The Art of Manliness - 10 Unchanging Ideas for Navigating an Ever-Changing World

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.720 to figure out what will happen in the future we typically make guesswork predictions and look to

00:00:15.520 particular periods in the past that seem like potential parallels my guest says that to figure

00:00:20.300 out what will happen next and how best to navigate that coming landscape the best things to consider

00:00:24.860 are those that have been true in every time and will be true until the end of it morgan haussell

00:00:29.820 is a venture capitalist and the author of same as ever a guide to what never changes today on the

00:00:35.020 show we talk about the ideas and principles that never change that can help you be successful in

00:00:39.160 an ever-changing world including how the biggest risk are those you can't see how the idea of

00:00:44.040 compound interest applies beyond your finances how your expectations can sabotage your happiness

00:00:48.620 why you need to learn to accept that things are supposed to be hard and how success can lead to

00:00:53.120 failure morgan also shares his rubric for choosing your reading what genres of books he finds most

00:00:58.240 useful for improving long-term thinking and two books he especially recommends for broadening your

00:01:02.640 perspective after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash same as ever

00:01:07.300 all right morgan haussell welcome back to the show thanks so much for having me back appreciate it

00:01:21.060 so you got a new book out called same as ever a guide to what never changes in the introduction of this

00:01:26.320 book you note that jeff bezos says that he's often asked what's going to change the next 10 years and

00:01:32.200 that he says quote i almost never get asked the question what's not going to change in the next 10

00:01:38.500 years and then he says and i submit to you that the second question is actually the more important of the

00:01:43.340 two why is the question or the answer to the question what doesn't change more important so much of

00:01:51.400 this just came from my experience that kind of led to cynicism in the financial industry of how bad we

00:01:56.260 are at forecasting as a whole industry forecasting the next recession forecasting the next bear market

00:02:01.340 or even like in politics who's going to win the next election we're terrible at it we're absolutely

00:02:04.800 abysmal at it and so there's two things you can do with that insight one is you can become even more

00:02:10.360 cynical and just say nobody has any idea what the future is going to hold or you can kind of take the

00:02:14.980 bezos approach and just say look let's just focus on what we know is not going to change what is just

00:02:21.100 an innate part of human behavior that has been happening for hundreds of years and will continue

00:02:26.300 to happen hundreds of years from now and so often i i love history i love all kinds of history and it's

00:02:32.020 so common that whatever you're reading no matter what the time period is no matter what the country is

00:02:36.220 that you see all these common denominators of how people behaved 100 years ago 200 years ago and you

00:02:42.240 will say to yourself you're like oh that's exactly what people do today particularly you know my

00:02:45.820 background is all in finance so if you look at how people responded to the great depression or even

00:02:51.520 some of the big stock market declines in the 1800s it's exactly the same way it is today it's over

00:02:57.120 confidence that leads to panic like none of those things change so let's take that and say like look

00:03:01.820 nobody knows where the stock market is going to go next nobody can predict that but we know exactly how

00:03:07.440 people respond to greed and fear we know exactly how people become overconfident

00:03:11.840 we know exactly how people panic at the wrong periods of time because it's always been like

00:03:15.620 that so let's focus on that if we're going to have some sort of vision of the future rather than

00:03:20.160 pretending that we know what is going to change right by focusing on the things that don't change

00:03:24.560 you increase your chances of success even in the face of setbacks you have a great quote from naval

00:03:29.520 ravikant where he talks about there's a thousand parallel universes and you want to be successful in

00:03:34.760 999 of them and the way you do that is you focus on the things that probably won't change in any of

00:03:40.540 those parallel universes that's it that's it and like by doing that you're almost you're going out

00:03:45.260 of your way to remove luck and chance and serendipity out of the equation and you just want to situate

00:03:51.540 your life and go about your life day to day so that you are doing things and focused on things and

00:03:57.200 paying attention to things that you know are going to be part of your future and then luck and serendipity

00:04:01.680 will play its role on its own but rather than assuming that oh because this person was very successful

00:04:07.820 this person got very rich and trying to figure out how they did it what was their secret by and large

00:04:12.360 those are things that cannot be replicated by you or anyone else or even themselves because they were

00:04:17.060 specific to one time period but if you're focusing on the things that never change you give yourself

00:04:21.840 the highest chance of being successful so let me just give you like one quick example of this if you

00:04:26.460 were looking at warren buffett as somebody to look up to there are a lot of different things that you

00:04:30.260 could take away from his success but how he picked stocks and and the exact stocks that he picked

00:04:36.540 you know back in the 1960s and 70s you can't replicate that today but can you replicate his

00:04:42.160 patience and his endurance like yeah probably so that's something that is worth paying attention to

00:04:47.780 rather than all the other things that you cannot replicate or and by the way like he can't even

00:04:51.800 replicate those things so big picture what are the types of things that don't change it sounds like

00:04:56.620 it's human behavior is what you've been focusing on that tends to be it you know there's a there's a

00:05:00.900 quote that i use at the start of the book from voltaire a very old quote where he says history never

00:05:05.320 repeats itself but man always does and that's really it it's like these like the details of

00:05:11.300 history always change so like compare the great depression to 2008 the details are totally different

00:05:16.320 because we had derivatives we had all these kind of like new financial instruments the details were

00:05:20.580 different but man never changes so how people respond to green fear that never changes so yeah it

00:05:25.980 tends to be these innate parts of human behavior that keep happening over and over again gotcha

00:05:31.100 so in the book you explore 23 different ideas that never change in the first one you explore

00:05:37.140 that big events the big events in life are often the result of tiny random and unforeseeable events

00:05:43.880 and you share a personal story that brings this idea home to readers can you share that story with us

00:05:48.900 yeah so i grew up as a competitive ski racer in lake tahoe california and ski racing is an interesting

00:05:55.340 sport it's obviously not baseball football basketball it's one of those weirdo sports that people don't pay

00:05:59.760 that much attention to and one of the things that's kind of quirky about it is that most

00:06:03.380 ski racers who get serious about it view high school as a nuisance that gets in the way so i

00:06:10.220 and all my other ski racing friends doing this we more or less bypassed high school we did this

00:06:15.560 independent study program that let us ski six days a week 10 months a year and it was great so i grew

00:06:21.360 up with about 12 other ski racers on the squaw valley ski team and we had known each other since we

00:06:25.300 were children we skied six days a week like it was it was a pretty awesome childhood and one day in

00:06:30.600 february of 2001 myself and two of my my best friends brendan allen and brian richmond were skiing

00:06:36.120 and we used to ski out of bounds quite a bit which if you're not familiar that's when you duck under

00:06:40.580 the ropes that say do not cross and because that's where you get some of the best skiing it's untracked

00:06:45.460 you get the place to yourself so we did this quite a bit and when we did it we would often get you know

00:06:50.140 there's no chairlift at the bottom when you ski out of bounds so we would often ski out to like a

00:06:54.680 backcountry road and then we would hitchhike back when we were doing this backcountry skiing during

00:07:00.660 this day we triggered a very small avalanche it was not that big it probably like came up to our knees

00:07:06.200 and it ended pretty quickly it wasn't that big a deal i remember when we got down the bottom we

00:07:10.500 kind of like laughed and high-fived about it it was like oh that was cool a little avalanche you see

00:07:14.000 that brenson so we hitchhiked back to the mountain and brendan and brian wanted to do that run

00:07:19.940 again they said hey that was great let's go do it again and for whatever reason i think it was

00:07:24.840 probably the hitchhiking is what always freaked me out i i didn't want to do it so i said hey

00:07:29.320 brendan and brian how about you guys go do that run again and rather than hitchhiking i'll drive my

00:07:34.520 truck around to the pickup spot on the backcountry road and i'll pick you two up so that's what we did

00:07:39.500 we went our separate ways brendan and brian went off went up the chairlift to go ski another run

00:07:43.880 and i went back to my truck to drive around the mountain to pick them up

00:07:47.420 20 minutes later i get to our pickup spot and they were not there

00:07:51.260 and i didn't think that much of it i think you know we didn't have cell phones back then so people

00:07:56.440 were very comfortable being out of communication it was normal to not know where somebody else was

00:08:00.940 and i didn't think that much of it i eventually left i realized that they were not coming i think

00:08:05.480 i waited 20 or 30 minutes and i was a little bit concerned but i did not think anything that bad

00:08:12.240 but the day went on the hours went on and later that day brian's mom called me at home and said

00:08:18.660 hey brian didn't show up for work today do you know where he is and i told her the truth i said we all

00:08:24.400 skied out of bounds backside of squaw and i was going to pick them up but they never showed up and i haven't

00:08:29.220 seen them since and brian's mom who was an expert skier herself is an expert skier herself i think kind

00:08:35.560 of pieced together in that moment what may have happened and i did as well more hours went on we

00:08:40.960 eventually got the police involved we did a missing persons report the police didn't take it very

00:08:44.680 seriously but we eventually got search and rescue involved and search and rescue went on the mountain

00:08:49.220 at about midnight and it was still a blizzard it was like gusting winds and snow in your face they

00:08:54.000 had these giant portable search lights and search dogs and these giant probe poles and they went

00:09:00.420 looking for brandon and brian at midnight and at about 9 a.m the next morning after they'd been

00:09:05.100 searching for you know nine hours at that point a team of search dogs kind of homed in on a spot

00:09:10.460 where we had been skiing and it had been a massive massive avalanche field the rescuers found the

00:09:17.020 search rescue team found this enormous avalanche debris field from what was clearly an enormous

00:09:22.200 avalanche that had taken place the previous day and the search dogs kind of honed in on the spot

00:09:27.040 and rescuers with probe poles these giant probe poles that searched down found brennan and brian

00:09:31.620 buried under six feet of snow in the avalanche field and they were dead of course and i always have

00:09:38.660 to preface this story by saying like i know that everyone listening to this and and and you brett

00:09:43.820 have lost somebody close to them i i know i'm not unique in this maybe the details were unique but

00:09:48.840 yeah of course a huge impact on me i was 17 at the time so were brennan and brian we're 17 years old

00:09:54.740 and one of the things that it took me a while to really piece this together but was the fact that if

00:10:01.380 i had gone on that second run with them 100 chance i would have died as well and these are two people

00:10:08.140 that i had been growing up with skiing and i skied with them that morning and then i declined a second

00:10:14.300 run and of course you know the initial trauma and still the the trauma and the pain today is losing

00:10:19.600 them but it was this always like maybe it was some form of survivor's guilt of being like gosh the most

00:10:24.820 important decision that i ever made in my entire life to this day was not taking that second run with

00:10:29.920 them and then you realize how fragile life is because i did not really contemplate that decision

00:10:35.760 to not do it with them i didn't i didn't weigh the pros and cons it was not a risk adjusted it was just

00:10:40.620 a random decision hey why don't you guys go i'm gonna i'm gonna stay back and that was the most

00:10:44.220 important decision i've ever made in my entire life so that's just an example of how fragile the world can

00:10:49.160 be we spend a lot of time forecasting risk thinking about risk thinking about what's in front of us

00:10:54.980 the truth is that most risk just comes from this just completely out of the blue

00:10:59.140 no nothing decision that you thought you made and that turns out to be enormously consequential

00:11:03.800 and there's a lot of examples like this in history of just a little tiny thing that somebody did that

00:11:10.120 seemed like the most benign decision ever that utterly transformed all of history and so once you

00:11:17.700 realize how fragile history can be even in your personal life or throughout the broader world

00:11:22.340 you become much more humble in your willingness and confidence to predict what's going to happen

00:11:28.700 next in the future well related to this idea is that the biggest risk in life are the ones we

00:11:33.260 don't see right like the avalanche risk you knew it was there but you didn't know that it was going

00:11:38.620 to happen that one time when you decided not to go yeah you use the example of the great depression

00:11:44.140 as a perfect encapsulation of this idea that the biggest risks are the ones we don't see

00:11:48.160 walks through that idea i did an interview with robert schiller from yale university a few years

00:11:53.480 ago and schiller won the nobel prize in economics for his work in in behavioral finance and part of

00:11:59.080 his his academic career many years ago was working with economic historians to find one person show me

00:12:06.320 one person who predicted the great depression and they can't find one person not a single person there

00:12:12.100 were people who said the economy is overextended there's going to be some sort of a pullback but a

00:12:16.340 depression where unemployment goes to 25 and it lasts for a decade nobody predicted that not a single

00:12:23.260 person saw that coming and people were pretty well informed in the late 1920s it wasn't that everyone

00:12:28.440 was oblivious it was just people knew what was going on they had all the data but the chain of events

00:12:34.620 that led from the stock market crash of 1929 to the depths of the great depression in 1932 33

00:12:40.400 was so unpredictable the number of things that had to happen and in hindsight it all makes sense you see

00:12:47.520 the craziness of the 1920s and in hindsight it's like of course that was the outcome but it was not it

00:12:52.780 was that it was not obvious to literally anybody in 1929 that this was in front of us so that's another

00:12:59.700 example of like the biggest risk is what we don't see coming because today in the year 2023 there are very smart

00:13:05.460 journalists and economists looking at all the risks in the world and saying here's the biggest risk you

00:13:10.960 know we have big budget deficits inflation war in the middle east etc etc and if history is any guide

00:13:16.700 and of course it is the biggest risk of the next year of the next five years of the next decade is

00:13:22.620 something that nobody not myself not you not anybody is even aware of today and think about the last 20

00:13:29.360 years i mean the the biggest risk of the last 20 years were september 11th and covid and that you

00:13:34.880 know the those are the events that move the needle the most and the common denominator of those events

00:13:39.620 is that nobody saw them coming until virtually the day that they happened and so i think it's it's always

00:13:44.460 been like that and it always will be like that so how do you prepare for risks that you can't see

00:13:50.340 i think there is some truth that by definition you can't and that's i i i think that's that's the

00:13:59.560 right answer that's the hard answer but if there is any kind of like okay well what what can you do

00:14:04.340 i've often thought for financial matters at least the amount of savings and liquidity and safety

00:14:10.540 cushion that you should have in your personal finances should feel like it's a little bit too much

00:14:15.400 it it it should make you wince a little bit because when it feels like it's too much

00:14:20.000 then at least you have a fighting chance to prepare for the risks that you cannot even imagine

00:14:24.100 that you can't even envision and if you are only saving for the risks that you can envision the

00:14:29.380 risks that are obvious to you then by definition you're going to miss the surprise 10 times out of

00:14:34.000 10 and so i think most people on average probably don't have enough safety and liquidity because they

00:14:40.280 are only thinking about the obvious risks they're not planning for the 9-11s the covid's the pearl

00:14:46.020 harbors that come out of the blue and do the most damage specifically because

00:14:49.920 nobody saw them coming so you should have uh some slack and slack is inefficient and people don't

00:14:55.280 like inefficiency but that's going to make you more efficient when bad things happen you know it's

00:15:01.380 it's generally true historically that on average roughly once per decade the world breaks once per

00:15:07.100 decade there's a massive event in the world where you wake up one day and you realize the world is not

00:15:12.720 the same place anymore covid was that 9-11 was that world war ii the great depression it's it's

00:15:18.420 usually been like that and during that one moment per decade the excess slack the capacity the cash

00:15:24.820 that you have in your savings is going to become the most valuable asset that you've ever had in your

00:15:29.180 life so another idea you explore is how our expectations can determine our happiness and you

00:15:35.980 start off by looking at how we romanticize the 1950s as this golden era in american history

00:15:41.600 but then when you actually look at the reality it wasn't as good as we remember it what's going on

00:15:47.460 there i think there's a lot of reasons people love to think about and romanticize and become

00:15:52.620 nostalgic for the 1950s one of the reasons is obviously just because the the 20 years that

00:15:58.080 preceded it in the great depression in world war ii were so awful for so many people that any sort of

00:16:03.300 peace and prosperity in the 50s just felt amazing by comparison that's a big reason but i think a lot of

00:16:08.360 like one of the other factors that went on here in the 1950s and why it felt so good and it felt

00:16:12.600 like the golden age of middle class prosperity is because for a brief period of time the distribution

00:16:19.440 between rich and poor the level of income inequality in america got very low there were not billionaire

00:16:24.960 hedge fund managers there were no ceos making 50 million dollars a year it just by and large did

00:16:29.580 not happen in the 1950s and that was really important it did something very important to people's

00:16:34.380 mindsets which is that there's no such thing as an objective level of wealth everything is just

00:16:39.660 relative to other people whenever you're trying to figure out how rich or poor you are you just

00:16:44.540 compare yourself to people around you and in the 1950s most americans could look at their neighbors

00:16:50.980 their co-workers their siblings their friends and say hey relative to them i'm doing pretty well

00:16:55.280 i'm probably doing about as well as they are and so that made people feel great even if statistically

00:17:00.800 they were not that well off even if statistically they were on average substantially poorer than the

00:17:06.780 average american is today even adjusted for inflation they felt better because relative to other people

00:17:12.100 they were closer in circumstances and i think what has happened over the last 80 years or so is that

00:17:18.040 on average we have become not only wealthier but way wealthier higher incomes higher net worth better

00:17:23.520 medical care higher life expectancy but we don't feel it because our expectations have risen by even more

00:17:29.820 so if your income doubles but your expectation triples you feel worse off even if statistically

00:17:35.800 you're doing twice as good as you were before so that's that's a big point i think it's true that

00:17:40.060 if your expectations rise faster than your income you will never be happy with your money

00:17:44.340 and that has been true forever like one common thread in history is that you know particularly for the

00:17:50.340 last 200 years or so things tend to get better for most people most of the time of course there are lots of

00:17:55.780 exceptions but for most people most of the time things get better you become more prosperous but

00:18:01.280 are people actually happier for it by and large the answer is no because with prosperity you just

00:18:06.340 ratchet up your expectations so think about what we have today that did not exist 100 years ago

00:18:11.320 penicillin advil sunscreen like all these like absolute basic necessities that we consider necessities

00:18:18.220 today that would look like magic to somebody 100 years ago but people just of course they just take

00:18:23.240 those for granted there's this quote that i love that says man has an infinite capacity to take

00:18:28.320 things for granted and that's it's kind of a sad realization but it's very true that with progress

00:18:34.160 tends to come a rise in expectations that kind of levels out the happiness that you gain from that

00:18:39.220 progress how do you counter that i think at the society level like at the broad level you can't it's

00:18:45.380 always been like that it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective that people don't just want to

00:18:50.100 become wealthy they want to become wealthier than their peers because that's how you compete for

00:18:54.480 a spouse a mate job opportunities whatever it is it doesn't matter how much you have it just matters

00:19:00.300 how much you have relative to other people who you're competing with is what really matters so i think at

00:19:05.040 the broad level there's there's nothing you can do about it at the individual level i do think it's

00:19:09.220 possible to at least like at the margins realize the game that is being played and realize that if you

00:19:15.960 don't go out of your way to manage your expectations with as much emphasis as you do improving your

00:19:21.040 circumstances you're never going to be happy and don't be surprised when you work your entire life

00:19:26.180 and get a bunch of raises and get a bunch of big bonuses and you're not any happier for it

00:19:29.820 and so i think going out of your way to manage your expectations with as much emphasis as you do

00:19:35.060 improving your circumstances is absolutely essential if you want to become not just wealthy but happy with

00:19:41.040 the wealth that you accrue yeah okay so focus on the absolute numbers instead of comparing yourself

00:19:46.160 to if you have if you got a million dollars in the bank like that's awesome but don't start worrying

00:19:50.780 like oh that guy's got three million i gotta start doing more another principle that stood out to me

00:19:55.080 was people don't want accuracy they want certainty how does that play out in the world it definitely

00:20:01.520 plays out with like commentary online and news and when people are like listening to their favorite

00:20:06.400 pundit by and large you don't want a pundit who is right you want a pundit who makes you feel better

00:20:12.240 and there's a quirk in punditry where if you tell people what they want to hear you as a pundit can be

00:20:18.480 wrong forever without penalty because when people watch a political forecast or a stock market forecast

00:20:24.600 really what they want is to reduce the uncertainty that they have in their head that is causing them

00:20:29.180 some amount of pain and anxiety because everyone i think intuitively knows how uncertain the world is

00:20:34.140 could go this way it could go that way and that uncertainty hurts it's not very fun but so when

00:20:39.300 you find somebody who says hey i actually know exactly where the stock market is going to go next

00:20:43.600 i know exactly who's going to win the presidency i know exactly you know how how the world's going to

00:20:48.500 play out we latch on to that because it instantly reduces the uncertainty that we have in our head 0.89

00:20:54.380 even if we intuitively know that what they're saying is bullshit and so there's a very long history of

00:20:59.320 that and i think it plays a role in an enormous degree in investing and politics of people just

00:21:06.960 latching on to the person who is pounding the table with the most certainty even if how the world

00:21:11.720 actually works is a lot of nuance and gradation and working in probabilities without certainties

00:21:19.220 yeah i've read and i think you talk about this in the book that when it comes to certainty

00:21:22.900 people who in the investment world who are like perma bears are always constantly saying oh man the

00:21:28.260 economy is going to crash there's a tendency for people to take that person more seriously because

00:21:32.140 that sounds smart compared to the person who's optimistic about the future because if you're wrong

00:21:37.860 that the economy is going to crash well no one really cares because everything's fine but if you're

00:21:43.460 wrong saying everything's awesome and then everything turns out to not be awesome you don't like that

00:21:48.740 guy it's definitely true that historically optimism makes you sound kind of aloof and detached and not

00:21:55.600 very smart and pessimism makes you sound smart like pessimism always sounds smarter than optimism

00:22:00.680 if if i were to say hey there's a great depression coming stock market is going to crash 90 you're

00:22:06.760 going to lose all your money most people will like sit up in their chairs and pay attention to that

00:22:10.080 but if i were to say hey i have a stock that's going to double in the next year a lot of people would

00:22:14.900 be like that sounds like a sales pitch you're pulling my leg i don't believe that and again like

00:22:19.780 from an evolutionary perspective it makes sense that people are more attuned to threats than

00:22:24.860 opportunities because you have to survive the threats in order to benefit from the opportunities

00:22:30.240 so we're always going to be more attuned to the pessimism than we are the optimism the irony though is

00:22:36.360 like if you are a student of history and you know people's ability to solve problems and become more

00:22:41.540 productive and for in a capitalistic society for that to accrue to you as an investor you should be an

00:22:47.480 optimist like your default assumption should be optimism even if the pessimism is so much more

00:22:53.300 seductive and will capture your attention in ways that optimism never will how have you learned to

00:22:58.360 get more comfortable with uncertainty i think for me it's just been a massive room for error

00:23:04.320 in my finances but i think i actually i think the the honest answer to that question is i don't know

00:23:09.080 if i have i think i'm prone to anxiety as much as anyone else and it was really interesting

00:23:14.580 for someone like me who writes about this stuff professionally to experience march of 2020 and

00:23:20.700 the start of covid that you know that was the intense lockdown month the stock market fell 40

00:23:25.000 during that period and i i didn't sleep very well during that period it was like even if even if you

00:23:30.900 know what the right response is to do once you're in the trenches so to speak everyone i think is kind

00:23:36.740 of naturally hardwired the the caveman part of their brain is to be anxious and uncertain about

00:23:44.160 parts of the world that you don't understand like that's that's a survival mechanism so in in some

00:23:48.560 ways we can't i can't but i think having some degree i think a core to a lot of this is just

00:23:55.320 basic humility the humility that we have no idea what's going to happen next and once you have that

00:24:01.860 then i think your willingness to try to predict goes down and you become more comfortable with saying

00:24:06.860 like look i need to situate my life so that if the world goes this way i'll be okay and if it goes

00:24:11.560 that way i'll be okay if my career goes this way it'll be okay but if it goes that way i'll figure

00:24:16.980 it out too it's less reliance on just a single path planning and more just like look i need to

00:24:23.460 have plan a b c for virtually anything that could happen in the world so i think people understand

00:24:27.860 the power of compound interest but you talk about how this power of compounding plays out in other

00:24:33.080 areas besides money where else do you see this besides finances well i think you you see it in lots

00:24:38.780 of places one of this one of the areas you see it is like in people's individual careers

00:24:42.400 where there's kind of two paths to take your career one that a lot of people will do is they'll

00:24:49.760 work at a company for one year and then move to the next company work there for a year and then the

00:24:54.000 next company work there for a year and that's that's not necessarily bad i'm not criticizing that

00:24:58.120 but another way is try to find a great employer and stay there for your entire career or stay there for

00:25:02.640 10 or 15 years before you move to another company and in the latter you get compounding of networks

00:25:09.000 of institutional knowledge of how that company works versus in the former when you are jumping

00:25:13.880 to a new company or new field every year every two years every time you do that you kind of have to

00:25:18.940 reset your social network your peer network the institutional trust that you have built up at that

00:25:25.100 employer and then so those benefits do not compound whereas the people who might stay at one company

00:25:31.120 or at least in one field for a long period of time those things do start to compound and i think

00:25:36.420 the huge majority of time that you see somebody in their profession and they're so good at it

00:25:40.940 and you watch them you just say how do you it looks effortless how do you do that the answer to that

00:25:45.740 question how do you do that is usually somebody saying i've been doing this thing in this chair

00:25:50.980 for 20 years or more that's usually the answer like because all those skills just started compounding

00:25:56.240 and the people who are jumping around never get that compound interest in their career

00:25:59.940 what have you learned to mitigate the desire to keep switching to different things so that you

00:26:05.980 can get that compounding effect what have you done in your own life well i've been i've been a writer

00:26:10.800 writing about the exact same thing for 17 years so in in some ways and i think that's really benefited

00:26:16.800 me is that not only have i been a writer for 17 years i've been writing about just behavioral finance

00:26:22.360 and virtually nothing else for 17 years and so when you do that just the amount of stories that you pick up

00:26:28.560 along the ways the anecdotes that you pick up along the way the learning what kind of writing style

00:26:33.840 works and what doesn't work there's the only way that you can learn stuff like that is just through

00:26:38.480 not only experience but years or decades of experience and so i think in my own life it's been

00:26:43.740 really beneficial now this is not to say that if you start a new career at age 22 and you hate it

00:26:47.980 that you shouldn't leave or if you have an employer that's that sucks you shouldn't find a new

00:26:52.060 employer it's not to say that whatsoever it's just a recognition that there is so much benefit

00:26:56.280 in terms of compounding to sticking with one thing and using years or decades of hard-fought

00:27:02.600 experience to gain that knowledge and that skill we're going to take a quick break for your word

00:27:07.740 from our sponsors and now back to the show another principle you talk about is that there's a

00:27:15.680 competitive advantage to imperfection and we kind of touched on this a bit earlier so what are the

00:27:21.820 downsides of chasing complete optimization it seems like intuition that people would say like oh you

00:27:27.740 you want to be as efficient as possible and there's definitely like this efficiency fetish among

00:27:32.360 businesses we want to become as lean as possible as efficient as possible one example of like how

00:27:37.320 starkly this backfired was in 2021 when supply chains were really broken you had at that time more

00:27:44.940 consumer demand for things like new cars and washing machines than virtually ever before it was

00:27:51.640 like a record amount of demand but those car companies and those washing machine companies

00:27:56.060 could not keep up with it because their supply chains were so quote-unquote efficient that they didn't have

00:28:01.840 any slack in them and like they all those companies would have been so much better off financially

00:28:07.060 if they had slack in their inventory if they had you know parking lots filled with unsold cars they

00:28:13.120 had the slack in their inventory so that when demand changed they could respond to it but because they

00:28:17.760 had spent so many years just saying you know just in time inventory if we're only going to stock the

00:28:23.280 exact number of cars that we are capable of selling over the next two days it was like such a tight

00:28:28.480 efficiency supply chain that when demand increased a little bit the whole system fell apart the whole

00:28:34.240 system virtually collapsed and so that's like one example of if you have a little bit of room for error

00:28:38.920 and slack and you go out of your way to not be efficient there's actually tremendous amount of

00:28:43.540 value in that tim ferris who of course wrote the four-hour work week in i think 2007 he had spoken

00:28:49.900 about this recently i don't want to put words in his mouth and i want to make sure i'm getting this

00:28:53.360 mostly right at least but he's gone out of his way to become in the last couple of years

00:28:58.180 to be less efficient in his life there's actually a lot of value in being less efficient and just kind of

00:29:03.700 like letting your day play out as it's going to play out and letting serendipity hit you in the

00:29:08.880 face when it wants to once in a while rather than having everything perfectly scheduled at nine o'clock

00:29:13.320 i'm going to do this at 11 o'clock i'm going to do that there's actually tremendous value to just like

00:29:17.540 free floating around and seeing what happens and you only do that when you recognize the value of

00:29:23.020 an inefficient life yeah so you can do this uh in your personal life with your cash savings so instead

00:29:28.800 of having you know all your money allocated in some investment it's good to have a good amount

00:29:34.660 of cash in a savings account somewhere and you might think oh my that's just a big waste like i could be

00:29:39.920 investing that and getting compound interest but you might need it like an emergency could pop up or

00:29:44.700 there could be like an opportunity where if you had cash you could jump on that opportunity and then

00:29:51.060 you can also do this with your time you know in your book you talk about being willing to set blocks of

00:29:56.540 your day where you're not doing anything you're not being productive because that can open you up

00:30:01.920 to new opportunities like that's when you get new ideas when you're not doing anything yeah i think how

00:30:07.060 you schedule your day is really important that a lot of particularly like the type a super ambitious

00:30:11.720 people will want to schedule their day to get the most out of it and i think that is by and large a mistake

00:30:18.200 if you have just several hours a day of unstructured think time on your schedule you will find that in

00:30:25.920 hindsight those will be the most productive hours of your day because good ideas rarely come when

00:30:31.580 you're sitting at your desk and you're like okay nine o'clock is my hour to come up with a good idea

00:30:35.580 that usually doesn't happen most good ideas come when you're going for a walk you're in the shower

00:30:41.000 you're at the gym it's these unstructured kind of free floating times when you let your mind wander

00:30:46.660 that creativity really starts to spark so particularly if you have if you're in a creative field

00:30:51.580 i think the more creative your field is the less structured you want your day the more open you

00:30:56.700 want your calendar even if that feels inefficient that's when the good ideas are actually going to

00:31:00.840 strike you well the other problem with scheduling your day to the hour you create sort of a just in

00:31:06.420 time inventory problem for your day because if one thing gets messed up it screws up your whole

00:31:11.240 schedule like those people who they want to get to the airport like at just the right minutes they

00:31:15.480 don't have to wait that long if traffic happens like they're going to miss their flight

00:31:19.400 that's it i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna knock on wood here because i'm a frequent traveler i've i've

00:31:23.640 never missed a flight in my entire life and i fly virtually every week because i i've i have a ton

00:31:28.580 of room for error and you could say look every time i fly i'm wasting an hour that i could have been

00:31:34.100 at home that i'm just kind of hanging out at at the airport doesn't bother me in the slightest

00:31:38.680 because at least for the work that i do missing a flight could be catastrophic and so those those

00:31:43.680 hours that i've wasted the other thing is i don't view them as wasted hours because when i show up to

00:31:47.360 the airport early i listen to a podcast i walk around airports are the best spots in the world

00:31:52.760 for people watching and so it doesn't bother me in the slightest if you can actually like figure

00:31:56.680 out how to utilize those quote-unquote wasted hours to actually gain some productivity and just have like

00:32:02.160 alone time to think in your head another idea that really hit home to me was it's supposed to be hard

00:32:08.000 what can jerry seinfeld teach us about this principle this is great story of like jerry seinfeld

00:32:13.900 talking with david letterman they've been friends for for decades and letterman was asking seinfeld

00:32:18.480 about the early days of seinfeld the show the sitcom seinfeld and during that period like jerry had all

00:32:24.880 these comedy writers that were supplied by nbc and david letterman says something like hey are those

00:32:31.160 writers a huge help are they like great at writing material and jerry says not really you know they're

00:32:36.260 okay but they're not that good and david letterman says like oh why that's interesting they're not that

00:32:40.480 good why and jerry said wouldn't it be strange if they were all great like wouldn't it be strange if

00:32:46.340 20 just like run-of-the-mill writers could come in and write the most brilliant hilarious company it's

00:32:51.580 supposed to be hard of course they can't come up with genius every single day it's supposed to be

00:32:56.540 hard i think this is really true in investing as well where there's all these statistics that everybody

00:33:01.860 knows about 90 of active fund managers can't beat the market they underperform the benchmark and that is

00:33:08.640 usually used as a statistic of a failed industry or like oh the industry is a scam my response is

00:33:14.780 always like of course it's that way what world would you want to live in or what world do you think you

00:33:19.560 live in in which everybody who tries to beat the market can do it of course 90 can't do it it's

00:33:24.820 supposed to be hard because the rewards are so great just like everybody can't get into the nba

00:33:29.600 it's supposed to be hard that's like the reason that it's hard is why it's enjoyable to watch these

00:33:33.920 are the best people in the world so i think just understanding the cost of admission and the price

00:33:39.100 of success for anything that you do is is really critical and you say that this idea that it's

00:33:44.340 supposed to be hard can help you put up with parts of your job you don't like how so this is cool from

00:33:50.720 jeff bezos that is like really stark but i think it's true he says if you can enjoy half of your job

00:33:55.900 if 50 of your job can be enjoyable that's about as good as it gets and no matter what you're doing

00:34:01.160 whether you're the ceo of a big company or an entry-level worker there is always going to be

00:34:05.460 at least 50 of your job that feels like capital w work it's it's just labor you don't want to do it

00:34:12.700 you don't want to go to this meeting you don't want to do this data entry you don't that's part

00:34:16.400 of it that's part of it there is no job in the world and that is a hundred percent fun and i think

00:34:20.780 people who say they enjoy a hundred percent of their job are are probably covering for something i think

00:34:26.340 there's there are so few exceptions to this that's hard and particularly if you are ambitious

00:34:30.680 and you want a big job you want a high-paying job then that ratio that bezos is talking about is like

00:34:36.900 if you could enjoy 20 of it 10 of it you're probably doing pretty good so i think just that

00:34:42.340 acceptance of the cost of admission the price of success is really important i think that quote

00:34:47.440 really hit home with me because i think there's this there's this idea out there that if you

00:34:51.800 if you love your job it won't ever feel like work um right like there's there's that quote that

00:34:56.520 says you know find a job you enjoy doing you'll never work a day in your life but every job is

00:35:01.580 still a job right even if you're i mean even if you're doing creative work there's going to be

00:35:06.240 parts of your job that just stink it's just it's work yeah it's like you know this is not just like

00:35:11.700 an artistic fulfillment like by and large you are working to support your family or support yourself

00:35:16.360 like it's it's work it's labor and we should recognize how lucky we are today that historically

00:35:22.160 95 of people the work that they did was manual labor and farming and today it's it's roughly

00:35:28.580 you know i forget the exact statistics 70 plus of jobs are considered service jobs something in that

00:35:34.440 range so we are very fortunate today that the kind of work that most people do is physically easier

00:35:40.820 than it used to be but i think it's still or if not even more mentally difficult and generates anxiety

00:35:47.220 and uncertainty and whatnot than it's ever before and you're never going to get rid of that there's

00:35:51.300 never going to be a time of like oh once i get this promotion then it's going to be smooth sailing

00:35:55.920 that's just it's not how it works these careers are supposed to be difficult that's why they can be

00:36:00.560 rewarding and so that's i think that's that's important for anything that you do in life and by

00:36:05.480 and large it's true for relationships like marriages take work and if people don't believe that they

00:36:11.900 should get their divorce papers ready of course it's hard of course it takes work and sacrifice and 0.70

00:36:17.360 what not of course it does and once you accept that price of admission then you realize that the

00:36:21.960 price is worth paying that the rewards are great but it's the people who don't realize that cost that

00:36:27.420 get themselves into trouble yeah my wife and i have an inside joke we worked at jamba juice together

00:36:31.700 when we first got married and we were in college so we just made smoothies all the time just you

00:36:36.140 know monotonous making smoothies making strawberry wild smoothies and we have a joke now with our job

00:36:41.600 there's certain tasks that are just like it's just monotonous boring even though we do a lot of

00:36:45.360 creative stuff right do podcast whatever there's parts of the job we just it's called smoothie

00:36:49.880 making it's like oh what are you doing i'm making smoothies today and it's just doing it's doing the

00:36:53.480 grunt work of the job you never get rid of that stuff no matter what you do yeah i mean it's really

00:36:58.840 true for parenting as well before you're a parent it's easy to imagine what it's going to be like and

00:37:03.820 it's going to be oh reading my kid bedtime stories doing arts and crafts playing baseball and yes there is

00:37:10.080 that but 90 of parenting is picking up mac and cheese from the floor changing diapers dealing 0.99

00:37:16.940 with screaming kids that's 90 of it like 90 of it is not that pleasant but by the way back to my last

00:37:22.360 point it's worth that cost of admission if you can deal with the food stains and the dirty diapers

00:37:28.300 and whatnot is well well worth the cost of admission you just have to recognize what you're getting

00:37:32.920 yourself into before you start but a trick with this is trying to figure out the balance of how much

00:37:38.220 crap you're going to put up with and figuring out the reward to it so how do you develop that ability

00:37:43.200 to identify the optimal amount of hassle and nonsense you have to put up with something to 0.97

00:37:47.980 get ahead in life because sometimes it's not worth it i don't know if there's a formula for it and it's

00:37:53.380 going to be different in every situation so rather than trying to say like what is the optimal amount

00:37:58.540 i think you can flip it over and just say it's just realizing that there's going to be some of it

00:38:03.260 there's going to be some like if you have no capacity to deal with inefficiency and nonsense

00:38:09.600 and rude people and delayed flights if your capacity to deal with that is zero you're going

00:38:14.620 to have a very difficult life and i i think you know again there's no formula but i often think in

00:38:19.600 my life i'm just making this number up i'm like you need to have a 20 capacity for your life of just

00:38:24.900 bullshit of 20 of what happens in your day and in your year is going to be things where you're like 0.75

00:38:30.580 ah really i got to deal with this i got a flat tire i got a meeting i got to go to i got to deal 0.98

00:38:35.940 with this silly nonsense that's life 20 capacity for dealing with bs on a day-to-day basis right the

00:38:42.000 silly nonsense that's something that never changes right never going to change you also talk about how

00:38:46.900 competitive advantages they usually end up dying at some point why do most competitive advantages die 0.95

00:38:52.980 there's lots of reasons the biggest and most important one is that success makes people

00:38:58.800 lazy and happy so to speak and then the fear and anxiety that created the success that drove them

00:39:06.340 into action dissipates as they become successful and then their success is cyclical they were scared

00:39:13.260 and anxious with which drove them to success once they were rich and successful that anxiety went away

00:39:18.620 and once the anxiety that made them successful goes away they begin their decline so that cyclicality

00:39:24.480 of success you see it everywhere at the individual level at the corporate level even like the

00:39:28.260 nation level you can see that you see it in the united states and so realizing that you know most

00:39:35.380 competitive advantages die makes you more aware of what it takes to succeed and just going out of

00:39:42.020 your way to ask the question what is my competitive advantage a lot of people will assume that their

00:39:47.100 competitive advantage was intelligence or some level of skill and sometimes that's the case that's

00:39:52.680 usually at least some part of it but for so much of this whether it's in sports or careers or

00:39:57.540 relationships what made you successful was fear you woke up scared every morning and that that fear

00:40:03.520 drove you into action and once your success eats away at that fear and you become fat and happy so to

00:40:09.600 speak that's the danger zone that's when you're really at a lot of risk is when you feel you're at

00:40:14.060 the mountaintop and you can kick your legs up and relax a little bit that's the danger zone yeah you give

00:40:18.880 the example of sears as a story of a brand or a company that had a competitive advantage but their

00:40:25.200 success actually led to their downfall it's like they like sears became so ridiculously successful in

00:40:31.180 the 70s and 80s that i think they got egotistical and they were like look we're really good at selling

00:40:36.380 socks and underwear we should now become a bank we should become a stock brokerage they started buying

00:40:42.340 they bought dean witter and they bought discover car they bought all these crazy things that they had no

00:40:45.940 idea what they were doing and i think that was just they became so successful that they thought

00:40:50.460 they could do anything and once they let that focus drift then walmart and target and eventually

00:40:56.980 amazon just came in and ate their lunch and this was a company that had been so successful at chasing

00:41:01.900 off competitors for a hundred years and then in the course of 10 or 15 years they lost everything

00:41:07.120 just went up in flames and so that's one example but there's that's that's almost that's the most

00:41:12.340 common story uh for successful businesses and without making any kind of predictions here you can

00:41:18.300 easily imagine a world in which 30 years from now at least one of amazon google microsoft tesla

00:41:25.620 those those big companies will be out of business i have no idea which one but just historically

00:41:31.680 speaking that should be your baseline scenario that's historically how it's worked i mean if you go

00:41:36.520 back even to the late 1990s not that long ago the big companies were kodak aig city group general motors

00:41:45.360 all those companies either don't exist or went bankrupt even if they still exist like and but those were

00:41:51.160 the behemoths back then sears of course was in there jc pennies and 20 years before that it was ibm and

00:41:58.300 us steel and all these companies that even though they they still exist they are shells of their former

00:42:03.220 selves so that's the most likely outcome in these situations is that former companies that had

00:42:08.460 massive competitive advantage similar to how what apple amazon have today they eventually lose it well

00:42:14.520 in your own life what can you do to counter this tendency for your competitive advantage to decline

00:42:20.100 because you just get you get lazy i think to some extent i i really admire the people who quit while

00:42:27.360 they're ahead and obviously most people just can't just quit their job whenever they want to i mean

00:42:32.700 hopefully they'll retire someday but i really admire the people who say look it was stress and anxiety

00:42:38.140 that got me here and i don't want to be stressed anymore so rather than becoming lazy on my job i'm gonna

00:42:43.780 quit the best example to me of that was jerry seinfeld whose show was on top of the world in 1998 it was

00:42:50.780 the biggest it had ever been and for various reasons he realized that what made the show so great at least

00:42:57.660 had the potential of dissipating and he said the only way to know where the top is is to experience

00:43:03.940 the decline and he said i had no desire to do that so when the show was absolutely at its peak

00:43:09.960 and had never been bigger he quit he pulled the plug and that is so hard to do but i really admire

00:43:15.120 those people who realize that it is way more beneficial for your reputation your legacy for your mental

00:43:22.080 health for your financial well-being it's way better to quit while you're ahead than it is to

00:43:27.000 experience the decline after you lose the skill that made you successful to begin with another idea

00:43:32.500 you talk about is the power of incentives to help help you understand why people do what they do even

00:43:37.600 like the crazy behavior so how can incentives understanding incentives help us understand people

00:43:42.080 i think a lot of times when you see somebody do something crazy or even evil it's easy to just say

00:43:50.300 that person is is a bad person that's an evil person and very often that's that's that is the

00:43:56.500 correct answer very often you can descend there i think what people overlook is that there are a lot

00:44:01.780 of things that they themselves you yourself me myself would do if we had the right incentives so

00:44:09.300 like one example here after the financial crisis of 2008 it was very easy to point the fingers at the

00:44:15.740 greedy wall street bankers who ruined the economy and like they like by and large that that actually 0.84

00:44:21.280 was the accurate criticism there's nothing wrong with that criticism what people missed was the idea

00:44:27.260 that look if you yourself the person criticizing if you were 27 and you worked at some wall street

00:44:33.900 investment bank and they said hey if you package these subprime bonds that were sold to widows and

00:44:38.800 orphans we'll give you a million dollar bonus we'll give you a 10 million dollar bonus you would

00:44:43.680 probably do it too it's so easy to criticize without realizing the incentives that will do it and

00:44:48.900 most people don't understand the boundaries of their morality and how those boundaries can be

00:44:55.380 influenced by the incentives of the system that they are operating in and that has a big impact i i think

00:45:01.240 it makes a lot of people more cynical than they could be and it also makes people ignorant to how

00:45:06.200 fragile the world can be because if you think like oh myself and everyone around me we're good people

00:45:11.640 we're moral people and we would not do x y and z you're going to miss the periods in which the

00:45:16.460 incentives are dangled in front of you that will cause you to do those things and therefore like

00:45:22.160 those people i think by and large underestimate wars financial crises whatever it might be and you

00:45:28.480 look at a war or financial crisis and you say how could somebody possibly do that and most of the time

00:45:34.580 the answer is because that person has incentives social incentives religious incentives nationalistic

00:45:41.660 incentives financial incentives that would actually make you possibly do that similar thing if you are

00:45:48.100 in their shoes yeah and uh you talk about you see this with when you go to a doctor or maybe a

00:45:54.620 financial advisor or maybe some sort of coach and you're looking for advice and they have an incentive

00:46:00.920 to make it look like they're offering you good advice so they're going to tell you to do something

00:46:05.780 even when maybe the more appropriate response would be like well actually you don't need to do anything

00:46:09.800 about this i actually went to the doctor this week with something that i went with 100 certainty in my

00:46:16.680 own intuition thought this is going to need surgery this is going to need a big intervention and the

00:46:21.520 doctor looked at it and said no you're fine you don't need to do anything get out of here go home you're

00:46:24.780 fine and it's like it's so refreshing to hear it once in a while because you're right that

00:46:28.160 i think it's very well intentioned that a doctor or a financial advisor or a consultant

00:46:33.000 wants like genuinely wants to give their patient or their client the right advice the best advice

00:46:39.040 but it's very hard to charge particularly a high fee a high hourly rate if you look your client in

00:46:45.420 the eye and say there's nothing you need to do just go home you like that's not adding any value

00:46:49.700 the desire to want to add value makes them want to pull some lever twist some dial do something for

00:46:55.620 the client to make it seem like they're adding value here and so that's the incentive that leads

00:47:00.620 to a lot of bad financial advice probably a lot of bad medical advice it's actually well-meaning it's

00:47:05.800 just the incentives of that system lean towards action in fields where sometimes do nothing is the best

00:47:12.660 answer and the right answer yeah i've had this issue with my roof so i got a metal seam roof and

00:47:17.420 there's been a leak somewhere and of course who do you call to you know look at your roof it's a roof

00:47:23.120 company every time i've brought out a roof company every single one of them has tried to sell me a

00:47:28.780 roof i finally found a company that said no we just need to make this one patch and you're good

00:47:32.860 but every other company is like no you need an entirely new roof and then you understand it's

00:47:36.480 like it's incentives what is that warren buffett quote like never ask a barber if you need a haircut

00:47:40.660 because he's always going to tell you you need a haircut that's it here's what's so interesting

00:47:43.860 about it when you say that i'm willing to bet that when you do need a new roof you're going to go

00:47:49.600 back to that guy yeah who told you that you don't need one because he just gained your trust so the

00:47:54.120 irony here is like if you can actually push back against those incentives you actually build a huge

00:47:59.520 amount of trust and that trust is going to be the most the biggest and most important financial asset

00:48:04.680 and financial driver that you have over time and or if your neighbor or your sibling or whatever

00:48:09.900 needed a new roof you would probably recommend them to that person who just declined an opportunity to

00:48:14.600 give you a new roof so what all these ideas have in common is that it requires you to look at life

00:48:20.520 in the world with a a long-term view right you can't just think about this situation because things

00:48:26.680 are constantly changing but all these things we talked about they happen on the long term

00:48:30.560 you mentioned in the book that you started reading more history books to get better at long-term

00:48:35.720 thinking were there any books in particular that had a big impact on your thinking like history books

00:48:40.920 there's one that really sticks out it's a book called the great depression a diary and self

00:48:46.960 explanatory title it was written by this ohio lawyer in 1930 or in the 1930s named benjamin roth and he

00:48:53.540 was a bankruptcy attorney in youngstown ohio and he just kept a very elaborate diary it was his personal

00:48:58.880 diary of what he witnessed during the great depression and how people in his town were dealing with

00:49:04.460 the decline and since he was a bankruptcy attorney he really had a front row seat into how the

00:49:09.140 depression was playing out and his son published it in 2010 and i think it's inadvertently the best

00:49:15.380 economic book that's ever been written because there's no hindsight bias in it most books about

00:49:20.440 the great depression or books about world war ii have hindsight bias you know how the story ends

00:49:24.900 and that colors the opinion of the person writing it but in 1932 benjamin roth did not know how it was

00:49:32.000 going to end he didn't know if it would ever end the great depression so when he's writing about it

00:49:36.820 it's so raw and you really feel the emotions and the uncertainty that they were dealing with

00:49:41.140 i mean the only other parallel there is anne frank's diary of the there's another world war ii book that

00:49:47.280 has no hindsight bias she did not know how it was going to end she didn't know how her story was going

00:49:51.700 to end and that is so rare and unique because anyone who is writing about history when they know

00:49:57.300 how the story ends is going to be influenced in some very subtle way that changes the arc of the story

00:50:02.420 but when you really see someone who is writing in real time it's a fascinating thing to witness so

00:50:07.740 that that that really stuck out to me and you also talk about when you pick your reading what you're

00:50:12.840 going to read for like just books or articles you always ask yourself will i care about this a year

00:50:17.240 from now 10 years from now 80 years from now and if the answer is no that's okay but i'm not going

00:50:22.680 to spend much time reading that type of stuff and the answer is no most of the time that's that's

00:50:27.400 usually the case i used to be a columnist at the wall street journal great place with people i

00:50:31.240 admire but there was such a strong push to make every article relevant to today's news so i would

00:50:37.540 write a column about investing behavior and sometimes the editors would say hey good piece

00:50:42.000 but how is this relevant to what's going on in the world today and i would want to push back and say

00:50:46.020 it's not but by and large it shouldn't if an article is not relevant a year from now it's not relevant

00:50:51.220 today that's how i viewed it but there was such a this idea that everything has to be tied to

00:50:57.180 what happened in your world over the last 24 hours and i think once you break away from that

00:51:02.760 or you recognize it you realize that the huge majority particularly of news that is published

00:51:06.660 today it's not that it's irrelevant but if you look at something like oh this company reported

00:51:11.760 quarterly earnings there's i'm not saying that's not relevant but will you care about that a year from

00:51:16.440 now of course you won't so once you put it through that filter it filters out the vast majority of

00:51:21.420 noise that's going on in the world besides reading history books or books with ideas that stand the

00:51:26.400 test of time what else have you done to improve your long-term thinking i mean this is somewhat

00:51:31.140 related but i love reading biographies particularly of very successful people you know entrepreneurs

00:51:36.160 politicians generals whoever it might be for the sole reason of 99 of the time if not you know

00:51:43.460 virtually 100 of the time at the end of the book you will say to yourself wow that person achieved a

00:51:48.260 lot in life and had a lot of success and their life looked like it sucks they were so stressed

00:51:54.120 the cost of their success was so enormous it came exclusively at the expense of the relationships with

00:52:00.420 their kids and their spouse and once you realize that then i think it's really important to start

00:52:04.920 admiring the right people like once you get the full view of their life and you're not just cherry

00:52:09.160 picking their success but you saw what it took to achieve that success there's a lot at the end where

00:52:14.280 i'm like oh it's so easy to look at just the the awards and the money and once you take a longer

00:52:20.240 view of like yes but here's what they had to sacrifice to get that this is true for elon musk

00:52:25.940 bill gates like all of these people today have made such enormous personal sacrifices to get where they

00:52:33.540 are that i think the vast majority of people definitely me once they get a full view of that you will say

00:52:39.240 look i admire those people i'm so glad that they exist because they make society better but never

00:52:44.680 in a million years would i actually want their life for myself is there a biography that you like

00:52:49.020 that really sticks out to you that you've read one that's so interesting i've read twice i think is a

00:52:53.980 biography of joseph kennedy john f kennedy's father and he's such an interesting person because when joe

00:52:59.600 kennedy was 20 he made this goal that he was going to make so much money that his kids would never have

00:53:06.280 to work and they could devote their entire life to politics to eventually become president

00:53:09.860 that was his life goal when he was 20 and he did it like he was just had the singular focus of

00:53:15.300 the only reason he wanted to become wealthy and he was extremely wealthy was so that his kids could

00:53:20.400 become president and it's just like that hey that's a perfect example if you see that and i think it's 0.98

00:53:25.680 fascinating but it's like god what a what a dumb life that is like what an egotistical life that is i 1.00

00:53:30.940 would never want to do that but he was such a he was such a an arrogant old bastard for lack of a 0.99

00:53:37.480 better phrase that it's just an absolutely fascinating life that he had this crazy ambition 0.98

00:53:43.020 and he did it and by the way john f kennedy was not his child that was supposed to become president

00:53:48.180 that the golden child was jfk's brother joe kennedy who died in world war ii so even after that dream

00:53:54.880 was shattered joe kennedy just immediately pivoted and said okay john you're going to be the one got to get

00:54:00.600 you into politics let's get going and even though jfk had a pretty mundane childhood he didn't really

00:54:06.500 have any skills that stuck out to anyone it was so important to the family that he became a successful

00:54:12.560 politician that it was just a 24 hour a day drive to turn him into a great public speaker uh informed

00:54:19.180 historian to understand how politics works and of course he became a president it's just a remarkable

00:54:24.700 story of like how driven to one goal one family can be yeah you talk about you this is that was

00:54:30.000 that's one of your other principles in the book that sometimes the characteristics that makes

00:54:33.480 someone successful also comes with like shadow characteristics that makes those good things

00:54:38.840 possible and you have to decide well do i want all because if you want to be successful like say

00:54:43.800 elon musk you have to be completely like elon musk and elon musk in his private life from what i've read

00:54:49.900 doesn't seem that great none does not seem great that's the the charitable definition of it seems awful

00:54:55.760 from my perspective you know what makes me happy in life and i'm sure i'm not rare in this is like

00:55:00.700 hanging out with my wife hanging out with my kids going for walks so they'll having dinner with my

00:55:04.760 family and what you see for the huge majority of these people who are mega successful is that the

00:55:09.880 mega success came at the direct expense of their family and personal life bill gates talks about when

00:55:15.060 he was really active in microsoft he went 30 years without taking a day off he worked seven days a

00:55:20.880 week for 30 years and it's like that's again i'm so i'm so grateful that he exists and people like

00:55:26.420 him exist because they create all this new technology that i benefit from but be careful when you are

00:55:32.180 idolizing these people it's one thing to say i'm glad they exist it's another to say i wish i had that

00:55:37.260 life that is for me at least by and large a step too far well morgan this has been a great conversation

00:55:42.520 where can people go to learn more about the book in your work so same as ever comes out november 7th

00:55:46.960 you can buy it on amazon barnes and noble wherever you buy books i spend most of my time on twitter

00:55:51.260 my handle is morgan housel just my first and last name fantastic well morgan housel thanks for your

00:55:55.180 time it's been a pleasure thanks so much my guest name is morgan housel he's the author of the book

00:56:00.140 same as ever it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information

00:56:04.140 about his work at his website morgan housel.com also check out our show notes at aom.is

00:56:08.580 slash same as ever where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:56:16.960 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:56:23.640 artofmanlies.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that

00:56:27.600 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and if you haven't done

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00:56:42.300 support and until next time this is brett mckay reminding you to listen to the aom podcast but put what

00:56:46.720 you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - November 08, 2023

10 Unchanging Ideas for Navigating an Ever-Changing World

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