Focus on a few principles
Do you remember the first time you’ve tried learning something and it felt mentally exhausting and physically draining? It’s something all of us have felt when doing something new. It feels like learning how to walk all over again. After a few years, you may get good at it, but when you look back, there’s always the regret of “wishing you did this instead of that”. As you get more experience, you’ll know what to avoid and what to focus on.
You can see this with professional boxers and how they can simply avoid punches just enough to land counters. For a beginner, they will excessively dodge punches but be too far to counterattack. An experienced person knows how to be efficient with their energy and they also know how to systematically make decisions base off what happens. I saw this firsthand while working with a trainer while we were in a crowded gym. Our goal was to work on squats with a barbell, but as it became evident that was not possible, we quickly switched to other variation that had the same effect. This may sound common sense but if you don’t know any other options, you’ll just simply wait in a long line like everyone else for a barbell rack.
I call this the limited principle—where lack of knowledge influences your decisions and thinking. You can only act on what you know and since what you know is limited, this also puts a limit on what you can do. It’s a common fallacy for people to assume that their method is best, and we see this commonly with how we vote. If you don’t know either candidate, you’ll vote for the person whose name looks the most familiar. That’s why candidates will pay an absurd amount of money in marketing and advertising. Just by making their name familiar, they can swing the undecided votes.
Perhaps the greatest influence is how limited information makes you think—anchoring your ideology down and the refusal to look outwards. When’s the last time you doubled down on something because you were certain you were correct. An area where you see this all the time is in politics, and it’s because if you change your mind on something, your opponents will capitalize on it, and it will cost you for reelection. George W. Bush justified the Iraq war when he cited “weapons of mass destruction”. After the dust settled, there were no weapons of such found, but the events leading up to that (9/11) made a questionable decision in hindsight, a rationale one at the moment.
Charlie Munger is well known for his usage of Inversion—what if the opposite happened? It’s a useful tool to steelman and think from a different perspective. Many people would think investing in stock is risky because of the economy, but let’s think differently. What if I didn’t get in now and lose all of the potential gains? That’s what happened after the great depression in 1929. If you were unfortunate enough to be born around that era, you probably lost all your money. For those lucky enough to be born after World War 2, you were in the golden era to invest as economies were starting to boom.
Asking yourself the potential risks of anything that could go wrong is an excellent way to see the entire landscape of your decisions. Some decisions are irrevocable and irreversible so it’s that more important to calculate the short and long-term benefits and repercussions.
I saw this often with peers choosing jobs after college. Some people chose the corporate office jobs, and some went with jobs they enjoyed. I had an economics major friend that worked at a surf rental store just so he can surf and be around the ocean all day. He’s one of the happiest people I know. His reasoning for doing so was logical and clear:
If I work at desk job to make money so I can surf, why not just find a job that allows me to do that while making money?
Funny enough, he was using his degree to help him get out of the area he studied for many years. I had others that conformed to the rat race of a 9-5 office job, hour long commute, and corporate lifestyle that they’ve sworn to never take part in. They would say:
Okay, it’s not my favorite thing to do, but the pay is good. Besides, I’m not going to be here forever. I’m going to make my money and then bounce when the time is right.
It’s been a decade since they’ve said that and they’re still at their job, hating it each day.
Have you ever seen an incredibly smart person do something so dumb that you question why did they do that in the first place? Especially if it’s something that negatively affects them.
The smart-dumb principle is when normal rational people make dumb, or ill fitting, illogical decisions based on other’s or their own personal view on the topic.
I recently read about Wilt Chamberlain—one of the best and physically gifted basketball athletes the world has ever seen. He stood at 7’1”, could bench over 400lbs, vertical of 40+ inch, 4.6 seconds in the 40-yard dash, and more. I’m not sure if you know any 7 footers, but many tall people are very uncoordinated and clumsy, and Wilt was a unicorn. He could move like a point guard, and he was strong as an ox. His only weakness was his free throw shooting. Keep in mind this is a man that scored 50 points per game for a season.
His free throw percentage was around 40 percent, so if you ever watch a compilation of his free throws, it’s a montage of the ball clanking off the rim. He then tried to shoot the ball “granny style”, with the ball under his legs and would toss it underhand. The result? A 20 percent increase.
In one game, he made 28 out of 32 free throws for an absurd 87.5 percent. Coincidentally, this is the game he scored 100 points again. A record yet to be broken.
you would think, if a method gave you the opportunity to score that many points, you would stick with it right? Sadly, he reverted back to his normal method and the low percentages came back. In Wilt Chamberlain’s autobiography, he wrote:
“I felt silly, like a sissy, shooting underhanded. I know I was wrong. I know some of the best foul shooters in history shot that way. Even now the best one in the NBA, Rick Barry, shoots underhanded. I just couldn’t do it.”
Wilt Chamberlain gave up the chance to be the greatest player of all time just because he didn’t want to look silly.
Principles aren’t shortcuts, but a guide on how to approach a task or a problem. I’d say they’re not shortcuts because you still need to consistently make an effort to see if it works and if it reliable. It’ll take some hard work.
They’re a guide because it helps us simplified a complex thing and helps improve our understanding of it. unfortunately, not all guides are correct, and some guides are obsolete because other fundamental principles have changed.
The way we’ve consumed media has transformed — from television to personal podcasts and blogs. The reputation and trust of mainstream media companies are lower than they’ve ever been, and it’s mostly due to the agenda and bias of these companies. People just want to hear from people they trust, often that comes from influencers that aren’t bound by a network or from someone at the top telling them what to say.
A basic principle in viewing media was to make sure you pick a channel in which all sides are shown. Where people can show you an unbiased viewpoint instead of political dogma and virtue signaling. It was a great idea to flip between Fox and CNN to see the differences, but now the two companies are so far off on each end of the spectrum that there’s no longer any middle ground.
The focus became more about attacking rather than news. It was no longer an adequate guide to use them as sources of information. I’m also not saying personal podcast like Joe Rogan’s is adequate in getting it right every time, but it’s refreshing to see someone curious in many areas and to admit that they’re wrong. When’s the last time you heard someone from big network apologizing for their statements? It’s complicated because the opposing network will jump on it immediately.
Your new principle, or guide, to source appropriate medium of news is to ensure the person running it has the humility to admit they’re incorrect whenever new evidence is presented. It’s important that they should have a thirst for knowledge instead of letting their ego misguide them into thinking they know everything.
Principles are useful, and you can start to learn anything with them. It can be how you live life to how you approach any problem. My aunty loves desserts and her principle for them is to only take three bites. Just enough to enjoy them, and enough to prevent weight gain and overindulgence.
Just make sure your principles are constantly reviewed and tested to ensure they’re still relevant. Principles are just a way to do things, but it’s not the ONLY way. It’s just a tool that must be used in the right way and the right job.
Until next week!
Scott
If you’ve enjoyed my articles, please subscribe and share! Please connect with me on :