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Change captures our attention because it’s surprising and exciting. But the behaviors that never change are history’s most powerful lessons, because they preview what to expect in the future.
Things that never change are important because you can put so much confidence into knowing how they’ll shape the future. Bezos said it’s impossible to imagine a future where Amazon customers don’t want low prices and fast shipping—so he can put enormous investment into those things.
Ski resorts are pretty good at protecting customers from avalanches by closing off the most dangerous slopes and using explosives to intentionally set off avalanches late at night, before customers arrive in the morning.
Predicting what the world will look like fifty years from now 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.
Events, like money, compound. And the central feature of compounding is that it’s never intuitive how big something can grow from a small beginning.
We are very good at predicting the future, except for the surprises—which tend to be all that matter.
financial advisor Carl Richards says, “Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.”
Nassim Taleb says, “Invest in preparedness, not in prediction.” That gets to the heart of it.
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.
The first rule of happiness is low expectations.
People gauge their well-being relative to those around them, and luxuries become necessities in a remarkably short period of time when the people around you become better off.
Investor Charlie Munger once noted that the world isn’t driven by greed; it’s driven by envy.
It’s staggering how expectations can alter how you interpret current circumstances.
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt says people don’t really communicate on social media so much as they perform for one another.
Today’s economy is good at generating three things: wealth, the ability to show off wealth, and great envy for other people’s wealth.
Something I’ve long thought true, and which shows up constantly when you look for it, is that people who are abnormally good at one thing tend to be abnormally bad at something else.
Part of this idea is realizing that people who are capable of achieving incredible things often take risks that can backfire just as powerfully.
What kind of person makes their way to the top of a successful company, or a big country? Someone who is determined, optimistic, doesn’t take no for an answer, and is relentlessly confident in their own abilities.
the same personality traits that push people to the top also increase the odds of pushing them over the edge.
people think they want an accurate view of the future, but what they really crave is certainty.
The decline of local news has all kinds of implications. One that doesn’t get much attention is that the wider the news becomes the more likely it is to be pessimistic.
