The Art of the Good Life
Rolf Dobelli

Summary

Timeless lessons from a great investor on living a good life

Rating: 4/5

Notes

Do some mental accounting (if you buy some thing, add 50% for income tax)

All partnerships have to be constantly nurtured

‘The good life is only achieved through constant readjustment’

Flexibility makes you unhappy and tired and it distracts you from your goals. For certain principles, stay un-flexible

Accepting reality is easy when you like what you see, but you have to accept it even when you don’t - especially when you don’t

‘If you don’t deal with reality, then reality will deal with you’ - Alex Haley

If it doesn’t genuinely contribute something, you can do without it. That’s double true for technology

Instead of looking for the upside, systemically eliminate the downside in your life

Remind yourself that everything you are, everything you ave and can do is the result of blind chance

Introspection is nothing but a job interview w/ yourself - highly unreliable. What you should be exploring instead is your past

‘All those who summon you to themselves turn you away from yourself’ - Seneca

Invest more in experiences than physical objects

Eastern paradox: once basic needs have been met, incremental financial gain contributes nothing to happiness

Money is relative, not just in comparison to other but in comparison to your past

A single outstanding skills trumps a thousand mediocre ones

‘You don’t have to be brilliant. Only a little bit wiser than the average guy for a long long time’ - Munger

Your focus should always be on the activity, the work, the input - not the success, the result or the output

Understand that public perception has little to do with the quality of one’s work

Avoid situation in which you have to change other people - you won’t

Don’t avoid making a long term plan, but focus on the now

Make the most of your present experiences instead of worrying about future memories

The brain reasons facts into memories through a compact, consistent and causal story

Don’t be surprised when someone judges you incorrectly - you do the same to yourself

There’s no point in being unhappy just because you were once unhappy

If you don’t make it clear on the outside what you believe deep down, you gradually turn into a puppet

Determine what you can influence and what you can’t. Address the former. Don’t let the latter prey on your mind

Envy has a bigger impact on your life satisfaction than physical affliction or financial ruin and you need to learn to manage it

To solve envy, stop comparing yourself to others but rather to your past self

Wisdom is prevention

‘A clever person solves a person. A wise person avoids it’ Einstein

You’re not responsible for the state of the world

Focus, time and money are our 3 most important resources

Mental subtraction: instead of thinking of all the things you don’t have, consider how much you’d miss the things you do have if you lost them

Don’t put anyone on a pedestal, last of all yourself

Accept unfairness in the world as a fact

The less you expect, the happier you’ll be

Sturgeon’s law: 90% of anything published in any genre is crap

View your own importance from the perspective of the next century - your name will mean nothing

Material success is 100% a matter of chance

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