☕ saturday mornings - May 7, 2022

feeling alive, resume paradox & avoiding lifestyle creep

Ahoj from Prague!

Happy Saturday! I hope you’re having a lovely start to your weekend.

What I’ve been up to:

• Spent three days in Cinque Terre, a string of sleepy centuries-old seaside villages on the rugged Italian Riviera coastline with bright multi-coloured buildings and crystal blue water. I hiked between each of the five villages on a stunning oceanside trail.

• I headed North to Prague, the capital of Czechia, where I've spent the past three days touring the winding cobblestone streets and admiring its colorful baroque buildings and mysterious Gothic churches. Prague is nicknamed “the City of a Hundred Spires” as building a spire was considered a symbol of wealth and status. Everyone who could afford it added spires to their buildings although they serve no function.

Below is your edition of “saturday mornings”, a weekly recap of the coolest things I’ve been pondering and exploring this week.

Thanks for being here.

More than anything, I want my writing to be a catalyst for interesting conversations and making friends with people on the same intellectual wavelength as me.

If you ever want to chat, feel free to reach out!

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✍️ Quote I’m pondering:

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.”

― Joseph Campbell

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🌟 Excellent conversation:

"The better my resume gets, the less happy I am"

I recently spoke with a friend who completed a Harvard MBA, worked at one of the top consulting companies in the world, and became a partner at a prestigious venture capital firm.

Her LinkedIn was immaculate. But, she was miserable.

Last year she left it all behind to start a completely new career in science. And she’s never been more excited for her future.

She spent years anchoring on a faulty definition of success. She wanted to "have the most success" in the eyes of society and her peers. This led to Ivy League schools, prestigious firms, and high salaries.

This definition is easy to follow because it’s simple. It’s a clear, defined target in a confusing world.

The visibility makes it even more tempting. In her words "everyone else is looking at the same target. We’re all running a race to see who can reach it. And our proximity often matters less than our lead against the person right next to us".

I asked what advice she would give her younger self just starting a career. She provided some incredible insights and I wanted to share them with you all.

• Your definition of success predicates where you go. You need to define success for yourself. What's your definition of success? It's a simple but terribly hard question to answer.

• Keep track of what gives you energy. What makes you feel alive.

• Your calling is invisible and internal. It is felt, not seen. It's a force that only you can feel and most won’t understand.

• Follow your calling. It will pull you where you’re supposed to go and leaves you nothing to explain yourself with other than, just maybe, happiness.

• There's an element of trial and error in finding the right career for you. Your first job won't be your forever job.

• Put less pressure on yourself to find a perfect job out of school. Create a good hypothesis for what you want to do based on two factors: (i) why you'll like it and, (ii) why it feeds into your natural strengths.

• Look for a decent balance of skill development and learning something you're uniquely interested in.

• Develop the mental foundation to not constantly benchmark yourself against other people. There's a theory that humans can't help it, we will always compare ourselves to others. In that case, choose your benchmarks selectively. Be intentional about who you invite into your benchmark pool.

• Remove other people from the equation. You shouldn't do something because others are doing it. But you also shouldn't not do something because others are doing it.

• Manage your own ego and trust yourself. Have confidence that you'll figure it out and make the right choices. More importantly, you'll pick yourself up when you make the wrong ones.

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💡 Idea I’m exploring: Lifestyle Creep

Avoiding lifestyle creep, the upgrading of your lifestyle as you increase your income, is one of the best strategies for long-term wealth generation.

It's tempting to continually upgrade your lifestyle as you make more money. Many people do. Nicer car, new apartment, fancy things. After all, you're working hard!

But, if you continually spend more as you make more, you never become wealthy. The gap between your income and expenses remains roughly the same.

My brother, Jack, has an extremely successful friend in commercial real estate. In conversation, he mentioned to Jack that many of his commercial real estate high-rolling friends live paycheck to paycheck, despite making +$800k annually.

"These individuals have riches", Seneca notes, "just as we say that we 'have a fever,' when really the fever has us."

As my Dad told me growing up, you can always spend more than you make.

Downwards Spiral of Spending

In my experience, spending money isn't like thirst or hunger where you fill a desire and it goes away. Rather it's food that makes your hunger worse. Spending money makes you want to spend more money.

This was coined the “Diderot Effect" by famous French philosopher Denis Diderot, who learned this lesson the hard way. After emerging from a life of poverty, he purchased a luxurious dressing gown (relatable) which led to him buying all new things to match the luxury of his new gown. He went bankrupt a few years later.

“The Diderot Effect,” writes James Clear “states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption which leads you to acquire more new things."

Optimizing for Freedom

Money is valuable to the extent it provides freedom. Freedom to do what you want, freedom from things you don't want to do, and freedom from things that create negative emotion.

This type of freedom is determined by our ability to generate wealth.

"Lusting for money is bad for us because it is a bottomless pit" Naval Ravikant notes. "There is never enough because the desire is turned on and doesn't turn off at some number. I think the best way to stay away from this constant love of money is to not upgrade your lifestyle as you make money."

By avoiding the pull to constantly upgrade your lifestyle, you avoid a lust for money. You avoid the spiral of consumption that has caused many to spend their way into poverty and away from freedom.

If "you can save money, live a little below your means, you can find a certain freedom."

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That’s all for this week’s edition of “saturday mornings”.

If you have any feedback, I’d love to hear from you.

Reply to this email, leave a comment, or find me on Twitter @tommy_dixon_

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Have a fantastic weekend.

Much love to you and yours,

Tommy