Core Capital - Part Five
Different Forms of Currency
Let’s recap the journey we’ve taken:
Part One - getting started with Core Capital
Part Two - getting paid in time, freeing one’s self from 9-5 and Human Capital
Part Three - household expansion & contraction as well as Being Local.
Part Four ended with a tip to maintain flexibility in capital allocation in an uncertain world.
That’s a good point.
Here’s another.
The smartest “old folks” I know are surprised with how their lives changed on the far side of 70. Not just physical changes. They are most surprised by changes to their values, desires and priorities.
Despite these changes, certain themes run through conversations I have.
Access To Quality Medical Care
Connection
Community
Peers
I want to explore connection and community. Specifically, how we might work towards creating a valuable non-monetary asset.
Towards the end of our formal careers, and before we’re elderly, we will have a window of time. For most of us, this window will be 10-15 years long. That’s a big chunk of time to set up the final decade of our lives.
Valued & Relevant
It’s never been easier to acquire, and share, knowledge.
Social Media has leveraged our ability to make connections and learn rapidly.
And… it only takes a few connections to make our lives dramatically better.
I’m going to lay out a strategy for staying relevant, and valued, by your community. I’m going to focus on content creation. It’s one of many options available.
Start By Building A Library - some examples
What these libraries have in common:
Started when skills were current
Answer questions that constantly arise
Save the author a multiple of the time required to create
Establish expert credentials in a field of interest
Most importantly, content provides the ability to quickly share knowledge and help others.
From my phone I can…
Pull up an article
Screenshot the relevant section
Paste the picture
Embed a link
1-2-3-4 takes less than a minute. Doesn’t even need to be my article.
That minute repeated daily, lets me establish thousands of new connections every year.
Thousands of new connections per year
Stack the years
Compound the network effects
But it’s not about the thousands, or hundreds of thousands, we reach.
It’s about the certainty of making new, and interesting, connections.
Something our elders understand… Many of our favorite people will die before us. Each of us will need to replenish our pool of friends.
Consistently helping younger people achieve their goals is a wonderful way to stay connected.
Success, Monetization, Views & Likes
Failure Isn’t Fatal
I’m grateful I figured something out very early in my life.
There’s more value in writing…
Than the amount I’m paid
Than the number of people who read it
The seeds of my first book were born in posts to a Web 1.0 electronic bulletin board. My book was a bestseller in its niche and covered a topic I knew nothing about five years earlier.
That was 20 years ago. Today, it’s possible to learn even faster.
A Different Form of Currency
My grandmother had a favorite saying in her 80s:
You know, Dear, there’s nothing golden about these years.
She’d say it with a twinkle in her eyes and a smile on her face. For Nana, day-to-day elder living was boring.
Certain aspects of the aging process are unavoidable, and unpleasant. However, daily living can be improved by finding a way to help, and connect with, others.2
Hopefully, this article gave you ideas for lifelong learning and staying engaged. Someone needs to hear your story.
Start with the end in mind and, remember, our definition of success is likely to change as we age:
Valued & Relevant
Connection & Community
Finally…
We don’t get to decide who, and what, interests other people.
I’ve been living in a narrow niche for decades. It works for me.
Our lives only need to make sense to us.
Stephen’s daughter, Siren, has followed him into the field of exercise science. Training my kids to assist with my interests, struck me as an excellent idea. Two of them think so, too. My buddy, Alan, recommended I purchase a set of mini lab coats for them.
One of my favorite Elder Blogs was Ronni’s called Time Goes By. She blogged from 2004 right up to the end of her life in 2020. The site’s still up.