As a financial writer, people are always asking Morgan Housel what he thinks they should do with their money. He has shared his advice in countless articles and even a bestselling book (The Psychology of Money). What he’s realized, however, is that markets change. So does technology. And politics. And so many other things that influence the decisions people make about their money. This book is a collection of timeless lessons about the things that don’t change: the things that were true thousands of years ago and are still true today, and will continue to be true a thousand years from now.
“Most great things in life—from love to careers to investing—gain their value from two things: patience and scarcity,” he writes, “patience to let something grow, and scarcity to admire what it grows into.” This is an insightful bit of wisdom, a great quote to write down and repeat if it is meaningful to you, but it also remains an open-ended question. Why don’t people value patience and scarcity more? Why do we find value in speeding things up and trying to acquire more?
Each chapter discusses a timeless truth and covers themes like humility, prudence, and understanding different people’s perspectives. He writes about the difference between good things slowly compounding over time and bad things blowing up in an instant. What he writes about incentives I have found to be particularly true in my own life: “Incentives are the most powerful force in the world and can get people to justify or defend almost anything.” I worked at a corporate restaurant for over a decade and was often frustrated with my management’s resistance to my suggestions for improvement. Then one day I realized their incentive was simply to get a paycheck and not rock the boat. That was the day I stopped making suggestions.
Another timeless truth Housel touches on is the captivating effect of a good story. Author Yuval Noah Harari’s best-seller Sapiens is a great example. Published in 2014, Harari’s book has been criticized for not expressing anything new, only recounting truths that many historians have already discovered before. Yet, the reason Harari’s book has sold so many copies is due to his ability to relate a known history through the telling of a new and compelling story. I’ve read it, (and reviewed it) and it’s great.
While you may or may not agree with Housel’s assertions about human behavior, the important question he raises is: Why do we spend so much time trying to predict things that constantly change instead of trying to understand the things that don’t? It’s an important question, one that the book doesn’t actually try to answer. It simply poses the question.
Through his writing, Housel posits that it is more important to spend time trying to understand recurring patterns of human behavior, because joy and jealousy are the same today as they always have been. Same goes for greed and generosity. And for hope and fear. And love and hate. With this in mind, the question “What timeless truths do we find most important?” is left for us readers to consider for ourselves. The answers will be different for all of us, and they should be. When we consider why this is so, we might then ask each other why we don’t agree, and Housel has an answer for this when he writes: “‘Why don’t you agree with me?’ Can have infinite answers. Sometimes one side is selfish, or stupid, or blind, or uninformed. But usually a better question is, ‘What have you experienced that I haven’t that makes you believe what you do? And would I think about the world like you do if I experienced what you have?’” This timeless truth is about perspective and is an interesting thought experiment, which I think is the whole point of the book.
In conclusion, this book left me with two important questions to consider. Firstly, which timeless truths matter to us? And secondly, why do we spend so much time trying to predict things that constantly change and so little time trying to understand things that don’t?
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