A Learning a Day

I worked with Vanguard’s personal advisory service until recently. I wrote about why in this post five years ago.

The good news is that the research and the thesis/reasoning behind going with Vanguard panned out as well as I’d have hoped. However, a few years in, I found myself wanting a bit more flexibility in approach. But Vanguard’s scale made that hard.

And, just when I was beginning to wonder if it was time to try something different, my long-time advisor decided to leave and join a smaller firm for the same reasons. The decision was easy.

But, even as the move played out, I appreciated how thorough Vanguard were in the exit process. They followed up a few times just to make sure they could do a quick exit interview and get feedback.

Three reflections:

(1) Companies celebrate scaling – it is capitalism at its finest. But as a company scales its operations, it inevitably loses its personal touch. I love that Vanguard has thoughtful systems like exit interviews for customers. But it is always a great reminder of the fact that – especially as a customer – scale isn’t always what it is cracked up to be.

(2) There was a nice moment in the exit interview when I shared that I was following my current advisor. The gentleman said “Makes sense. We’re in a relationships business after all.” It made me reflect on the idea that so many businesses are relationship businesses at the end of the day. Again, with scale, that’s easy to forget.

(3) I’ve spoken to many folks over the years about the approach they take to their finances. Every time I’ve done so, I’ve realized that deciding how to manage our finances is a very personal decision as it is driven primarily by our level of interest in the topic. People who are passionate about it do a great job. Others, like me, prefer working with a human we trust. As is the case with so many important questions, there’s no right answer.

Just what’s right for us given our preferences and constraints at this point of time.

“We’re only different from the bacteria because we are able to ask what the hell this is all about. Not answer, just ask.”  — Carolyn Ives

It resonated.

I work with someone who is relentlessly solution oriented. There’s just no wasting time griping about problems. Every conversation is about finding a path forward, negotiating one if necessary, and moving forward.

Solution oriented folks are a pleasure to work with. But the addition of the relentlessness makes it a formidable combination as every positive interaction becomes an opportunity for forward momentum.

That forward momentum has a way of building and compounding over time.

Obstacles are expected of course. But forward momentum makes resistance futile.

Seeing this always serves as a good reminder to self – it is amazing what we can accomplish when we’re relentlessly solution oriented.

I’ve been enjoying Brad Stulberg’s newsletter over the past months. His latest edition linked to an article he’d written recently. I loved it and thought I’d share it in full.

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We are drawn to stories of individuals who not only embody the pursuit of excellence, but also have humility.

Think of the American gymnast Simone Biles, who worked through mental health issues that kept her mostly sidelined at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and went on to win three gold medals at the Paris Games. Perhaps the most iconic image from these Games occurred after one of the few gymnastics events she didn’t completely dominate, the individual floor competition. At the awards ceremony, Biles, who earned silver, and her teammate Jordan Chiles, who took bronze, bowed to show respect to the gold medal winner, Rebeca Andrade of Brazil.

Or perhaps your attention during the Games was captured by the pole-vaulter Mondo Duplantis, representing Sweden, who broke his own world record while being cheered on by his fellow medalists, Emmanouil Karalis of Greece (who administered tape to a cut on Duplantis’s hand during the competition) and the American Sam Kendricks, who helped quiet the crowd before each of Duplantis’s world record attempts. In the stands, supporting and helping to coach him, was Renaud Lavillenie, the Frenchman whose world record Duplantis first broke in 2020.

Then there was the American sprinter Noah Lyles, who earned the title of world’s fastest man by winning gold in the 100-meter dash. Shortly after, he wrote in a social media message to fans: “I have asthma, allergies, dyslexia, A.D.D., anxiety, and depression. But I will tell you that what you have does not define what you can become. Why not you!”

Excellence is not perfection or winning at all costs. It is a deeply satisfying process of becoming the best performer — and person — you can be. You pursue goals that challenge you, put forth an honest effort, endure highs, lows and everything in between, and gain respect for yourself and others. This sort of excellence isn’t just for world-class athletes; it is for all of us. We can certainly find it in sports, but also in the creative arts, medicine, teaching, coaching, science and more.

Understanding that excellence lies in the pursuit of a lofty goal as much as in the achievement of that goal allows us to expand our definition of success. Excellence is a process. That process can, and must, be renewed every day. The real reward for excellence is not the medal or the promotion, but the person you become and the relationships you forge along the way. In 2007, the psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar coined the term “arrival fallacy” to describe the trap of thinking that reaching a goal will bring lasting contentment or fulfillment. Anyone who has ever thought, “If I achieve such-and-such goal, then I’ll be happy,” understands this.

In some instances, excellence also calls for competing, a word derived from the Latin “com,” which means “together,” and “petere,” which means “to strive.” The best competitors strive together. It’s why following their 800-meter freestyle race, the first thing the American swimmer Katie Ledecky and the Australian Ariarne Titmus did was reach across their lanes to embrace. It’s why Simone Biles said of competing alongside Rebeca Andrade, “It brought out the best athlete in myself, so I’m excited and proud to compete with her.”

Excellence means striving well, and finding fulfillment in the process. When you find a pursuit or activity you care about and give it your all, you learn to value focus, consistency, care, discipline and compassion. You learn about the importance of hard work and rest, yes, but also how to graciously accept loss, and learn from it.

Pursuing excellence is, at its core, retaining respect, compassion and empathy for others even in pursuit of being your best, and, sometimes, winning. Yes, you must be driven and fierce and at times try so hard that people may think you are crazy. But it’s precisely because of this determined commitment — and the recognition of how hard it can be — that you gain immense empathy and respect for others in the arena.

Over the past decade, I have reviewed hundreds of studies and interviewed dozens of elite performers, including athletes, scientists, artists, physicians, educators and businesspeople, and I have found the top indicators of people’s lasting success and satisfaction came down to how they answered these five questions: Did they give their pursuit their all? Did they live in alignment with their values? Were they patient and present? Did they embrace their own vulnerability? And did they build meaningful and mutually respectful relationships along the way? To my surprise, no idea has resonated more with Olympic medalists than groundedness — that you can be a good person and reach great heights.

The Olympics may be an example of excellence and achievement at a pinnacle few of us can imagine, but they do offer us a moment to reflect on our own versions of excellence. How should I spend the time I have? How do I summon the focus to pursue my interests with care? What does this say about the values I hold and my desire to practice them? At a time of disconnect and alienation, the pursuit of excellence offers a powerful and necessary path to intimacy with ourselves, our work and our communities. It is, at root, what it means to be the best humans we can be.

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Powerful and beautifully written – thanks Brad.

On the one hand, we need to experience frequent dissatisfaction because it results in the drive that fuels our ability to weather the inevitable obstacles on the way to solving valuable problems.

On the other hand, we also need to learn to experience satisfaction when we make significant progress. We experience satisfaction when we practice improving our perspective – thus inspiring gratitude.

Dancing between these and finding the optimal balance during the various seasons of our lives is the balancing act that ends up defining our life.

We have a bike rack that carries four bikes. Two years ago, I made the mistake of not fastening the front of the last bike. We drove a couple of miles before we realized what happened and paid for the damage to the bike (tire replaced, brake adjustment).

I felt the pain of that mistake for days. Every subsequent time we took our bikes out, I took a lot of care to fasten all four bikes. I made a mental note to check the back at least once as I started driving, and so on.

Yesterday, I made this mistake again. Luckily, this time, it was a bigger bike and it just somehow lay flat on the rack. My response was to say “phew” and thank my/our stars.

At least it almost was.

Until I wondered why I wasn’t spending as much time reflecting on what caused this mistake. My default response was to just brush it away as a close call… and move on.

Three reflections:

(1) Anything we learn has a rate of decay. When I learnt my lesson about fastening the bikes carefully, I changed my behavior immediately. But, two years in, I’ve not taken any steps to reinforce that learning. Ergo decay.

It is a good reminder for any safety related lessons we learn. Take the time to refresh and reinforce said lessons from time to time.

(2) It takes intentionality and discipline to squeeze learning out of wins and close calls. It is important to simulate pain and learn from such experiences.

(3) We remember bad luck and forget good luck by default. Ditch the default. Pay attention to the good luck.

There’s often a lot more to be grateful for than we realize.

I think a more accurate title of Deb Chachra’s book “How infrastructure works” would probably have been “Reflections on Infrastructure.” The title hints at a more systematic examination of infrastructure. This book wasn’t that. Instead, it was a nicely put together set of reflections about infrastructure. Still a very nice read – just not what the title might suggest.

Here are 5 things I took away:

(1) The word infra means below or beneath. Infrastructure is a collection of the many systems below the surface that makes our life possible. It is, by nature, transparent. When it works, we just see right through it.

(2) Essential infrastructure goes from luxury to utility to a political right. The internet is a great example of this. It started as a luxury, then became a utility, and is on its way to becoming a political right.

(3) The challenge with addressing climate change until a few years ago was that our carbon emissions were directly tied to our consumption – more consumption meant more fossil fuels burnt. As societies advance, their energy needs grow. So, addressing climate change directly meant advocating a regression in lifestyle.

However, thanks to the incredible advances in renewables, we can now think of fossil fuels as a transition state. They were very useful while they were around. But we get to experience a future where energy is more abundant than ever before. <1% of the energy from the sun would comfortably meet all of humanity’s energy needs.

(4) The marvelous Dinorwig power station/electric mountain in Wales is a great example of how we are capable of creating elegant sustainable solutions for our energy needs. More in this post.

(5) “If you don’t schedule time for maintenance, your equipment will do it for you.”

Reading this book has greatly increased my appreciation for hidden infrastructure systems all around me. This book has had the kind of impact great educators have in our lives – it has changed how I “see.”

Thanks Prof Chachra.

Yale economist Robert Shiller won the Nobel Prize in economics in part for his work developing a nationwide index of U.S. housing prices dating back to the 1800s.

I once asked – where did he find home price data from the 1800s?

“The library,” he said, dryly.

“It’s in a book by Grabler, Blank and Winnick, a National Bureau of Research volume in the early 1950s. They had a nice analysis; wonderful book. I could recommend you read it, but nobody reads it, nobody reads it.”

There’s a well-known idea in real estate that you earn the highest ROI on the ugliest properties no one wants to own. The same is true for so many things in life: The unsexy work, where there’s little competition, is where some of the biggest ideas are found.

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This story was another Morgan Housel special.

It resonated.

Author Steven Johnson shared this anecdote in his newsletter.

“Sometime in the late spring I read H. W. Brands’ epic account of the California Gold Rush, The Age of Gold, published in 2002. I could easily spend the rest of this essay just recounting the greatest hits from it, but there was one mind-bending fact that has stuck with me since I finished the book.

Because the Sierra Nevada—and the Basin and Range Province to the east of them (including Death Valley)—were such inhospitable environments for human passage, news of the discovery of gold in the western foothills of the Sierra reached Australia and China and Chile months before it reached the east coast of the United States.

Without a railroad or a telegraph line to connect the United States from coast to coast, the maximum speed of information was gated by the maximum speed of ships, and sailing from San Francisco to the Atlantic Seaboard took months, if you made it at all. You either had to sail around the horn of South America—one of the deadliest seas in the world—or sail to Panama and then attempt the land crossing of the Panama isthmus, with hopes of connecting with a ship bound for New York or Boston at the other end.

Either way, the information you carried moved at a snail’s pace compared to a Clipper ship riding the Pacific trade winds to Sydney. All of which meant there were Australian and Chinese prospectors arriving in the Sierra foothills before the President of the United States learned that gold had been discovered in California.”

It takes 6 hours to get across from one coast to another now. And the ability to transmit information across coasts – why, even to the rest of the world – is instant.

This was a fascinating reminder of how we take the progress we enjoy for granted.

Progress is often indistinguishable from magic.

“The more we pursue something, the more we achieve the opposite of what we truly want.” | Alan Watts

The more we pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied we become.

It reminded me of a learning I call “the law of unattraction” –  “The universe makes something happen when you have put in your best effort and are ready to walk away.”