“Fall seven times, stand up eight” – Japanese proverb
Dear readers, this article will be a slight tangent to what this column will typically be about, but I hope the message here is clear enough to still resonate with you.
I think every content creator — and I’m using that term freely to include people like me — has, at some point in their creative journey, thought to themselves that they can just “wing it” and create something consistently. Boy, was I wrong! Some long-time readers here in Palawan Daily News may recognize this column or my name (or a quick search would show) that I used to write regularly, years ago. Based on that sentence, you can probably guess this isn’t the case anymore, and it’s dawned on me that writing, regularly, is a genuinely difficult thing to do.
Coming up with a topic every week can actually be a struggle if you “wing it.” I even catch myself, many times, thinking “I’ll write an article this Saturday” (or insert any day here), and that day seems to never come. I’ve also come to a realization: the problem was never a shortage of ideas. It was that I kept leaving “when I write” entirely up to my own discretion — and discretion, it turns out, is unreliable.
This concept has a name in Behavioral Economics: Nudging. It’s the idea that instead of leaving something up to a person’s willpower or discretion, you build in a structure that makes the better choice the default — so it just happens, instead of depending on someone remembering to choose it every time.
How this works is to get people into something instead of just waiting for their discretion. And, you know what? It actually works. In their landmark study published in the Journal of Political Economy, Thaler and Benartzi (2004) studied this dynamic through the “Save More Tomorrow” program where employees who pre-committed to automatically raising their savings rate every time they got a raise ended up saving significantly more than employees who had to actively decide to save more each time. Folks who are, in effect, forced to save end up building a nest egg, whereas people who have to make the decision every single time end up saving a lot less, or not at all.
I believe this is part of the real value that financial consultants and advisors provide — the fact that they reach out to you to get you to invest, regularly, leads to better outcomes than just “DIY”-ing it.
And so, this is me nudging myself, publicly: starting with this piece, this space is no longer “Broker’s Journal.” It’s “Learning in Progress.” Consider that both a confession and a promise. I know I don’t have it all figured out yet, but I’m committing to showing up here regularly and thinking out loud with you as I go.
What I’m trying to say is that I want to use this same idea of nudging to force myself back into the habit of writing. And for you — if you’ve been meaning to build a tidy little nest egg, or start any good habit you keep pushing to “next Saturday” — maybe the lesson is the same one I just learned about myself: don’t wait for discretion. Get a nudge instead.
Disclaimer: Just a reminder, dear reader, that the content in this column is my opinion only and should not be construed as investment advice because I am not your financial adviser, neither did I take into consideration your personal objectives, financial situation, needs or circumstances as your fiduciary. This column is mainly for your entertainment and education only.
