Saturday, April 22, 2023

Sticking around!

 The ability to stick around for a long time - without wiping out or being forced to give up is what makes the biggest difference ; not growth , not brains ,not insight;

This should be the cornerstone of your strategy , whether its investing or career or business of your own!

pg.58 : The Psychology of Money - Morgan Housel

 

I am reminded of the quote : " Survival of fittest"  - in the Evolution theory by Charles Darwin : 

the natural process by which organisms best adjusted to their environment are most successful in surviving and reproducing : 

as you can see , its not the smartest, strongest or the most talented - its the fittest that survive - its the ones that can avoid the ruins!

To be fit, you got to stay away from ruins - breakdown - and kaput - to sustain the song 

To give the personal finance example, you need to have at least 6 months of cache in case you run into a paycheck issue - to stay fiscally fit! otherwise its going to be a meltdown!

Charlie Munger says : "Tell me where death is ; I shall never go there!" (looks like he is successful in dodging death as he is 99 years and active!)

Munger's idea is : Problem avoidance => Stick around for long time => Compounding effect!

Being smart and talent is good and necessary - but not sufficient ; 

one way to avoid troubles is using the margin of safety principle ; this is the approach that rocket scientists use in their designs;  They don't design necessarily the strongest nozzle - rather they make it strong enough to avoid failure! 

Margin of Safety (M.S) =   Allowed Load      -   1

                                          Actual Load    

As long as margin of safety is > 0 , you are good! 

a similar approach you can to take to life as well: 

M.S  =  Allowed Risk -   1

             Actual Risk

As long you are acting with positive M.S. you are good! 

and you will be one of those last (Wo)man standing - no need for willpower and all that crap!


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