Notes on — Pebbles of Perception by Laurence Endersen
Too soon old, too late wise
In the short book, Pebbles of Perception, Laurence Endersen borrows from other authors to give thoughtful advice that is applicable in everyone's life. Heavily influenced from the great book Poor Charlie's Almanack Endersen concludes that a great life needs good choices. Good Choices need curiosity and character. These are the three areas that the book explores.
The challenge for all of us is to stay curious.
Cultivating worldly wisdom requires curiosity. Endersen makes a point that to stay curious one must:
- Improve the quality of questions before working on the answers
- Use more questions to see beyond the obvious answers
- Cultivate second-level thinking a la Howard Marks
- Be interested
A life of curiosity puts us on the path of Lifelong Learning. Lifelong Learning is the distinguishing trait of high performance individuals. To make the learning effective, we need to have periods of thoughtful reflection and cultivate a habit of truly reading books for understanding and not just for entertainment. The best way of knowing if we learned something is the simple Feynman Technique. Having an open mind makes you prone to learning and understanding. We must approach conversations as a way to learn and not lecture others.
We build character through our actions and our motivations. Good choices are those that rest on the foundation of good character.
To build character and justify our actions we must understand what type of life we want to live. A great exercise that Endersen proposes is to follow this thought process:
- What am I hoping to achieve?
- What does achievement look like to me?
- What behaviours would ensure that I failed?
- What actions do I need to take to get to where I want to go?
Building a strong character requires a high degree of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the most important predictor of our success in life (both professional and personal in my opinion). Cultivating emotional intelligence requires us to cultivate: acceptance, awareness, character, communication, compassion, equanimity, honesty, interdependence, patience, perspective, resilience and sociability.
As humans we are predetermined to be afraid. Fear is one of the most destructive emotions a human can have. It paralyses us and prevents us from reaching our potential. The worst events in our life happen only in our imagination.
How will you ever be polished, if you are irritated by every rub
Life will have certain losses. That is normal. But as Endersen correctly states, we should know that:
- Loss is natural and to be expected
- The consequences of loss will not be as bad as we imagine, especially if we are living full and varied lives
- We never lose our capacity to learn, our capacity to love and above all our capacity to choose
In life, we will face adversity. It will not be fair and it will not be evenly distributed. It is us who decide how to frame this adversity. Are we victims? Or is this an opportunity to grow, show our resilience and take responsibility of our future. How we answer this question will truly affect our character.
Our ability to choose is one of life’s great gifts. We are the product of our choices. Good choices come from good character, and a few good choices make all the difference.
Pebbles of Perception is a book that needs to be in every serious CEO’s bookshelf. As in life, the effectiveness of a CEO depends on his ability to make good choices. This short but great book gives a good outline of how to go about doing this and points us in the right direction to learn more.
my notes
Pebbles of Perception: How a Few Good Choices Make All The Difference
Laurence Endersen
Too soon old, too late wise.
LOCATION: 73
Some of the material for this book came from the responses to the following question which I have been posing to anyone who will listen: “Imagine you are dying and have no material wealth. You are allowed to pass on one or two pieces of thoughtful and useful advice to your young adult children. This is the only inheritance you can leave behind — thoughtful advice that they will understand and apply in their lives. What would that advice
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The structure of this book is built around three core themes: Curiosity; Character; and Choice. Curiosity and character provide the foundation for good choices. Our call to action is to be curious, build character and make better choices. With fuel in our tank and tread on our tyres the journey is all ours.
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The challenge for us all is to stay curious.
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We can be too quick to blurt out what we believe are the correct answers, when more value can be gained by searching for a better question. A questioning mentality is far more effective than a knowing mentality.
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While good managers ask how questions, innovators also ask why, why not and what if questions. Innovators can combine healthy scepticism with a lack of cynicism. They proceed with a mind that is open to possibility.
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Howard Marks.
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First-level thinking focuses on the most visible and immediately obvious answer. It is clear to everyone. By contrast second-level thinking considers what else might be going on. This is not immediately obvious. Continually asking ourselves why allows us to go beyond first-level thinking.
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Good if questions stimulate rich debate. For example, what would you do if you were not afraid? If you could be known for one thing, what would you like that to be? Why are we not enjoying life to the full? What if we did more of what we enjoy and less of what we find dreary or soul-destroying? How do we go about changing our priorities? This why, what-if and how sequence can be the key to possibility, which, let’s be honest, is far more interesting than complaining about the status quo.
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Stay curious. Improve the quality of questions before getting to work on answers. Use more questions to see beyond the obvious answers. Improve group dynamics by ensuring there is enough attention given to asking the right questions. Be interested.
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make a conscious decision to learn something new every day? No matter how small the daily learning, it is significant when aggregated over a lifetime. Resolving early in life to have a continuous learning mindset is not only more interesting than the passive alternative, it is also remarkably powerful. Choosing lifelong learning is one of the few good choices that can make a big difference in our lives, giving us an enormous advantage when practised over a long period of time.
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The process of thoughtful reflection makes our experiences more concrete, and helps with future recall and understanding. Reflecting about what we learned, how we felt, how we and others behaved, and what interests were at play, hardwires the learning in our brain and gives us a depth of context and relevance that would otherwise be absent.
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Too few read for understanding. Adler’s book is concerned with reading to understand. Being widely read is not the same as being well read.
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How do we test whether we really understand something? A powerful yet deceptively elegant technique was devised by the late American physicist Richard Feynman. Step 1. Choose the topic or concept that you are trying to understand. Take a blank piece of paper and write the name of the topic at the top. Step 2. Assume you’re teaching the topic to someone else. Write out a clear explanation of the topic, as if you were trying to teach it. A great way to learn is to teach. You identify gaps in your knowledge very quickly when trying to explain something to someone else in simple terms. Step 3. If you get bogged down, go back to the source materials. Keep going back until you can explain the concept in its most basic form. Step 4. Go back and simplify your language. The goal is to use your own words, not the words of the source material. Overly elaborate language is often a sure sign that you don’t fully understand the concept. Use simple language and build on that with a clear analogy.
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Make the learning lens your default setting. Approach every conversation with an open mind. OK, I have a view and I believe it to be the correct one, but, what might I be missing here? What if the other person has some insight that can illuminate my own? What if I am wrong? We listen intently not just with our ears, but with our eyes and our senses. We are paying attention, striving to perceive what is really going on in the other person’s mind. And they know and appreciate it. The whole conversation is a journey of discovery not a battle of wits.
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Make them a star. Try to bring out the best in other people. This is not false flattery, but helping people get their views properly heard and understood. Do not seek to show off how smart you are.
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Be courteous. There is no need for rudeness. Respect the right of someone to have a different opinion from yours. Leave unconstructive criticism at the door. There is no good in it. It merely creates resentment and distorts the other person’s lens, often for a long time. If you call a person an idiot, both you, and the person you insulted, have changed. No apology can take back the words. Avoid criticising people in print or in front of others.
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Double check your gut feelings. For example, first impressions can trigger subconscious negative emotions. The person resembles someone you had a problem with, and you suddenly dislike them. Abraham Lincoln understood this risk. When he met someone he didn’t like, he resolved to get to know them better.
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Find your words. Once you have demonstrated a full understanding of the other person’s view, think carefully about what you want to say and then don’t say it! Try instead to figure out what the other person is likely to hear. In other words, try to make some allowance for the distortions in their lens. Your opinion on something is more credible when you can also clearly articulate the contrary view. Good communicators are thoughtful in how they choose and arrange their words.
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Words are never enough. Your tone and demeanour should be consistent with, and supportive of, the whole message.
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Choose quality over quantity. Don’t always feel there is a need to fill every moment with communication.
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Know when to give or accept an apology. A genuine apology, offered sincerely and accepted, is one the most emotionally mature human interactions.
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Don’t be a crocodile, all mouth and no ears. Choose a learning lens over a lecturing lens. Be aware of the differences between your lenses and those of others. To truly listen to others is a gift to them. Give it with courtesy and humility. The payback is real understanding.
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We can only see a situation with true clarity when we take the time to carefully consider the interests at hand. And we understand it even better when we consider how the situation might be different if the underlying interests were different.
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The carrot is effective, but it is too pointed. We suddenly focus on the incentive and forget about the second order consequences. What we see is that narrow incentives influence performance, but they may not improve
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Good incentives acknowledge recognition, public perception, and the value of pursuing work that we can be proud of. So yes, if we want to persuade, we should appeal to interests not reason. But when it comes to interests, appeal not just to net worth but also to self-worth.
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We usually get the behaviour we reward; and It’s mad to incentivise behaviour that we don’t want.
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Incentives matter greatly — underestimate them at your peril. People will navigate the shortest path to the incentive. The curious among us will pay particular attention to incentives, monetary or otherwise.
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For most things, “contextually confident” seems like where we should be spending most of our time. Just because we are not certain doesn’t mean we can’t proceed.
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What are some practical suggestions for dealing with context dependency? 1. Always consider whether there is a better question. 2. Consider what might be missing. 3. For important decisions don’t think twice, think thrice. 4. Use checklists. 5. Develop your own decision making frameworks and keep decision journals. 6. Think like a scientist would. The focus of the ‘scientific method’ is on empirical and measurable evidence. 7. Consult others who have real and relevant experience. 8. Widen the diversity of your own experience.
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Nothing occurs in isolation. Always consider the context and recognise that it: (a) is different for everyone, and (b) changes over time. Don’t be dogmatic.
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Character: Integrity and authenticity. Of good reputation. Principled. We build character through our actions and our motivations. Good choices are those that rest on the foundation of good character.
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Why not write now and let our loved ones know how much they matter to us?
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Ray Dalio.
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Knowing what you want; 2. Knowing what’s true; 3. Knowing what you need to do; and 4. Doing it.
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Try the following thought process: 1. What am I hoping to achieve? Look beyond the first level: What am I really looking to achieve? Don’t just scratch the surface. 2. What does achievement look like to me? Express it in as much detail as possible. 3. What behaviour or actions would ensure that I failed? 4. What actions do I need to take to get to where I want to go (guided by avoiding the behaviours and actions in step 3)?
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Start by considering the end. Visualise both the road to personal fulfilment and the destination. Consider what behaviour would thwart that fulfilment and do the opposite. Thinking about the route to avoid helps reveal the more rewarding road.
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In fact, the vast majority of our fears are simply thought-based time distortions attempting to impose either the past or our fearful perception of the future on the present moment. When understood for the impostors that they truly are, our fears dissolve.
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If you are invaded by thought-based fear, seek to recognise and closely observe the thoughts. Focus solely on the present moment. Ground yourself in the present moment where there is no harm — you are breathing and you are living. With practice, when we focus purely on the present moment we can face our fear, see it for the mental construct that it is, and watch it pass, like a cloud in the sky or a twig floating down a stream.
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Another helpful analogy is that of a ship. We are each the captain of our own ship. Fear of the future is the anchor that holds us in the harbour. Fear-ruled ships stay in safe harbours. But what use is a ship that won’t set sail?
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Future fears melt away when we fully accept ourselves as we are, when we love ourselves, not in a narcissistic way, but in a compassionate way.
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“How will you ever be polished, if you are irritated by every rub?”
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So yes, there will be loss. But we should know that: — loss is natural and to be expected; — the consequences of loss will not be as bad as we imagine, especially if we are living full and varied lives; and — we never lose our capacity to learn, our capacity to love and, above all, our capacity to choose.
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Fear is mostly a thought-based construct. It dissolves when we drop our comparisons and accept ourselves fully as we are, right now. Loss is as natural as birth. Choose real life over regret.
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Always think for yourself. Don’t automatically accept what you are told.
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Mental health is more complex. Maintaining our self-esteem is critical. Fundamentally this is about loving ourselves unconditionally — compassionately recognising our core humanity and capacity to make our own way.
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That said, if we would like to reduce the risk of mental anxiety the following may be helpful: 1. Pursue a purpose. The late self-help writer Stephen Covey encouraged us to Live, Love, Learn and Leave a Legacy. 2. Aim for a balance between work and play. Extremes of either are harmful over prolonged periods. 3. Rest. Take time out and switch off the noisy mental chatter. Look at the beauty and stillness in nature without trying to analyse it, or listen to relaxing music without trying to ‘do’ or ‘achieve’ anything else at the same time. 4. Practise accepting what is. What angers us controls us. Stress comes from wrestling with reality. 5. Stand up for yourself. You have the basic right to be treated with respect and dignity. 6. Believe in something bigger than yourself.
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Know yourself and see the journey. Be yourself and enjoy the journey. Mind yourself and extend the journey.
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Consider a handwritten letter.
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“Friends Fish with Fearless Frank”)
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A lot has been written about negotiation and there are many theories, some conflicting. My assumption is that we are negotiating with someone with whom we want to have a continuing relationship or may meet again at some stage in the future (which should be our working assumption).
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Successful negotiators prepare.
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Successful negotiators seek bigger pies, not bigger slices.
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Successful negotiators take their time.
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Successful negotiators focus on understanding the underlying interests of both parties.
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Successful negotiators understand perception.
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Successful negotiators maximise, but never overuse, their perceived power.
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Successful negotiators rarely ever accept the first offer.
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Successful negotiators believe that virtually everything is negotiable.
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Successful negotiators delve into differences.
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Successful negotiators incrementally and continually build on common ground.
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The Psychology of Persuasion. In his enlightening book, Cialdini introduces six principles of influence. The principles are very firmly grounded in human psychology. Principle One: Reciprocation. When you give something to someone they feel obliged to give something back in return. If you want to receive, give first. The best salespeople use this all the time. They give value first. Principle Two: Scarcity. People want what’s scarce. You should emphasise genuine scarcity whether in the form of unique features or limited editions. The luxury goods market is built on the foundations of scarcity. The diamond market is built on perceived scarcity. Principle Three: Social Proof or Consensus. We are social animals. People do things if other people are doing them. Seeing people similar to us (or people we aspire to be like) promote products makes us think, “If it’s good for them, it must be good for us.” Books, songs and movies reach tipping points where people buy them because everyone else is buying them. Principle Four: Authority. We have a psychological tendency to respect authority. This causes us to buy all sorts of “scientifically proven” products. Principle Five: Consistency. Being inconsistent is considered undesirable. We go to great lengths to avoid inconsistency. Therefore to influence behaviour it is best to start from a common understanding and build slowly from there. Build on existing commitments. A powerful question in keeping someone to a commitment is: “Do I have your word on it?” Principle Six: Liking. We are far more likely to be influenced by our friends. If you want to increase your influence with someone else, strengthen your friendship with them.
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Good Character = Principled Sellers = Natural Ability + Science + Integrity
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Sales, negotiation and influence are an essential part of our daily dealings with friends, associates and the world at large. We all have natural abilities that can be enhanced through experience and through understanding the science. People of good character exercise their skills with integrity.
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Adversity is both inevitable and relative. Everyone meets with adversity, but not in equal measure. Nor do we respond in the same way. Many of us have a tendency to sweat the small stuff and get troubled by trivialities.
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think there are three things that can help: Reflection on the nature of adversity, with a view to understanding; Recognition of when we personally face adversity, with a view to acceptance; and Re-writing our life story to account for the experience of adversity, with a view to personal growth.
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Adversity is distributed neither in equal measure nor with reason. Bad things can and do happen to good people. The purpose of reflecting on adversity is to understand that it is inevitable, indiscriminate and arbitrary.
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What is life expecting of me now? Adversity places a fork in the road. Our previous assumptions about the way the world works and our place in it may need to be revised.
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A “victim narrative” can take us under, but a “survivor narrative” helps us to cope. Some go beyond a “survivor narrative” and take on a “growth narrative”. Through a “growth narrative” we are interpreting adversarial events as an opportunity to demonstrate our resilience, choose our response and take ownership of our future. Growth is an endless quest, set always against the benchmark of our previous self. Frequently the “growth narrative” leads to a greater focus on relationships, experiences, learning, community service and a fresh appreciation of what it means to be alive.
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Adversity does not discriminate. We can’t avoid it — all we can do is seek to understand it and when we ultimately meet it recognise the question it is asking of us. The answer to that question is within us and no one else.
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Who would you feel comfortable calling at 4am, explaining that you needed their help in an emergency? Who could you call upon to mind your two dogs for a few weeks while you went to hospital for an operation? Who could you rely upon if you were in trouble? Your answers may give you some clues as to who your true friends are. You may find that family members feature prominently.
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How many non-family friends could you rely on in a time of need? If there is one — or, even better, a few — then you have something to truly treasure.
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true friend: — Won’t lie to protect your feelings, but speaks the truth lovingly and gently. — Won’t judge whether what you’re feeling is right or wrong, instead encouraging you to discover your own truth. — Will keep you from becoming your own worst enemy. — Will celebrate your personal victories with the same excitement as they would their own. — Will help you find your own path in life, even if it takes you in the opposite direction to theirs. — Accepts you for who you are and doesn’t seek to change this. — Forgives you, because they understand the bigger picture. — Expects nothing from you, but wants everything for you. — Is always there, even if you have forgotten them for a while.
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Consider being WARM as a reminder to be: Welcoming — When we see our friends we instinctively make them feel welcome with a smile and a warm greeting. Friends don’t need to make appointments. Indeed we can be even more welcoming of a surprise visit. Authentic — Friends are free to be themselves. And friends allow us to be ourselves. Reliable — Friendship requires effort. We may not always be in the mood to spend time with our friends, or to help them, but we do it anyway. Friends are reliably there for each other. Time is no barrier to friendship. No matter how much time has passed when we meet up with old friends, it feels like time falls away and we reignite with that part of us that liked each other from the start. Mutually Respectful — There is no friendship without mutual respect. In a balanced relationship, each friend respects the other for who they are.
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On building character our preference should be to speak and write clearly. The ability to reduce something to its essence is the true mark of understanding. Be wary of complexity for complexity’s sake.
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Our ability to choose is one of life’s great gifts. We are the product of our choices. Good choices come from good character, and a few good choices make all the difference.
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People speak of finding their passion. I think the more appropriate advice is to pursue your passion, as your passion will naturally emerge when you gradually figure out (a) what you enjoy doing, and (b) what you are good at.
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In choosing a career the most important thing is to pursue work that we enjoy. We get to career utopia if we can also share in value creation and work with people we respect and trust.
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Do one thing at a time. Give it your full attention. Author Gary Keller reminds us that: “Until my ONE thing is done, everything else is a distraction”.
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Our most productive state is when we are enthusiastic. This combines being proactive with a real sense of purpose.
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As a large portion of the world’s population moves above the subsistence level, engaging experiences are trumping things in the pursuit of happiness. We are entering an era where engaging experiences are what light our emotional fire.
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Travel is a great way to experience different cultures and to enrich our perspectives. Time spent doing interesting things with friends is one of the most fruitful experiences of all.
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What matters is not the house in which we live but the home that we make.
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Accepting that individual preferences vary widely, I suspect many of us may want to think twice when we see too many of the following characteristics: — Anyone with unrealistic expectations! — Someone with no close friends. — Someone with no sense of humour. — Those with an overly pessimistic orientation. — Anyone we want to change, think we can change or who wants to change us. — Someone who does not speak our language, literally or figuratively. — Those who are bad-tempered, mean, domineering or incapable of change. — Someone we have just met and have not had a chance to get to know. — Someone we feel we can’t have good conversations with now, or in ten years’ time. — Someone who is widely different in age, maturity, culture or belief systems.
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I believe we should have high hopes and low expectations.
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So, when it comes to the question of whom to marry, perhaps we could rephrase the question as who would be a great long-term friend.
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more appropriate characterisation may be that my partner is the one I have chosen.
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Too much negativity, and a relationship is heading for the rocks. Defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism and contempt are particularly corrosive. Stonewalling is the worst of all. Watch for these characteristics in your potential partner and in yourself.
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Another important factor when choosing a partner is to ensure you both share a similar moral code. When it comes to difficulties later on in the relationship — and there will be some — a common moral code will help in deciding the best way forward. When the code is in sync it is easier to come to a fair understanding that will please both parties.
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Firstly, I don’t have anything useful to say on the topic of whether one should marry. I will leave this to Socrates: “By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” Secondly, when you find the right person don’t mess it up. You may not get a second chance.
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The Four Pillars of finding a good marriage partner: Pillar One: Take your time. Whom to marry is probably the most important decision you will ever make. Pillar Two: Don’t settle. Be aware of the most obvious warning signals and don’t expect to change your partner (or you will most likely end up changing partners). Pillar Three: Look for long-term friendship that is grounded in mutual respect and enjoyment of each other’s company. Pillar Four: Deserve a good partner.
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We may want to think twice if we are having children to “lock in” a partner, add another achievement to the list, mind us in our old age, or simply follow what we see most others do.
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Before having children we should consider whether we are emotionally mature enough to make, and follow through with, such a consequential decision. Are we up to the challenge? To treat our children well we need to know and respect ourselves.
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Just as important as the choice to have children, is the choice of who will be there by our side. We need all the support we can get. Single parenthood is especially difficult, but perhaps not as hard as parenthood by feuding partners. Having wider family support available to parents is a real blessing. Kind grandparents can be wonderful role models for children, a source of non-judgemental encouragement.
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Our happier times seem to be before and after kids. We remember our time with children more favourably than our actual experience at the time.
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Two important things are: (i) showing unconditional love, and (ii) fostering our children’s self-esteem. The goal is that our children know they are loved and know they are capable.
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“compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it…He who doesn’t…pays it.”
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Commit to a regular and automatic savings plan. Decide that you will save a fixed amount of your monthly earnings from now on. It could be somewhere between 5% and 20%.
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Good books to start with are David Swensen’s Unconventional Success or Joel Greenblatt’s You Can Be a Stock Market Genius.
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Tax can be a large cost that eats into returns. Tax efficiency is a crucial component in building long-term wealth. Get professional advice here. Look in particular at whether you are fully utilising the tax-free compounding capacity of pension or retirement plans for both you and, if married, your spouse.
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Charlie Munger did a great job of summarising these in a lecture entitled The Psychology of Human Misjudgement. Daniel Kahneman also comprehensively tackled the topic with Thinking Fast and Slow.
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Your fault, not mine (the “fundamental attribution” effect). There is a difference in the way we see the actions of others and our own actions. When others do things, we see their behaviour as a representation of their true nature rather than a reaction to our behaviour. So when someone else is hostile, we see it as part of their innate personality. When we are hostile we see it as a reaction to their hostility. We see what we do as a reaction to circumstances rather than as a problem with our nature.
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I’m on top of this (the illusion of control). We overestimate what is in our control and underestimate the role of chance.
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reason-respecting tendency. The next time you want to skip a queue at an airport, go to the top of the line and say “I am under time pressure to catch a plane”. You will be surprised how many people accept your “reason”.
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I have it handy (the availability bias). Kahneman calls this “what you see is all there is”. We ascribe greater weight to more recent facts, more vivid facts or the story that seems most coherent. We tend to accept our first conclusions.
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Highlights and happy endings. They were onto something at the wedding of Cana when they saved the best wine till last. Apart from peaks and troughs, we also disproportionately remember and value endings.
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Thinking guru Edward de Bono has done great work on the practical tools to force our brains down different tracks to assist with creativity. The tools are very effective because they are not natural.
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The following highlights some of the people that I found to be excellent in their respective fields. Thinking & Wisdom: Peter Bevelin, Edward de Bono, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Gilbert, Daniel Kahneman, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Steven Pinker, Tania Singer, Amos Tversky. Philosophy & Effective Living: James Allen, Stephen Covey, Viktor Frankl, Tamar Gendler’s Open Yale philosophy lectures, Daniel Gilbert, Khalil Gibran, A.C. Grayling, Charles Handy, Tony Humphreys, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Thomas Merton, Anthony de Mello, Shane Parrish’s Farnam Street blog, M. Scott Peck, Graham Price, Eckhart Tolle. Selling, Negotiation & Influence: Dan Ariely, Robert Cialdini, Herb Cohen, Stuart Diamond, Jeffrey Gitomer, Gavin Kennedy, Daniel Pink, Brian Tracy, William Ury. Marriage: John Gottman. Investing: Warren Buffett, Joel Greenblatt, Seth Klarman, Howard Marks, Michael Mauboussin, Charlie Munger, David Swensen.
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A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle Influence by Robert Cialdini Man’s Emerging Mind by N.J. Berrill Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charles T. Munger Relationship, Relationship, Relationship by Tony Humphreys and Helen Ruddle The Promise by Graham W. Price Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
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