Moving in Decades
I'm 36 now, and I've failed as an entrepreneur twice. I say that plainly. Both times, the pattern was almost identical. I worked on an idea passively for two or three years, as a side pursuit. It felt safe there. Then I jumped into it full-time, and once I did, I stayed for less than a year. Both times. Not because the ideas collapsed overnight, but because something inside me did.
Fear played a big role. A quiet fear that asked the same question every day: am I really built for this? Once the job disappeared, every slow week felt louder, every doubt felt heavier. The other part was personal runway. I come from a background where money is always counted, never abstract. When runway feels limited, time starts working against you. You rush decisions. You look for proof too early. Staying becomes emotionally expensive.
What stands out to me now isn't that I quit, but how quickly I quit once I went all in. The ideas didn't get a fair shot at time. In contrast, the things I never depended on immediately, never forced to justify, never tied to survival, they stayed. My current job is now over five years. YouTube creation is two and a half years. A long-running passion project is five years. Guitar learning is over a year. Spanish learning has crossed two years. None of these were rushed. None of them demanded certainty. Because of that, they had room to grow.
Somewhere along the way, my way of choosing changed. I stopped asking whether something would work soon and started asking whether it would still make sense to me ten years from now. Whether I could imagine a relationship with it that wasn't transactional. What a normal Tuesday with it would look like after the excitement faded. That question quietly disqualifies many things. It also brings calm. You don't need to touch everything. You only need to touch what can age with you.
At this stage of life, starting something isn't casual anymore. A business, a hobby, even a person: all of them demand time and emotional attention. So before I begin now, I try to imagine the relationship a decade out. If I can't see steadiness, respect, and patience in that future version, I don't start. Not because it's bad, but because it doesn't belong to this phase of me.
I've noticed something about people who are genuinely wealthy, not performatively so. Their lives are slow. Almost boring from the outside. They don't react much. They don't move frantically. What they enjoy today isn't the result of last week's decisions, but the accumulated weight of choices they stayed with for years. The present doesn't shake them because the past already did the heavy lifting.
I saw this clearly in a small but telling moment from my own life. One day, the value of my gold investments went up by nearly three lakhs. It felt good, not life-changing, but noticeable. The very next day, it dropped by almost the same amount. Nothing actually changed. I didn't buy or sell. No decision was made. Yet emotionally, there was a brief rise and fall. It made me realise how trivial these fluctuations are, and how often people let them affect their peace.
This happens everywhere. Markets go up, markets go down. Numbers move. News cycles scream. Even sensible people panic when the time horizon is short. A strong model feels strong only until fear enters the room. Remaining unaffected by these swings, especially when money is involved takes years of practice and conditioning. It takes distance. It takes a longer lens than most people aren't comfortable holding.
Moving in decades changes how noise lands on you. Daily movements stop feeling personal. Temporary highs don't make you reckless, and temporary lows don't make you doubt everything. You still care, but you don't react. You become stubborn in a quiet way. You stop arguing with every fluctuation. You let time do what time does best. Smooth, Compound, and Correct.
Looking back, my earlier failures weren't just about business. They were about impatience disguised as ambition. About wanting certainty before time had a chance to participate. When you move in short bursts, every delay feels fatal. When you move in decades, delays become part of the path. You stop asking, "Is this working?" and start asking, "Is this worth staying with?"
There's also emotional relief in this way of living. You don't need every day to be meaningful. You don't need constant progress. You're okay being average for a while. You're okay learning slowly. That detachment isn't indifference, it's maturity. It's knowing that not everything needs your anxiety to move forward.
Today, I'm more careful about what I let into my life. Not less ambitious, just more selective. If I touch something now, I assume I'm shaking hands with it for a long time. That assumption filters out most distractions and deepens what remains. Depth comes from duration. Stability comes from staying.
Moving in decades doesn't make life faster. It makes it steadier. It doesn't promise success. It promises continuity. And continuity, given enough time, quietly outperforms intensity.
At 36, that feels like the right way to move.