Do Nothing Wrong and the Right Thing Will Happen
“There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no bold old pilots.” As an amateur pilot myself, I’m often put in mind of this saying. I quite like the idea of being an old pilot someday. It’s certainly better than the alternative.
When I clamber into the cockpit of my old single-engine plane (a 1975 vintage), I’m not aiming for anything spectacular. I’m just trying not to crash. The potential causes of a crash are well established: flying in bad weather, flying without a checklist, flying when you’re too tired, flying without proper fuel reserves.
Investing in the stock market might not put your survival at risk, but there’s plenty of money at stake. Investors often talk about “upside” and “downside.” By “upside,” they mean the total conceivable positive results of an investment (such as an above-average yield), while “downside” encompasses all possible negative results (such as bankruptcy). These terms can also be applied to flying. Before and during a flight, I focus almost exclusively on the potential downside and how to avoid it. The upside, on the other hand, gets very little of my attention. The majesty of the snowy Alps, the gorgeous cloud formations, the way my sandwich tastes at this dizzying height—all that will come. As long as I keep the downside at bay, the upside will take care of itself.
Investor Charles Ellis recommends the same approach for amateur tennis players. Unlike pros, who can place virtually every shot wherever they choose, amateurs make endless mistakes. They smash the ball into the net. They aim too long, too high, at the wrong area of the court. Professional tennis is an entirely different game from the amateur variety: pros win points; amateurs lose points. This means that if you’re playing against an amateur, your best option is to focus on not making any mistakes. Play conservatively, and keep the ball in play as long as possible. Unless your opponent is deliberately playing equally conservatively, he or she will make more mistakes than you do. In amateur tennis, matches aren’t won—they’re lost.
Concentrating on the downside instead of the upside is a valuable intellectual tool. Greek, Roman and medieval thinkers even had a name for this approach: negative theology—the negative path, the way of renunciation, of omission, of reduction. The basic idea is that you can’t say what God is, you can only say what God isn’t. Or, in our terms, you can’t say what a good life guarantees; you can only say what a good life prevents—but you can say that for sure.
For 2,500 years, philosophers, theologians, doctors, sociologists, economists, psychologists, brain researchers and advertising executives have been trying to figure out what makes people happy, yet the body of knowledge they’ve produced is still somewhat puny. Social contacts are important, they tell us. It helps to have a sense of purpose. Sex is probably a good idea, as is moral behavior. Well, great. I think we could probably have worked that out for ourselves. Their results could hardly be less precise. In terms of concrete contributing factors to happiness—the happiness upside—we’re still fumbling around in the dark.
But when we ask what factors have a significant negative impact on the good life—which factors jeopardize it—we can pinpoint them exactly: alcoholism, drug addiction, chronic stress, noise, a lengthy commute, a job you despise, unemployment, a dysfunctional marriage, stupidly high expectations, poverty, debt and financial dependence, loneliness, spending too much time with moaning Minnies, overreliance on external validation, constant self-comparisons with others, thinking like a victim, self-loathing, chronic sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety, rage and envy. You don’t need science to tell you that. You can see it for yourself—in your own mind, in friends, in your community. The downside is always more concrete than the upside. The downside is like granite—hard, tangible, solid. Whereas the upside is like air.
So do your best to systematically eliminate the downside in your life—then you’ll have a real chance of achieving a good life. Of course, fate may intervene at any time: a meteorite destroys your house, a war breaks out, your child drowns, your company goes bust. But fate, by definition, is immune to influence. So don’t dwell on it.
You’re probably thinking I left out a thing or two from the list above: disease, disabilities, divorce. However, countless studies have shown that the impact of these factors dissipates more quickly than we imagine. In the initial months after an injury, paraplegics focus almost exclusively on their disability—understandably so—and they feel correspondingly miserable. Yet after just a few months, their mood normalizes. Ordinary, everyday issues return to the forefront of their minds, while their physical injuries fade into the background. The same is true of divorce. After a year or two’s travail, you reach the other side of the valley of tears. But alcoholism, drug addiction, chronic stress, noise, lengthy commutes—indeed, any of the factors on the first list: those aren’t things people learn to live with. Those cannot simply be normalized. They’re always present, and they make a good life impossible.
Investors who have been successful in the long term, such as Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, work with mental tricks, tools and attitudes that are eminently applicable to everyday life. Step one: avoid the downside. In their investments, Buffett and Munger are careful first and foremost about what to avoid—i.e., what not to do—before they even think about the upside. Buffett observes: “Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them.” You don’t have to be a genius to do that. Charlie Munger has commented, “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
So what should we take away from all this? That a big part of the good life is about steering clear of stupidity, foolishness and trends instead of striving for ultimate bliss. It’s not what you add that enriches your life—it’s what you omit. Or as Munger once quipped (revealing that he’s not lacking intelligence in the humor department, either): “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”