People gauge their well-being relative to those around them, and luxuries become necessities in a remarkably short period of time when the people around you become better off. Investor Charlie Munger once noted that the world isn’t driven by greed; it’s driven by envy.

a lot of workers have “thought jobs” without much time to think.

done. I think it’s often hard to distinguish high expectations from motivation. And low expectations feels like giving up and minimizing your potential.

“For every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a change in size inevitably carries with it a change of form,” Haldane wrote. A most convenient size. A proper state where things work well but break when you try to scale them to a different size or speed.

With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is apt to happen,” Mosteller said.

Events, like money, compound.

incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough.

He’s not wrong, but the danger is assuming that if something can’t be measured it doesn’t matter. The opposite is true: Some of the most important forces in the world—particularly those regarding people’s personalities and mindsets—are nearly impossible to measure and impossible to predict.

Being driven by what other people have and you don’t is an unavoidable trait in most people. It also highlights just how important managing expectations can be if you want to live a happy life.