Brain Food – No. 579 – June 2, 2024
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Welcome to Sunday Brain Food, a weekly newsletter full of timeless ideas and insights you can use in life and work. (Read the archives).
FS
“If we can’t work smarter, we resort to working harder. We cut out lunch, skip the gym, and run from one meeting to another so we can fit more in. Being busy seems to matter more than getting stuff done.”
— Much of What You’re Going to Do or Say Today is Not Essential
Insights
“Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“The test of a business man is not whether he can make money in one or two boom years, or can make money through the luck of getting into the field first, but whether in a highly competitive field, without having any initial advantage over his competitors, he can outdistance them in a perfect honourable way and keep the respect of himself and of his community.”
— Harvey Firestone, Men and Rubber: The Story of Business
— Check out the 12 lessons I learned reading Men and Rubber
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
— Calvin Coolidge
Tiny Thoughts
“Restlessness is a sign you’ve overstayed your welcome with where you are and need to leave by moving toward the person you can be. Our love of stability keeps us where we are. The key is to leave just before you’re ready. If you leave too late, you miss the opportunity.”
“Most people are brought up believing that if they are a good person, good things will happen to them. While not entirely wrong, it’s not enough to unlock your potential. It’s like walking up to a door with two locks and only one key. If you want to go inside, you need the other key. The second key is going positive and going first—proactively helping others. When both keys are used together, the door unlocks, and a previously hidden world of opportunities reveals itself.”
There is a certain category of decisions that work well in the classroom but not in real life. I call these chalkboard decisions. These decisions tease us because the math always seems correct.
The problem is that most decisions are less about the math and more about judgment. The math always points to the optimal immediate decision, which is rarely the best long-term decision.
Consider paying off your mortgage. With 2% interest rates, the spreadsheet will tell you it doesn’t make sense to pay off your mortgage. Instead, put the money you would have used to pay off your house in the stock market. Assuming an 8% return, you’d be much better off.
The math in chalkboard decisions is irrefutable. And yet, the best decisions are often based on positioning yourself for things you can’t see.
What if we have a pandemic? What if the stock market drops 20% or 30%? What if mortgage rates rise 10%? Can you handle these events with equanimity, or will circumstances force you to do something you don’t want to do?
I see the same thing in business all the time. The math says lever up, reduce inventory, pay your employees as little as possible, charge your customers as much as possible, and take advantage of the weakness of your suppliers. You don’t need to look far to see companies who take this approach. In the short term, these decisions almost always seem optimal. In the long term, they almost always fail.
If it helps to visualize chalkboard decisions, imagine standing at the base of a 2000m mountain with two paths in front of you. You can only see the next 100m of each, and one path looks easier. If you only consider what you can see, you’ll choose the easier path. Only after you walk the first bit do you realize that choosing the easiest visible path leads to a cliff and doesn’t take you where you want to go.
Our ability to predict the future is never as certain in the real world as in the classroom. No matter how compelling the math, the best chalkboard decision might not be the best overall move.
TKP Podcast
Morgan Housel on The Knowledge Project Podcast on having your aspirations grow less quickly than your net worth:
“If your aspirations are outgrowing your net worth, that’s when people get into trouble. If your net worth grows 10%, but your expectations grow 12%, that’s when you get into trouble.”
— Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.
+ Members have access to the transcript.
Thanks for reading,
— Shane
P.S. Hacking your Brain.