Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

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.”

A good rule of thumb for a lot of things is to identify the price and be willing to pay it. The price, for so many things, is putting up with an optimal amount of hassle.

Carl Jung had a theory called enantiodromia. It’s the idea that an excess of something gives rise to its opposite.

The second is realizing the power of enough.

There’s a saying—I don’t know whose—that an expert is always from out of town. It’s similar to the Bible verse that says no man is a prophet in his own country. That one has deeper meaning, but they both get across an important point: It’s easiest to convince people that you’re special if they don’t know you well enough to see all the ways you’re n

The big takeaway here is that we really have no idea what policies we’ll be pushing for in, say, five or ten years. Unexpected hardship makes people do and think things they’d never imagine when things are calm. Your personal views fall into the same trap. In investing, saying “I will be greedy when others are fearful” is easier said than done, bec

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.

Neither country would start a war with a big bomb. But would they launch a small one? Probably. And would a small bomb justify retaliating with a big one? Yes. So the small bombs increased the odds of the big bombs being used. Small risks weren’t the alternative to big risks; they were the trigger.

But there’s another story about the 1930s that rarely gets mentioned: it was, by far, the most productive and technologically progressive decade in U.S. history.