05/05/2023
Tell yourself different "stories." Most of the things we do and believe result from stories that we tell ourselves. Some stories are silly and destructive.
The story that we are told in America is that achievement—money, power, awards—equals success. I had this idea deeply imbued at a young age. We are desire-fulfilling machines: the mind literally IS desire. My desire–and therefore my actions–were shaped by these stories, like the story of achievement. Now I try to ask, what stories are we telling ourselves that are bu****it? Example: I wanted to write a book. Rather, I wanted to have written a book because I could carve a notch on my achievement belt. I even wanted to do it at an earlier age than anyone I knew (among my friends and family, the earliest I was aware of was an uncle who wrote his book when he was 33). How ridiculous!
Now I just want to explore. That may mean blog posts, research papers, new investing strategies, letters, podcasts, long periods of nothing, or maybe a book. Who knows? Exploration is continuous, there is no end point. Focusing on exploration is very rewarding all the time. It may produce things that look like end points, like achievements, but those things are just byproducts.
The same idea applies to investing. The continuous goal, in my case, is a portfolio that has distinct advantages versus the market along dimensions like value, momentum, capital allocation, etc. There are no price targets, no return targets, no staking my results on a given outcome for a given company. A goal-less process like this is incredibly hard to maintain in an industry which has convinced itself (I despise this particular “story” we’ve told ourselves) that the passage of three months requires that we get together and retrofit a narrative to explain what was likely pure noise.
But hard as it is to maintain, I believe that a continuous process, informed by deep research, is the only way to beat the market.