On a daily basis, life and work can feel tough.
Moments when we feel everything is going great are few and far in between.
On most days, it just feels uphill and against the wind.
On days like these, it is worth reminding ourselves that airplanes take off against the wind, not with it.
I have been a Morgan Housel fan for over a decade. He’s gone onto earn deserved praise for his exceptional writing style that mixes powerful anecdotes with timeless wisdom about investing and life. So, I was excited about reading “Same as Ever.” Here are 7 lessons that resonated:
(1) The world isn’t crazier than it was before. With 8 billion people, crazy things every day are inevitable.
(2) Calm plants the seeds of crazy. If stocks keep going up, the market is going to get too confident. That, then, will lead to a crash.
The world is calmer and safer than ever before – primarily because of the progress we’ve made against deadly diseases thanks to vaccines. But that made us over-confident and thoroughly unprepared for a pandemic. And so on.
Every time this (recession, pandemic, etc.) happens, we will feel the pain of the wound. The wounds will heal but the scars will last.
(3) Slow progress among a barrage of bad news is normal. Bad news is about what happened, good news is invisible because it is about things that didn’t happen. Improvements in heart disease at 1% per year for 70 years saved 25 million Americans. It’d never make the headlines any given year. But, over 7 decades, it is massive.
(4) Plan like a pessimist, dream like an optimist. The key is surviving the short term to make it to the long term.
(5) It’s supposed to be hard.
In 1990, David Letterman asked his friend Jerry Seinfeld how his new sitcom was going. Jerry said there was one frustrating problem: NBC supplied the show with teams of comedy writers, and he didn’t think they were getting much good material from them.
“Wouldn’t it be weirder if they were good?” David asked.
“What do you mean?” Jerry asked.
“Wouldn’t it be strange if they could all just produce reams of hilarious material day after day?”
Recalling the conversation a few years ago, Seinfeld laughed and told Letterman: “It’s supposed to be hard.”
(6) The grass is greener on the other side because it is fertilized by bullshit. You only get the smell when you come close enough. This idea might have been my favorite.
(7) Incentives are the most powerful force in the world.
When we’re biking over a bump on the road, it is best to loosen our grip on the bike.
The tighter our grip, the more we absorb the shock from the bump.
It works the same way when we drive and find our car skidding. There’s no point attempting to turn or brake at that moment. We have to loosen our grip, wait till we feel the contact of the wheels on the road, and take control.
It is counter intuitive to loosen our grip at a moment when we risk losing control. But, doing so helps us acknowledge that external factor and then gain control after.
So it goes in life.
We went to a sports store seeking some help. We hadn’t bought the item from them and they were well within their rights to say – “Sorry folks, we can’t help.”
Instead, they chose to do the opposite. They explained they’d seen this problem before, helped us understand how we could get a warranty, and even helped clean the item. They didn’t have an exact replacement – else they’d have taken it.
They cared. It showed. It even brightened up our evening.
It is amazing when that happens.
I hope I can pass on that feeling to people who come to me for help too.
A simple way to understand the health of an organization is to calculate the percentage of people who think their job is to review and criticize vs. find ways to build on interesting ideas.
“The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There’s something wrong with the way you are measuring it.”— Bezos
This resonated.
Ever since we moved into our home, a problem that annoyed me was the time it took for hot water to show up in our shower. As the pipes got cold overnight, the hot water had to first displace the cold water ahead and then heat up the pipes.
In winter, it often meant a minute’s wait with water wasted along the way.
Along the way, we tried a few solutions – including pouring it into a bucket and using it to water plants. We also asked a couple of handymen who didn’t seem to know. And, in retrospect, I clearly didn’t do a good job researching this online. Anyway, nothing worked/lasted and the problem continued to annoy me.
Until I learnt about the recirculator pump via a post my wife spotted on Nextdoor.
This magical device can be programmed to recirculate hot water during specific times in the day. Now we have hot water on demand. It is a game changer.
I don’t know why this pump isn’t mandatory with every hot water heater. I assume the water savings alone would make it worth everyone’s while. As a bonus, the user experience is significantly better as well.
If you’re not already using one, I hope you give it a try.
“Ego is a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.” | Eckhart Tolle
It resonated.
It also beautifully captures why say “ego blinds” – it removes our ability to see what is actually happening.
Dysfunctional relationship with the present indeed.
I was reminded of a wonderful post by venture capitalist Bryce Roberts.
Most people want to be fit, most people aren’t.
Most people want to build a successful business, most people won’t.
Most people want to be the best version of themselves, most people aren’t.
Most people have dreams they want to fulfill, most people won’t.
Everyone wants to quit something, build something, be something, do something. Most people won’t.
How many things have we wanted? How many opportunities have we craved? How many broken things have we wanted to fix?
And how many of those have we shrunk from. Hid from. Or, excused away.
We’re not alone.
Most people won’t.
But every once in a while someone puts themselves out there. Makes the leap. Faces rejection or failure or worse. And comes out the other side. Better. Changed. Bolder.
Most people won’t. Which means those that do change everything.
It resonated – both because of its wisdom but also because of its manifesto-like character.
The root of the word thrift is “thrive.”
The idea is that thrift enables us to have savings that in turn enable us to thrive.
It pays to be thrifty – in our personal lives and in how we manage resources on our teams.
Thrift enables us to thrive.
A Learning a Day 