10 LESSONS FROM THE ART OF THE GOOD LIFE BY ROLF DOBELLI
1. Living a good life has a lot to do with interpreting facts in a constructive way.
2. The good life is only achieved through constant readjustment. All partnerships have to be consistently nurtured.
3. People who self-correct early on have an advantage over those who spend ages fiddling with the perfect set-up and crossing their fingers that their plans will work out. There’s no such thing as the ideal training. There’s more than one life goal. There’s no perfect business strategy, no optimal stock portfolio, no one right job. So don’t invest all your resources into the perfect set-up—at work or in your personal life. Instead, practice the art of correction by revising the things that aren’t quite working—swiftly and without feeling guilty.
4. Chain yourself to your pledges. Uncompromisingly. It’s easier to stick to your pledges 100 percent of the time rather than 99 percent.
5. So accept reality—accept it radically. Especially the bits you don’t like. It might be painful in the moment, but it’s got to be done. It’ll be worth it later on. Life isn’t easy. Even living a good life, you’ll have to deal with your fair share of failure, and it’s okay to put a foot wrong every now and then. The key is to discover why it happened and tackle the issue at its root. Because problems aren’t like great Bordeaux wines—they don’t improve with age.
6. A basic rule of the good life is as follows: if it doesn’t genuinely contribute something, you can do without it.
7. A big part of the good life is about steering clear of stupidity, foolishness and trends instead of striving for ultimate bliss. It’s not what you add that enriches your life—it’s what you omit. Or as Munger once quipped “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”
8. Stay humble—especially if you’re successful. The greater your success, the less you should toot your own horn. Modesty has fallen out of fashion these days, and there’s nothing we like better than showing off on social media. Restrain yourself.
9. How many times have you asked yourself how much better life would be if you had a different job, lived in a different location, a different house, had a different haircut? Okay, it would be a little different. But now you know that the effect of a change is considerably less than you might think. Take the longest possible view of your life. Realize that the things that seemed so important in the moment have shrunk to the size of dots—dots that barely affect the overall picture. A good life is only attainable if you take the occasional peek through a wide-angle lens.
10. There a few rules of thumb for dealing with money. The first has been termed by some linguistically adventurous individuals fuck-you money, in reference to the last two words—ever, presumably—you will yell at your boss before storming out of the office. Basically, fuck-you money refers to the savings that would allow you to quit your job at a moment’s notice without ending up in dire financial straits. One year’s salary, say. Fuck-you money is freedom. More important even than material independence is that fuck-you money allows you to see and think objectively. So if you haven’t saved up your fuck-you money yet, keep your fixed costs low. The lower your outgoings, the quicker you’ll reach your goal. In any case, it’s a nice feeling to have money without spending much of it.