This advice will change your life (part 1)

Forgive the not-so-modest clickbait-y title. I promise you this isn’t clickbait, but…

The Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum ©Francesca Grima

…on the other hand I can’t actually promise it will change your life. But it just might.

There are two writers that I look up to a great deal. If I could only write half as well, with their wisdom, common sense and gift for storytelling, I would be delighted. When I set out to write my book, I started off by trying to emulate them, but as anyone with aspirations to be a writer knows, you need to find your own style.

Still, we can look to others for inspiration and guidance.

Morgan Housel is a financial blogger who covers a range of topics well beyond the field of finance. You may think, “Finance? No thanks, sounds boring!” That’s natural. I used to think the same. But he writes about the bigger picture and he’s a gifted storyteller. Trust me when I say that he’s one of the wisest, best writers I know. There’s a reason his first book, The Psychology of Money (Timeless lessons on wealth, greed and happiness), was such a huge bestseller.

Among other things, we – how dare I put myself on a level with him – are both big believers in getting outside your reading comfort zone as much as possible. Read outside of your field. If you’re a lawyer, don’t only read law-related books. If you’re an architect, read a bit about behavioural economics. If you’re in IT, read some philosophy or history:

“Why would an investor read about medicine? Or watch a military history documentary? Or study evolution? Not for the specific academic facts of those fields. No use there. But expanding the boundaries of what you read and think about offers a glimpse into to how people operate in the real world. How people respond to incentives, think about risk, and deal with surprises. Real-world stuff that’s often hard to quantify into an academic formula or argument, but helps you better understand how people behave in the wild.”

Real World vs. Book Knowledge

I became an English teacher in April 2005, when I did my CELTA (the Certificate in English Teaching to Adults) in Prague. I did a lot of pre-course preparation. I read all of the recommended methodology books before, during and after the course. That summer, I had a summer school job in the UK that was quite different from what I had learnt on the CELTA. It was more fun and games, a bit of teaching teenagers (mainly Spanish and Italian) in the mornings, excursions in the afternoon and activities in the evening. It was also a great opportunity for teachers to socialise, and there were definitely plenty of teacherly shenanigans involved. It was tremendous fun, but I can’t say it was great experience in actual teaching.

I arrived in Lviv, Ukraine at the end of August 2005, for my first full-time, proper job. I was nervous as hell. The weekend before I was due to start, David, the Director of Studies of the school, saw me looking through the teaching methodology books. I wanted to brush up over the weekend before I started on Monday. I asked him if I could take a few of the books home with me over the weekend.

He said no.

And instead gave me another book and told me to read it: Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko, by Patrick Neate

This was the blurb on the back of the book:

“Zambawi, a banana republic in sub-Saharan Africa, is on the verge of revolution. President Adini, dictator and eunuch, clings to power whilst his soldiers switch sides so often they don't know which uniform to wear. All in all, Zambawi is not the ideal location for student teacher Jim Tulloh to indulge in a spot of character building. Yet with the help of Musa, the local witchdoctor, some flatulent weed and headmaster, PK, Jim's days look set to be mellow in the extreme; until Jim is kidnapped from his bush school by the rebel Black Boot Gang. But it is when the Gangers invoke the spirit of Zambawi's Great Chief Tuloko that Jim's fate takes a really unexpected turn…”

I thought, “What the hell is this? How is this going to prepare me for Monday?”

He told me to trust him.

Even though the book was about a teacher – not an English teacher – abroad, it had nothing to do with methodology and it was a wild and crazy story. Highly entertaining, sure. But when I started reading it I couldn’t really see how this would help me prepare for my classes.

It only hit me a bit later.

It made me forget my nervousness. In a weird way, it mentally prepared me better than reading more methodology books would have done. There was so much information in those books, and I was eager and impatient and wanted to make a good first impression that at that point, no amount of extra reading was going to prepare me any better for my first day on the job. After a certain point, less becomes more. I was trying to overload myself with too much. The book was a perfect escape and it took my mind off teaching, and forced me not to think about it.

I went in feeling pretty fresh on Monday and I think my first day went okay, I don’t really remember.

It wasn’t the actual book itself, but just the fact that it was “outside my field.”

At first, I thought my boss was crazy. But as I got to know him, it turned out he was a genius.

“It might sound crazy, but once you understand the basic principles of your profession, you might gain more expertise by reading around your field than within your field. Connecting dots between fields helps you uncover the most powerful forces that guide how the world works, which can be so much more important than a little new detail that’s specific to your profession. And if you look hard enough, there are so many dots to connect.”

Little Ways the World Works

Housel isn’t alone in this way of thinking. This comes from one of the most influential books I’ve ever read:

“What are the most efficient ways to build new mental models? Read a lot – just read. Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years.”

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

Mental models are how we see and understand the world. It’s a way of representing how something works. Our brains can't store all the world's details, so we use models to simplify complexity into understandable parts. The world is a strange place, very confusing and hard to make sense of at times.

“To be a polymath is to be interested in everything – and in nothing else.”

Susan Sontag

Reading beyond your field is also a way of being well-rounded and broadening your knowledge. Be a polymath. Expose yourself to as many fields as possible. Being a so-called generalist rather than a specialist, is a great way of surviving and adapting in today’s world. It keeps you on your toes and prepares you for anything. I try to read as much as possible across a wide range of fields, but I don’t know if I am always able to put what I read into practice. I’m working at it.

I want to tell you another story. But for the story to be a little more meaningful, you should first read this recent post from Housel. There is a valuable lesson in it.

What Makes You Happy

Have you read that post? If so, then you can now read my story.

Like many people, I always lose umbrellas. Rather, I should say that I used to lose umbrellas. Years ago, I stopped buying umbrellas because I was sick of losing them all the time. I hated that feeling of “Oh no, another lost umbrella and all that wasted money.”

But a few months ago in Vienna, it was day after day of heavy rain and as much as kids love the rain and splashing in puddles, my poor daughter was getting soaked. I felt like an irresponsible father arriving home with my little girl looking like a drowned rat.

One day we were on our way to an Indian street festival when the skies opened above us and we were about to get drenched. We dived into the nearest shop that looked like it would sell umbrellas and I was finally ready to give in to my years of resistance and finally buy another one.

And what luck – the shop had just one left! I spotted it and then at the same time so did a woman with the same goal. But I was a step or two closer and, thinking of my daughter’s well-being, grabbed it first. It didn’t have a price tag, but it was a basic umbrella and it wasn’t an expensive shop.

That damn umbrella was 19 euros! Maybe I’m just cheap, but that’s ridiculously expensive in my book. I’d never paid anywhere near that much for an umbrella in my life. I think it was triple the cost of the most expensive I’d ever had.

But what could I do? As they say, beggars can’t be choosers, right?

It kept us dry and it has done its job over the past few weeks.

Exciting story? No, not at all – but that’s not it.

The other day, it was raining and I was on the tram. We got to the final stop and I alighted. But I was so immersed in reading Morgan Housel that I had forgotten my umbrella on the tram (that’s one lesson to be learned). The second I realised this, the doors had closed and the tram departed on its return route. I ran to the tram and pounded furiously on the glass, shouting “no, no, stop, stop!” while the passengers looked at me, probably thinking, “Oh, this poor man, there’s something wrong with him, he needs help.”

As the tram pulled away, I instinctively sprinted after it. I know the route very well and I set off as fast as I could to intercept it before it got to the next stop. I didn’t follow the tram route itself – there is no way I would have caught up to it. My only chance for success was to take the most direct route possible and cut a few corners, literally, which meant running straight across the road, and diagonally through traffic, as fast as I could. And of all days not to be wearing my running shoes!

Panting and gasping, I made it to the stop just as the tram was pulling up. Totally out of breath, I jumped onto the tram as the doors opened, and dashed to where I had been sitting. There was a giant of a man in a military uniform, and I saw my umbrella at his feet. Muttering my apologies and thanks in my best possible German, I grabbed my umbrella, held it up for the crowd, the man smiled and a few people clapped. I then stumbled off the tram just before its doors shut, my heart pounding.

That was the best workout I had had in months!

More importantly, I was ecstatic. I hadn’t felt such satisfaction and relief in a while. It was a tremendous feeling of accomplishment. It wasn’t that I had recovered the actual umbrella or the thought of the lost money. It was the unexpected joy I got in accomplishing something unexpected, and something simple I had taken for granted, and the adventure itself gave me such a warm and fuzzy feeling. It wasn’t some lofty goal or dream I had, just a regular and mundane everyday thing, but that in itself was what made it so delightful.

Minimal expectations. Unexpected adventures. Simple pleasures. Contentment. Happiness.

How fitting that I was reading What Makes You Happy as I got to the tram stop. So if I hadn’t been reading, I probably wouldn’t have forgotten my umbrella. There’s probably another lesson to be learned here.

If that isn’t enough Housel for you – and it never is, trust me (one more time) – then here is another one, in a different style. This is short, a series of thought-provoking questions. It will take you a minute and is a minute very well spent:

A Few Questions

Time to wrap up

I’m afraid I’ve been naughty. Housel is only the first of the two writers that I greatly admire and respect. The second, who was the inspiration for this post’s title (you’ll see), I will talk about in my next post.

That will give you something to look forward to (maybe).

Read more

Two books that may interest you that touch on some of what I’ve written about here. I have not actually read the first, but it has received good reviews. I would recommend the second, even though in some circles Harari has become quite ‘unfashionable.’ His books have come in for some criticism, but I still appreciate what he has to say.

David Epstein, Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century