Long-term investment with no early returns

I’ve had my HBO Max subscription for about two years without watching any single show on it. Crazy that I forgot about it until a good friend of mine reminded me of it. I’ve unsubscribed from it right away and also found some other subscriptions that I’ve been paying without using them (smh). I’ve unsubscribed from them too.

Then I reviewed other spendings like piano lessons, Japanese and judo classes. Are these the best use of my time and money? I don’t really see a lot of progress in any of these as quickly as I expected and it’s honestly frustrating. Should I stop taking these and save money instead?

I realized that they are still meaningful to me and it’s not throwing my money down the gutter (like my HBO subscription, smh) because I still see a little bit of progress made over time and know that there will be big returns down the line.

After a few tangential leaps of thoughts, I came to ponder upon the idea of long-term investment that’s seemingly inefficient (ie. Little to no short-term or tangible returns). It is indeed painful to go through the times that no immediate returns or positive feedback on the progress is visible, but in the end I believe long-term investments in these categories will make a huge difference in life:

• Infrastructure: Investing in infrastructure doesn’t provide immediate return and costs a lot of resources (eg. Highway construction, Engineering infra setup, Working out regularly). It’s evident though how much difference it makes in the long run. In our day-to-day lives there are these infrastructure areas like improving physical, intellectual or mental health via fitness exercises, Duolingo or mindfulness routines.
• Future: Education is the best way for us to become future-proof (well, not 100% but as much as we can). The years of going to school for more than 10 years before turning adult is seemingly inefficient (why not send the kids to work as soon as they can walk and lift small things, the early industrialists in the 18th and the 19th centuries must’ve thought so), the world seemed to have acknowledged the benefit of this K-12 + college/graduate school educational system given its wide adoption. Not just the regular school years, but learning any new skills takes so much time and energy and they don’t always translate into immediate results. It’s like when babies learn how to walk. Consistency is the only way to wade through this inevitably inefficient phase. If we keep going regardless of days, months or even years of seemingly no progress, eventually we will reach the tipping point and will be able to be good at it, just like babies learn how to walk after a relentless series of trial-and-error.
• Culture: What’s the point of fashion (especially high fashion) or art (especially modern art)? Aesthetics and the concept of practicality or usefulness don’t seem to go hand-in-hand. Some elements of fashion (eg. long nails) seems to be directly against practicality. Investing in intangible values like these examples might not return tangible benefit but it proves the fact that our desires transcend practical needs and the impracticality from the lens of pure needs is justifiable and necessary to fulfill the desires.

Of course it doesn’t mean that we should stop caring about achieving short-term efficiency by optimizing our limited resources to achieve maximum results. We still ought to strive for making the most out of our lives, but investing in infrastructure, future and culture adds another dimension for us to zoom out to see the long-term goals and intangible but important areas in our lives.

To take these insights into action, starting this month I’m picking up Python to invest in my future. It’s been a rought few days to understand the basic concept (just like what I said about babies learning from trial-and-error!). I will persevere and will recoup all the sunk cost in the end.

I’d like to end today’s musing by remixing the famous quote from Winston Churchill: If you are going through hell the phase of long-term investment with no early returns, keep going!