More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The average life expectancy is approximately eighty years; my parents were in their mid-sixties, and I saw them once per year. The math said I would see them fifteen more times before they were gone.
That sounded pretty damn good to me on the basis of one simple, foundational assumption: Money will lead directly to success and happiness.
Mark Twain is often quoted as having said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
The arrival fallacy is the false assumption that reaching some achievement or goal will create durable feelings of satisfaction and contentment in our lives.
How many folks, in country and in town, Neglect their principal affair; And let, for want of due repair, A real house fall down, To build a castle in the air?[1] I was chasing that castle in the air, blind to the reality that I was allowing my real house to fall down:
The greatest discoveries in life come not from finding the right answers but from asking the right questions. If I had been playing the wrong game, what was the right one?
I met a forty-six-year-old barber who grinned as he told me, “I can pay my bills and I take my girls on two vacations a year. If you ask me, I’m a rich man.”
Close your eyes and imagine your ideal day at eighty years old (or one hundred, in the case of the ninety-year-old!). Vividly imagine it. What are you doing? Who are you with? Where are you? How do you feel? The exercise forces you to begin with the ideal future end in mind—it establishes a personal definition of a successful life that can be used to reverse-engineer the actions in the present to achieve that desired end.
Peter Drucker, the Austrian-born management guru, “What gets measured gets managed.” The statement implies that the metrics that get measured are the ones we prioritize. In other words, the scoreboard is important because it dictates our actions—how we play the game.
In one week, you can jump-start your actions. In one month, you can see and feel the impact. In one year, everything will be different. Your entire life can change in one year. Not ten, not five, not three. One. One year of asking the right questions. One year of measuring and prioritizing the right things. One year of focused, daily effort on the right actions.
I reprioritized my health, focusing on the boring basics of movement, nutrition, and sleep.
a misogi challenge (a Japanese ritual that involves doing something so challenging on one day that it has lasting benefits for the rest of the year).
“Never fear sadness, as it tends to sit right next to love.”
“Find dear friends and celebrate them, for the richness of being human is in feeling loved and loving back.”
“Treat your body like a house you have to live in for another seventy years.” He added, “If something has a minor issue, repair it. Minor issues become major issues over time. This applies equally to love, friendships, health, and home.”
“Tell your partner you love them every night before falling asleep; someday you’ll find the other side of the bed empty and you’ll wish you could tell them.”
Never let a good friendship atrophy”).
Always remind yourself that your track record for making it through your bad days is perfect”);
Regret from inaction is always more painful than regr...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Three core insights summarize the body of research on the topic of money and happiness: Money improves overall happiness at lower levels of income by reducing fundamental burdens and stress. At these lower levels, money can buy happiness. If you have an income above these levels and are unhappy, more money is unlikely to change that. If you have an income above this baseline and are happy, more money is unlikely to drive increasing happiness.
“When it comes to money and happiness, there is a glitch in our psychological code.”[1] He argues that this glitch is driven by our flawed extrapolation of the early-in-life happiness gains from increases in income—that we experience some of the positive impact of money on our well-being as children and young adults and then spend the rest of our lives “[salivating] in anticipation of good feelings when the bell of money rings.” The glitch keeps us on a metaphorical treadmill, always running, never getting anywhere, chasing the early-in-life happiness that money once provided.
In a 2018 paper published by Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton, researchers asked a group of millionaires (1) how happy they were on a scale of 1 to 10 and (2) how much more money they would need to get to a 10 on the happiness scale. Commenting on the results, Norton said, “All the way up the income-wealth spectrum basically everyone says [they’d need] two to three times as much.”[2]
Your wealthy life may be enabled by money, but in the end, it will be defined by everything else.
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. —Lao Tzu
In the third century B.C., King Pyrrhus of Epirus rose to power as the little-known leader of an expanding territory in Greece.
The term Pyrrhic victory now refers to the victory won at such a steep cost to the victor that it feels like a defeat. The victory damages the victor beyond repair. He wins the battle but loses the war.
The warning signs on the path don’t involve loss of life and limb like they did for King Pyrrhus, but they aren’t pretty: You hit another quarterly profit target but miss another anniversary dinner. You earn a record bonus but fail to make it to a single one of your child’s sports games. You say yes to every single work call but can’t find time to reconnect with an old friend. You stay in a job for the security but allow your higher-order purpose to wither and die. You host five client dinners per week but can’t walk up the stairs without feeling winded.
Your new scoreboard is the five types of wealth: Time Wealth Social Wealth Mental Wealth Physical Wealth Financial Wealth
If you have a life devoid of Time Wealth, you are trapped in a perpetual loop of busyness, running faster and faster but never making progress, with little control over how time is spent and whom it is spent with.
Social Wealth is the connection to others in your personal and professional worlds—the depth and breadth of your connection to those around you.
If you have a life devoid of Social Wealth, you focus on acquired social status and lack the consequential, weighty relationships that provide lasting satisfaction and joy.
Mental Wealth is the connection to a higher-order purpose and meaning that provides motivation and guides your short- and long-term decision making.
If you have a life devoid of Mental Wealth, you live a life of stasis, self-limiting beliefs, stagnation, low-purpose activities, and perpetual stress.
Physical Wealth is defined by a focus on the controllable actions around movement, nutrition, and recovery and the creation of consistent habits to promote vigor. If you have a life devoid of Physical Wealth, you lack the discipline to maintain these habits and you are at the mercy of the natural physical deterioration that robs you of enjoyment, particularly in the latter half of life.
Financial Wealth is built upon growing income, managing expenses, and investing the difference in long-term assets that compound meaningfully over time. If you have a life devoid of Financial Wealth, you exist on a treadmill of matching inflows and outflows, a never-ending chase for more.
As you start to walk on the way, the way appears. —Rumi
Thriving is not an end state—it is a continuous journey.
When you experience a pain, a rock-bottom moment, a tragedy, an end, there is a light that shines through from that darkness. The light is the blinding insight—the aha moment of clarity—that comes through when you see the other side. It’s the light I saw when my old friend told me I would see my parents only fifteen more times before they died. It’s the light an old man sees when he regrets never pursuing his passion in life. It’s the light parents see when their kid no longer wants to get tucked into bed. It’s the light a dying woman sees as she realizes her kids are the only people who
...more
You can also take and share the assessment online at the5typesofwealth.com/quiz.
In the study of philosophy, the term razor denotes any principle that allows you to quickly remove unlikely explanations or avoid unnecessary steps. It allows you to metaphorically shave away unneeded explanations or actions.
Occam’s razor, named for fourteenth-century philosopher William of Occam, states that when weighing explanations for something, the one with the fewest necessary assumptions is generally the correct one. The simplest explanation is the best one.
Hanlon’s razor, a tongue-in-cheek adage stating that one must never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. It’s best applied to politics, relationships, and general online discourse.
Hitchens’s razor, created by and named for the late author Christopher Hitchens, states that anything asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. A useful rule that wil...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“I realized that I was the problem, because I was expecting her to take the leftovers of what I was able to offer, and that felt wrong to me.”
But the Tuesday-dinner rule wasn’t about the dinner—not really. “It was all about symbolism, ripple effects into every other area of my life. The ritual illustrates to me and everyone around me—my family, my partners, my employees, my friends—what my priorities are.”
Most important, that idea (“I will never miss a Tuesday dinner”) is an identity-defining statement for Marc Randolph. It is clear, controllable, and serves as a reminder-to-self of the type of person he is.
Your Life Razor is a single statement that will define your presence in the current season of life. A powerful Life Razor has three core characteristics. It is: Controllable: It should be within your direct control. Ripple-creating: It should have positive second-order effects in other areas of life. Identity-defining: It should be indicative of the type of person you are, the way your ideal self shows up in the world.
The goal is to complete this sentence: “I am the type of person who [blank].”
There is no favorable wind for the sailor who doesn’t know where to go. —Seneca
Anti-goals are the things we don’t want to happen on our journey to achieve our goals.
