Same as Ever

The wise in all ages have always said the same thing, and the fools, who at all times form the immense majority, have in their way, too, acted alike, and done just the opposite. —Arthur Schopenhauer (Location 33)

The dead outnumber the living . . . fourteen to one, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril. —Niall Ferguson (Location 39)

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once said that he’s often asked what’s going to change in the next ten years. “I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next ten years?’ ” he said. “And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.” (Location 140)

One is highlighting this book’s premise—to base predictions on how people behave rather than on specific events. (Location 292)

Predicting what the world will look like fifty years from now (Location 292)

is impossible. But predicting that people will still respond to greed, fear, opportunity, exploitation, risk, uncertainty, tribal affiliations, and social persuasion in the same way is a bet I’d take. (Location 293)

As financial advisor Carl Richards says, “Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.” (Location 328)

Daniel Kahneman says, “The idea that what you don’t see might refute everything you believe just doesn’t occur to us.” (Location 388)

Nassim Taleb says, “Invest in preparedness, not in prediction.” That gets to the heart of it. (Location 399)

Two, realize that if you’re only preparing for the risks you can envision, you’ll be unprepared for the risks you can’t see every single time. So, in personal finance, the right amount of savings is when it feels like it’s a little too much. It should feel excessive; it should make you wince a little. (Location 404)

Montesquieu wrote 275 years ago, “If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.” (Location 434)

Investor Charlie Munger once noted that the world isn’t driven by greed; it’s driven by envy. (Location 439)

Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough. (Location 487)

Today’s economy is good at generating three things: wealth, the ability to show off wealth, and great envy for other people’s wealth. (Location 514)

Peter Kaufman, CEO of Glenair and one of the smartest people you will ever come across, once wrote: We tend to take every precaution to safeguard our material possessions because we know what they cost. But at the same time we neglect things which are much more precious because they don’t come with price tags attached: The real value of things like our eyesight or relationships or freedom can be hidden to us, because money is not changing hands. (Location 543)

When asked, “You seem extremely happy and content. What’s your secret to living a happy life?” ninety-eight-year-old Charlie Munger replied: The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you’re going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable expectations and take life’s results, good and bad, as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism. (Location 555)

Reversion to the mean is one of the most common stories in history. It’s the main character in economies, markets, countries, companies, careers—everything. Part of the reason it happens is because the same personality traits that push people to the top also increase the odds of pushing them over the edge. (Location 655)

If you have the right answer and you’re a good storyteller, you’ll almost certainly get ahead. (Location 837)

Mark Twain said, “Humor is a way to show you’re smart without bragging.” (Location 924)

Guiding people’s attention to a single point is one of the most powerful life skills. (Location 949)

Jeff Bezos once said, “The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There’s something wrong with the way you are measuring it.” (Location 993)

The ones who thrive long term are those who understand the real world is a never-ending chain of absurdity, confusion, messy relationships, and imperfect people. (Location 1079)

Surprise has six common characteristics: • Incomplete information • Uncertainty • Randomness • Chance • Unfortunate timing • Poor incentives (Location 1146)

“Everything feels unprecedented when you haven’t engaged with history,” writer Kelly Hayes once wrote. (Location 1157)

“A tree that grows quickly rots quickly and therefore never has a chance to grow old,” forester Peter Wohlleben wrote. Haste makes waste. (Location 1310)

Robert Greene writes: “The greatest impediment to creativity is your impatience, the almost inevitable desire to hurry up the process, express something, and make a splash.” (Location 1324)

An important thing about this topic is that most great things in life—from love to careers to investing—gain their value from two things: patience and scarcity. Patience to let something grow, and scarcity to admire what it grows into. (Location 1326)

The same people with the same intelligence have wildly different potential under different circumstances. (Location 1410)

“Nothing can become truly resilient when everything goes right,” Shopify founder Toby Lütke said. “The excess energy released from overreaction to setbacks is what innovates!” wrote Nassim Taleb. (Location 1413)

During World War II an unnamed U.S. soldier was interviewed by a newspaper. Asked what he was thinking during combat, the soldier replied: “I was hoping to remember to stay afraid because that is the best way to stay alive and not make careless mistakes.” (Location 1417)

President Richard Nixon once observed: The unhappiest people of the world are those in the international watering places like the South Coast of France, and Newport, and Palm Springs, and Palm Beach. Going to parties every night. Playing golf every afternoon. Drinking too much. Talking too much. Thinking too little. Retired. No purpose. So while there are those that would totally disagree with this and say “Gee, if I could just be a millionaire! That would be the most wonderful thing.” If I could just not have to work every day, if I could just be out fishing or hunting or playing golf or traveling, that would be the most wonderful life in the world—they don’t know life. Because what makes life mean something is purpose. A goal. The battle, the struggle—even if you don’t win it. (Location 1490)

Entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson echoed the same when he said, “Most successful people are just a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity.” (Location 1497)

A carefree and stress-free life sounds wonderful only until you recognize the motivation and progress it prevents. (Location 1502)

Same for careers, social progress, brands, companies, and relationships. Progress always takes time, often too much time to even notice it’s happened. (Location 1542)

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function,” physicist Albert Bartlett used to say. (Location 1651)

If you understand the math behind compounding you realize the most important question is not “How can I earn the highest returns?” It’s “What are the best returns I can sustain for the longest period of time?” (Location 1658)

A big thing to know about how people think is that progress requires optimism and pessimism to coexist. They seem like conflicting mindsets, so it’s more common for people to prefer one or the other. But knowing how to balance the two has always been, and always will be, one of life’s most important skills. (Location 1670)

who acknowledge that history is a constant chain of problems and disappointments and setbacks, but who remain optimistic because they know setbacks (Location 1731)

Save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist. Plan like a pessimist and dream like an optimist. (Location 1736)

An important lesson from history is that the long run is usually pretty good and the short run is usually pretty bad. It takes effort to reconcile those two and learn how to manage them with what seem like conflicting skills. Those who can’t usually end up either bitter pessimists or bankrupt optimists. (Location 1744)

Not maximizing your potential is actually the sweet spot in a world where perfecting one skill compromises another. (Location 1765)

The irony is that people can get some of their most important work done outside of work, when they’re free to think and ponder. The struggle is that we take time off maybe once a year, without realizing that time to think is a key element of many jobs, and one that a traditional work schedule doesn’t accommodate very well. (Location 1780)

Cash is an inefficient drag during bull markets and as valuable as oxygen during bear markets. Leverage is the most efficient way to maximize your balance sheet and the easiest way to lose everything. Concentration is the best way to maximize returns, but diversification is the best way to increase the odds of owning a company capable of delivering returns. On and on. (Location 1818)

The more precise you try to be, the less time you have to focus on big-picture rules that are probably more important. (Location 1833)

Charlie Munger once noted: “The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want. It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.” (Location 1872)

Jeff Bezos once talked about the realities of loving your job: If you can get your work life to where you enjoy half of it, that is amazing. Very few people ever achieve that. Because the truth is, everything comes with overhead. That’s reality. Everything comes with pieces that you don’t like. You can be a Supreme Court justice and there’s still going to be pieces of your job you don’t like. You can be a university professor and you still have to go to committee meetings. Every job comes with pieces you don’t like. And we need to say: That’s part of it. (Location 1889)

Most things worth pursuing charge their fee in the form of stress, uncertainty, dealing with quirky people, bureaucracy, other peoples’ conflicting incentives, hassle, nonsense, long hours, and constant doubt. That’s the overhead cost of getting ahead. (Location 1899)

A unique skill, an underrated skill, is identifying the optimal amount of hassle and nonsense you should put up with to get ahead while getting along. (Location 1920)

A good rule of thumb for a lot of things is to identify the price and be willing to pay it. The price, for so many things, is putting up with an optimal amount of hassle. (Location 1938)

The only thing harder than gaining a competitive edge is not losing an advantage when you have one. (Location 1965)

Five big things tend to eat away at competitive advantages. One is that being right instills confidence that you can’t be wrong, which is a devastating characteristic in a world where outlier success has a target on its back, with competitors in tow. Size is associated with success, success is associated with hubris, and hubris is the beginning of the end of success. Another is that success tends to lead to growth, usually by design, but a big organization is a different animal than a small one, and strategies that lead to success at one size can be impossible at another. There is a long history of star investment fund managers from one decade underperforming in the next. Some of this is the unraveling of luck. But success also attracts capital, and a big investment fund isn’t as nimble as a small one. The career version of this is the Peter Principle: talented workers will keep getting promoted until they’re in over their head, when they fail. A third is the irony that people often work hard to gain a competitive advantage for the intended purpose of not having to work so hard at some point in the future. Hard work is in pursuit of a goal, and once that goal is met the relaxation that feels so justified removes paranoia. This allows competitors and a changing world to creep in unnoticed. A fourth is that a skill that’s valuable in one era may not extend to the next. You can work as hard and be as paranoid as you’ve always been, but if the world no longer values your skill, it’s a loss. Being a one-trick pony is common, because people and companies that are very good at one specific thing tend to be the highest paid during the boom. The last is that some success is owed to being in the right place at the right time. The reversion to reality that unmasks good luck is often only obvious with hindsight, and is both humbling and tempting not to believe. ([Location 1990](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&a...

...sin=B0C1685PDK&location=1990))

Tags: pink

“Keep running” just to stay in place is how evolution works. And isn’t this how most things in modern life work? Business? Products? Careers? Countries? Relationships? Yes to all of them. Evolution is ruthless and unforgiving—it doesn’t teach by showing you what works but by destroying what doesn’t. (Location 2037)

“The grass is always greener on the side that’s fertilized with bullshit.” (Location 2130)

Tags: pink

It’s easiest to convince people that you’re special if they don’t know you well enough to see all the ways you’re not. Keep that in mind when comparing your career, business, and life to those of others. (Location 2140)

When you are keenly aware of your own struggles but blind to those of others, it’s easy to assume you’re missing some skill or secret that others have. The more we describe successful people as having superhuman powers, the more everyone else looks at them and says, “I could never do that.” Which is unfortunate, because more people would be willing to try if they knew that those they admire are probably normal people who played the odds right. (Location 2172)

Everyone’s dealing with problems they don’t advertise, at least until you get to know them well. Keep that in mind and you become more forgiving—of yourself and others. (Location 2180)

Tags: pink

Incentives are the most powerful force in the world and can get people to justify or defend almost anything. (Location 2203)

Incentives fuel stories that justify people’s actions and beliefs, offering comfort even when they’re doing things they know are wrong and believe (Location 2211)

A good question to ask is, “Which of my current views would change if my incentives were different?” If you answer “none,” you are likely not only persuaded but blinded by your incentives. (Location 2266)

Expectations also shift and goalposts move faster than you can imagine. Collins once said of Aldrin: “I think he resents not being first on the moon more than he appreciates being second.” (Location 2343)

Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” (Location 2347)

You might think you know how it’ll feel. Then you experience it firsthand and you realize, ah, okay. It’s more complicated than you thought. (Location 2354)

The long run is just a collection of short runs you have to put up with. (Location 2370)

Long term is less about time horizon and more about flexibility. (Location 2398)

Benjamin Graham said, “The purpose of the margin of safety is to render the forecast unnecessary.” The more flexibility you have, the less you need to know what happens next. (Location 2405)

Permanent information is: “How do people behave when they encounter a risk they hadn’t fathomed?” (Location 2411)

An important component of human behavior is that people who’ve had different experiences than you will think differently than you do. They’ll have different goals, outlooks, wishes, and values. So most debates are not actual disagreements; they’re people with different experiences talking over each other. (Location 2533)

Two things tend to happen after you get hit with something big and unexpected: • You assume what just happened will keep happening, but with greater force and consequence. • You forecast with great conviction, despite the original event being improbable and something few, if anyone, predicted. (Location 2603)

The typical attempt to clear up an uncertain future is to gaze further and squint harder—to forecast with more precision, more data, and more intelligence. Far more effective is to do the opposite: Look backward, and be broad. Rather than attempting to figure out little ways the future might change, study the big things the past has never avoided. (Location 2628)

Investor Chamath Palihapitiya: “Chamath Palihapitiya: The #1 Secret to Becoming Rich,” Investor Center, February 5, 2021, YouTube video, youtube.com/watch?v=XnleEVXdQsE (Location 3135)