mindsets

Elon Musk said he had lunch with Charlie Munger in 2009. Munger allegedly told the whole table all the ways Tesla would fail. It “made me quite sad,” Musk tweeted last week. “But I told him I agreed with all those reasons & that we would probably die, but it was worth trying anyway.” It’s both sad and inspiring. It’s also, I think, more complicated than it looks. Munger was recently asked an unrelated question that adds a layer to Musk’s point. Asked, “You seem extremely happy and content. What’s your secret to living a happy life?” 98-year-old 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. I think these guys are making the same point. And it’s an important point. Musk is right that some things that will probably fail are worth trying anyway. That’s true for everyone in almost all areas of life, because we live in a tail-driven world where a few events drive the majority of outcomes. It’s a world that demands you become comfortable with a lot of things not working, lots of things failing, and constant disappointment, because “success” means you tried ten things and eight of them fail miserably but two change your life. Munger is right that unrealistic expectations assure misery, for two reasons. One is that the world is a fragile and volatile and complicated place, and the only way to avoid disappointment is to expect it. Second is that progress tends to move the goal post. So the only way to enjoy the modern world is if your expectations rise slower than its progress. The common denominator between both guys is the superpower of having low expectations. That’s not intuitive, because low expectations make you think of a mopey pessimist who’s accomplished nothing. But I want to convince you: it’s the opposite. 1. Tails, you win Late last year Musk was asked about one of the hardest problems on SpaceX’s plate. Its massive Starship has to cut weight everywhere it can so that the cost of each launch becomes low enough to launch the things all day. Step one was cutting the landing gear. Rather than the rocket returning to Earth and landing on its own, the new design means it’ll come down with its bottom exposed, aiming itself at a giant tower on the ground. Just before hitting the ground, two enormous rods shoot out of the tower and grab the rocket like a parent catching a falling child. It’s wild. Musk explained: We’re talking about catching the largest flying object ever made on a giant tower with chopstick arms. It’s like Karate Kid with the fly, but much bigger. He then laughed, and added the most important line: “This probably won’t work the first time.” He says that often about his endeavors. When a rocket failed to land five years ago, he said, “Didn’t expect this one to work, but next flight has a good chance.” Talking about Starship’s challenges last month, he said “success is one of the possible outcomes.” He tweeted two years ago: To be frank, in the early days, I thought there was 90% chance that both SpaceX & Tesla would be worth $0. The press & aerospace / automotive industry at the time (correctly) agreed with me. I don’t think any of that is casual irreverence or cocky risk-taking. Purposely low expectations is the only way to survive in a world that’s not kind enough to reward every ambitious person with success. When people say, “higher risk equals higher return” they should actually be saying, “higher risk means I’ll probably earn lower returns most of the time but there’s a small chance I’ll earn very good returns that make up for it.” That’s the distinguishing feature of higher risk: The greater prevalence of failure, not the smaller chance of success that has the potential to offset it. The key part is that low expectations and accepting frequent losses increase the odds of sticking around long enough to eventually be right enough to make up for it, and then some. And that applies to ordinary people, not just maniacs like Musk. In a boring index fund of 500 stocks, fewer than 20 companies make up most of the returns in any given year. Sometimes it’s fewer than five companies. The rest – literally 80%+ of companies – range from OK to disastrous returns. So if you track every individual company, bring your pitifully low expectations. That’s how the world works. 2. Getting the goalpost to stop moving President James Garfield died in 1881 because the best doctor in the country did not believe in germs, and probed a bullet wound with an ungloved finger, likely contributing to his fatal infection. There are so many examples of the primitive lives the most privileged people lived in different eras it’s astounding. Charlie Munger was born in 1924. The richest man in the world that year was John D. Rockefeller, whose net worth equaled about 3% of GDP, which would be something like $700 billion in today’s world. Seven hundred billion dollars. OK. But make a short list of things that did not exist in Rockefeller’s day: Sunscreen. Advil. Tylenol. Antibiotics. Chemotherapy. Flu, tetanus, measles, smallpox, and countless other vaccines. Insulin for diabetes. Blood pressure medication. Fresh produce in the winter. TVs. Microwaves. Overseas phone calls. Jets. To say nothing of computers, iPhones, or Google Maps. If you’re honest with yourself I don’t think you would trade Rockefeller’s $700 billion in the early 1900s for an average life in 2022. But that’s hard to admit, because all the insane luxuries Rockefeller didn’t have are now considered basic necessities. Everything works like that. All luxuries become necessities in due time. It’s why “everything’s amazing and no one’s happy,” as Louis C.K. says. The only way to counter that truth is going through life with purposely low expectations. Don’t expect a lot of economic growth. Don’t expect great investment returns. Don’t expect a ton of innovation. Don’t expect politics to improve. Expect occasional catastrophes. Be OK with things staying roughly the way they are right now, or worse. Because for most people the way things are right now is indistinguishable from magic relative to how things used to be. Then any little improvements that happen to come along feel incredible. You appreciate them more. Low expectations don’t make you depressed – they do the opposite, making little gains feel amazing while bad news feels normal. It’s not easy, because the knee-jerk way to set expectations is to anchor to what everyone else has right now. But imagine the tragedy of unbelievable progress throughout your life and enjoying none of it because you expected all of it. My friend Brent has a theory about marriage: It only works when both people want to help their spouse while expecting nothing in return. If you both do that, you’re both pleasantly surprised. It’s a good model for a lot of things.

I originally wrote this as a doc, and did a talk w/ slides in Fall 2020 at Convoy. This is very focused on how to work in a software engineering team (surprise! that’s most of what I know about!) but I’ve had friends say they’ve shown this to their partners,...

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.” – Kolossus “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

All the data about taking cold showers is bullshit to me.  Sure, some research says that they can reduce anxiety, improve your immune system, increase metabolism to assist in weight loss, reduce the number of days you call out sick from work, and potentially even improve cancer survival. But I don’t care about any of that.  The reason I interrupt my warm showers by cranking the knob to the side is far more simple, in fact it’s nearly tautological. I do it to do it. It’s making a statement about who is in charge.  In one of his letters, Seneca describes himself as a “cold-water enthusiast.” He would “celebrate the new year by taking a plunge into the canal, who, just as naturally as I would set out to do some reading or writing, or to compose a speech, used to inaugurate the first of the year with a plunge into the Virgo aqueduct [present day Trevi Fountain].” But then he gives the real reason: “The body should be treated more rigorously that it may not be disobedient to the mind.” I think about that every morning just before I crank the knob. Who is in charge? The courageous side of me or the cowardly side? The side that doesn’t flinch at discomfort or the side that desires to always be comfortable? The side that does the hard thing or the side that takes the easy way?  In a Sports Illustrated story by Greg Bishop about the Los Angeles Rams’ difficult path to becoming Super Bowl champions, we learn that Rams General Manager Les Snead is a cold-water enthusiast. “As Les Snead watched his grand football experiment unfold over the course of the 2021 season,” Bishop writes, “he decided that, starting on Jan. 1, he would borrow from the Roman philosopher Seneca and plunge into the Pacific Ocean. And he did that, every morning, every week, all the way until Super Bowl Sunday.” It wasn’t so he could improve his immune system to make it through the long season. It wasn’t to increase his metabolism. It wasn’t to reduce anxiety. Those things might have been nice ancillary benefits but they were not the point. The purpose was to become the kind of person that could do it—that could crank the handle or dive into the surf even though that’s almost certainly not going to be pleasant.  Because that guy is also the guy who can trade a quarterback he just signed to an enormous contract. That guy is also the guy who can say ‘Fuck those draft picks’ even though everybody else in the NFL thinks that insane.  As I write about in Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave, we can’t just hope to be brave when it counts. Courage has to be cultivated. No athlete just expects to hit the game-winning shot—they practice it thousands of times. They take that shot in scrimmages, in pickup games, alone in the gym as they count down the clock in their head. You know there’s that cliché: Do one thing each day that scares you.  It’s hokey but it’s actually not bad advice! How do you expect to do the big things that scare you—that scare others—if you haven’t practiced them? Why do you think you can endure the cold reception of a bold idea if you can’t even endure cold water? How can you trust that you’ll step forward when the stakes are high when you regularly don’t do that when the stakes are low? What gives you any confidence you’ll do the hard thing when people are watching if you can’t do that even when no one is watching?  The person who does something scary every day is less fearful than someone who can’t. The person who does something difficult every day is tougher than someone who doesn’t. And life? Well life is scary and it is tough. There is nothing worth doing that isn’t. You need those traits…unless you plan to cower and hide or get really lucky.  We treat the body rigorously to remind it who is in charge. We push ourselves in little ways so the big ways stop seeming quite so big, quite so out of character. We minimize fear by making the act of overcoming it routine. We test ourselves to prepare for the tests of life. Courage, self-control—all of the virtues are habits. They are superlatives paid for over the course of a life of virtuous decisions. They are not something you declare, like bankruptcy, they are something you earn, that become part of you. Just as a writer becomes one by writing—we build them by doing. By doing things like them.   We can crank the knob in the shower to cold. We go for the run even though we’re tired. We pick up the phone and start the conversation we’ve been dreading. We agree to try what we have never tried before.  We do something difficult, something scary, something good every day.  We do it to do it.  We do it because we’re in charge. We do it so we can do it when it counts.  P.S. .S. Also I’m excited to announce we’re re-opening Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy For Your Actual Life. It’s a 14-day course designed to show people how to integrate philosophy into their everyday lives. Along with the 14 custom emails delivered daily (~20,000 words of exclusive content), there are 3 live video sessions—what we call office hours—with me where I’ll be taking all your questions about Stoicism. It’s one of my favorite things to get the chance to interact with everyone in the course—I would love to have you join us. You can learn more here! But it closes March 21 at Midnight so don’t wait.   Tweet Facebook Twitter Google+ Pinterest LinkedIn

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fulifil the next one, and so on. Every person is capable and has the desire to move up the hierarchy toward a level of self-actualization. Unfortunately, progress is often disrupted by failure to meet lower level needs.

Listen now (12 min) | This week’s podcast (12 minutes) is on a crucial difference, between planning to start, and planning to finish. We talk a lot about the difference between more and less planning, on the spectrum between full waterfall and full agile, and like most of you, I share a bias towards less planning.

The author of "The Black Swan" and "Skin in the Game" on what it's like to have true financial freedom.

A summary of Carol Dweck's book Mindset, which explores our two mindsets (fixed and growth) and how they impact not only our attitudes and learning but also our outcomes.

Taking the leap is, in fact, a very rational thing to do. Here's why.

The best game to play is the one that requires no scoreboard in the first place.

Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator, says he doesn’t have any extraordinary skills. He’s a pretty good artist. He’s kind of funny, an OK writer, and decent at business. But multiply those mediocre skills together and you get one of the most successful cartoonists of all time. A lot of things work like that. A couple ordinary things you don’t notice on their own create something spectacular when they mix together at the right time. One of the big leaps forward for humanity is when we mixed copper, which is soft, with tin, which is like paper, and created bronze, which is hard and made great tools and weapons. It was like two plus one equals ten. Same with the weather. A little cool air from the north is no big deal. A little warm breeze from the south is pleasant. But when they mix together over Missouri you get a tornado. Same with people. It’s tempting to want to find the one big skill that will set you apart. But most incredible things come from compounding, and compounding isn’t intuitive because the incremental inputs are never exciting on their own. A few little things that are easy to ignore yet work wonders when combined together: Curiosity across disciplines, most of which are outside your profession. A well-calibrated sense of your future regret. The ability to endure risk vs. assuming you can avoid it. Respecting luck as much as you respect risk. The willingness to adapt views you wish were permanent. Low susceptibility to FOMO. A sensitive bullshit detector. Valuing your independence over someone else’s priorities. Respecting history more than forecasts. Respecting the difference between rosy optimism and periods of chaos that trend upward. Quitting while you’re ahead before you’ve exhausted or outgrown what made you successful. Outperforming by merely “doing the average thing when everyone else around you is losing their mind.” Thinking in probabilities vs. certainties, including the idea that a good decision can result in a bad outcome and vice versa. Acknowledging that some things are unknowable and not fooling yourself into thinking you can figure them out. Identifying what game you’re playing and not being persuaded by people playing different games. Expecting the ridiculous and absurd vs. assuming the world is always governed by rational decisions. Accepting some inefficiency and hassle without losing your cool. Knowing the long-term consequences of your actions. Deserving the good reputation you have. Getting along with people you disagree with. None of these are too exciting, but maybe that’s the point: Most things that look like superpowers are just a bunch of ordinary skills mixed together at the right time.

Peter Thiel asks this one question when he interviews someone to determine their future.

How to solve problems quickly and cheaply? Add more mental models to your thinking toolbox. Check the best mental models For problem-solving.

Steven Pressfield wrote for 30 years before publishing The Legend of Bagger Vance. His career leading up to then was bleak, at one point living in a halfway house because it had cheap rent. He once spoke about the people he met living there: The people in this halfway house, we used to hang out in the kitchen and talk all night long, were among the smartest people that I ever met and the funniest and the most interesting. And what I concluded from hanging out with them and from others in a similar situation was that they weren’t crazy at all. They were actually the smart people who had seen through the bullshit. And because of that, they couldn’t function in the world. They couldn’t hold a job because they just couldn’t take the bullshit, and that was how they wound up in institutions. The greater society thought, “Well these people are absolute rejects. They can’t fit in.” But in fact they were actually the people that really saw through everything. This may not have been Pressfield’s point, but it reminds of something I’ve long believed. If you recognize that BS is ubiquitous, then the question is not “How can I avoid all of it?” but, “What is the optimal amount to put up with so I can still function in a messy and imperfect world?” If your tolerance is zero – if you are allergic to differences in opinion, personal incentives, emotions, inefficiencies, miscommunication and such – your odds of succeeding in anything that requires other people rounds to zero. You can’t function in the world, as Pressfield says. The other end of the spectrum – fully accepting every incidence of nonsense and hassle – is just as bad. The world will eat you alive. The thing people miss is that there are bad things that become bigger problems when you try to eliminate them. I think the most successful people recognize when a certain amount of acceptance beats purity. Theft is a good example. A grocery store could eliminate theft by strip-searching every customer leaving the store. But then no one would shop there. So the optimal level of theft is never zero. You accept a certain level as an inevitable cost of progress. BS, in all its forms, is similar. 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. Franklin Roosevelt – the most powerful man in the world whose paralysis meant the aides often had to carry him to the bathroom – once said, “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.” Every industry and career is different, but there’s universal value in that mentality, accepting hassle when reality demands it. Volatility. People having bad days. Office politics. Difficult personalities. Bureaucracy. All of them are bad. But all have to be endured to some degree if you want to get anything done. Many investors have little tolerance for a bad year or a stretch of underperformance. They think it’s noble. “I demand excellence,” they’ll say. But it’s just unrealistic. The huge majority of them won’t survive. Compounding is fueled by endurance, so sitting through market insanity is not a defect; it’s accepting an optimal level of hassle. Same in business. My friend Brent Beshore says running a company is like eating glass while being punched in the face. “Often nothing works. Emotions run wild. Confusion reigns.” He’s also equated it to a daily battle where you wake up every morning, grab your knife, fight off challenges, and pray you make it home alive. But dealing with that hassle is the entire reason why it can be lucrative. “Where there’s pain there’s profit,” he often reminds people. There’s an optimal level of hassle to accept, even embrace. Another upside: Once you accept a certain level of BS, you stop denying its existence and have a clearer view of how the world works. 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 that he lives in denial over what he thinks he’s in control of, and demands unrealistic precision from subordinates who compensate by hiding bad news. Good advice for a lot of things is just, “Identify the price and be willing to pay it.” The price, for so many things, is putting up with an optimal amount of hassle.

I was living on the beach in Santa Monica, California, and life was perfect. I was in paradise, and deeply happy.

An excellent work of philosophy exploring our underlying anxiety caused by the ultimate freedom afforded to us by modern living, and our desire to escape that freedom for a more comfortable life.

In markets and life

The knowledge of a carpenter is in his hands. The apprentice must work with his own to discover it. Here is some terrible advice: “If you can't explain it to a 6-year-old, you don't understand it yourself.”

Our lives are full of decisions, and bad ones can lead to regret. New Scientist helps you make up your mind

“Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.” — Yousuf Karsh

David shares a compilation of the best links from his newsletter Friday Finds. Read here.

Plus! The Carbon Rally; The Bridge; Housing and Rates; Full Stack Media; Buying Out Contracts; Diff Jobs

​ ​ ​ Wisdom for the end of the year Instead of a regular edition, here's a holiday special, featuring seven of the most powerful snippets I've added recently to my digital equi...

It's the great everything and the great nothing.

To fully embrace the joy of missing out and choose to do the things that make us happy, we need to better understand what’s driving our fear of missing out.

by Carrie Moyer A couple years ago I found myself drifting away from a close friend because I realized that he always made me feel weirdly… judged. Not in the sense that I did anything to upset him, but because it felt like he was always assessing everything around him to see if it conformed to his standard of good taste