Taking stock on my 29th birthday

Turning the page on the most momentous year of my life (yet).

Today I turn 29.

On my birthday last year, I sent out the 100th edition of my financial newsletter.

Today’s edition was #360.

Two years ago, I marked the day with 27 lessons in 27 years, which became one of my most-read pieces of the last decade.

I’m not one for celebrations, but I do see utility in using a birthday to take stock. My 28th year has been my most consequential yet:

• Got engaged in Italy

• Won a Fulbright award in Germany

• Married in California

• Our media startup — now 16 months old — has grown every quarter

• Hosted nearly 300 guests for Journalists Club events

It’s strange to compress 12 months of diligence and logistics into a few bullet points.

A list feels dishonest in its brevity. Bullets hide texture — the doubts, recalibrations, urgency.

What stands out isn’t just that good things happened, but that all of them marked culminations of efforts from years prior.

I have to remind myself that even the podcasts I joined this week, for instance — one with the New York Stock Exchange, the other with Danny Moses of “The Big Short” — were not sudden breaks, but dividends of steady work.

The older I get the more I grasp how a life well-lived is an exercise in compounding. Tiny, inscrutable moments that accrue into a fulfilling narrative.

Here’s what I wrote on this day last year:

A realization I’ve had in the last 12 months is that, ideally, each passing year makes you more comfortable doing what you want to build a reputation for, and nothing else.

That feels more true today.

Narrowing focus has accelerated my life in the best directions. The paradox of ruthless prioritizing is that it makes life feel both slower and faster.

Slower because you spend more time solving deep, deliberate problems; faster because you stop bleeding energy on shallower pursuits.

The danger of a good year is mistaking the milestones for the story. I see them instead as punctuations.

The real story is in the ordinary days at the office.

Dinners with friends.

Early mornings in the gym.

Drafting a newsletter.

Dates with my wife.

Even the most beautiful wedding — ours really was perfect! — is just the visible tip of a much longer accumulation.

In life, as in markets, compounding is an invisible wonder of the world.

Like scrolling through engagement photos or glancing at a plaque on the wall, efforts manifest most clearly in hindsight.

And right as you happen to take stock, it’s time to turn the calendar again.

Phil Rosen
Co-founder & Editor-in-Chief, Opening Bell Daily

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