Page 149 - Morgan Housel - The Psychology of Money_ Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness-Harriman House Limited (2020)

are over time, balance at every point in your life becomes a strategy to
avoid future regret and encourage endurance.
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Aiming, at every point in your working life, to have moderate annual
savings, moderate free time, no more than a moderate commute, and at least

moderate time with your family, increases the odds of being able to stick
with a plan and avoid regret than if any one of those things fall to the
extreme sides of the spectrum.

We should also come to accept the reality of changing our minds. Some
of the most miserable workers I’ve met are people who stay loyal to a
career only because it’s the field they picked when deciding on a college
major at age 18. When you accept the End of History Illusion, you
realize that the odds of picking a job when you’re not old enough to

drink that you will still enjoy when you’re old enough to qualify for
Social Security are low.

The trick is to accept the reality of change and move on as soon as possible.

Jason Zweig, the Wall Street Journal investment columnist, worked with
psychologist Daniel Kahneman on writing Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast
and Slow. Zweig once told a story about a personality quirk of Kahneman’s
that served him well: “Nothing amazed me more about Danny than his

ability to detonate what we had just done,” Zweig wrote. He and Kahneman
could work endlessly on a chapter, but:

The next thing you know, [Kahneman] sends a version so utterly

transformed that it is unrecognizable: It begins differently, it ends
differently, it incorporates anecdotes and evidence you never would have
thought of, it draws on research that you’ve never heard of.

“When I asked Danny how he could start again as if we had never written
an earlier draft,” Zweig continued, “he said the words I’ve never forgotten:

‘I have no sunk costs.’”⁴⁹