The Inevitability of Non-sense
Or Bull S***, Nuisance or even Hassles. They are here to stay.
“Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong - these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.” - Winston Churchill
In my previous works, you would have read about the stupidities that highly intelligent people were engaged in, eventually leading to catastrophic blow-ups and embarrassing failures. We covered Bill Hwang, Nirav Modi, Vijay Mallya, 1MDB, and many others. All these stories share similar traits i.e. envy, greed, ignorance, overconfidence, and other emotional biases. These also come very close to the 7 deadly sins i.e. vices covered in Christian teachings.
You, the reader, may belong to the category of people that ain’t plagued by any of these demons that are meant for normal people. Now that would be a highly evolved set of a reader base. But let’s assume you are, wise in your choices and humble in your demeanor. But you alone can’t make anything happen. Everything you are committed to achieving requires people to play their part. Even in endeavors that solely depend on you e.g. your workouts need the gym staff to keep the machines in order.
And since you are dependent on others, for every domain of your active life, how sure can you be about others having as high a standard of operating as yourself. And if you do have these expectations, then you are in for a rude shock when someone disappoints you with their sub-standard product, service, demeanor, or work ethic. If someone hasn’t disappointed you yet, trust me, they will, soon enough.
“Always assuming malice puts you at the center of everyone else’s world. This is an incredibly self-centered approach to life. In reality, for every act of malice, there is almost certainly far more ignorance, stupidity, and laziness.” - Shane Parish
It’s not that others are inherently evil in their thinking or trying to make you the target of their pursuit of world domination. It’s just their own struggle with making wise choices between the good and the bad, long term vs short term, right vs wrong, selflessness or selfishness and this could get burdensome with time. Hence many decisions are reduced to mere shortcuts without much thought poured into making choices. It’s a plain lazy approach to decision-making as most dread to think through things.
It’s exactly the case with Smokers, and I used to be one till 2016. We know all along that this habit can kill us, but we still pick up the stick and light it to enjoy those few dopamine-producing puffs that elevate us to a wiser and a calmer plain, above the crowded market of expectations and deadlines. I knew it was affecting my stamina and my appetite, but the nicotine hits were just bliss in those few moments in the open. My wife and I haven’t had many fights since our marriage, except for the ones related to my smoking habit.
It all stopped in 2016, it had to. On being diagnosed with severe Hyperthyroid symptoms, my doctor asked me “If I was smoking on a regular basis?” My wife was there in the room and I could see the pain in her eyes and the emotions she was hit with when I answered “Yes”. Irrespective of the prescription or surgery recommended by the doctor, I had decided at that very moment, that I will give up smoking for good. I won’t be able to see the pain in her eyes again if something worse was to happen later on, and it would if I didn’t get myself back on track.
That decision has been amongst the best decisions of my life. I have stayed away for 5+ years and feel no temptation to ever pick up the stick again. But if not for the wake-up call in 2016, I would have continued on the path of self-destruction. If not for my wife and her unconditional love for me inspite of my smoking vice, I wouldn’t have the courage to choose the right from the wrong.
Today, I look back and laugh at my stupidity of feeling like a man with a cigarette in my hands. I was naive, living in a bubble of my own, fitting in with the crowd I had around me and choosing pleasure over longevity. I know how it feels to be wrapped in a cocoon of my own making. When I see the same lapses being exhibited by others, I know that they too are wrestling with some demons and this makes me more empathetic towards them.
But empathy doesn’t mean you have to buy into people’s excuses for their non-sensical behavior, leading to hassles in getting your work done. Being understanding doesn’t require you to buy into people’s BS or the nuisance their lapses can create. You have to deal with it. No matter how you choose to deal with it, this litany of errors will keep taking different shapes and forms, and never fail to show up.
So what can one do in a scenario when you are at the receiving end of someone else’s stupidity. You have only 3 choices -
Do Nothing
Do Something
Do Everything
Scenario # 1
You have provided a Fund Manager a part of your capital but he has underperformed the market over 1, 3, or 5 years.
Do Nothing #
If you do nothing here, then you are basing your decision to hold this asset purely on hope. Hope seldom is a good strategy. Hope is a lazy choice and it makes you rest on the assumption that the fund manager will ultimately make the right choice and triumph over its competition and the myriad forces of capitalism working against his business performance.
In absence of taking a call to exit this fund, you are exposing yourself to the possibility of losing the purchasing power of your money, seeing others make their money work for them handsomely, postponing your goals, or canceling them altogether. This is a huge nuisance to go through because someone else did not do their job well.
Do Something #
If you choose to do something, then you will have to go through the rabbit hole of analyzing various fund managers in your country and evaluating their individual performances. You will have to start with sifting through 100s or even 1000s of funds available in the industry. This would require you to learn from experts in Fund Management Industry or seasoned investors, understand the importance of asset allocation, check for expense ratios, counsel on optimal taxation policies, assess performance ratios and so much more.
None of this would have been required if the Fund Manager had delivered. But he didn’t, so you would like to take matters into your hand and choose the right fund manager. You still ain’t guaranteed alpha generation i.e. returns in excess of the market index. But, you have put in your work and gone through enough noise and clutter, to arrive upon a provider you’d like to manage your money.
This takes an investment of time, money, and lots of patience to get your head around the subject of Money Management using Funds or ETFs.
Do Everything #
If you choose to do everything, then you might just decide to analyze stocks on your own and not have any 3rd party manage your money i.e. no Mutual Funds and no ETFs. Now, this opens up a rabbit hole miles deep. This would entail going through annual reports, conference calls/transcripts, scuttlebutt, industry, and business analysis, hundreds of pages to read on daily basis, and dedicating your life to mastering this skill, just like Warren Buffet or Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.
This would also create a paucity of time for other commitments. You may not be able to spend much time with family, or attend social gatherings, or take kids out for a movie or even give much time to your health. Your excellence in this field may require a heavy price to pay.
None of this would have been needed if the fund manager had managed your money well. But he didn’t. And hence the need to go through the hassle of developing deep expertise so that you could make your money work better for you.
There could be many reasons for the fund manager not performing - his overconfidence, his lack of attention to detail, his inability to recruit the right people or hold onto good people, his substandard interpersonal skills that may have lead to a deteriorating culture or his laziness to scuttlebutt for good ideas.
You would never know the exact reason, but it could be any of these or maybe all of them. It may take a long time before an opinionated version of the reality comes out in an autobiography or an interview. But either way, you will need to go through the nonsense of dealing with people with lower standards or lower skills or very bad luck or conflict of interests. The world is far from being utopian, nor is it ever reaching there.
If you were to change this scenario into a non-investing one, you will have to go through the same painful path irrespective of the choice you make. Let’s consider Scenario 2 in which one of your family members (Sam) isn’t taking time out for upgrading his skills, but choosing to spend all his free time socializing and goofing around with friends.
Do Nothing #
If you do nothing, the most probable future is that Sam may not have a successful corporate career, eventually losing interest in his job or maybe getting fired. This would lead to you dipping into your connections to get him a placement somewhere and hoping he shines and outworks others. But if Sam did not spend any time learning or upgrading his skills, then your contact may be disappointed in you referring your family member inspite of the wrong attitude or work ethic.
Doing Something #
This would entail having conversations that inspire Sam to take time out to learn, attending courses with him on Unacademy or Skillshare, taking him out to network with really successful people so that their influence rubs of on him and constantly seeking ways to get Sam to read or learn something that makes him aspire for more and do even better.
This is a lot of work. It ain’t easy to influence anyone, especially when you are trying to do it subtly and hoping it is received well, instead of you making someone feel wrong or less skilled than others. Any parent would be able to explain this since they struggle with this objective daily with their kids.
Doing Everything #
This refers to going ballistic in meeting your objectives. This would remind you of a movie character that pushes her children to the limits of their learning capabilities or skills. This entails very difficult conversations, strict measures, banning coming home late, mandating online classes, getting Sam to join a coaching academy or a profession where he can learn the most.
This is going to need the most amount of time and attention from your end. This will create an imbalance of energies and equations at home. This may create a heavy atmosphere around the 2 people involved in this heated exchange. This sometimes works and those stories are turned into biographies and movies. But most of the time, it may not, leading to anxiety or pain that could last for years between the parties.
None of this would have been required if Sam was committed to learning voraciously, being influenced by the right people, excelling in his endeavors, and being ambitious in his goals. What could be the reasons he wasn’t this way - wrong peers, no attention from parents since they were both busy earning money for the family, lower quality of teachers in school, very toxic corporate culture at work, or others.
Whether it’s Money, Family, Health, Religion, Spirituality, or any domain of your life that matters to you, you will be dealing with nonsense, nuisance, bull****, or hassle of one kind or another.
In testing times, you also may wish for an ideal scenario where life’s beautiful and abundant in every aspect. That too can bring its own aftermath and always does. As Morgan Housel stated in his recent most newsletter "The Nikkei increased 400-fold from 1950 to 1990, an average annual return of more than 16%. Returns were so extreme from 1950 to 1990 that there was nothing left over for subsequent decades."
It’s been 30 years since Nikkei 225 peaked in 1990. It still trades below 1990 levels. That’s 3 decades of losses for those who invested in Stock Markets in 1990 in Japan.
“The events that happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is), will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future.” - Greek historian Thucydides
Instead of expecting people to always operate with high standards, do be prepared for someone that falls way short of your expectations. Instead of expecting trustworthy relationships around you, be prepared for someone that will do something selfish enough to jeopardize that relationship. Instead of expecting ethical grounds for people to act upon, be prepared for someone to take shortcuts for the wrong incentives.
It’s going to cause you hurt, anxiety, stress, lost business, broken commitments, damage to reputation, sour relationships, and misunderstandings. It’s going to need time, attention, patience, perseverance, money, and other resources to build your fort again and to take it to greater heights. These will happen and the best way to prepare for them is to expect them to happen.
It’s like buying an Insurance Policy. You know you will die one day, so why not have a Life Cover that protects your family when the time arrives. Death ain’t a blissful moment but you are prepared for its eventuality. When the nonsense or the bullshit arrives, you are prepared to make one of the choices and go through the hassle that is needed. Embrace it, you have no choice. And make the most of it, give yourself no other choice.
Smoking made me go through a lot of nuisance medically, a lot of hassle in my marriage, and a lot of bull**** advice from doctors for surgery. I chose to do everything in my capacity to reverse my thyroid and mend my relationship with my wife. I dug deep into the nutritional rabbit hole and found a ketogenic diet that worked on my system like magic. My thyroid’s been gone for 6 years now and I happen to be in the best shape ever. My only vice is gone and it seems I have gained loads of brownie points over the years from my wife ;)
You would be amazed at the surprises life could gift you with, if you were prepared for the nuisance to come and willing to take responsibility to get things done anyways.
“I would say you’ve fallen into the commonest fallacy of all in dealing with social and economic subjects—the ‘devil’ theory. You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity…. You think bankers are scoundrels. They are not. Nor are company officials, nor patrons, nor the governing classes back on earth. Men are constrained by necessity and build up rationalizations to account for their acts.” - Doc Graves describes the Devil Fallacy in the 1941 sci-fi story ‘Logic of Empire’
Recommendations for the Week #
Morgan Housel is one of my favorite writers and his piece this week was a profound one. He discusses how success creates its own destruction and his examples will drill down the lessons in your mind as no other writer can.
What Ivy misses about Steve Jobs - WSJ Article. This was a beautiful write up from Apple’s ex-Chief Design Officer, Jony Ives. It gives you an insight into Steve Jobs though process and the virtues he most admired. Apple is an expression of Steve Jobs pursuit of excellence and purity and this article does a damn good job of making the reader see that.