Rating: 4/5
The Book in 3 Sentences
Same as Ever by Morgan Housel is an attempt by the author to try to distill down on principles that do not change across human history, in the ever changing world that we live in.
The book emphasises over predictability of human behaviours over events since history has shown that events are difficult to predict but human behaviour remains consistent
Its divided into several short lessons with anecdotes and their impact, reads like Phycology on Humans, and definitely makes you think.
Impressions
I enjoyed reading the book, while all the lessons by themselves weren’t new, but this was a nice collection of a lot of wisdom neatly in one place, and some of the points that were mentioned provoked and make me think for considerable period of time. Overall an enjoyable read.
Who should read it?
Curious minds would like reading it, if you like books by Naseem Taleb ( Skin in the game) , Daniel Kahneman ( Thinking Fast and Slow) , you would enjoy this book as well. Definitely helps to add facts for dinner table or with a group of friends. You can buy the book here
What I learned from the book
Some of the chapters were quite interesting.
Risk is what you don’t see - We are often good at predicting things, apart from the things that we cannot predict, and those are the things that actually makes most of the difference. Better to invest in preparedness than prevention, since risk will arrive, when and what is often we cannot predict.
People prefer stories over numbers - People will connect to stories much more than just cold numbers, often its not the best ideas that win, but people who are able to distill their ideas into the most consumable format that connects the most. Especially for complex topics, stories are the leverage.
Expectations and Reality - First rule of happiness is low expectations, if you just want to be happy, you can be happy, but the difficulty is we want to happier than other people. We compare wealth with other people, if everyone around you is earning more, doesn’t matter how much you earn, you will feel that you do not earn enough. Especially with Social media allowing us to showcase wealth indiscriminately, the feeling of lacking things in your life has never been bigger. We have more facilities than Rockefeller in his day, but will we call ourselves richer than him? Its all relative to people around you.
My Top 3 quotes
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once said that he’s often asked what’s going to change in the next ten years.“I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next ten years?’ ” he said.“And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.” Things that never change are important because you can put so much confidence into knowing how they’ll shape the future. Bezos said it’s impossible to imagine a future where Amazon customers don’t want low prices and fast shipping—so he can put enormous investment into those things.
“Good news is the deaths that didn’t take place, the diseases you didn’t get, the wars that never happened, the tragedies avoided, and the injustices prevented. That’s hard for people to contextualize or even imagine, let alone measure. But bad news is visible…It’s the terrorist attack, the war, the car accident, the pandemic, the stock market crash, and the political battle you can’t look away from.”
Naval Ravikant once wrote: One day, I realized with all these people I was jealous of, I couldn’t just choose little aspects of their life. I couldn’t say I want his body, I want her money, I want his personality. You have to be that person. Do you want to actually be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, their happiness level, their outlook on life, their self-image? If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100 percent swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous.
Summary + Notes
If you quickly want to read this book then these links are quite useful
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