Inspirational Humanity

We celebrate outliers. Record-breaking and extremes of human achievement. Those being celebrated have a combination of barriers to entry the vast majority cannot possibly overcome, and hopefully... a smidgen of humanity we can relate to. Traits we can learn from. We can recognise the pain etched sharply in the face of a lone cyclist being pursued relentlessly by the peloton. With what we are given, we can apply these lessons and make the most of it.

I like the tough love concept of accepting responsibility and avoiding blame. I also get that part of white, english-speaking, male privilege is that I get treated as an individual and have no one to blame. I am not part of any category of people that is massively disadvantaged. So I have to take responsibility, but only from a strong foundation. That is empowering. If I succeed, I am acknowledged... not my category. If I fail, it is my fault... not my category. I get seen. 

It is true that massive groups of people have disadvantages that swallow their inspirational humanity. We are grappling with how to overcome those structural barriers and see people. How do you see the humanity and potential within people who aren’t breaking records? How do we avoid and unwind the disadvantages of a category becoming so engrained, that the shadows and scars remain even when walls fall and doors open? 

Austrian Mathematician wins Gold

Normal has Muscles

“Reversion to Mean” is the idea that history matters. We tend to live in the now and focus our attention on things that are different from what we expect. Heroes and losers. Normal is boring. Except normal carries a lot of information. It is almost impossible to distinguish luck from skill for an individual, because our lives are too short, we change too much, and there is too much noise. Like spinning a coin. A fair coin that has landed on heads 10 times in a row, still has a 50/50 chance on the 11th spin. If a tall man has a son, it is likely that his son will be shorter than him. Likely doesn’t mean definitely. It means that “normal” has muscles. Price isn’t normal. Sometimes it has short man syndrome, and sometimes it has tall man syndrome. Price isn’t value. It is a date between supply and demand. How much there is of something. How much is wanted. Both of those change. Stretch the time frame over how you value things, and always keep an eye on normal. Study our history and still the noise.

Arnie 1974

Pay Deep Attention

All lives don’t have the same options. The challenge with reading books, watching movies, and spending time with outliers and heroes is their realities are likely vastly different. I went to watch a play about homelessness in the UK. Something as a Soutie, I had been skeptical about (“You don’t know what poverty is. Come to South Africa.”). The Actors took suggestions from the audience, and then played it out. The lesson? We have no idea how to live other people’s lives. We just think we do. The best generic advice is to pay deep attention to your options. Talk to people whose lives resonate with yours. Find mentors who have walked the path from where you are. Friends one page ahead. Don’t underestimate what you can learn from very average people. What you can learn from, rather than teach, people less fortunate than you. Don’t spend so much time trying to surround yourself with successful people that you lose yourself. Meritocracy can hide what we have under what we want.

UK National Charity for Homelessness

Revert to Mean

Reversion to Mean is the reliable default assumption that you should take “this changes everything” with a pinch of salt. Habits run deep. Normal changes slowly. Normally. The hardest part of a fast is breaking the fast, gradually returning to more sustainable behaviour while maintaining the essence of the changes you took to an extreme. The danger is that big changes lie in the tails. The Fat Tails. Thinking the world can be neatly summarised into Risk and Return numbers that drive your decisions is like learning to drive on a farm, or learning to shoot fish in a barrel. Reversion to Mean works well enough that it is a Hubris factory. It can build track records of success that turn men into demi-gods. Till the day you realise the world is too complicated, ambiguous, and random to control. Till you realise you are not a God, and the best everyone can do is do their best. Till you personally, revert to mean.

Beware the Extremes

Humans of Security

I enjoy the “Humans of New York” series. Little stories about real people. The stories we hear tend to be about outliers. People blessed with extraordinary talents, resources, or opportunities. The path to that kind of glory is limited. It is incredibly useful to have the Satellite Navigation of a mentor or community where you just need to do what needs doing. Next best is a decent road map. Being able to choose a destination (a person doing roughly what you want to do), and then plotting the journey (developing the skills and knowledge necessary to do what you want to do). LinkedIn helps. Lots of people effectively openly share their abbreviated CVs. Paths on display. Case Studies. Step One to Financial Security is getting an income. First, that requires listening to as many people a few steps ahead of you as possible. Opening your eyes to “Best Practice”. Then taking each step consciously.

Poker Money

“You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table. There’ll be time enough for counting, when the dealing’s done.” One of the challenges with price not being value is the swings. Working for a salary is a little like buying/selling houses. The price changes very infrequently, so you don’t end up panicking about it. Partly because you are not looking. Salaries are relatively smooth, and pretty sticky. They don’t go down often, unless they go away (and you lose the job). When you break from that security to seek autonomy, the numbers can get big (or small), very quickly. They aren’t real. The problem with “Poker Money” is we treat gains and losses differently. Often it is tempting to go out and spend large windfalls to treat yourself in the Booms. But during the Busts, there isn’t the option to top things up. A challenge in Personal Finance is to develop detachment from your income. To stop the hand-to-mouth cycle of boom and bust. To not spend everything in the good times, so that you can build endurance and resilience for the challenging times. “This to shall pass” is comforting when people are down. You sound like a wet blanket saying the same in good times.

Detach

Ordinary Matters

Extremes get too much attention. It is the ordinary that drives what compounds. Extremes can destroy you though, so they do need a little more focus. Just not everything. A small Buffer may be one month’s salary. Enough so that instead of going under, and being saved by a check for a desperate gasp each pay day, your head is above the water. A slightly bigger Buffer may be 3-6 months’ salary. An Emergency Fund. Enough to give you a few month’s breathing space to find new employment if you lose your job. An even bigger Buffer starts getting exciting. What would you do with 5 years’ breathing space? Retrain? Start a business? Change your ordinary? Don’t let the extremes bully you. It is what you do every day that matters. Create space for your every day.

Don't be Bullied

Add Time to Boring

The idea that wealth comes from stumbling across some earth-shattering breakthrough is because of our obsession with outliers. Boring doesn’t make for good storytelling. But add time to the right kind of boring, and that is where real change happens. Change that silently compounds on strong foundations until the “over-night” success is identified years after the fact. Start from where you are. Find a way to earn. Build a Buffer between what you earn and what you spend. Build that Buffer into an Engine. Give that Engine space and time to breathe and grow. One day, it will be able to look after you.

Reverse Animal Farm

In George Orwell's Animal Farm, things start bad for the animals. The Revolution brings hope but things get awful fast. Everything is bad... but everything is made out to be great. Bryan Caplan says we currently live in the same chasm between the truth and reality, but in the opposite direction. Reverse Animal Farm. We spend so much time on terror, fear, brutality, and poverty that we don't see the progress we are making. I strongly believe the world is less racist, sexist, homophobic and violent than in the past. That doesn't mean there isn't lots of work to do. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of awful stories to show that things are 'getting worse' in isolation. Somehow we need to keep the sense of urgency, while being half-hearted fanatics - still making time to celebrate, enjoy, play, be silly and then crack on with the heavier stuff.

Reverse Animal Farm

Pay Attention

If we lived in an artificial world designed by a computer that gave us more of what we wanted, based on what we pay attention to, we may have a problem. People slow down when there are car accidents. Does this mean we want more car accidents? The stories we share are based on highlights and lowlights. We remember things that stand out - funny, violent, loud, colourful, sexy. We do live in that artificial world. The computer is our mind. It gives us more of what we pay attention to. Most of the stories that matter are very ordinary. Average. Shared. Common. Pay attention to the things that matter.