Setting a sustainable pace
Cultivate deep roots—Produce at a sustainable pace—Get time on your side
Hi all,
Hope you all have a good weekend, and if you’re in the U.S., a relaxing Memorial Day holiday.
I wanted to share a few books that have surprised me this year—in a good way. Reading these have been part of my goal of “reading out of my comfort zone”.
The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, Michael Pollan
Thank you,
Brendan
I’ve run enough long-distance races to notice a constant of human nature. The gun goes off, the crowd rushes forward, and at least a handful of eager hares sprint forward at a pace that is completely unsustainable. Conspicuously wearing basketball shorts, the hares keep up with the emaciated elite runners for at least the first half mile, but soon collapse to a plodding jog.
The theme of today’s note is setting a sustainable pace. In today’s hyper-competitive globalized job market, amidst the rush of social media and the disorienting promise of AI, I suspect most of us feel the urge to run faster and faster to keep up. Below are some thoughts that have reminded me that faster is not always better. And that sustainable success demands both persistence and patience across the long run.
#1: Cultivate deep roots
“Like anything that appears suddenly and grows fast, regimes that come out of nothing inevitably have shallow roots and will tend to crash in the first storm.”
—Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Machiavelli lived during the 16th century, an unsettled period of Italian history. As he observed the rise and fall of kings and their kingdoms, he also wondered what it took to maintain stable power. Kings who were given their land by a political friend, or who bribed their army to fight for them, or who had merely gotten lucky almost never held onto power. Kings who had slowly and methodically attained power through sheer effort and wits, such as Francesco Sforza, had in the process cultivated the strength and respect to maintain it.
Machiavelli’s message is to be skeptical of sudden success, of being given a kingdom too quickly. The wheel of fortune launches fools to such highs every day, and most don’t sustain it. Slow, methodical growth may seem unsexy, even boring. But it takes a lot of practice and a long time to grow the deep roots (relationships, skills, battle scars) that survive the toughest storms.
#2 Produce at a sustainable pace:
“The psychology professor Robert Boice spent his career studying the writing habits of his fellow academics, reaching the conclusion that the most productive and successful among them generally made writing a smaller part of their daily routine than the others, so that it was much more feasible to keep going with it day after day. They cultivated the patience to tolerate the fact that they probably wouldn’t be producing very much on any individual day, with the result that they produced much more over the long term.”
—Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weekends: Time Management for Mortals
Long-term productivity is a race in which the patient and persistent win. The patient and persistent show up every day for a few hours and build habits they can sustain in the long run. They avoid the psychological, social and physical collateral damage packaged with pulling impatient all-nighters. They avoid costly burnout.
Burkeman calls this patient and persistent approach radical incrementalism. Radical incrementalism is based on the truth that if you get 1% better at something every day, you’ll get 37 times better over the course of a year through the power of compounding. You’ll improve even more over a 40 year career. But compounding doesn’t work without consistency. “The first rule of compounding” Charlie Munger reminds us, “is to never interrupt it unnecessarily.” Burnout will do that.
#3 Get time on your side:
“As I write this Warren Buffett’s net worth is $84.5 billion. Of that, $84.2 billion was accumulated after his 50th birthday. $81.5 billion came after he qualified for social Security, in his mid-60s. […] The real key to his success is that he’s been a phenomenal investor for three quarters of a century. Had he started investing in his 30s and retired in his 60s, few people would have ever heard of him.”
—Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money
What’s most unique about Warren Buffett is not his high returns. It’s how long he’s been able to stay in the game. Because he’s been playing for an unusually long time, he’s been able to compound his wealth massively in recent years. He’s found a way to be extraordinarily consistent over an extraordinarily long period of time. He represents an extreme example of the impact of being both patient and persistent.
Thanks for reading! I love when these thoughts lead to conversations with readers. Did you find anything interesting or surprising? Reply to me and let me know.