Some Men Wrest
I just started to read Jack Bogle’s book Enough.: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life.
This epigram was mentioned in Chapter 1:
“Some men wrest a living from nature and with their hands; this is called work. Some men wrest a living from those who wrest a living from nature and with their hands; this is called trade. Some men wrest a living from those who wrest a living from nature and with their hands; this is called finance.”
I don’t like to say that I work in finance because simply put, I do not work in finance.
Also, that would just sound like an icky and boring thing to say in general.
Apologies, if you do.
But regardless of one’s line of work, we should have an aspiration to achieve more than just a bi-weekly paycheck, as my former college classmate Rusty Guinn wrote on the Epsilon Theory blog:
“When I say that I think your work is holy, I mean exactly what I say. Your work supersedes your job. Your work will often supersede your passions because it isn’t a thing you feel. Your work is what you do with the gifts of life, talent, intelligence, fortune and strength you have been given. Be shrewd, but where you have the power to do so, reject any who would tell you to squander them.”
Time is valuable because there’s so little of it to go around.
We all have routines that have morphed into daily habits and sometimes become uncompromising obligations.
On the Farnam Street blog, Shane Parrish wrote about taking back ownership of your active mindset, which we oftentimes lose:
“You should have planned for traffic. You made a terrible investment and you have no idea what you’re doing. Stop waiting for people to teach you the skills you need to earn a living and go learn them.
When the passive mindset takes over, you say another phrase that drives me batty: ‘I can’t.’ Actually, yes you can, you’re just not willing to pay the price. You’re not willing to do the work or spend the time. You’re not willing to do something hard. You’re not willing to sacrifice what’s needed.
The passive mindset is defined by an attitude, an assumption that life happens to you and you’re not responsible. People with this mindset also say things like, ‘Why does this always happen to me?’
When the language you use about things going on in your life is passive, you slowly convince yourself that nothing is your responsibility. This makes you feel good because it absolves you from responsibility. It means you don’t have to look inside yourself and change anything. It means you’re not in control.
Well, I have news for you: you are in control. You’re in control of how you respond to the ups and downs of life. You’re in control of how you talk to yourself.
An active attitude means ownership. You own your failures. An active mindset means you are responsible for the things you control.”
Not to be outdone, David Perell is in line for the unofficial title of the best article written this quarter, in my opinion, as his popular long essay tackled the triumvirate of (i) commerce, (ii) higher education, and (iii) politics:
“Narratives, which once imbued gatekeepers with authority and prestige, are now instantly fact-checked by a skeptical public. Less than a generation ago, when the production and distribution of information were prohibitively expensive, the public had limited access to information.
We’re whirling in an information vortex. Dizzy and disillusioned, our compass steers us in the wrong direction. Magnetic north points towards the best practices of the industrial age, but when we follow them we veer off course. The magnetic field has reversed. We’ve entered a digital, two-way, information-rich world where millions of people can produce and distribute content at scale. We need to recalibrate our collective compass.
The media environment is like a crystal ball. By observing it, we can predict the future. Commerce will become quirkier, education will be overhauled, and politicians will increasingly look like anti-establishment celebrities. Industrial, Mass Media structures are obsolete and unfit for our new environment. Just as we cannot pick up a palm tree in Los Angeles and expect it to grow on the North Pole, systems from the Mass Media Age will not work in the Internet Age.
Unaware of our contemporary environment, we’ve resorted to anger, anxiety, and rage. From commerce to education to politics, rather than running away from these technologies, we should run towards them. Until we understand and adapt to our digital environment, we will not be able to reap its fruits.”
We should not rush to read the latest app notification nor should we chase catching up to our neighbor’s checking account balance as Morgan Housel points out today:
“You can be an optimist and say living standards will keep improving, which I think is likely. But you can’t say that people will feel proportionally better off, because the goalpost will always move up with improvements in living standards. There is a correlation between money and happiness, but it diminishes with each additional dollar gained. This is especially true at the micro level where people live their day to day — the hedge fund manager who makes $100 million a year compares their life to other hedge fund managers who make $100 million per year, so their life doesn’t feel nearly as amazing as others imagine. Their goalpost moved to the next town over.
If the 1950s and 1960s felt like a better time, it’s because there was less dispersion between income groups, with fewer extremely wealthy people inflating the lifestyle aspirations of everyone else. But that highlights the point here: when you watch other people live a better life, your benchmark for normal and acceptable rises. The goalposts move. This isn’t necessarily bad or good, and I don’t have a solution; it’s one of those things that just is. Like death and taxes.”
I am happy to operate and invest independently.
Sure, out there in the world, might be quality, trustworthy partners.
But as investment advisor Dina Isola reminded the U.S. Congress this month, the everyday investor still needs extra protection:
