It’s easy to read Morgan Housel’s Psychology of Money as a pure finance book. But its real power lies in what it teaches us about career, ambition, and human behavior.
Instead of the financial takeaways, There are 3 non-financial lessons that hit home for me.
Lesson 1. Define your own Game
In the book, chapter 8 is titled “Man in the Car Paradox” where Housel gave us a reminder that when you see someone driving a million dollars car, you rarely think, “Wow, the guy driving the car is amazing.” Instead, you imagine yourself in that car, and think people would think you are cool. Read that sentence again and see the paradox.
In life, career, and age of digital media, it is easy to get caught up in tracking metrics that belong to someone else’s journey.
We should acknowledge that everyone is playing different games with different rules, timelines, and definition of “winning”. Focus on your own scoreboard.
Lesson 2. Understand the game (and who you’re playing with)
How many times have you invested significant effort to prepare an earth-shaking proposal that could save hundreds of thousands of dollars that you thought would be appreciated, just to get ignored or shoved to the sideline?
On Chapter 16, “You & Me”, Housel warns on taking financial advices from people playing a different game than you. A day-trader has a completely different definition of a good stock than say a, FIRE investor or a family man aiming to retire with a dividend portfolio at 65.
The same trap applies at work, business, and in life. Everyone you interact with has different incentives, KPIs, career timelines, and personal goals. Before you try to persuade a colleague or investor to resolve your problem or invest in your company, you should first try to be in their shoes and map out their “game”. Don’t expect anyone’s buy-in if their KPIs are different, frame your ideas so that it also helps them to win their game.
Bonus: Go for Win-Win (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey)
Lesson 3. Recognize the roles of Luck & Risk
We love to attribute great outcomes entirely to skill and hardwork. Poor outcomes entirely to laziness or incompetence. Chapter 2, titled “Luck & Risk” reminds us that the world is full of surprises, and later in chapter 6, “Tails, You Win”, Morgan shares that a small number of events or decisions could move the needle for everything else. So don’t beat yourself up when things don’t go yourself, and don’t get in your own head just because you’ve successfully launched a project.
My sentiments are that we have to continously work hard and get ourselves ready, so when the opportunity comes knocking, we will be ready to answer.
This I do agree: “Luck favors the bold”
So what’s the takeaway?
If you’re currently based in a stressful environment, working your ass off to “win”, or just trying to understand why you’re struggling while it seems like everyone else is living in paradise. This is my summary for you from the above lessons.
- Stop comparing, focus inward. Appreciate what you have currently, know the gap from where you want to be, and find out how to bridge that gap.
- Stop listening. Not to shut the world out but just the tsunami of “advises” and “wins” from online. Focus on your own game, focus on your field, your team mates, your enablers, your competitors. This applies to job hunting, pitching, sales, dating, and anything else.
- Stop waiting. Luck and risks are critical but they are outside our domain of control, get the ball rolling and get things moving.
If you’re interested in the book, this is it’s Amazon link.
If you’re still here, thank you & I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it. This is my first blog since a long, long time (blogger age #ifkyk), so I wanted to start something short and simple. Here is a bonus image generated by Nano Banana
