Author of The Psychology of Money and Same As Ever, partner at The Collaborative Fund.Note that the blogger is Morgan Housel and his colleagues.
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2024-10-15 06:28:00
After college, my wife (who was then my girlfriend) and I got an apartment in the Seattle suburbs. It was amazing – a perfect location, a beautiful apartment, even had a view of the lake. The economy was such a wreck at the time that we paid almost nothing for it.
A few months ago I reminisced to my wife about how awesome that time was. We were 23, gainfully employed, living in our version of the Taj Mahal. This was before kids, so we slept in until 10am on the weekends, went for a walk, had brunch, took a nap, and went out for dinner. That was our life. For years.
“That was peak living, as good as it gets,” I told her.
“What are you talking about?” she said. “You were more anxious, scared, and probably depressed then than you’ve ever been.”
Of course, she was right.
If I think deeper than the initial knee-jerk memory, I remember being miserable. I was overwhelmed with career anxieties, terrified that I wouldn’t make it, worried I was about to be fired. For good reason: I was bad at my job. I was insecure. I was nervous about relationships being fragile.
In my head, today, I look back and think, “I must have been so happy then. Those were my best years.” But in reality, at the time, I was thinking, “I can’t wait for these years to end.”
There’s a Russian saying about nostalgia: “The past is more unpredictable than the future.” It’s so common for people’s memories about a time to become disconnected from how they actually felt at the time.
I have a theory for why this happens: When studying history, you know how the story ends, which makes it impossible to imagine what people were thinking or feeling in the past.
When thinking about our own lives, we don’t remember how we actually felt in the past; We remember how we think we should have felt, given what we know today.
I remember myself as being happier than I was because today, looking back, I know that most of the things I was worried about never happened. I didn’t get laid off, the career turned out fine, the relationships endured. I slayed some demons. Even the things that were hard and didn’t end up like I wanted, I got over.
I know that now.
But I didn’t know that at the time.
So when I look back, I see a kid who had nothing to worry about. Even if, at the time, all I did was worry.
It’s hard to remember how you felt when you know how the story ends.
I was recently asked at a conference how investors should feel about the stock market given that it’s basically gone straight up over the last 15 years.
My first thought was: you’re right. If you started investing 15 years ago and checked your account for the first time, you would gasp. You’ve made a fortune.
Then I thought, wait a minute. Straight up for the last 15 years? To echo my wife: What are you talking about?
Are we going to pretend like the 22% crash in the summer of 2011 never happened?
Are we supposed to forget that stocks plunged more than 20% in 2016, and again in 2018?
Are we – hello? – now pretending that the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression didn’t happen in 2020?
That Europe’s banking system nearly collapsed?
That wages were stagnant?
That America’s national debt was downgraded?
Are we now forgetting that at virtually every moment of the last 15 years, smart people argued that the market was overvalued, recession was near, hyperinflation was around the corner, the country was bankrupt, the numbers were manipulated, the dollar was worthless, on and on?
I think we forget these things because we now know how the story ends: the stock market went up a lot. If you held on tight, none of those past events mattered. So it’s easy to discount – even ignore – how they felt at the time. You think back and say, “That was so easy, money was free, the market went straight up.” Even if few people actually felt that way during the last 15 years.
So much of what matters in investing – this is true for a lot of things in life – is how you manage the psychology of uncertainty. The problem with looking back with hindsight is that nothing is uncertain. You think no one had anything to worry about, because most of what they were worrying about eventually came to pass.
“You should have been happy and calm, given where things ended up,” you say to your past self. But your past self had no idea where things would end up. Uncertainty dictates nearly everything in the current moment, but looking back we pretend it never existed.
My wife and I recently bought a new house. Like most of the country, it cost – let me put this mildly – a shitload more than it would have a few years ago.
We started talking about how cheap homes were in 2009. In our region they literally cost four to five times more today than they did then – plus, interest rates were low in 2009, and there was an endless supply of homes on the market to choose from. We said something to the effect of, “People were so lucky back then.”
Then we caught ourselves, shaking off delusion, and thinking, “Wait, do we really have nostalgia for the economy of 2009?” That was literally the worst economy in 80 years. All anyone talked about was how terrible everything was. Homes were cheap because unemployment was 10% and the stock market was down 50%.
Looking back, we know 2009 was not only the bottom but the beginning of a new boom (albeit with volatility). But we didn’t know that back then, and it gave us plenty to worry about that’s easy to forget today. What felt like risks then now look like opportunities. What felt like dangers then now look like adventures.
In a similar way, Americans are still nostalgic about life in the 1950s. White picket fences, middle-class prosperity, happy families, a booming economy. There was also the ever-present risk of nuclear annihilation. Today, we know the missile was never launched. But the 5th-grader doing nuclear attack drills by ducking under her school desk? She had no idea, and had plenty to worry about that is impossible to contextualize today, since we know how the story ends. So of course she wasn’t as happy as we think she should have been.
I subscribe to a few Instagram accounts devoted to 1990s nostalgia. I was a kid then, so I’m a sucker for this stuff. The comments on those posts inevitably say some version of, “Those were the best years. The late ‘90s and early 2000s was the best time to be alive.” Maybe it was pretty good. But we also had: A bad recession in 2001, a contested presidential election, 9-11 – which utterly reshaped culture – two wars, a slow economic recovery, on and on. It’s easy to forget all of those because we know the economy recovered, the wars ended, and there wasn’t another major terrorist attack. Everything looks certain in hindsight, but at the time uncertainty ruled the day.
Of course, things could have turned out differently. And for many people – those who were laid off, or did lose their home, or did die in war – the happy nostalgia of remembering what life was like before might well be valid.
But as Thomas Jefferson said, “How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.”
Part of the reason nostalgia exists is because, knowing what we do today, we often look back at the past and say, “you really didn’t have much to worry about.” You adapted and moved on. Isn’t that an important lesson as we look ahead?
Understanding why economic nostalgia is so powerful – why it’s almost impossible to remember how uncertain things were in the past when you know how the story ends – helps explain what I think is the most important lesson in economic history, that’s true for most people most of the time:
The past wasn’t as good as you remember. The present isn’t as bad as you think. The future will be better than you anticipate.
2024-09-24 04:51:00
The ultimate success metric is whether you get what you want out of life. But that’s harder than it sounds because it’s easy to try to copy someone who wants something you don’t.
I’ve seen this play out twice: An incredibly talented young writer with a big blog following joins a major media company where they quickly fizzled into irrelevance.
It was the same story each time: When the writer was young and independent they could write with their own voice, their own style, their own flair. They could run with their own intuition.
They were artists, which was what made them great.
Then they joined a big media company, which said, “That’s not how we do things here. Here’s our style book, you must follow it to a T. And meet Gordon, he’s your new editor. He will tell you what to write and when to write it. Good day, sir.”
They became employees, which was their downfall.
And these were very successful media companies. They knew what kind of writing worked and what their readers wanted. But of course it didn’t work out. What was right for the company was wrong for the writer. A talented person can quickly become mediocre when you force them to be someone they aren’t.
Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, there’s so much to learn from that.
It’s so common to on one hand recognize how much variety there is among people – different personalities, backgrounds, goals, skills – but on the other hand ask, “What’s the best way to do this thing?” as if there can be one universal answer for vastly different people.
One area this impacts people is with money, where more damage is caused not by dumb financial plans but by reasonable ones that just aren’t right for you.
How you invest might cause me to lose sleep, and how I invest might prevent you from looking at yourself in the mirror tomorrow. Isn’t that OK? Isn’t it far better to just accept that we’re different rather than arguing over which one of us is right or wrong? And wouldn’t it be dangerous if you became persuaded to invest like me even if it’s wrong for your personality and skill set?
Or take how we spend money. You like this, I like that. Who cares? It gets dangerous when you assume that if someone else is spending their money differently they either must be doing it better than you or doing it wrong. And that’s actually very common, because it’s easy to interpret someone spending money differently than you as an attack on what you’ve chosen to spend money on.
It’s possible to be humble and learn from other people while also recognizing that the best strategy for you is the one closest aligned with your unique personality and skills.
A few things happen when you do.
You do your best work and have the most fun when you’re not burdened by fear that someone else thinks you’re doing it wrong.
You measure how you’re doing against your personal benchmarks, which can both push you to your potential and prevent you from chasing someone else’s.
You have a much better shot of getting what you want out of life. Which, again, is all that really matters.
2024-09-19 01:52:00
Ryan McFarland came from a long line of motorsports junkies given that his grandfather had been a race car engineer and his father ran a motorbike store. As a result, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that McFarland grew up riding dirt bikes and stockcars, or that he eventually went into the family business as well. It also shouldn’t come as a surprise that he was eager to pass on the McFarland “love of wheels” to his own son.
As any parent knows, getting a young child to ride a bike is a significant challenge. McFarland’s experience was no different. So, like many of us, he purchased an endless number of things to help his son get riding — toddler tricycles, trainer bikes, and even a training wheel equipped motorcycle.
Nothing worked. More importantly, each failed to teach his son the most important part of riding a bike — learning how to balance.
Think about it. While training wheels or a tricycle might stabilize a rider, neither allow a kid to equalize their weight on a bike.
The reason?
The extra wheels do all the balancing. They simply serve as a crutch.
So what did McFarland do?
He decided to engineer a very different type of bike, but rather than adding something to the bike, he chose to take something away — in this case the pedals.
The result was the Strider Bike, which enabled kids to focus exclusively on their balance and has since become one of the best-selling bikes of all-time, as well as a godsend for parents everywhere.
Within a few days, McFarland’s son was riding the Strider Bike. Within a couple weeks, he was riding a real bike. Within a few years, his company had sold millions of bikes. In short, McFarland had solved a significant challenge with a simple (and far less expensive) solution.
This story is far from the only case where the best solution came from using less of something rather than more. In fact, I have dealt with this dynamic personally over the past two years.
See, I grew up with eczema as a child, which I thankfully outgrew when I was about eight years old. Unfortunately, it reappeared in patches back in early 2021, so I went to see numerous doctors, dermatologists, and allergists. Each recommended a new cream, pill, and eventually a shot, which led to very mixed results. Finally it dawned on me to ask an allergist for a patch test, which is essentially a way to test to see if you are allergic to any specific chemicals that are commonly found in various soaps, shampoos, creams, and countless other products. I took the test and found out I was very allergic to two of the 150 things they tested for, one of which is prevalent in something called Aquaphor, which is a Vaseline-like ointment that we had been using on my both of my sons’ skin.
Care to guess when we had started using it?
You guessed it, early 2021. Precisely the same time that I started having a recurrence of my eczema.
So, what did we do?
We removed Aquaphor from daily use in our house, I stopped taking the various medications I was using, and my skin problems have slowly improved.
Whether it applies to training wheels or skin medication, this begs the question — why are we so inclined to add things rather than take them away when searching for solutions?
The answer is simple — human nature and incentives.
The fact is, people are biased towards solving problems through addition rather than subtraction.
The reason?
Because adding something makes you feel like you are advancing, while taking something away makes you feel like you are retreating. Couple this with the fact that most companies are incentivized to sell us endless “solutions”, and it should come as no surprise that the desire take something away is practically non-existent.
We see this dynamic across all parts of the economy, and society at large.
In healthcare, nearly every condition people face is addressed by adding something. Have a skin issue? Try this cream. Having trouble sleeping? Take this pill. Can’t lose weight? Take this new injectable called Ozempic (ironically a drug that aims to *take away *our appetites). Casey Means wrote extensively about this in her new book — Good Energy — that is now #1 on the Amazon charts. In short, she makes the case that instead of jumping immediately to medications that almost always have side effects, we should instead start by identifying what is causing the problem and trying to eliminate it. For example, if you have a skin issue, start by cutting out soaps with countless active ingredients. Can’t sleep? Cut back the amount of alcohol you drink and/or TV you watch before bed. Dealing with a stomach or weight issue? Try reducing the amount of processed food and sugar you eat.
In software, this concept of favoring less over more is known as the “Mythical Man Month” (or more simply, “Brooks’ Law”), which was discussed at length on a recent podcast Patrick O’Shaughnessy did with Bret Taylor (Co-Founder of Sierra, former Co-CEO of Salesforce, and a current board member at Open AI). Taylor pointed out that,
“If you want to make a software project take longer, add more people to it. This is based on the premise that when you are developing a complex system, smaller teams who complete each others’ sentences, each own part of the system, truly understand it, and work in unison create a magical, yet fragile, dynamic. This is the case because adding more people means more bureaucracy, which risks disempowering some of your best people and slowing things down. Just look at Healthcare.gov as a perfect example.”
Retail is another obvious example. Look no further than Starbucks’ recent troubles. One of the main culprits? The decision to add countless options to their mobile app. In short, by designing its app to enable customers to hyper-customize their favorite drinks (according to one report there are over 170,000 ways to customize a Starbucks order), it led to orders like the one below:
Instead of increasing revenues and customer retention, this hyper customization led to poor customer service, employee turnover, longer wait times, and often incorrect drink orders. Eventually, it even led to Starbucks firing its CEO and replacing him with Brian Niccol, who made a name for himself running a company that has nearly perfected the concept of “taking things away” — Chipotle.
In short, by having far fewer options and ingredients, Chipotle created a juggernaut in the fast casual category by maximizing efficiency, throughput, and quality, which is a very different business model than a company like McDonalds, which has an endless number of options on its menu and is constantly adding new ones.
As a result, last year Chipotle’s restaurants collectively generated more than $10 billion in annual revenues and close to $2 billion in annual operating profits (up from $900 million and $250 million respectively fifteen years ago). This model has resulted in a stock that has compounded at more than 25% annually over the past decade-and-a-half, which means that $1,000 invested in 2009 would be worth more than $40,000 today.
Unfortunately, too many investors manage their portfolios like McDonalds or Starbucks instead of Chipotle. In an attempt to improve or upgrade them, they almost always look to layer on new investments, commitments, asset classes, and securities, often shooting well past an appropriate level of complexity:
Worried about a market crash? Layer on expensive hedges.
Concerned about volatility? Buy complicated options.
Want to generate higher returns in a low interest rate environment? Add leverage.
Trying to keep up with other investors? Chase a hot buyout or venture capital fund.
The trouble is that when they do this, the more vulnerable their portfolios become. It causes them to lose track of what they own, reduces their portfolio’s liquidity and transparency, and forces them to pay higher fees in the process. It also often leads to investors being forced to make decisions they swore they never would, typically at the worst possible moments.
We saw this first hand in the lead up to, and during, the Covid crazed market of 2020-2021. “One man band” venture capitalists were able to raise money with ease, firms like Tiger Global sprayed money in every direction with little diligence, term sheets from unknown investors landed on general partners’ desks, “extension funds” were waved into portfolios without even the slightest objection from limited partners, leverage was easy to come by, and investors happily traded daily liquidity for decade liquidity. Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg, as there were countless other examples of investments and structures being added to portfolios in pursuit of higher returns.
However, in 2022 and 2023, this dynamic changed materially as “one man VCs” started to disappear, the Tigers of the world were humbled and retrenched, those blind term sheets stopped coming, extension funds were tabled, limited partners starting guarding liquidity with their lives, and investors more broadly started pulling in the reins as they attempted to determine what lay ahead.
So, experiences like this beg a few questions:
Is increased complexity the path to better performance, or would investors be better off if they simply removed a few things?
Should investors hold one hundred 1% positions in their portfolio (i.e., be overly diversified), or should they concentrate their bets in their highest conviction positions, watch them closely, and add to them when they get dislocated?
Should investors deploy capital at a torrid pace during bull markets, or would they benefit from slowing down a bit?
The answer in each case is very likely an emphatic “yes” to the latter.
In fact, this probably goes for most things in life.
Think about it this way. What would happen if you reduced the number of things you focus on in your daily life by 20%? How about 30%?? Say 50%???
What are the chances you wouldn’t miss the things you cut out?
Would you possibly become more focused on the things you decided to keep?
Would you end up being a happier person? A better colleague? Parent? Spouse?
My guess is the answer would be a “yes” across the board here too.
But you might say, my life or portfolio is already SO complicated, how can I possibly uncomplicate it?
My response?
Just because things have gotten complicated doesn’t mean you can’t reverse it. Afterall, if Elon Musk can do it with his Raptor rocket engines, you can too.
In this day and age the case can be made that we live in an era of too much. Too much information, too much stuff, too many choices, and too many distractions. As a result, there is a good chance that the path to happier lives, and yes, better portfolio performance, might start by taking things away.
2024-09-02 22:11:00
I recently sat down with legendary investor Howard Marks, co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management.
We talked about investing, debt, endurance, and what really makes a difference in lifetime investment results.
2024-08-30 04:55:00
President James Garfield died because the best doctors in the country didn’t believe in germs, probing Garfield’s bullet wound after an assassination attempt with ungloved, unwashed fingers that almost certainly contributed to his fatal infection.
It sounds crazy – 1881 wasn’t that long ago – but historian Candice Millard writes in her book Destiny of the Republic how controversial germ theory was to 19th-century doctors:
They found the notion of “invisible germs” to be ridiculous, and they refused to even consider the idea that they could be the cause of so much disease and death.
Even the editor of the highly respected Medical Record found more to fear than to admire in [antiseptic pioneer] Lister’s theory. “Judging the future by the past,” he wrote, “we are likely to be as much ridiculed in the next century for our blind belief in the power of unseen germs as our forefathers were for their faith in the influence of spirits.”
Not only did many American doctors not believe in germs, they took pride in the particular brand of filth that defined their profession.
They spoke fondly of the “good old surgical stink” that pervaded their hospitals and operating rooms, and they resisted making too many concessions even to basic hygiene … They believed that the thicker the layers of dried blood and pus, black and crumbling as they bent over their patients, the greater the tribute to their years of experience … They preferred, moreover, to rely on their own methods of treatment, which not infrequently involved applying a hot poultice of cow manure to an open wound.
Even a child reading this today recognizes how insane this is. And it’s hardly an isolated example. Doctors used to prescribe chloroform for asthma and cigarettes for hay fever. They injected cow’s milk into the veins of tuberculosis patients, hoping the fat would transform into white blood cells.
Mercifully, we’ve moved on. We believe new crazy stuff, but not that crazy stuff. Everyone learned, those learnings were universally accepted and passed down the generations who are now better off because of it. Reading about medicine from 100 years ago makes you feel utterly disconnected from today’s world, like you’re reading about a different topic altogether.
But take something like money.
These lines were written 130 years ago by author William Dawson:
It would seem that the anxieties of getting money only beget the more torturing anxiety of how to keep it.
More lives have been spoiled by competence than by poverty; indeed, I doubt whether poverty has any effect at all upon a strong character, except as a stimulus to exertion.
The thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in money ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary. The man who can buy anything he covets values nothing that he buys.
Or this, written by Earnest Hemingway in 1936:
He remembered poor Scott Fitzgerald and his romantic awe of [the rich] … He thought they were a special glamorous race and when he found they weren’t it wrecked him as much as any other thing that wrecked him.
Or this, written by a lawyer in 1934, taking account of the bubble preceding the Great Depression:
In normal times the average professional man makes just a living and lives up to the limit of his income because he must dress well, etc. In times of depression he not only fails to make a living but has no surplus capital to buy bargains in stocks and real estate. I see now how very important it is for the professional man to build up a surplus in normal times. Without it he is at the mercy of the economic winds.
Or this, describing the 1920s Florida real estate:
From 1919 to 1929, both forms of personal debt—mortgages and installment credit—soared. The volume of home mortgages more than tripled, and the amount of outstanding installment debt more than doubled.
Or this account of Seneca, who lived 2,000 years ago:
Enemies accused him of preying on affluent elderly people in the hope of being remembered in their wills, and of “sucking the provinces dry” by lending money at a steep rate of interest to those in the distant parts of the empire.
It’s all so relatable. Like nothing has changed. We’ve always been asking the same questions, dealing with the same problems, and falling for the same false solutions. We probably always will.
Reading old finance articles makes you feel like the ancient past was no different than today – the opposite feeling you get reading old medical commentary.
Of course there are things we knew about medicine 200 years ago that were true and things we believed about money 100 years ago that were false. But in degree there is no comparison – there’s no financial equivalent of everyone denying germs only to eventually agree that it’s so obviously true it’s not worth debating.
In some fields our knowledge is seamlessly passed down across generations. In others, it’s fleeting. To paraphrase investor Jim Grant: Knowledge in some fields is cumulative. In other fields it’s cyclical (at best).
There are occasional periods when society learns that debt can be dangerous, greed backfires, and more money won’t solve all your problems. But it quickly forgets and moves on. Again and again. Generation after generation.
I think there are a few reasons this happens, and what it means we have to accept.
Some fields have quantifiable truths, while others are guided by vague beliefs and individual circumstances. Physicist Richard Feynman said, “Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings.” Well, people do. So any topic guided by behavior – money, philosophy, relationships, etc. – can’t be solved with a formula like physics and math.
Neil deGrasse Tyson says, “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.” You can disagree and say science is the practice of continuous exploration and changing your mind, but in general he’s right. Germ theory is true and we know it’s true. But what about the proper level of savings and spending to live a good life? Or how much risk to take? Or the right investing strategy given today’s economy? Those kinds of questions do not lend themselves to scientific answers. They’re subjective, nuanced, and impacted by how the economy changes over time. So often there simply isn’t relevant information to pass down to the next generations. Even when firm financial rules exist, some truths have to be experienced firsthand to be understood.
Cyclical knowledge, and the inability to fully learn from others’ past experiences, means you have to accept a level of volatility and fragility not found in other fields. I can imagine a world in 50 years where things like cancer and heart disease are either non-existent or effectively controlled. I cannot ever imagine a world where economic volatility is tamed and people stop making financial decisions they eventually regret – no matter how much history of past mistakes we have to study.
2024-08-21 03:40:00
Every forecast takes a number from today and multiplies it by a story about tomorrow.
Investment valuations, economic outlooks, political forecasts – they all follow that formula. Something we know multiplied by a story we like.
The trick when forecasting is realizing that’s what you’re doing.
A few weeks before he died a reporter asked Franklin Roosevelt if the Yalta Conference negotiations near the end of World War II set the stage for permanent peace in Europe.
“I can answer that question if you can tell me who your descendants will be in the year 2057,” Roosevelt said. “We can look as far ahead as humanity believes in this sort of thing.”
The deals hammered out in Yalta were the things we knew. How long they’d hold, how much they’d be adhered to, and what else could get in their way is just a story people told and believed in varying degrees.
Anything that tries to forecast what people will do next work like that.
The hard thing is that while the number we know today can be something real and verified, the story we multiply it by is driven by what you want to believe will happen or what makes the most sense. Forecasters get into trouble when the number we know from today gives an impression that you’re being objective and data-driven when the story about tomorrow is so subject to opinion.
When valuing a company, revenue/cash flow/profits is the number we know. The earnings multiple you attach to that figure is just a story about future growth.
Same with economic trends. We have lots of data, but none of it means much until you attach a story to it about what you think it means and what you think people will do with it next.
That seems obvious to me. But ask forecasters if they think the majority of what they do is storytelling and you’ll get blank stares. At best. It never seems like storytelling when you’re basing a forecast in data.
And while data-driven storytelling doesn’t mean guessing, it doesn’t mean prophecy.
We can use historical data to assume a trend will continue, but that’s just a story we want to believe in a world where things change all the time.
We can use data to assume a crazy event will revert to the norm, but that’s also just a story in a world where unsustainable trends last longer than people think.
Few things escape that reality. B.H. Liddell Hart writes in the book Why Don’t We Learn From History?:
[History] cannot be interpreted without the aid of imagination and intuition. The sheer quantity of evidence is so overwhelming that selection is inevitable. Where there is selection there is art. Those who read history tend to look for what proves them right and confirms their personal opinions. They defend loyalties. They read with a purpose to affirm or to attack. They resist inconvenient truth since everyone wants to be on the side of the angels.
In finance this point is made with the quip that more fiction has been written in Excel than in Word.
None of this is bad. I think it’s just realistic, and it means all of us should keep a few things in mind.
1. A fact multiplied by a story always equals something less than a fact. So almost all predictions have less than a 100% chance of coming true. That’s not a bold statement, but if you embrace it it always pushes you towards room for error and the ability to endure surprise.
2. The most persuasive stories are what you want to believe are true or are an extension of what you’ve experienced firsthand, which is what makes forecasting so hard.
3. If you’re trying to figure out where something is going next, you have to understand more than its technical possibilities. You have to understand the stories everyone tells themselves about those possibilities, because it’s such a big part of the forecasting equation.
4. When interest rates are low, the story side of the equation becomes more powerful. When short-term results aren’t competing for attention with interest rates, most of a company’s valuation comes from what it might be able to achieve in the future. That, of course, is just a story. And people can come up with some wild stories.
2024-08-07 01:47:00
I once asked a successful author how to market a book. He waved me off and said, “If the book is good you don’t need to market it. If the book is bad, no amount of marketing will help.”
He was exaggerating: I think his advice is like 80% true. But it’s definitely 80% true. And it applies to almost any product. The best marketing is a good product.
Charlie Munger once talked about how sensational Costco founder Jim Sinegal’s career was.
Podcaster David Senra asked Munger: Why are there so few speeches or interviews with Sinegal?
“He was busy working,” said Munger.
The most impressive people don’t spend their lives on social media or managing their publicity.
Economist Russ Roberts couldn’t figure out why so many World War II veterans hated the Red Cross.
The Red Cross? How can you hate them? But he kept hearing it over and over again.
Asked where the animosity came from, the vets kept talking about the donuts. The donuts, the donuts, the donuts.
During World War II the Red Cross set up comfort stations across Europe for Allied soldiers to get a haircut, coffee, and donuts. It was free for the Americans, but British and Canadian soldiers were charged a few cents. That created a hierarchy that hurt morale, so American generals eventually asked the Red Cross to start charging the American soldiers too.
Suddenly U.S. troops – accustomed to getting free donuts – were being charged. And they hated it, viewing the Red Cross as a greedy profiteer exploiting their hunger. The grudge remained for decades after the war.
Two lessons here: It’s almost impossible to charge for something once you’ve given it away for free, so choose your business model carefully. And people are extremely sensitive to even reasonable price changes, which is why inflation is always an emotional issue.
Jerry Seinfeld recently said:
Audiences are now flocking to stand-up because it’s something you can’t fake. It’s like platform diving. You could say you’re a platform diver, but in two seconds we can see if you are or you aren’t. That’s what people like about stand-up. They can trust it. Everything else is fake.
His advice: “Get good at something. That’s it. Everything else is bullshit.”
Demographic historian T.H. Hollingsworth once published an analysis of the life expectancy of the British peerage. It showed a peculiar trend: Before the 1700s, the richest members of society had among the shortest lives – meaningfully below that of the overall population.
How could that be?
The best explanation is that the rich were the only ones who could afford all the quack medicines and sham doctors who peddled hope but increased your odds of being poisoned.
I would bet good money the same happens today with investing advice.
If a petty criticism about you is obviously false, you tend not to care. If anything it just makes the person criticizing you look dumb.
If the criticism could be true, you might become outraged because you know it’s a genuine attack on your identity.
Talking to Tim Ferriss, Naval Ravikant once said:
If I said, “Tim Ferriss is fat,” that would just bounce right off of you. But if I said, “Tim Ferriss and Naval are fake gurus,” that might hit us, right?
I thought about this when I heard an FBI interrogator say the #1 way to spot someone covering up a lie is how angry and righteous they become when defending themselves.
After the November, 1930 election, Republicans and Democrats held an even number of seats in the House of Representatives. A perfect tie.
By the time members were sworn in, thirteen had died, most of them Republicans. Special elections to replace them fell in Democrats’ favor, and when the Congress first met the Democrats held a comfortable majority.
Remember this the next time you hear a confident political forecast. No one knows anything, even when it looks obvious.
A similar story, from investor Howard Marks:
I tell my father’s story of the gambler who one day hears about a race with only one horse in it, so he bet the rent money. Halfway around the track the horse jumped over the fence and ran away.
A coach once described the rule of thirds for athletes: When training, one-third of your days should feel good, one-third should feel OK, and one-third should feel terrible. That’s a good, balanced, routine. It’s when you know you’re pushing yourself, but not too hard. Taking risks, but not overdoing it. Have challenging goals, but not unrealistic ones.
I think you can apply that to businesses, careers, and relationships: If it’s always terrible, you’re doing it wrong. If it always feels great, you’re naive, oblivious, or undershooting your potential.
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 him: 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.
A startup founder I know was once trying to raise money from an investor. The investor told him, “I love your idea, but I think this only has a 20% chance of working.”
The founder replied: “Twenty percent? Wow, you’re an optimist. I think the odds are 10%, max.”
This was from a founder who was devoting his life to this company, with full passion and energy.
Jeff Bezos once said:
Every startup company is unlikely to work. It’s helpful to be in reality about that, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be optimistic. So you have to have this duality in your head. On the one hand, you know what the baseline statistics say about startup companies, and the other hand, you have to ignore all of that and just be 100% sure it’s going to work, and you’re doing both things at the same time. You’re holding that contradiction in your head.
Before playing the Cleveland Cavaliers, Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich was asked by the press how his team could stop the Cav’s impressive run. “How do you feel your defense can get into passing lanes and stop it?” they asked.
“Oh, we probably won’t. I can give you some bullshit if you want,” Popovich said.
We need more of this. There’s a fine line between motivational cheerleading and lying.
Ronald Reagan once told this story.
There were two brothers. One was a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist. The other an incurable optimist.
The parents thought both kids were so unrealistic that they talked to a psychiatrist, who came up with an idea for Christmas: Give the pessimistic boy a roomful of the most incredible toys and tell them they’re all for him. Give the optimistic boy a roomful of horse manure and tell him that’s all he’s getting. That should cure them.
The parents did it. When they checked on their boys, the pessimist with all the toys was crying. “Someone is going to take all of these away from me,” he said.
The optimistic kid with a roomful of horseshit had never been happier. He was digging frantically. “There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere,” he said.
Optimists and pessimists don’t respond to the information they see as much as they do an interpretation of what they want to see.
Mr. Beast – the most successful YouTube creator – said it’s easier to make one video that gets 10 million views than it is to make 100 videos that get 100,000 views. Why? Because the best content is evergreen. It will be as relevant 10 years from now as it is today – and still getting views – which is so much more powerful than trying to get people’s attention with an idea that might be relevant today but no one will care about next Tuesday.
In his 1818 poem Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley writes about coming across the rubble of a destroyed, millennia-old monument in the middle of nowhere. Nothing about the monument can be identified, except the base, with an inscription that reads:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No one will remember you in 100 years, and it’s helpful to remember that when making big life decisions.
2024-07-26 01:32:00
Despite being awash in information, it seems harder than ever to uncover the truth. This is troubling because when people can’t find the truth, they don’t know where to turn. They don’t know how to respond. They don’t know where to look for guidance. As a result, they wander aimlessly searching for it.
Yet, the good news is that when people eventually find the truth, they immediately know it because, as Winston Churchill said, “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
I have thought about this a lot in recent weeks and, in doing so, was reminded of a lesson my father imparted on me and my brother when we were kids. We commonly referred to it as “filling the bathtub”.
My most vivid memory of this lesson came after one of us lost something that was important to him. When he got home from work, he was clearly disappointed, so he sat us down and said,
“Alright boys. Imagine you have an empty bathtub and an eyedropper filled with water. How long do you think it would take to fill that bathtub if you added one drop at a time?”
Confused, and likely a bit scared, we replied,
“Uhhh…a long time?”
My dad replied,
“That’s right. A long, LONG time, but if you have enough time, you will eventually fill that tub.”
The two of us nodded in agreement as he continued,
“The same goes for trust. Each time you two do something trustworthy, you get to add a drop. Over time, those tiny drops accumulate until the bathtub is full. And, when the bathtub is full, you will have earned my trust.”
I remember thinking to myself,
“Got it dad. Makes sense.”
But he wasn’t finished. His lesson had another leg to it,
“However, boys…when you do something that is significantly untrustworthy, you pull the plug and all that water you’ve earned over time goes down the drain.”
This image has stuck with me, especially today given how hard it seems to know who or what to trust.
So, this raises two questions — Why is this the case and what can we do about it?
I found it helpful to turn to a few quotes from the late Charlie Munger who, alongside Warren Buffett, managed Berkshire Hathaway for close to six decades and, in doing so, earned the trust of countless people.
“Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.”
While technology has materially decreased the time it takes do many things (i.e., book reservations, send messages, check the weather, get directions, etc.), it has also increased peoples’ desire for immediate results. As a result, this has significantly altered the incentives that drive the economy, and society at large.
Look no further than people on social media clamoring for “likes”, politicians catering to their bases instead of “crossing the aisle” to appeal to voters in the middle, the media thriving on soundbites and scandals as opposed to simply reporting the news, and investors making extremely confident forecasts instead of acknowledging an uncertain future.
So, where does this leave us?
While this behavior can generate their desired results (i.e., often money and fame), it typically entails stretching the truth. Even more troubling, sustaining these results often requires consistently “one upping” yourself, which means stretching the truth even further.
Think of it this way.
To increase their “likes”, an “influencer” on social media must paint a picture of an even better life (i.e., more airbrushed photos, exotic vacations, fancy cars, private jets, etc.).
To get more attention, a politician must move their stances even further to the extremes (i.e., think about who gets on MSNBC and Fox News most often…it is not the boring centrists).
To get more viewers, MSNBC and Fox News have to do the same.
To entice limited partners to invest in a company, deal, or fund with a payoff well into the future, not only does management have to make bold forecasts that increase expectations regarding how large the opportunity is, they have to then exceed these forecasts over time (often by a considerable amount).
The trouble is that when the truth gets stretched far enough, something eventually breaks.
In recent years, influencers have resorted to doing more extreme things for attention, political disfunction has reached a nadir, the media sensationalizes the news at best (or flat out makes it up at worst), and many companies that hyped their “massive total addressable markets” rose quickly to dramatic heights, only to fall in spectacular fashion (see Robinhood, WeWork, Peloton, and FTX, just to name a few).
As a result, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that confidence across countless parts of society has fallen to levels not seen in decades.
That is just a glimpse of how we got here.
How about where we’re going?
“The first rule of compounding is to never interrupt it unnecessarily”
Like a tree that spends many years as a small sapling before growing into a towering oak, trust’s earliest drops are negligible and barely visible. Yet, over time they compound on one another as trust increases. It just takes a lot of patience and persistence to wait for that tub to fill up.
Herein lies the opportunity.
In this empty tub of a world we seem to be living in, several paths forward will likely emerge for those interested in seeking the truth.
Three stand out:
The first is likely the easiest — to accept and live with the status quo. Those who choose this path will argue, “Sure, the bathtub is empty, but this is just the world we live in” and “Given that it is harder than ever to determine who and what we can trust, why waste the effort trying?” While this is not the path I would suggesting taking, I can’t blame those who do. Afterall, seeking the truth today is exhausting, and potentially damaging if you accidentally hitch yourself to the wrong wagon.
The second is more difficult, but will likely be the most promoted path. It will center around developing and leveraging technologies like artificial intelligence that attempt to “find the truth”. To “fact check” and “validate”. These technologies will likely aim to help people counter those that spread “untruths”. While this path will be tempting, it will only be a shortcut, which as Morgan Housel describes in “The Greatest Show on Earth”, is not sustainable. Think of it as a more robust version of X’s “community notes”. Helpful? Sure. A durable way to determine and build trust? Unlikely.
Then there is a third option. The good old-fashioned way — seeking out, following, partnering with, and investing in those who are committed to filling the bathtub gradually. This path requires identifying those who repeatedly do the right thing. These are the people willing to resist this new incentive structure centered around shorter attention spans and instantaneous feedback. These are the companies and investors who favor long-term compounding and are committed to staying the course, even if it means enduring periods that test even the most determined souls.
Surely this will require time and patience, but it will be worth it.
Don’t believe me?
Look no further than Munger’s philosophy on hiring,
“It is simple…trust first, ability second.”
Munger elaborated,
“Warren and I have a system where we spend a lot of time identifying very trustworthy people and then pass along that trust. As they practice that trust, they get more confirmed in being trustworthy. Eventually this creates a seamless web of trust, which is incredibly efficient and useful. By the way, this isn’t just my doctrine, there is the doctrine in economics that tries to explain why firms come into existence and it states that ‘firms come into existence because a lot of people who trust one another operating within a firm are more efficient than they would be if they were a bunch of independent proprietors’.”
In essence, Munger is describing his own version of the bathtub. By creating a “seamless web” of people he and Buffett could trust, and then empowering them, the duo created a unique compounding machine.
This created significant advantages — like being able to buy companies more cheaply because sellers were willing to accept a lower price in exchange for retaining more control. Then, given management teams had Buffett and Munger’s trust, they could operate their companies with more freedom, which enabled them to make better long-term decisions.
As a result, Berkshire built an incredibly loyal shareholder base, an even larger and loyal collection of admirers, and one of the strongest long-term performance track records of all-time (~20% compounded since 1965) despite enduring multiple material downturns, difficult moments (see their original investment in Berkshire Hathaway in the early 1960’s and then in Salomon Brothers in the early 1990’s), and prolonged periods of relative underperformance (Berkshire trailed the NASDAQ by more than 30% annually from 1995-1999).
Today, it feels like we are reaching an inflection point. I could be wrong, but it feels like people are tired of being lied to. Instead of airbrushed versions of life, they want to witness reality. They want politicians who tell it straight. They want a media that reports all sides of a story. They want to invest in companies and funds that are transparent, forthright, and aim to be around for decades instead of days. They want all the facts. They simply want the truth.
In short, they want people willing to fill the tub.
2024-07-18 16:52:00
A few lines I came across recently that got me thinking:
“It is far easier to figure out if something is fragile than to predict the occurrence of an event that may harm it.” – Nassim Taleb
“Survival is the ultimate performance measure.” – Vicki TenHaken
“Everything feels unprecedented when you haven’t engaged with history.” – Kelly Hayes
“My definition of wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions.” – Naval Ravikant
“I don’t deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don’t deserve that either.” – Jack Benny accepting a Emmy
“Half the distinguishing qualities of the eminent are actually disadvantages.” – Paul Graham
“It is difficult to remove by logic an idea not placed there by logic in the first place.” – Gordon Livingston
“The best arguments in the world won’t change a single person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” - Richard Powers
“Comforts, once gained, become necessities. And if enough of those comforts become necessities, you eventually peel yourself away from any kind of common feeling with the rest of humanity.” – Sebastian Junger
“Technology finds most of its uses after it has been invented, rather than being invented to meet a foreseen need.” – Jared Diamond
“All behavior makes sense with enough information.” – My brother in law, a social worker
“It’s very common to be utterly brilliant and still think you’re way smarter than you actually are.” – Munger
“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.” – Sebastian Junger
“Psychology is a theory of human behavior. Philosophy is an ideal of human behavior. History is a record of human behavior.” – Will Durant
“No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future.” – Ian Wilson
“If something looks irrational – and has been so for a long time – odds are you have a wrong definition of rationality.” – Taleb
“If you want these crazy ideas and these crazy stages, this crazy music, and this crazy way of thinking, there’s a chance it might come from a crazy person.” - Kanye West
“I want to live in a way that if my life played out 1,000 times, Naval is successful 999 times. He’s not a billionaire, but he does pretty well each time. He may not have nailed life in every regard, but he sets up systems so he’s failed in very few places.” – Naval
“Young brains are designed to explore; old brains are designed to exploit.” – Alison Gopnik
“I learned early that people will admire your work more if they are not jealous of you.” – Benjamin Franklin
“Show me a man who thinks he’s objective and I’ll show you a man who’s deceiving himself.” – Henry Luce
“History as usually written is quite different from history as usually lived. The historian records the exceptional because it is interesting.” – Will Durant
“The cure for imposter syndrome is to realize that all the other people are just convincing imposters, too.” – Alison Gopnik
“Everyone encourages you to grow up to the point where you can discount your own bad moods. Few encourage you to continue to the point where you can discount society’s bad moods.” – Paul Graham
“I am not an optimist. I’m a very serious possibilist.” - Hans Rosling
“The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” -Twain
“The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” – Amos Tversky
“The dead outnumber the living 14 to 1, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril.” – Niall Ferguson
“If you can get your work life to where you enjoy half of it, that is amazing. Very few people ever achieve that.” - Bezos
“Risk means more things can happen than will happen.” - Elroy Dimson
Gall’s Law: “A complex system that works invariably evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.”
“Some things have to be believed to be seen.” —Ralph Hodgson
“No harm’s done to history by making it something someone would want to read.” – David McCullough
“It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.” —Richard Cavett
“The most surprising thing I found about business was the large concern for finance and low concern for service.” – Henry Ford
“There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.” – Twain
2024-06-18 04:16:00
“Nature is not in a hurry, yet everything is accomplished,” said Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu.
Giant sequoias, advanced organisms, towering mountains – it builds the most jaw-dropping features of the universe. And it does so silently, where growth is almost never visible right now but staggering over long periods of time.
It’s quiet compounding, and it’s a wonder to see.
I like the idea of quietly compounding your money. Just like in nature, it’s where you’ll find the most impressive results.
Every few years you hear a story of a country bumpkin with no education and a low-wage job who managed to save and compound tens of millions of dollars. The story is always the same: They just quietly saved and invested for decades. They never bragged, never flaunted, never compared themselves to others or worried that they trailed their benchmark last quarter.
They just quiety compounded.
Their entire financial universe was contained to the walls of their home, which allowed them to play their own game and be guided by nothing other than their own goals. That was their superpower. It was actually their only financial skill, but it’s the most powerful one of all.
Imagine if, after your first date with a partner, you had to make every phone call, every text, every conversation with that person public on social media. Or even just with a small group of friends and family. You know what would happen: People would tell you you’re doing this wrong, you’re doing that too much, you should say more of this and less of that, on and on. You’d be so embarrassed, nervous, and influenced by other people’s goals and different personalities that you wouldn’t be you. None of the relationships would work.
Money is similar. People become so nervous about what other people think of their lifestyle and investing decisions that they end up doing two things: Performing for others, and copying a strategy that might work for someone else but isn’t right for you.
I try to keep in mind that there are two ways to use money. One is as a tool to live a better life. The other is as a yardstick of success to measure yourself against other people. The first is quiet and personal, the second is loud and performative. It’s so obvious which leads to a happier life.
Quiet compounding means four things to me:
1. An emphasis on internal vs. external benchmarks.
Always asking, “Would I be happy with this result if no one other than me and my family could see it, and I didn’t compare the result to the appearance of other people’s success?”
It’s impossible to win the social-comparison game because there’s always someone getting richer faster than you. Once you stop playing the game your attention instantly shifts internally, to what makes you and your family happy and fulfilled. It makes it so much easier to enjoy your money, regardless of how you choose to spend and invest it.
2. An acceptance of how different people are, and a realization that what works for me might not work for you and vice versa.
Christopher Morley said, “There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.”
A lot of financial mistakes come from trying to copy people who are different from you.
So be careful who you seek advice from, be careful who you admire, and even be careful who you socialize with. When you do things quietly you’re less susceptible to people with different goals and personalities than you telling you you’re doing it wrong.
3. A focus on independence over social dunking.
Once you do things quietly you become selfish in the best way – using money to improve your life more than you try to influence other people’s perception of your life. I’d rather wake up and be able to do anything I want, with whom I want, for as long as I want, than I would try to impress you with a nice car.
4. A focus on long-term endurance over short-term comparison.
A lot of people want to be long-term investors but struggle to actually do it. One reason is they get caught up in comparison – comparison to peers, benchmarks, and wondering what other people will think of you if they find out you lost money in the last six months.
Long-term investing is about being able to absorb manageable damage; if you can’t do that, you’re pushed into the much harder trick of attempting to avoid short-term volatility. You’re only durable when you care more about surviving volatility than you do looking dumb for getting hit by it in the first place.
Instead of trying to look smarter than everyone else, you make a quiet bet that things will slowly get better over time.
You’re not in a hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
2024-06-15 04:03:00
On his way to be sworn in as the most powerful man in the world, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to be lifted out of his car and carried up the stairs.
Frances Perkins, who campaigned with Roosevelt and later became Secretary of Labor, said the most remarkable thing about the president’s paralysis was how little its hindrance seemed to bother him. He once told her: “If you can’t use your legs and they bring you milk when you wanted orange juice, you learn to say ‘that’s all right,’ and drink it.”
There’s a useful and overlooked skill: Accepting a certain degree of hassle and nonsense when reality demands it.
This is not an enjoyable skill, which makes it overlooked. But you realize how useful it can be once you spot someone who lacks it. They struggle to get through the day, upset by the smallest hassle. I was once on a flight with a CEO – he let everyone know that’s what he was – who lost his mind after we had to change gates twice. I wondered: How did he make it this far in life without the ability to deal with petty annoyances outside of his control? The most likely answer is: In denial over what he thinks he’s in control of, and demanding unrealistic precision from subordinates who compensate by hiding bad news.
A few other useful and overlooked skills:
Calibrating how much you wanting something to be true affects how true you think it is. This is magic in investing, where huge rewards for being right correlate with people’s unshakeable faith that they are right. The idea that rewards promote focus and skill is only true to a point; when the rewards get high enough it spins the other direction, because mental bandwidth that would otherwise go toward strategy and reason is overwhelmed by dreaming about the reward. It’s also partly why people spend a weekend researching a new washing machine but 15 minutes researching a new investment. Recognizing that huge rewards require added skepticism of your own reasoning is underrated.
Respectfully interacting with people you disagree with. Confirmation bias gets easier when people are more connected. But connectivity also means you’ll also run into more people who disagree with you. Benedict Evans: “The more the Internet exposes people to new points of view, the angrier people get that different views exist.” Handling that challenge without digging the hole deeper is one the 21st century’s most important skills. If you’re not blessed with perfect empathy, the trick to opening your mind to those you disagree with is to find people whose views on one topic you respect – that checks the box in your head that says “this person isn’t totally crazy” – and debate them on the topics you disagree about. Without the first step it’s too easy to write someone off before you’ve heard their full argument.
The ability to have a 10-minute conversation with anyone from any background. Cursive writing was dropped from the nationwide core education curriculum in 2010. Most people probably think that’s fine; technology took its place. But technology also took the place of many face-to-face conversations. And that has deeper consequences than forgoing curly writing. Sitting with someone you’ve never met, looking them in the eye, and carrying on a conversation – what used to be so common it wasn’t considered a skill – is now a competitive advantage.
Getting to the point. Everyone’s busy. Make your point using as few words as possible and get out of their way.
Diplomatically saying “No.” “No” is often delivered in two damaging ways. One is that a person feels bad saying no even when they want to, so they stall or say “yes” and delay an inevitable “no.” Then you look like a jerk and the other person is let down more than they’d be if you were up front. Another is being unintentionally stern in your “no” in a way that makes the other person never want bring an idea or problem to your attention again. Here again, both sides lose. A diplomatic “no” is when you’re clear about your feelings but empathetic to how the person on the receiving end might interpret those feelings. It’s critical in private investing like venture capital, where the pass rate on potential investments approaches 99%.
Respecting luck as much as you respect risk. Both are the idea that outcomes can be influenced by events outside of your control. If risk is what happens when you make good decisions but end up with a bad outcome, luck is what happens when you make bad or mediocre decisions but end up with a great outcome. They both happen because the world is too complex to allow 100% of your actions dictate 100% of your outcomes. But risk is easy to pay attention to because it gives you an intellectual out when something doesn’t go your way. Luck is the opposite. It’s painful to think that some – maybe most, maybe all – of your success was not caused by your actions. So luck is downplayed and ignored in a way risk isn’t. The ability to recognize that your wins might not signal that you did anything right in the same way your losses might not signal you did anything wrong is vital to learning something valuable from real-world feedback.
2024-06-10 06:46:00
On a rainy morning earlier this spring, I pulled my car out of our driveway to take my seven-year-old son to school. After shifting from reverse into drive, I looked at my phone to listen to a podcast on Spotify. Then it happened. He said it.
“Dad, why do you have to look at your phone SO much?”
Dagger.
I knew it was coming. It was only a matter of time. Whether I was texting, emailing, or aimlessly flipping through Twitter, I had noticed him glaring at me recently while doing so.
With my car stuck between the driveway and the street as rain pelted my front windshield, I was equally stuck trying to respond. Eventually I muttered some lame explanation in a pathetic attempt to defend the indefensible.
I peered into the rearview mirror to see if he had bought it.
He hadn’t.
The look on his face said it all.
I pulled the car back into the driveway, turned around, and asked him plainly,
“Does it seem like I am ALWAYS on my phone?”
He replied,
“Well, not ALL the time, but a lot of the time. Why do you have to look at it so much?”
Want to know what stung the most?
It was that he didn’t seem mad. It was worse. He just seemed disappointed.
After repeatedly telling him and his brother to get off their iPads, TV, and other devices, here he was telling me to do the same.
Like the dad who gets called out for using drugs himself in the 1980’s War Against Drugs commercial, I was the definition of a hypocrite.
The question was, what was I going to do about it?
I told him I would look at it less, keep it in my room when I was home, and not bring it downstairs. I stayed true to my word….for about a week. Then this discipline broke down and like someone on a crash diet, I reverted to my old ways. Back to the phone, back to aimlessly flipping, back to my son glaring at me.
Then I read Jonathan Haidt’s book, “The Anxious Generation”. If you haven’t heard of it, here is the link. Buy it.
If you don’t see yourself reading a book, try reading this article by Haidt titled, “End the Phone Based Childhood Now” (link).
If you’re simply not a reader, listen to this podcast by Bari Weiss, “Smartphones Rewired Childhood: Here is how to fix it.” Here is that link.
All three are eye opening.
In short, Haidt argues that smartphones and social media are rewiring our kids’ brains, which is making them the most distracted, depressed, and fragile generation in history.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise given that the companies behind smartphones and apps are highly incentivized to keep us glued to them. Just look at what Sean Parker, the first president at Facebook, said about the company’s strategy,
“We wanted to exploit a vulnerability in human psychology. To do so, the apps needed to provide a little dopamine every once and a while to keep you hooked. Me, Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Systrom (Instagram’s founder), and others knew this and we did it anyway. God only knows what it’s doing to our kids.”
They knew smartphones were the perfect mechanism for delivering dopamine and somehow convinced parents to willingly provide them to their kids during the most formative part in their lives.
The results are more than troubling, especially considering smartphones and social media arrived on the scene rough a decade-and-a-half ago.
From a mental health perspective, the correlation is hard to dispute.
Gen Z’s reading and math scores also began to decline around the same time (Nation’s Report Card), while many reports indicate that this generation is shyer, more risk averse, and less ambitious than previous generations.
Are smartphones and social media 100% to blame?
Maybe, maybe not, but it sure feels like they are at least a significant part of the problem.
Knowing this, and recognizing that I have two young boys who are going to be begging for smartphones in a couple years, I asked myself,
“How am I supposed to tell them that they can’t get one if I am on mine all the time?”
So, I did something a bit odd — I went out and bought a flip phone.
That’s right, a flip phone. This is it.
Anyone over the age of 40 remembers it. Basic screen, grainy pictures, no email, no apps, multiple clicks to text one letter, and most importantly, no social media.
When I turned it on for the first time, it felt like traveling back in time.
I used it for a month and here are my biggest takeaways:
1. I was significantly less distracted
Think about the last time you were waiting in line for lunch, to catch the subway, or at a stoplight. Did you reach for your phone? How about the last time you were out to dinner. Did you check a text when someone you were with went to the bathroom, or worse, in the middle of your conversation? You have. We all have. A flip phone liberated me from this.\
2. I could focus for longer periods of time
I was able to truly concentrate. This meant doing things like reading long-form articles and books, working on projects, and writing without being distracted by a meaningless alert.
3. I was more aware
Not having a smartphone myself enabled me to observe how many people walk, or even drive, around with their phones eight inches from their faces – on the subway, in the elevator, at red lights, on the sidewalks, and even crossing busy intersections. The more I noticed this, the more I realized how bizarre it is. In fact, I kept thinking to myself, if someone took a decades-long nap like Rip Van Winkle and woke up today, what in the world would they make of this phenomenon?
4. I was bored more often
I was bored a lot, but you know what? I actually enjoyed it. Being bored forces you to think and to “be in your own head”, which are both incredibly refreshing. As a friend reminded me, our generation used to be bored all the time as kids, especially during things like long car rides and you know what we did? We invented and created ways to entertain ourselves. Our kids could use more of this. Hell, all of us could.
5. I found that some ignorance can be bliss
Humans are not meant to have instant access to so much information. Yet, due to smartphones, we do, which is creating a “filtering effect”. As a result, we are gravitating to extremes — reading about wars in far flung places is making us more fearful back home, seeing reports of rare child abductions is causing parents to restrict their kids’ freedom to wander even the safest neighborhoods, watching airbrushed Instagram’s and TikTok’s is convincing kids their lives are miserable, and searching WebMD for generic headaches is making us think we have brain tumors. My takeaway? Being a bit “in the dark” can be a very healthy thing.
6. I was more engaged with people, my wife and kids in particular This was my biggest takeaway. I was more engaged with everyone I came in touch with. I talked to my Uber drivers more, chatted with people in the elevator, and was generally friendlier. Most importantly, my wife and kids noticed. In fact, my older son actually said to me recently,
“Dad, can you believe how much time other people spend on their phones?”
“Other people” — what a difference a month can make.
Now I will say, while this month without a smartphone has been liberating in numerous ways, it was not without its issues or drawbacks:
For instance, managing my calendar wasn’t easy, I was forced to print out paper tickets for flights and sporting events, and I had to go back to ordering my morning coffee in person.
I also gained an even deeper appreciation for an app like Waze after getting stuck in significant traffic driving home from my son’s practice because I couldn’t see that there was an accident on the beltway.
There were some things that fell in the “mixed bag” category as well:
While I was less distracted, I missed my group texts given that my flip phone only allowed up to four people on a text.
Access to emails, in moderation, is also likely a net positive of smartphones as it enables us to have more flexibility in their careers and lives.
Cameras are a bit dicier. I originally thought they were a “nice to have”. However, after experiencing a month without one, it made me wonder why we are choosing to live life like this,
When we could be living like this.
Takeaways
I’m open to be persuaded, but after living life without a smartphone for a month, the case for keeping them out of kids’ hands as long as possible is pretty damn compelling. Afterall, if adults are as addicted to them as they appear to be, what are the chances young and impressionable kids can fare any better?
So, what would I suggest?
1. A Detox
Try it for a week, a month, or more. It was liberating. “Detoxing” provided a great perspective on just how distracted kids must be with these things, how much less distracted they would be without them, and what life used to be like before we all became addicted.
2. Cut out the non-productive apps
It is ironic, but if the Blackberry got the nickname “Crackberry” because of its addictive nature, these modern smartphones are straight up heroin.
They don’t need to be though.
This is what my iPhone used to look like:
This is what my iPhone looks like today.
Twelve apps, all of which are relatively productive. Also, I found this grayscale feature that has made the phone infinitely less interesting, and yes, boring…which is a good thing.
The result?
My daily usage is down more than 75%, I don’t feel myself reaching for it nearly as much, and most importantly, my kids don’t see me on it very often (or at least they have said anything yet…).\
3. Incentivize Kids to Not Use Phones in School
I am in no place to tell anyone what to do with their kids. That said, I think the evidence is pretty compelling in favor of finding ways to limit smartphone usage during the school day for many of the reasons I have highlighted. Even more compelling is the fact that most kids don’t even seem to want them there, so long as that means NO ONE has them at school.
Look no further than a recent study led by the University of Chicago economist Leonardo Bursztyn that captured the dynamics of this social-media trap.
Bustztyn recruited more than a thousand college students and asked them how much they would need to be paid to deactivate their accounts on either Instagram or TikTok for a month. On average, students required roughly $50 ($59 for TikTok, $47 for Instagram) to deactivate whichever platform they were asked about.
Next, the experimenters added a wrinkle to the question. They asked,
“If we are successful in getting your classmates to deactivate as well, would that change the price you would require to deactivate your phone?”
The typical response stunned the researchers. Not only did the price change, on average the students said they would be willing to PAY the experimenters to deactivate their Instagram and Tik Tok accounts if their classmates did as well.
More recently, I spoke with someone who ran an Outward Bound trip for middle school students and conducted a survey after the trip. Care to guess what the kids voted was the best part about the trip?
Being in nature? Rock climbing? Sleeping in tents? Fishing?
Nope.
The top response was being away from their phones.
So, what, if any, investment implications should come from this?
That’s for a later date.
2024-05-27 14:33:00
John D. Rockefeller was the most successful businessman of all time. He was also a recluse, spending most of his time by himself. He rarely spoke, deliberately making himself inaccessible and staying quiet when you caught his attention.
A refinery worker who occasionally had Rockefeller’s ear once remarked: “He lets everybody else talk, while he sits back and says nothing. But he seems to remember everything, and when he does begin he puts everything in its proper place.”
When asked about his silence during meetings, Rockefeller often recited a poem:
A wise old owl lived in an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke,
The less he spoke, the more he heard,
Why aren’t we all like that old bird?
Rockefeller was a strange guy. But the more I read about him the more I realize he figured out something that now applies to tens of millions of workers.
Rockefeller’s job wasn’t to drill wells, load trains, or move barrels. It was to make good decisions. And making decisions requires, more than anything, quiet time alone in your own head to think a problem through. Rockefeller’s product – his deliverable – wasn’t what he did with this hands, or even his words. It was what he figured out inside his head. So that’s where he spent most of his time and energy.
This was unique in his day. Almost all jobs during Rockefeller’s time required doing things with your hands. In 1870, 46% of jobs were in agriculture, and 35% were in crafts or manufacturing, according to economist Robert Gordon. Few professions relied on a worker’s brain. You didn’t think; you labored, without interruption, and your work was visible and tangible.
Today, that’s flipped.
Thirty-eight percent of jobs are now designated as “managers, officials, and professionals.” These are decision-making jobs. Another 41% are service jobs that often rely on your thoughts as much as your actions.
Here’s a problem we don’t think about enough: Even as more professions look like Rockefeller’s – thought jobs that require quiet time to think a problem through – we’re stuck in the old world where a good employee is expected to labor, visibly and without interruption.
The point is that productive work today does not look like productive work did for most of history. If your job was to pull a lever, you were only productive if you were pulling the lever. But if your job is to create a marketing campaign, you might be productive sitting quietly with your eyes closed, thinking about design. The problem is that too many workplaces expect their knowledge workers to pull the proverbial lever – today in Microsoft Office form – 40+ hours a week when they’d be better off doing things that look lazy but are actually productive. The result is that most people have thought jobs without being given much time to think, which is the equivalent of making a ditch-digger work without a shovel. Maybe this is why productivity growth is half of what it used to be.
If you anchor to the old world where good work meant physical action, it’s hard to wrap your head around the idea that the most productive use of a knowledge-worker’s time could be sitting on a couch thinking. But it’s so clear that it is. Good ideas rarely come in meetings, or even at your desk. They come to you in the shower. On a walk. On your commute, or hanging out on the weekend. I’m always amazed at the number of famous ideas that came to people in the bathtub. But tell your boss you require a mid-day soak, and the response is entirely predictable.
Look at famous thinkers who didn’t have to impress anyone by looking busy, and you see a theme: They spent a lot of time doing stuff that didn’t look like work, but in fact was stupendously productive.
Albert Einstein put it this way:
I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. If my work isn’t going well, I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination.
Mozart felt the same way:
When I am traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal or during the night when I cannot sleep–it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.
Bill Gates got his best work done on what looked like vacation:
“Hi, thanks for coming,” said Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, appearing eager for company after four days alone at the waterfront cottage. He was there for his “Think Week,” a seven-day stretch of seclusion he uses to ponder the future of technology and then propagate those thoughts across the Microsoft empire.
This meshes with a Stanford study that showed walking increases creativity by 60%.
Everyone eventually has to sit down and produce their work, and are held to goals and quotas. But as the economy shifts to knowledge work, we should respect that what actually produces good work can at first look lazy, and (even more so) vice versa.
In investing, where there’s the potential to win by pure luck, it’s wise to judge someone by their process, rather than their outcome. Work may be the opposite. Judge people by their outcomes, not by the visibility of their process, which is often hidden inside their head.