Eight Millionaire Habits That Changed My Life

Freedom is the goal not money.

Nov 02, 2021

Millionaire habits confuse us.

We think it means to follow some bro in a Lambo and accidentally become a selfish a-hole. I’m not talking about millionaires that worship money though. The millionaires I’m talking about believe this:

Freedom is the goal not money.

They’re rich in time and not necessarily money, because they’ve put the effort in to create foundational habits. This type of habit changes the game.

Here are eight millionaire habits to fall in love with.

Read these hidden gems

You’ve heard the cliche “get a reading habit.” Snoozer.

The people I respect who have all the free time in the world read Twitter Threads. They’re different to books. Books have a lot of filler. Often they contain one good idea that’s extended out to fill up a book and keep a dinosaur book publisher happy.

Reading lots of books, therefore, becomes hard.

The hidden gems to read are Twitter Threads. Writers can’t waffle on. There are character limits. They have to get to the point which saves you a lot of time.

Search Twitter for tweets that contain the word “thread” in them. You will find some of the best content on the internet when you do. The most successful threads are how-tos that are actionable.

Make it a habit to read at least one Twitter Thread per day.

Look at your biggest goal for the day

Goals are deceptive. Many people have far too many.

The real flex isn’t a list of goals that fill up multiple A4 pieces of paper. The point is to have one goal to achieve each day. Everything else is then secondary.

The power of only doing one thing creates deep focus. '

If practiced for long enough your goal will start to produce enormous results. It happened to me as a writer. I committed to write one thing on the internet per day. I’ve done it for 7 years. That level of focus has created 99% of my results.

One big goal at a time.

Walk to think

If you read stoicism you’ll quickly learn that walking is a habit that has lasted multiple centuries. Why? Because it works.

When I need to think and unlock my creativity, I walk. One hour of walking helps all the ideas floating in my head start to thread together. By the time I’m done my Roam Research notepad is full of actionable insights.

Walking is creative mediation for your mind.

Wake up at a reasonable hour

It sucks to admit but people who achieve ‘time freedom’ wake up early.

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to be up at 4 am. But it also doesn’t mean that waking up at 11 am is going to be good for you either.

Think of it like this: The earlier you wake up, the quicker you get a headstart on the day.

Countless studies have proven that the morning is when your brain is the freshest.

One hack a lot of people I know who work for themselves use is they work their ass off in the morning and then take it easy in the afternoon. When your morning is productive it sets up your whole day to be better.

Wake up one hour earlier than you currently do. See for yourself.

Dare to start a side hustle and stick to it for 12 months

Time millionaires buy back their time with a new interest.

That interest becomes a side hustle. They often stay at their jobs (if they have one). Then they work away at both. Eventually, if they stick at their side hustle for long enough, it’s able to support them to the point where they don’t need a job anymore.

Some quit. Some do both. The point is they have a choice.

A side hustle is an experiment. It’s the power to dream and work on something new after hours. Tied to that is learning, action, networking, rejection, failure.

"Ideas are cheap. Execution is expensive.
The ability to execute separates people, not the ability to come up with ideas."
– Shane Parrish

A side hustle teaches you to execute. The results become a self-fulfilling philosophy if you stick at it for more than 12 months.

Learners are earners

A woman I know built an empire from her tiny office in Sydney, Australia. She’s not that smart. She has an average team. Her content is okay. She’s nice enough.

When I interviewed her back in 2016 what surprised me is how much she prioritizes learning. She does an online course every few weeks. She always has a book on the go. And she attends live events to learn from the best in her industry.

All that learning has made her a master of her field. She knows the trends and new directions to head down before 99% of her competition. People follow her because she seems sharp, as opposed to smart.

It’s not that hard to appear like you know what you’re talking about. Make learning a habit and everything you say and do will start to change, without you having to make any other changes.

A strong reputation is built by knowing your sh*t. A learning habit is how you do it.

Open-mindedness over default skepticism

People who become time rich do so, not because they’re clever, but because their brain is open for business.

Our human survival instincts prioritize skepticism over open-mindedness to keep us safe. Your brain thinks it’s doing you good. It’s not. It’s ruining your life.

Opportunities are the key to improving your life. But you need open-mindedness to be able to see opportunities. You can’t walk around with a closed mind and call everything a scam and expect to get somewhere in life and one day buy back your time so you don’t need to kiss any boss’s hairy butt.

It’s trendy to bash hope, or optimism, or open-mindedness. But that’s a one-way ticket to loserville.

Sure you’ll fit in with the crowd. But the crowd generally gets it wrong and ends up in a mountain of debt, thinking if they load up on overpriced real estate they’ll be fine and hopefully retire at 65. Wrong.

The key isn’t to have blind faith.

No.

The key is to:

Go in with an open mind and listen for yourself.
Dare to challenge your beliefs.
Listen to uncomfortable truths.
Realize a lot of what you know up until now could be faulty or downright wrong. That’s okay. None of us are Einstein.

Open minds solve problems. That creates value. Value buys back your time.

Proof of work is how you attract opportunities

For a long time I used to randomly email people who had 100x the success in life that I had. I hoped blind luck would allow me to succeed.

I begged for favors.
I offered fake help.
I name-dropped like a dumb ass.

Then the idea of Bitcoin changed my thinking. Bitcoin has a process called mining. I won’t bore you with the technical jargon, but mining allows you to validate transactions on the network. You have to spend money on computers and electricity in order to participate in the mining game and earn money from it. Those expenses create a proof of work model.

Proof of work is visible evidence you have skin in the game.

To get opportunities you have to do the same. Put in the work. Produce some results. Then ask people who are ahead of you to collaborate, or provide access to a scarce resource, or attach their name to your work.

That’s what I did with writing. I’m still a nobody, although I can email influential people with clear proof of work and at least have them agree to talk to me via Zoom.

Granted, Elon Musk isn’t exactly jumping on a call with me. But Ryan Holiday, James Clear, James Altucher – I reckon they would.

There’s no substitute for doing the work. Work is the shortcut to everything. Work produces results. Results are damn sexy to people who can offer opportunities that will change your life.

This instalment of Unfiltered is free for everyone. I send this email weekly. If you would also like to receive it, join the 50,000+ other smart people who absolutely love it today.

👉 If you enjoyed reading this post, feel free to share it with friends!