#15 - Resilience, Anger Management and Being Indistractable
A few tips to improve personal productivity and a summary of key ideas from Buffett's letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders - 1979
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Hello,
Greetings from the Curious Cat.
As people adapt to the new normal post the pandemic, they are grappling with issues in dealing with anxiety, worry, anger, etc. In order to ease this transition, we browse through a few classic articles that try to help us manage these particular issues.
In today’s edition, we look at -
Five Ways To Build Resilience
How To Become Indistractable ?
Eight Strategies To Manage Anger
Key Ideas From Warren Buffett’s letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders - 1979
Let us dive in.
Five Ways To Build Resilience
Read the article here (Read Time ~ 13 mins)
Mark Manson writes that most mental health advice promotes self-absorption and does not promote emotional stability. Psychological resilience comes from leveraging negative feelings by creating positive adaptations. Resilience is the ability to take things like anger and sadness and make them useful and productive. It is an ability to experience failure and self-loathing and use them to improve yourself.
Some ways to do them include -
Care about something other than yourself - The easiest way to overcome anxiety is not to get rid of risk, but to make the risks worth something. The way we orient ourselves towards preparation for pain rather than prevention is to simply have a larger goal in life than feelings or pain.
Focus on what you can control - You cannot control your pain and suffering but you can control how you think about your pain. You can control whether you think you will never recover and be the same again, or whether you think you will bounce back fine. Pain is inevitable but suffering is only in the mind.
Inward optimism; outward pessimism - Those who are prepared for pain are the most resilient in the face of pain. Those who expect challenges are the most ready to face challenges. An optimal mindset is a dual-sided approach.
Find your inner masochist - As much as we crave feeling good, a small part of us likes the struggle and pain. This is because the process of overcoming pain and struggle makes us feel as though we have lived meaningfully.
Never suffer alone - The first lesson of investing is to diversify. Building relationships is like investing a small percentage of our happiness in others and receiving an investment of some of their happiness in us in return thereby diversifying our happiness across many people in many different aspects of life. A strong network of relationships helps in building resilience and an emotional safety net of people who can help share the burden with you in adverse circumstances.
These five steps can serve as a decent indicator to build psychological resilience when faced with tough circumstances.
How To Be Indistractable ?
Read the article here (Read Time ~ 17 mins)
Nir Eyal writes that distraction has become the norm and it is actually the brain ducking challenging feelings like boredom, insecurity, loneliness, fatigue and uncertainty. Once the person understands the depth of distraction, they can manage it and improve their response to not getting distracted.
Master internal triggers: Self-exploration in identifying internal triggers is one way to introspect on the reason for distraction. Once you acknowledge them, it can be beneficial to reframe the triggers at hand. Sometimes, reframing a trigger and thinking about a particular activity as fun can have a powerful effect on the brain. The benefits of reframing also extend to how one thinks of their own tendencies.
Make time for traction: Identifying your priorities and giving them the designated time in your schedule also helps in building traction. A schedule that helps in ticking off a daily to-do list by converting your priorities and values into time can be useful.
Hack back external triggers: Turning off your phone notifications and screen updates can have a big effect.
Prevent distractions with pacts: By making an agreement with yourself on how you wish to spend your time is a useful strategy.
Building these small habits can help in enhancing our productivity by a large amount
Eight Strategies To Manage Anger
Read the article here (Read Time ~ 15 mins)
Ryan Holiday writes that anger, even if it feels good, can end up making things worse. He recommends eight strategies through ancient Stoic philosophy which can help in managing anger -
Identify the costs of anger - When the costs are laid bare, you are less likely to get angry.
Identify what is in your control and what is out of your control - The ancient Stoics talked about making this distinction clear. We don’t control what is happening around us but we do have the power to control how we respond.
Accept that there are going to be stupid people and stupid things in the world - Learning how to walk-away, de-escalate and allowing other people to be themselves and you being you can help in simplifying life.
Don’t get upset in advance - The future is out of control and it is uncertain and vast. We need to be aware of that but we need not suffer in advance because we have plenty of time to prepare and plenty of wide open present in front of us as well.
Let go of the past - All we can do is move forward regardless of the past situations, people or things which have bothered us.
Get physical - The impulse of anger is natural but we don’t have to give ourselves to it. We can find helpful, harmless outlets to channelize those impulses and redirect that energy and emotions to avoid seismic disruptions in our lives.
Meditate on your insignificance - There is ego, selfishness and a belief in your significance in anger. When you try to expand your view, it is a reminder of your greatness and your smallness. It is about letting the self feel small to gain strength through unity with the whole which can be empowering.
Focus on not making things worse - Anger is a toxic emotion and diminishing the manifestation of irrational behavior through anger requires sustained practice of deliberate actions and positive choices
Managing anger requires deliberate and conscience effort. These eight techniques serve as a good frame for anger management.
Key Ideas from Buffett’s letter to shareholders - 1979
Last week, we summarized the letter written in the year 1978. While we summarize the key ideas in the letter, we encourage the readers to read the entire letter to capture the context in which the thoughts were expressed by Buffett.
On operating performance: We continue to feel that the ratio of operating earnings (before securities gains or losses) to shareholders’ equity with all securities valued at cost is the most appropriate way to measure any single year’s operating performance.
On managerial performance: The primary test of managerial economic performance is the achievement of a high earnings rate on equity capital employed (without undue leverage, accounting gimmickry, etc.) and not the achievement of consistent gains in earnings per share. In our view, many businesses would be better understood by their shareholder owners, as well as the general public, if managements and financial analysts modified the primary emphasis they place upon earnings per share (EPS), and upon yearly changes in that figure.
On futility of measuring EPS: “Earnings per share” will rise constantly on a dormant savings account or on a U.S. Savings Bond bearing a fixed rate of return simply because “earnings” (the stated interest rate) are continuously plowed back and added to the capital base. Thus, even a “stopped clock” can look like a growth stock if the dividend payout ratio is low.
On relationship between investment returns and inflation: A few years ago, a business whose per-share net worth compounded at 20% annually would have guaranteed its owners a highly successful real investment return. Now such an outcome seems less certain. For the inflation rate, coupled with individual tax rates, will be the ultimate determinant as to whether our internal operating performance produces successful investment results - i.e., a reasonable gain in purchasing power from funds committed - for you as shareholders.
On the investor’s misery index: The inflation rate plus the percentage of capital that must be paid by the owner to transfer into his own pocket the annual earnings achieved by the business (i.e. ordinary income tax on dividends and capital gains tax on retained earnings) - can be thought of as an “investor’s misery index”. When this index exceeds the rate of return earned on equity by the business, the investor’s purchasing power (real capital) shrinks even though he consumes nothing at all. We have no corporate solution to this problem; high inflation rates will not help us earn higher rates of return on equity.
On turnarounds in business: Both our operating and investment experience cause us to conclude that “turnarounds” seldom turn, and that the same energies and talent are much better employed in a good business purchased at a fair price than in a poor business purchased at a bargain price.
On long term fixed interest bonds: We have severe doubts as to whether a very long-term fixed- interest bond, denominated in dollars, remains an appropriate business contract in a world where the value of dollars seems almost certain to shrink by the day. Those dollars, as well as paper creations of other governments, simply may have too many structural weaknesses to appropriately serve as a unit of long term commercial reference.
On laying off people: It is our policy not to lay off people because of the large fluctuations in work load produced by such voluntary volume changes. We would rather have some slack in the organization from time to time than keep everyone terribly busy writing business on which we are going to lose money.
On management communication to shareholders: Your Chairman has a firm belief that owners are entitled to hear directly from the CEO as to what is going on and how he evaluates the business, currently and prospectively. You would demand that in a private company; you should expect no less in a public company. A once-a-year report of stewardship should not be turned over to a staff specialist or public relations consultant who is unlikely to be in a position to talk frankly on a manager- to-owner basis.
On principles of managing the overall company: Your company is run on the principle of centralization of financial decisions at the top (the very top, it might be added), and rather extreme delegation of operating authority to a number of key managers at the individual company or business unit level.
Afterthought
History is merely a list of surprises…It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again
-Kurt Vonnegut
And that is a wrap for the week. We hope you enjoyed binge reading this edition. If you found this newsletter useful and worth your time, do share it with your friends.
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