Happy Saturday all,
I hope you’re having a lovely start to your day.
Below is your edition of “saturday mornings”, a weekly recap of what I’ve been pondering, learning and exploring over the past few days.
Thanks for being here.
✍️Quote I’ve been thinking about:
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of the intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the beauty in others; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
I’ve repeated that last line a couple of times in my head. Charles Dickens, in “Our Mutual Friend”, echoes a similar idea:
“‘No one is useless in this world,’ retorted the Secretary, ‘who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.’”
📰Article I’ve been pondering:
I came across this article from Harvard’s newspaper a couple of years ago, but recently returned to it as the ideas have become more topical in my life.
As a university student in business, you hear the term “optionality” thrown around a lot.
Optionality is simply the pursuit of “opening the most doors” or “keeping the most options on the table” when making a decision.
If someone in business doesn’t know what they want to do with their career, they often pursue a role at an investment bank or consulting firm. Those jobs provide a lot of “option value”: you develop a broad set of skills and can go into almost any career afterwards.
At its core, the idea makes sense: when you don’t know what you want to do with your career, choose a job that will provide a lot of options down the road and punt the decision to a later date. Options are valuable in the face of volatility or uncertainty.
However, here’s where the pursuit of optionality goes wrong: when you actually know what you want to do. Or, you never stop and think about what job creates a future that excites you, because the impulse response is to create more optionality.
The author writes:
This emphasis on creating optionality can backfire in surprising ways. Instead of enabling young people to take on risks and make choices, acquiring options becomes habitual. You can never create enough option value—and the longer you spend acquiring options, the harder it is to stop… The dreams that those options were meant to enable slowly recede into the background. For a few, [banks and consulting firms] are their dream come true—but for every one of those, there are ten entrepreneurs, artists, and restaurateurs that get trapped in those institutions.
The danger is the pursuit of optionality instead of your dreams. If your dreams are apparent to you, pursue them. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Seeking optionality simply wastes time and energy: your most valuable resources.
Linda Rottenberg, CEO of Endeavor Global and named one of “America’s Best Leaders” and one of the “100 Innovators for the 21st century”, was asked what advice she would give to college students:
People always tell recent graduates that they should keep their options open; “don’t close any doors”. But keeping every option open winds up leading to paralysis or, worse than that, self-deception. How many of my former classmates who took a job at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey for “a few years” before they pursued their real passions like cooking or starting their dream company are actually now chefs and entrepreneurs? Most are still banking and consulting, believing their doors are still open. My advice to college students: Close doors.
💡Idea I’m exploring:
The value of a day
A couple of weeks ago one of my close friends, who I consider to be one of the smartest people I know, asked me a question: “Would you trade places with Warren Buffett?” It seems like a silly question at first, but it really made me think.
The obvious answer is no.
Warren Buffett, despite being worth over $100 billion, is 91 years old. If I chose to trade places, I’d lose a lot of my physical ability and likely have ~5-7 more years to live. In other words, I’d be $100 billion richer but have to forfeit 71 years of life.
Here’s where it gets interesting. If I’m not willing to make this trade, how much is my time worth to me? What value am I placing on a day?
According to my decision, each year of my life is worth $1.4 billion. Each month is worth $117 million. Each day is $3.9 million...
One may argue that each day is worth more as you age, because you get closer to “the end” and therefore savour each moment more. The final moments of your life are the most precious.
Atul Gawande, author of “Being Mortal”, spent time with elderly individuals nearing the end of their life. He found that when people must contend with life’s fragility and see the future ahead of them as something that is finite and uncertain, their focus shifts to the present moment . They experience a lot more joy from the small things in life.
However, one could also make the opposite argument: today is more valuable than tomorrow. Every day you get older, you have less energy, vitality and opportunity to chase experience. Especially as tomorrow is never guaranteed.
Let’s assume both these arguments cancel and each day in my life holds the exact same value, almost $4 million.
I see two main takeaways here:
Time is your most valuable resource. It makes me think long and hard about how I’m spending my days and who I’m spending my days with (or without).
Money is worth much less than time. This question highlights the highly non-linear relationship between time and money. One day to me is worth more money than I’ll probably make in my entire life.
That’s all for this week’s edition of “saturday mornings”.
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Have a great weekend folks.
Much love to you and yours,
Thomas