I actually encrypt my wishes and goals into the things I do. There are creative ways for each of us to embed our wishes into our daily lives, but we have to set those wishes to start with.

Undeniably, joining a flourishing company vastly differs from joining a struggling one, just as there's a significant contrast between building a company with the intention to sell and constructing one with the goal of passing it on.

To give a sense of perspective, consider that an HFT making $0.001 per share in SPY has an alpha that is worth roughly 0.0008%. A one penny spread is ten times this amount. In contrast, long term investors are able to effectively employ active strategies. Their alphas are orders of magnitude greater than the cost of crossing the spread.

Only when I spent a year and a half writing a book, did I realise how long it takes you to do something to get a tangible result. It makes you respect money more when it comes from something you create, rather than just trading back and forth with someone else's cash.

There is no business without creativity. And I think we have a lot of examples of great organisations that didn't want to be creative. Kodak is a good example, they didn't want to see the digital world! Creativity for me is the first condition to establish yourself as a leader in whatever you do in life.