All good companies (including ours) focus on growth and make sure they allocate a budget for their growth. Without a clear focus on growth, it is impossible to run a successful business. The term “growth team” and “growth hacking” are all normal in the current business world.
I strongly believe the same logic should apply for us individuals too. We should allocate X% of our revenue (aka salary) for our individual growth. It is totally ok to experiment on how we spend on growth and not get immediate results.
The first step in this direction is to decide the percentage. It could be anywhere between 5% to 10% of the total amount we earn (in fact, even something as low as 2% works too).
The next step is to invest this amount on the items which will help in 1) improve productivity 2) learn more 3) become happier in general. Trust me, not all the spending might end up in immediate good results and some of them might turn out to be useless. But in the long run, a personal growth mindset helps in leading a better and productive life.
Some of the growth spends which worked well for me.
- Having a good home setup (this was much much before lockdown) with a standing table and multiple monitors, laptop stand, keyboard, and mouse.
- Sticky notes on my table to highlight the next set of tasks to work on. They are multi-colored to make sure I have different colours for different priorities of task.
- Audible premium package. I now have 71 books in my library and increasing every month.
- Buy hardcover books instead of paperback. The initial idea was that I’ll be able to collect a good library of books with hardcover ones. But now, I buy hardcover so that I can gift the book to others once I’ve finished the book.
- Good noise cancellation headphones.
- Good router with both 2.5GHz and 5GHz dual-band.
- Good/high-quality notebook (A4 size) to take notes.
- Spending money for software I use (like Evernote, Calm, 1Password, Pillow, Grammarly in my case). I don’t use Superhuman, but it clearly belongs to this list.
Not all of these purchases worked out all the time. Some of them ended up as waste of money
- Oculus VR
- iPad with keyboard and pencil.
- Raspberry pi with display
Looking at the list above, I’m overall happy with the results. The growth mindset helps me spend/experiment on new items without the guilt of overspending. But I always make sure I don’t go over the budget. And I truly believe everyone should adopt this growth mindset to improve both personal and professional productivity!