In Progress No. 18
The Big Lessons of the Last Year | Stories are Powerful | The Problem with Procrastination
Knowledge
The Big Lessons of the Last Year
Morgan Housel has outlined his biggest lessons from this past year in a recent post. Here are my favourites:
1. Big risks are easy to underestimate because they come from small risks that multiply.
Big risks are easy to overlook because they’re just a chain reaction of small events, each of which is easy to shrug off. A bunch of mundane things happen at the right time, in the right order, and multiply into an event that might look impossible if you only view the final outcome in isolation. Math is hard, but exponential math is deceiving.
2. A lot of undue pessimism comes from underestimating how quickly and firmly people adapt.
People are astoundingly good at adapting. When contemplating change it’s tempting to draw a straight line and assume a change in circumstances leads to an equal change in how you feel. But it’s never like that. When faced with a change people quickly say, “OK, this is the new baseline. Our expectations now begin there.” It’s part of why we are so bad at forecasting.
3. History is only interesting because nothing is inevitable.
Daniel Kahneman says that when you experience a surprise the correct takeaway is not to assume that event will happen again; it’s to accept that the world is surprising. The big lesson is to realize that you will again be hit by things you didn’t see coming, that no one was talking about, and that will move the needle more than all the things you expected to happen combined.
Wisdom
Stories are Powerful
We live in the data age. It’s the new oil. Few things remain which can’t be quantified, mapped, and projected.
In any analysis, detailed information is now a given. To raise money for a company, you can tell investors exactly what you make on every sale, how much it costs to acquire a new customer, what your growth is going to be this year. All business is quantified.
All of those data points matter. But only to you. Why? Because you have more context than anyone else. To you, the numbers are features of a broader story. To others, they’re merely numbers on a screen. Cold and lifeless.
For anyone else to believe the story, they need to understand the context. The numbers need to be woven together into a narrative that brings them to life.
No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.
— Daniel Kahneman
Kahneman is a behavioural economist who understands individual decision-making more than most. He recognizes a simple truth: that numbers aren’t an effective way to evoke the emotions which lead to a decision being made. We’re evolved to encode information into verbal stories, not spreadsheets.
Stories survive because they stick. They inspire. They drive decisions.
Numbers need a narrative. Start weaving.
Insight
The Problem with Procrastination
What’s causing you stress today? How much of it is in your control? How much of it can you act on right now?
Taking care of the immediate tasks that you are in control of is one of the most satisfying ways to spend time. It’s a surefire way to minimize regret and ensure that your time is well-spent. If you exhaust all of these tasks, then you can proceed with more abstract work.
Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.
— Seneca
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Today
Random Find
Tree.fm: A website that loops through live recordings of the forests of the world. I found this super interesting. Hit the hyperlink to check it out.