I recently read Morgan Housel‘s new book “Same as Ever” which I very much enjoyed. He’s a good writer and storyteller. He stays on message and doesn’t wander – making for an easy read.
This morning on my morning walk I was listening to the Bookworm podcast reviewing this book when it dawned on me that the notion of change is what we see is exactly how our vision systems work. It’s the movement of something in our sight that captures our attention, not the static elements in the scene. So it is in life Housel contends.
Here are few of the highlights I made while reading:
- Our life is indeed the same as it ever was. . . . The same physiological and psychological processes that have been man’s for hundreds of thousands of years still endure. —Carl Jung
- 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. Your future. Everyone’s future.
- Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once said that he’s often asked what’s going to change in the next ten years. “I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next ten years?’ ” he said. “And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.”
- An irony of studying history is that we often know exactly how a story ends, but we have no idea where it began.
- 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.
- The biggest news, the biggest risks, the most consequential events are always what you don’t see coming.
- Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough.
- We tend to take every precaution to safeguard our material possessions because we know what they cost. But at the same time we neglect things which are much more precious because they don’t come with price tags attached…
- Probability and uncertainty are just so difficult for us to comprehend.
- There have been roughly 100 billion humans to ever live. With an average age of roughly 30 years, individual humans have lived something like 1.2 quadrillion days (or 1.2 million billion). Crazy things that have a one-in-a-billion chance of happening have occurred millions of times.
- Even within a good story, a powerful phrase or sentence can do most of the work. There is a saying that people don’t remember books; they remember sentences.
- Stability is destabilizing. Or, put another way: Calm plants the seeds of crazy. Always has, always will.
- Stress focuses your attention in ways good times can’t. It kills procrastination and indecision, taking what you need to get done and shoving it so close to your face that you have no choice but to pursue it, right now and to the best of your ability.
- The most important things come from compounding. But compounding takes awhile, so it’s easy to ignore.
- The real magic of evolution is that it’s been selecting traits for 3.8 billion years. The time, not the little changes, is what moves the needle. Take minuscule changes and compound them by 3.8 billion years and you get results that are indistinguishable from magic.
- Evolution is ruthless and unforgiving—it doesn’t teach by showing you what works but by destroying what doesn’t.
- You never know what struggles people are hiding.
- Stephen King explains in his book On Writing: This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. I figured the shorter the book, the less bullshit.
- Complexity gives a comforting impression of control, while simplicity is hard to distinguish from cluelessness.
- A decade ago I made a goal to read more history and fewer forecasts. It was one of the most enlightening changes of my life.
The book is an easy read – you’ll finish it in a couple of sittings!