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😶🌫️ I hate to say it but... I'm an addict
Kevin Standart
August 20, 2024
Hey friend,
Yep, I have a confession. I’m an addict.
I hate to admit it, but I’m addicted to self-help books. I’m addicted to health, finance, philosophy, productivity and career books. I’m addicted to Dale Carnegie, Jim Rohn, and Morgan Housel. Dare I even say Tony Robbins? I’m addicted to life hacks, dark facts, and wisecracks. But in all honesty, I’m addicted to the ‘aw ha’ moments.
I want to feel the pure ecstasy when two brain cells meet each other for the first time. I want to feel the moment when you’re handed a missing puzzle piece. I want a book to twist me to see a new point of view. I want the juice. I want to be inspired.
My shelves are full of self-help books, but the book I keep finding myself flipping through is “Richer, Wiser, Happier” by William Green. I know the title is pretty cringe, but the book is excellent.
William Green created a well-organized collection of tips, stories, quotes, and reflections from the world’s most successful investors. While the book’s primary focus is on investing, it touches on many other topics; logical thinking, misbehavior, simplicity, eastern philosophy, relationships, history, and much more.
The book references so many people, books, and other areas of thought, like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Power vs Force, Occam’s razor, Charlie Munger, Charles Darwin, and more again.
When I bought this book, I was lusting after money. I was looking for the investing secret formula, but I found something much better. I found recipes for life.
A recipe from Richer, Wiser, Happier:
“As you might imagine, most of the hyper-ambitious strivers on Wall Street don’t have a lot of patience for mystical mumbo jumbo about motorcycles. But Pirsig’s vision of a soulful, ethical, intellectually honest approach to life resonated deeply with Sleep and shaped the type of investor he would become. In an email about Pirsig’s enduring impact on him, Sleep remarks, ‘You really want to do everything with quality as that is where the satisfaction and peace is.’”
This insight stopped my reading, a simple idea, an intuitive idea, and I had to unpack it. Here are the three insights I came up with:
Quality - is a signal of integrity to the world
If we take the extra time, go the extra mile, and polish the parts no one sees, we are behaving with integrity.
Peace - we did something well for others
By providing others with quality work, we need not worry about complaints, confrontation, or litigation.
Satisfaction - we did something well for ourselves
By doing quality work, we can rest easy and reflect with admiration on who we are and what we’ve done.
TLDR - When we err on the side of quality, we behave with integrity, care for others, and feel fulfilled.
Thank you so much for your time. I hope I brought you some value.
Talk soon,
Kevin
PS - Please forward this to anyone you think might like it.
by Kevin Standart
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“It's remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
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