Accumulate Mental Effort over time
In business and investment, we are thinking about investment in regard to compound interest, looking forward to an exponential appreciation in the end.
In learning we must think about mental effort accumulation in terms of Intellectual accumulation or know-how accumulation. Everything we do, think, write, talk must converge into making our goal become true. Over time, our mental effort condenses into concrete things such as business, products, information goods (IP capital), innovation, technologies, assets, wealth, relationships. These specific things are considered as store rooms or boxes that preserve our effort over time. It certainly takes time; some take more time than others but they all need time to grow. We must sow the seeds in every act we take daily. And these acts must synchronize synergistically and converge at the end to enable our dream, our objective come true.
If our work, thinking daily is fragmented and they do not fit into a big picture at the end, our effort over time will dissipate into the vacuum.
Therefore, it is reasonable to say each learner must set their goals and act accordingly, consciously to achieve the goals. Here, we come to a difficult question: what should be our goals? Happiness and success, of course. But they are too general, too vague. One ought to have some specific, concrete goals: academic goals, professional goals, family goals and health goals, etcetera.
