Mental Rules & Treating Money Like a Business

Hey :)

This is an email I send to keep in touch with friends and share a bit about what I'm up to and thinking about. This month, I’m:

• Treating money like a business

• Exercising every weekday

• Making my phone dumb(er)

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“Treating money like a business”

Someone made a passing comment to me at an event I was at earlier this year about treating money like a business.

This stuck with me because A) It made me realise that I wasn’t B) It gave me clarity on what I might change and C) It seemed fun to explore.

I’m embarassed to say I started August unable to answer basic questions like how much did my portfolio grow last year? Or how much am I paying in fees?

It turns out poorly, and way too much.

In just a few weeks I’ve made good progress laying the groundwork to treating this more like a business. From getting better oversight using Kubera, backtesting and simplifying my portfolio using PortfolioVisualizer and cutting out advisors who weren’t adding value to build a leaner ‘team’, it feels refreshing to be treating this in a way that feels familiar.

Mental rules & exercising every weekday

I’ve been trying to get to the gym and lift more for a while – but I’ve struggled with consistency. And finding time. And motivation.

In July, I read Shane Parrish’s Clear Thinking in which he talks about using mental rules (e.g. “I exercise every weekday”) to shortcut needing to use willpower to form a habit.

I gave this approach a shot by setting myself the mental rule of exercising every weekday. For over a month I’ve met this – either lifting weights, going for a run, or playing golf.

Reducing my phone screen time

At the start of this year, I clocked up 3.5 hours/day of mostly unproductive screen time on my phone.

I’ve been trying to curb this habit for years without much progress. I’ve tried the Light Phone, app blockers, disabling notifications, and much more.

This month I made a few changes which made a big difference.

Here are some of the things I changed:

• Automatically toggling between colour/grayscale depending on which app is open (I followed this). This alone made a huge impact (greyscale reduces dopamine and makes the phone feel less toy-like)

• Putting charging docks around the house outside of the bedroom so I’m not tempted to take it to bed or look at it first thing in the morning)

• Using a Brick – a 3D-printed fridge magnet with an NFC chip inside that bricks your phone (blocks apps) when you tap it. The only way to unblock the apps is to tap it again.

• Moving non-essential apps to a backup phone that I keep out of sight

• Disabling voicemail (you can do this by calling #404#) – people just send a text or email if it’s important enough.

• Disabling face-detection open & requiring a long password to open

🔗 Bits & Bobs

• A tool I started using: Strong – a beautifully simple workout tracker.
  

• A book I’m (re)reading: Four Thousand Weeks – A very good book on the topic of how to spend your time on things that matter. The first time I read this I was weeks away from becoming a dad. Re-reading it a year and a half later it’s like a whole different book.
  

• A thing that resonated: I’m not sure where I came across this but the advice “Before age 35, avoid building businesses with friends. After 35, only build businesses with friends.”
  

• A thing I’m working on: Launching GTFO this week and getting our YouTube channel up and running.

• A thing I enjoyed: Tim Ferris’ Fear Setting exercise – I came across this a few years ago but never got around to it. I did it for the first time last week which was fascinating!

That’s it for now! Feel free to write back and let me know what you've been up to.

Cheers!
Marcus

P.S. One of my goals this year is to spend more time with friends. If you fancy hanging out – hit reply :)