Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

What’s different now is the size of the global economy, which increases the sample size of potential crazy things that might happen. When eight billion people interact, the odds of a fraudster, a genius, a terrorist, an idiot, a savant, a jerk, or a visionary moving the needle in a significant way on any given day is nearly guaranteed.

But bad news? It’s not shy or subtle. It comes instantly, so fast that it overwhelms your attention and you can’t look away.

The world breaks about once every ten years, on average—always has, always will. Sometimes it feels like terrible luck, or that bad news has new momentum. More often it’s just raw math at work. A zillion different things can go wrong, so at least one of them is likely to be causing havoc at any given moment. And given how connected we are, you’re g

Not all jobs require creativity or critical thinking. But those that do function better with time devoted to wandering and being curious, in ways that are removed from scheduled work but actually help tackle your biggest work problems.

some of us are too much attracted by the thought of rare things and forget the law of averages in diagnosis.”

Something I’ve long thought true, and which shows up constantly when you look for it, is that people who are abnormally good at one thing tend to be abnormally bad at something else. It’s as if the brain has capacity for only so much knowledge and emotion, and an abnormal skill robs bandwidth from other parts of someone’s personality.

The trick in any field—from finance to careers to relationships—is being able to survive the short-run problems so you can stick around long enough to enjoy the long-term growth. Save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist. Plan like a pessimist and dream like an optimist.

There’s a scene in the movie Lawrence of Arabia in which Lawrence puts out a match with his fingers and doesn’t flinch. Another man watching tries to do the same and yells in pain. “It hurts! What’s the trick, then?” he asks. “The trick is not minding that it hurts,” Lawrence says. This is one of the most useful life skills—enduring the pain when n

But usually a better question is, “What have you experienced that I haven’t that makes you believe what you do? And would I think about the world like you do if I experienced what you have?” It’s the question that contains the most answers about why people don’t agree with one another.