Some Things I Think
Some Things I Think
APR 26, 2023 by Morgan Housel@morganhousel
The fastest way to get rich is to go slow.
Many beliefs are held because there is a social and tribal benefit to holding them, not necessarily because they’re true. Nothing is more blinding than success caused by luck, because when you succeed without effort it’s easy to think, “I must be naturally talented.” Social media makes more sense when you view it as a place people go to perform rather than a place to communicate. Comedy is the best way to teach about human behavior. George Carlin, Chris Rock, and Jerry Seinfeld have done more to enlighten others than 99.9% of psychology PhDs.
The best measure of wealth is what you have minus what you want. (By this measure, some billionaires are broke.) The most valuable personal finance asset is not needing to impress anyone.
Most financial debates are people with different time horizons talking over each other.
From school, I remember: Every good story I was told, but none of the formulas I memorized before a test.
It’s easiest to convince people that you’re special if they don’t know you well enough to see all the ways you’re not.
“People like you more when you are working towards something, not when you have it.” - Drake
A lot of people seem to have a necessary level of stress, and when their life is going well they make up imaginary problems to fill the void.
Few things are as persuasive as your own BS, while nothing is easier to identify than other people’s BS.
Everything is sales.
Every employee is replaceable.
Those we admire most in sports, business, politics, and entertainment tend to share one quality: They knew when it was time to quit, time to pass the baton, time to disappear, in a way that preserved, even enhanced, their reputation. Nothing diminishes past success like overstaying your welcome.
The hardest thing when studying history is that you know how the story ends, which makes it impossible to put yourself in people’s shoes and imagine what they were thinking or feeling in the past.
You can only ignore the critics if you also discount the praise.
There are two types of people: Those who want to know more and those who want to defend what they already know.
My jealousy of dogs: They can sit for hours doing absolutely nothing, appearing perfectly content.
A lot of people like making money more than they enjoy having money. The change, not the accumulated amount, is the thrill.
Matt Damon says, “You retard socially and emotionally the moment you become famous. Your experience of the world is never the same.” The same may be true – and far more common – for those who become wealthy.
Most beliefs are self-validating. Angry people look for problems and find them everywhere, happy people seek out smiles and find them everywhere, pessimists look for trouble and find it everywhere. Brains are good at filtering inputs to focus on what you want to believe.
Few traits are as attractive as humility, but few are as common as vanity.
Everyone wants to be lucky and to be admired, but no one admires a person for their luck.
The market is rational but investors play different games and those games look irrational to people playing a different game.
A big problem with bubbles is the reflexive association between wealth and wisdom, so a bunch of crazy ideas are taken seriously because a temporarily rich person said it.
Logic doesn’t persuade people. Clarity, storytelling, and appealing to self-interest do.
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