Sahil Bloom

Sahil is a VP at a generalist investment fund with over $2.5B in AUM, where he focuses on investments in the consumer products and services sector.

In his free time, he’s built a platform focused on financial education and literacy on Twitter, where he writes and releases threads aimed at demystifying the world of finance, money, business and economics.

On his morning routine.

I’m typically up by 4 AM on weekdays.

Once I’m up, I’ll splash some cold water on my face and spend the first hour of the early morning reading. I don’t have a set reading routine, just whatever grabs my attention. It might be a new Ben Thompson article or a sci-fi book I’m obsessed with, it’s really all over the place. 

The best thing about this block of time is that there’s nothing in my inbox. People just haven’t woken up yet. Then I’ll move into another hour of deep work.

I’ll focus on the one task that requires my deepest thought of the day. Once I move into the rest of the morning and afternoon, it’s already done.

On leveraging his calendar.

I’m obsessed with using my calendar to create a tangible schedule that I can stick to and hold myself accountable to.

It’s one of the highest leverage tools in my arsenal.

However, the biggest negative is that it can definitely add to my stress if I’m not hitting these predefined tasks, windows, and timelines.

Life happens, and things get in the way.

It’s the exogenous factors that we can’t control for that can shift your schedule and in turn yield unnecessary stress. That’s the downside.

Over time, I’ve become more flexible with my calendar while still leveraging as much as possible to create hard time constraints to get things done.

On advice to his younger self.

First, I’d tell myself to not lose sight of long-term skill development. 

When I was just starting out, there was a range of skills I just had to get good at really fast to perform my job at a high level.

In the world of finance, that meant modeling or slide creation.

But, if you only focus on these really tactical skills, you can quickly lose sight of what it takes to be a great partner at a firm.

Execute the short-term, but never lose sight of the long-term.

Early on, I watched what the partners at my firm were doing on a day-to-day basis. I did my best to deeply understand how they were thinking about problems, which has really paid off for me in the long-term.

On financial wellness.

Financial wellness is your ability to support, take care of, and enjoy your time with loved ones. 

To be blunt, that’s the foundational goal for almost everyone in life.

However, financial wellness looks a lot different depending on your preferences and style of living. For some, it involves being happy with just the essentials. For others, it’s about going on extravagant vacations with friends and family. 

Both definitions are fine.

It really just depends on your values and preferred lifestyle.

At the end of the day, it’s all about defining what happiness, meaning, and wellness mean to you. From there, you can go out and design a life that matches your preferred definition.

On his plans for financial education.

When it comes to my Twitter presence, I never got into financial education thinking there was any sort of business or monetization involved with it. 

I’ve just always been passionate about education.

As a kid when I used to travel to India, I saw firsthand the lack of opportunity that’s an unfortunate reality for so many around the world. 

We’re in a seminal moment where tech is actively breaking down education barriers while democratizing access.

Twitter and other online forums are wildly powerful tools that can reach anyone with internet access. That’s really what motivates me to keep posting.

On the drawbacks of online presence.

When you’re living online, you’re constantly connected. 

It can become quite difficult to escape that 24/7 connection and retrench into yourself because you’re constantly being hit with external stimuli.

As a result, it can get tough to remain introspective about your feelings, emotions, and day-to-day wellness.

More importantly, when you’re constantly in contact with all of these amazing people online, you can sometimes lose sight of those that are closest to you.

Social media reprograms your brain in a negative way, full stop. These systems are engineered around dopamine and set up to impact your brain.

So, you need to actively fight against it. 

I’ve had to learn the hard way about turning off and setting clear boundaries.

On his evening routine.

Regarding specific tactics, I swear by blackout shades for optimal sleep.

We also keep our house at 64 degrees and have a white noise machine that helps us sleep much better. On the topic of supplements, I typically down a magnesium supplement before going to bed.

While I’ve also experimented with a variety of CBD and melatonin, I’ve yet to find anything that’s materially helpful, though I’m always open to trying new things. 

Then I’m in bed around 8 PM, read for about 45 minutes, and call it a day.