Ten Rabbit Holes to Explore 🐇
Luck, Debt, Flow State, Asymmetric Payoffs, Wars and more.
Luck
‘Success is like trying to enter an exclusive nightclub. There is the front door for the 99% of people waiting in line, doing what everyone else is, and hoping to eventually get in. There is the VIP door for the 1% in the privileged and connected who can effortlessly slip through.
What they don’t tell you is that there is always a third door. This is through a back alley kitchen or a cracked window that will take resourcefulness to discover and guts to pound on 100x’ - Excerpt from The Third Door by Alex Banayan.
Shao Zhou takes this further and addresses the question - How can we increase our surface area of luck so that serendipity blesses us with moments that could become life-defining? I highly recommend this piece.
In the spirit of expanding our surface area of luck, the responsibility comes down to us to play games with high probabilities of success and to avoid where the odds of loss/ruin are high. Joe Wiggins, in his post, addresses 9 reasons why people get sucked into loss-making games. Get a strong grip on these 9, and you will save yourselves tens of thousands of dollars, if not millions over time.
Pattern Recognition
Michael Maubossin is a legend in the world of investing and his papers are sought-after reading for Ivy League students and professional investors worldwide. His current paper isn’t a heavy lift and hence I considered sharing it with all here. It explores the human bias for spotting trends or patterns where none exist e.g. seeing a pattern of your favorite animal in the clouds. His take emphasizes the importance of the environment and the rules of the game, and where patterns could be formed and capitalised. He also hints at games where we shouldn’t even attempt spotting trends/patterns - making this part the most crucial aspect of the piece.
Wisdom
Graham Weaver’s talk at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business is one of my favorite YouTube videos ever. It provides a perspective by which every choice could have higher odds of success with bigger payoffs. He digs deeper into evaluating opportunities and making wise choices, without which, you could be wasting decades in an economic swamp with nothing to show.
What if you had all the money in the world, would that make you happy? What if you could buy anything, travel anywhere, and fulfill all your desires - would that make you happy? What is the answer to this question? You could spend your entire career seeking answers to these loaded questions. Or you could read this piece from Ben Carlson and learn vicariously i.e. through someone else’s experience. That will save you decades and that sounds like a good deal !!!
Debt
Visual Capitalist has built a lucrative business out of converting global data into interesting illustrations. They have made the subject matter easy to understand for their readers, and made their bankers happy too ;) I am a fan of their work and hence sharing their recent post on the global debt levels and the comparative standings between many countries. A lot of trouble brewing here and I am positioning my portfolio accordingly.
Flow State
Just imagine your favorite music composer or movie director. How do you think they go about their work? Do they get distracted as easily as you do? Do they have social media sucking away their time and attention? Or do they have a process to muscle through all resistance and arrive at work that delights the audiences and moves the field forward with every creative output of theirs? If you’re keen to know the answer, then read this post on X by Billy Oppenheimer.
US Supremacy
There has been enough talk about China taking over the US economically and even challenging their military might and alliances. Is this true or is the US only getting stronger? The media is trying very hard to make me believe that the US is running out of money, fighting many losing battles, and losing confidence globally. What if the truth is the complete opposite? Read this piece by the Guardian to explore the facts on the ground. This makes for a very interesting read.
As an addition to the previous piece, I am sharing with you a nuanced perspective on the Russia-Ukraine War. Noah Smith gets into the weeds here to understand the challenges on the ground in Ukraine, and the choices US & Europe have in maintaining the world order. Kudos to them if they succeed. And if they don’t, then wars and chaos will become the new normal.
I have been writing this newsletter for over two years and I have come to realize that the title of my newsletter isn’t apt to the subject matter or the context of my pieces. My writings intend to aid you in thinking better, living with vitality, and creating a shock-proof life.
I have a few names in mind and I seek your suggestion on which one suits the newsletter the best as a title. Three choices are presented below and I look forward to your revert on the same:
Wishing you a fantastic week ahead for you🤝
Can’t wait to get your feedback.
Manish