How To Become Healthy, Wealthy and Wise?
Put Your Mind, Body and Your Money On A Training Program
In 1763, Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac published the proverb, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” We are all familiar with that sentiment – and even then, it was not an original thought. But it was unique to the Enlightenment’s revolution of the mind.
Not only do you own your life, but you can transform yourself for the better — if you so choose. In addition, the proverb rejects the Biblical mind and body dichotomy and informs us that we are a complex system of physicality and consciousness.
Less obvious, but equally important, is the Almanac’s prescription: the most advantageous use of time for work and for rest. It is relevant to all three aspects: physical, financial and cognitive well being. Of course, that was 18th century America, capitalism had barely taken hold, and leisure time was rare. Perhaps the only Western society that had produced it for those who were not high born were the Dutch.
But this is 21st century America, recreational opportunities are in great supply — and an easy to understand system for health, wealth and wisdom is readily available — if you are willing to invest in yourself.
Healthy
Beginning with physical activity for long-term vitality, aerobic exercise – meaning a comfortable heart rate energy zone that activates your fat calories as your fuel source, has long-term benefits that will raise your fat-burning metabolism, increase endurance, lower body fat composition, lower resting heart rate, and fortify your immune system.
The tool you will need is a heart rate monitor and the information you will need is to know where your heart rate corresponds to an easy aerobic pace. This can be estimated using readily available charts for your age and sex, but the most accurate measure is a VO2 max test that will measure your fat calorie burn rate for every level of intensity.
Some systems use percentage of maximum heart rate as the baseline and others use functional threshold power. Either is fine. Your threshold is probably between 80% and 85% of your maximum heart rate, but for elite athletes it could be as high as 90%. However, high intensity training is not the subject of this article.
Here, I will emphasize the three energy zones at or below threshold: the mostly aerobic comfortable pace (55 - 65% of max heart rate), the speedy aerobic pace (65 - 75% of max heart rate), and the most efficient challenging but sustainable pace (75 - 85% of max heart rate) described in Stu Mittleman’s book titled Slow Burn.
The other thing to know is what physical adaptation those energy zones will help you accomplish: aerobic endurance, muscular endurance, or power. Ultimately, the objective data for health and fitness is your metabolic chart for heart rate, fat calorie burn, sugar calorie burn, and your threshold for converting to high intensity training. The best way to raise your threshold is to work underneath it.
But most importantly, are you willing to commit five to ten hours per week over a lifetime to maintain an energetic, low body fat habit that is fun and enjoyable as you keep track of your success?
Wealthy
This is not a “no pain, no gain” mindset. This is the efficient use of energy. And in the context of personal wealth, the similarities are remarkable. Naturally, the goals to achieve are different: cash flow for lifestyle expenses, money for family, travel, entertainment and medical care, wealth for education, retirement, major purchases, or gifting, and investing with confidence in all of that, but the philosophy and process is identical.
In this case, the first set of objective data are the results of your values inventory that require money, the amounts that are needed, and their preferred times. And because we are dealing with an entire socioeconomic system of capital markets, the second set of objective data are the historical asset class metrics of average return, volatility and correlation coefficients.
By controlling what we can control — including market risk exposure, and modeling that against the uncertainty of the future, we also end up with three energy zones called underfunded, fully funded and overfunded. And instead of a VO2 Max test to calculate aerobic threshold and fat burn, we run Stress Tests for any investment strategy you care to model and calculate the number of trial runs that meet or exceed you cash flow expectations.
Below 75% is underfunded, 75 - 90% of trial runs that meet or exceed expectations is fully funded, and greater than 90% of trial runs that meet or exceed spending goals is overfunded. Again, the goal is to know what zone in which you are operating and stay in the comfort zone of high confidence without unnecessary risk or sacrifice.
Unfortunately, many or most practitioners calculate confidence levels using unreliable data and unreliable methods. First, nearly all of them calculate “probability of success,” which is misleading at best. Those results include many trial runs that are overfunded. Second, they require nearly 100% successful trial runs to be fully funded. Third, they are using capital market assumptions that are conservative projections. If so, all of these will force investors to sacrifice their lifestyle goals or their risk capacity.
But most importantly, are you willing to invest your values inventory, assign dollars of future wealth to those that require money, and measure success according to your funding status and risk capacity?
Wise
Naturally, wisdom is an abstract concept that does not lend itself to concrete measurement like your physical endurance or financial status can do. Having said that, there are activities that will improve your mental focus, understanding of important subjects, awareness of the world around you, and the emotional well being derived from contradictions eliminated from your thinking.
Obvious to nearly everyone, reading is the most effective way to acquire knowledge, hopefully understanding — and literacy itself was the greatest tool for mankind to achieve independence and prosperity. The material can be great literature for stylized examples of how things could and should be, or nonfiction related to the natural world, the humanities, biographies, self-help, etc. In all cases, if the authors present a benevolent view of human nature and you read with focus on conceptual meaning, your awareness will expand by a greater value.
Another proven way to gain wisdom is to write. Whether it is short articles like a letter to the editor, or long-form essays for Substack, or professional writing for your career, the mental focus needed for research and creating an outline will teach you much more than facts. You will learn structure. With effort, you will identify contradictions in your thinking, focus on principles and fundamentals, and improve your communication skills.
And like fitness goals or financial objectives, you can create an accountability program for yourself – ideally with an accountability partner who is not your best friend — and develop an easy to use method for keeping track of progress and success.
One way to do this is to track the time you dedicate to the high level of concentrated mental effort. This is full immersion on the important task, like I have been doing since I began writing this piece. Moderate focus is to pay attention to what is important while navigating the environment and reacting to necessary distractions. Minimal focus is relaxation of many varieties. All of these are good in the proper context and sufficient quantity, but full immersion is the activity to manage and track.
First, identify the long-term goal for knowledge, understanding, or awareness. Maybe it is to become a trusted advisor in your favorite academic or professional discipline. Or learn a system of philosophical, historical, psychological, economic, or artistic endeavor. It could be great literature — and learning to write great fiction is a challenge that can develop many cognitive skills.
But eating an elephant is done one bite at a time. What are the activities to which you will commit? How much time are you willing to invest? Who will help you measure your progress toward these goals? When will you know that you are succeeding?
Where is the best place to start? At the beginning. “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” A strong metabolism and lean body composition will buy you time. Defined values and fully funded cash flow expectations will buy you time. And both of them contribute to your ever growing awareness of the world around you. Time and awareness are the intangible dividends of a sound investment strategy.
