Month: November 2018

How many subscriptions are you currently enrolled in? Do you have any duplicates? Amazon Prime Video AND Hulu, wow. How luxurious.

I’ve been reading Walden by Henry David Thoreau and came across a quote that made me realize the rent collection business models that have arose through the internet, Spotify, Netflix, Birchbox, Dollar Shave Club, etc., are mostly unnecessary spending that diminish our own personal autonomy and wealth. I say this knowing full well that Audible, Apple Music, Sam Harris, Headspace, the YMCA, and SimplyPiano will all charge me this month. I too am a fly in the web.

Recently, there has been a wave of minimalism that has swept the western world. With books like The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, gaining renown as a means of not letting our wealth become transmuted solely to things we own.

“A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.” – Walden

This mindset, about looking not just at the item or service, but at the whole package, the baggage that comes along with a decision, reminds me of Ryan Holiday’s exploration of The Dress Suit Bribe. The meat of his post being, “…seemingly benign decisions trigger commitments to larger ideas than we might imagine. In the case of something like a mortgage they are literal contracts that require decades of a very particular kind of lifestyle.”

Most people are looking at what they get out of a deal, they fail to see that there is more to the picture. You buy Netflix, but what do you really pay for it? Surely it is more than just the money you send them, it is the time you spend on their platform, it is the time you spend discussing with others the shows you watch, it is the time you spend daydreaming about the next episode.

These are all hidden costs associated with that one purchase that affect your lifestyle. You can expand this to just about any decision in life. Should I choose that employer? Should I follow her on Instagram? Is this the right apartment for me?

All of these decisions have hidden costs.

However, that is not something to fear. Instead it should be something you think about often. Rationally auditing the decisions you have made so that you can make better ones, change previous ones, and help others in their quest for a better life. Like The Dunbar Hierarchy, you can expand this to your relationships.

Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living. So I ask you to examine, what subscriptions do you have that no longer serve you?

“Some people die at age 25 and aren’t buried until 75.” – Benjamin Franklin

In his book “The Compound Effect,” Darren Hardy talks about the momentum that one creates in their life. The book stresses that your life is shaped by the small decisions you make on a daily basis. You create or neuter momentum based on your choices of behavior. Flossing daily, or drinking pop are both examples of daily habits

There is an element of mindfulness to habits and life decision that many people miss. Often we are too subjective when we view our own lives, thinking that, “I would never do that. I know better.” However, we are all subject to the same fallibility of human thought. You are not special because you live your life. You are just as biased and confused as Odell Beckham Jr. or Benjamin Netanyahu.

This is just how life is. The wetware of the flesh computer behind your eyes is not capable of processing modern life. We deal with it well, but most people do not thrive with modernity because our brains developed over hundreds of thousands of years to be on the prairie hunting, gathering, and living among others in small tribes.

That fact should give perspective to how you think about your decisions. Learn about cognitive biases and logical fallacies that plague humanity, then you are able to exploit your programming to improve your own life.

“Life is like a snowball. All you need is wet snow and a really long hill.” – Warren Buffett

Therefore, better habits will change your momentum. Your inertia will shift, and you will alter the course of your life. The more you improve your daily routines, the more you improve yourself. The more you play to win, the more you will win. Give yourself the chance over and over, eventually the ball will connect.

Succeeding at life in any area, is not about one peak moment, but rather the consistent accumulation of small advantages above the mean. If you can be better than you were yesterday, even by one tenth of one percent, the compound interest of that will pay large dividends two, six, and ten years down the road.

I was recently discussing with some friends of mine about the prospect of altering my career path and the risks involved with that kind of decision. It was interesting to gauge their responses to that idea. My conservative friends were very risk averse, concerned about the potential downside of a bad decision. My more liberal friends were optimistic about making a change. This contrast made me think that too many people in life are playing the game to not lose, when they should be playing to win.

It’s not their fault either, society teaches us to get a secure job so we can earn a steady salary and comfortably retire in 40-50 years. It worked for our parents, so it should also work for us. However, I am very skeptical of anything that appears to be “one size fits all.” Roads from the 1960’s wouldn’t work very well in today’s world, why should career advice be any more relevant.

The problem with this mindset is that security is a false hope. First off, the world is always changing. The only thing that does not change is change itself. Nothing is stationary. This inherently means that seeking security is a bad idea because you are working against a law of nature. You are hedging that the course of your life will be stable enough for you to not have to anxiously pursue additional skills after a certain age.

“Most people die at 25 but aren’t buried until they are 75.” – Ben Franklin

People stop growing and learning. They begin to contract, away from things that make them uncomfortable, away from things that challenge their beliefs. Nobody can blame them for that, but it limits life experience in a drastic way. But in today’s world, being able to learn, unlearn, and relearn new skills is probably more important than the actual skills themselves.

Inflation drives the value of the dollar down each year, assuming that you will have enough for your basic needs 20 years from now by following the normal path will push you into poverty. Coasting to the finish line is no way to complete a race.

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!'” – Hunter S. Thompson

This is where compounding comes into effect. The decisions you make over the course of your life, but especially early on, have drastic effects on how far you can go before your time expires. If you learn skills that are broadly applicable today, you will carry them for the next 50-70 years.

If you eat healthy and exercise, you might be able to squeeze out a few more years, however even the life-hacking tech billionaires of Silicon Valley will eventually die. As the Stoics said, “remember, you are mortal.”

This finite amount of time you have on the planet is for you to use. Only you can decide how best to live your life, but refusing or being too scared to make a decision is a decision in it’s own right.

“If you do what everyone else does, you will have what everyone else gets.” – Stephen Richards

How does one chart their own course in life. Undoubtedly you are, as William Ernest Henley said in his poem Invictus, “the master of your fate, the captain of your soul.”

You have the power to change everything in your life. You need to be willing to deploy that power against the pursuit of your life’s mission with the voracity of an attacking horde. You will have to grind it out as you level up in life. There will be periods where you are forced to pay a high cost so that you can achieve a great gain.

Thanos embodies this quality perfectly, though he is a genocidal villain. He is an example of what your life should become. You have to be willing to play the game no matter the hand you are dealt and sacrifice everything. Otherwise you will spend your life wondering what you could have made of it. It is better to have tried and failed, than to have never attempted.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.” – Mark Twain

Don’t stay in the the confines of a safe environment. Don’t wish it were easier. Push yourself to become who you truly are. Play the game of life. Play the game to win.