The joy of the sabbatical. I’m excited this week as my wife and I are going on vacation. My prayer for the trip is that I’m able to reconnect with where I was on the deployment. That I’m able to step back and take a bird’s eye approach to life and see if I like the path I’m on and the habits that I’ve developed. More recently one habit I look forward to breaking is a beer a night. I feel like this is a globally detrimental habit – there’s associated cost, 1 easily turns into 2, I put on central adiposity, and the joy that comes from it isn’t that much.
Source: The Four Pillars of Investments – William Bernstein
Lesson: Resources will often provide resources that support their mode of thinking
Bill Bernstein is a resource that has frequently quoted on the White Coat Investor. The most recent chapter I read had a couple of take aways – fees and taxes associated with active investing makes relatively few active funds beat indexes. Index investing while giving average returns will make you more successful over time. The challenge I’ve had in working through this book is that it is not providing a contrarian opinion. Maybe that’s good. In my investment course during the MBA it was taught by a former small cap growth hedge fund manager who was one of the 15% of managers who consistently beat the market throughout his tenure. I think the theme that tied his course in well with the theme from the book is the challenge of asset bloat. As funds have more management they struggle to beat an average return. The professor even stated that when Voya consistently pushed for him to manage assets above 4 billion he knew that he wouldn’t be able to sustain returns. Maybe a key trait to active investing is having a limit to the size of the fund in which you place your assets. Personally, I will continue to pursue a passive investment strategy. I did have some concern when I saw that successful pension funds tended to run a 60/40 (stocks/bonds), whereas at this time in my life (early 30s) I have a 90/10 split that I elected to follow from The Simple Path to Wealth.
Source: Find Your Why – Simon Sinek
Lesson: Tell Stories About your life to find common themes that will help define your why. To—- so that —- .
The title of this book resonated with me because of the personal challenge of finding fulfillment in work. I think the solution is the barbell method. Maybe my next question for my coaching session is what’s a reasonable amount of time to dedicate to my passion versus the hedge (my day job). When considering my passion it should fall in line with the why. To show God’s love to all people, so that they can become the person God meant them to be. In making that statement, I don’t think God intended for us to be miserable. I think he made us to find fulfillment and from being directly connected to community.
Source: The Bed of Procrustes – Nasir Nicholas Taleb
Lesson: Some books need to be read and not listened to. Some books you need to put down and think about.
In Naval’s podcast with Matt Ridley, he discussed that while reading the Rational Optimist he would frequently put the book down and think about the statements that were made. The Bed of Procrustes reads similar to Proverbs in that it’s a sentence of two that provides a thought. Each line warrants putting the book down and thinking about. I listened to this on Audible, which was a mistake. There’s been a couple times, when I purchased the book on Kindle and the formatting was did not display optimally for the source. Example – Jocko Willicks books the manual for discipline**. There were a lot of diagrams that did not carry over. Some of the textbooks that are put out for Kindle also are formatted poorly and do not allow for easy reading.
High Love, High Discipline
Seeking Progress 