📚 A&B #170

🙏 Support:

This week’s newsletter was made possible by you.

I wanted to take a second to say thank you to all of you who read this newsletter every week. It means a lot to me and I appreciate your support!

👋 Hey everyone,

Here are a few popular posts you may have missed:

• 3 Ways to read books for free (this reel hit 1M+ views).

• An interesting Twitter poll on readers and their reading goals.

• Legendary investor Charlie Munger recently passed away, here’s a book and video of his I recommend checking out.

🤓 Course Update:

Thank you to everyone who preordered the course last week, we’re already at 100+ students! 🥳

The 50% off discount is over but you can still preorder it for 40% off. I want to reward people who believe in me early on so the earlier you buy it, the more you’ll save (the discount will decrease as time goes on).

Here are a few common questions I’ve gotten so I wanted to answer them to help everyone out:

• Do I have to pay multiple times or have a limited time to take the course?

  • Nope, you only have to pay for it once and you’ll get lifetime access. So you can buy it at a discount now and then take it whenever you have more time.

• Is there an expiration date for the refund policy?

  • Nope, it has a 100% money-back guarantee so you can buy the course, go through it, and if you don’t find it valuable, I’ll refund you no questions asked whenever.

• When will the course be out?

  • You can preorder it now, it will be released on January 2nd, 2024. That way if your New Year’s resolution is to become a reader, this course will help you.

Click here to preorder the course for 40% off.

PS: If you have any questions about the course, reply to this email and I’ll be happy to answer them.

📚 Book Summary:

This week's book is “Same As Ever” by Morgan Housel.

If you haven’t read Morgan’s first book “The Psychology of Money” I highly recommend it. I loved it so much that I had Morgan on my podcast.

His second book is similar but focuses more on human behavior and decision-making than finance and investing. I’d recommend reading his first book, then this one.

Here are 3 lessons from the book:

📖

1) Invest In Preparedness, Not In Predictions

One of the first lessons Morgan shares in his book is that risk is what you can’t see.

The riskiest and most impactful events in the world are the ones no one saw coming. Think COVID-19, 2008 financial crisis, 9/11, etc.

“The biggest risk is always what no one sees coming, because if no one sees it coming, no one’s prepared for it, and if no one’s prepared for it, its damage will be amplified when it arrives,” writes Morgan.

Morgan once interviewed a Nobel Prize-winning economist and asked him if anyone saw the Great Depression coming. His response?

“Nobody forecasted that. Zero…I have asked economic historians to give me the name of someone who predicted the depression, and it comes up zero.”

So instead of trying to predict the future, a better plan is to prepare for it.

For example, the State of California knows major earthquakes will happen sooner or later.

So, they prepare for it. Buildings are designed to withstand earthquakes that may not occur for a century or more, and emergency crews are always prepared to help at any given time.

“Invest in preparedness, not in prediction,” says statistician and risk analyst Nassim Taleb.

It would be wise for us to do the same.

📖

2) The Best Story Wins (So Learn To Tell Better Ones)

C.R. Hallpike is an emeritus professor of anthropology who once wrote a review of a young author’s new book on the history of humans.

He wrote that the facts in the book were not new, there were a few things the author got wrong, and that the book “is not a contribution to knowledge.”

Ouch.

But that young author was Yuval Noah Harari. His book “Sapiens” went on to sell 20+ million copies and become the most successful anthropology book of all time.

The most interesting part?

Harari agreed with Hallpike’s criticism.

Harari said “There is absolutely nothing there that is new….I did zero new research…It was really reading the kind of common knowledge and just presenting it in a new way.”

The reason “Sapiens” was such a hit was due to Harari’s beautiful writing and storytelling abilities. Harari took what was already known but wrote it better than anyone had done before.

The person who can tell a better story will be more successful than the person who has better credentials.

For example:

• Ryan Holiday doesn't have a PhD in history.

• Morgan Housel doesn't have a PhD in finance.

• James Clear doesn't have a PhD in psychology.

Yet all 3 authors have sold more copies than any "expert" in their respective fields.

An interesting takeaway from this: Be an entertainer first and an educator second.

Think of entertainment and education as a spectrum:

The most educational books are textbooks which are the least popular books.

The most entertaining books are fiction which are also the most popular books.

If you want to sell an idea, book, product, or brand, it’s worth learning how to become a better storyteller.

📖

3) The Advantage of Being Imperfect

A common urge for people is to try to squeeze out as much efficiency as they can from whatever they’re pursuing.

It feels like the right thing to do, but there’s almost always a major downside to over-optimization.

Billions of years of evolution have shown us that every species that evolves to become very good at one thing tends to become vulnerable at another.

A bigger lion can kill more prey, but it’s also a larger target for hunters. A taller tree can capture more sunlight, but it’s also more vulnerable to wind damage.

There’s actually an advantage to being a bit imperfect and not maximizing your potential in one specific area.

One common trap people fall for is to try to maximize their productivity to 100.

I’ve made this mistake in the past:

• I would avoid talking to people at the gym so I could get my workout done faster, but then I’d feel more lonely.

• I would eat lunch at my desk while watching an educational YouTube video, but then I’d feel crappy about sitting all day and not getting any air.

• I would try to listen to a podcast or audiobook whenever I walked anywhere, but doing this led to mental burnout since I was constantly consuming information.

My productivity may have gone up slightly, but there was always another area of my life that suffered from it.

The good news is that if you lower your productivity, another area tends to go up, like creativity.

A Stanford study found that going for a walk increased creativity by 60%.

Morgan writes that Albert Einstein, Mozart, and many other famous people would regularly go for walks.

Psychologist Amos Tversky once said, “You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”

So be careful about trying to optimize every minute of your day.

✅ Actionable Advice:

1) Invest in preparedness:

• Think of a few worst-case scenarios and prepare for them:

  • Take a CPR class.

  • Keep a first-aid kit in your car.

  • Keep 12 months of expenses in an emergency fund.

2) A few things you can do to become a better storyteller:

• Watch this viral TED Talk.

• Read “Building a StoryBrand.”

• Watch this 4-minute clip from legendary author Kurt Vonnegut.

3) Avoid over-optimizing your life:

• Do your workout without listening to any music or podcasts.

• Go for a walk in the park with only a notebook and write down any ideas that come to mind.

• Spend 15 minutes meditating (or trying to) instead of scrolling on your phone before bed tonight.

📖 Reading Lesson:

10 Short tips to become a better reader.

💎 Weekly Gem:

Website: Huberman Protocols 

This awesome website shares summaries of all of Andrew Huberman’s health protocols.

It includes advice on how to get better sleep, why you should avoid alcohol, how to boost testosterone, increase your strength and cardio, improve your sex drive, and so much more.

Worth bookmarking.

Thank you for your support, I'll see you next Sunday!

Read on,

Alex W.