Saturday Serendipity
Quote, Mental Model, Interesting find.
Hi there!
Reading time: About 5 minutes
Quote
“It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set.”
― Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance
Mental Model
Do something bias
I am going to give this mental model a short form of DSB. There is a quote from Blaise Pascal i think which says,
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone”
Now this is a noble thing to say but how does it apply to us. Currently with the invention of smartphones and social media apps entertainment is not an issue. So the times where we are sitting quietly in a room alone is there but we always waste this time sitting around watching entertainment and receiving cheap dopamine because we cannot sit in a room and think for a long period of time doing absolutely nothing. Doing nothing is a concept we are alien to.
Well let’s look at a medical condition. ADHD.
ADHD
Some of my friends have ADHD. I am sure all of us know someone who does. These are the people who are so restless they cannot sit in one place without doing something. They have a short attention span. Funny thing is every single one of us has ADHD. It only varies in terms of severity. Evolution has given all of us ADHD in our brain. Look at how everything that we consume in terms of content has gotten shorter and shorter so that they can grab our attention span. In fact my newsletters are kept as short as possible for that reason only.
In his blog Safal Niveshak says,
“In an attempt to be efficient and productive we force ourselves to always stay busy with some task or other. Not being occupied gives the impression that we are incompetent and wasteful. But sometimes, quite often actually, too much activity becomes counterproductive. In psychology this flavour of ADHD is known as Do Something Bias (DSB).
19th Century American writer Henry David Thoreau said –
It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?’ Don’t confuse activity with results. There is no reason to do a good job with something you shouldn’t do in the first place.”
This applies to every single field out there. The medical field more often than not gives medicines to people when in reality if they just wait and let their bodies immune system fight it off they are better off. They do this for multiple reasons. One is so that the patients psychologically feel like they are doing something to fasten the process of healing. On top of that if a doctor does not give any medicine the patients feel like the doctors have done nothing.
This medicine more often than not has unintentional effects which cause our body long term harm.
In football and cricket
In an interview after the world cup, Argentina goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez said that no goalkeeper wants to look like an idiot and hence dives if the first pen is saved. Which is why he told his teammates whoever is taking the second penalty should hit it down the middle. Guess what happened.
Dybala did just that and scored.
Most keepers tend to dive when a penalty is taken. Sometimes this is beneficial but according to research they are better off not diving. Most keepers would still dive because if you dive on the wrong side and concede it is not as bad as standing in the middle and conceding. They want to save embarrassment.
Test cricket is a game where the batsman effectively has to wait for a bad ball and let all the good balls go. Dravid was a master at this. He was known as the wall. Dravid is every investors favourite cricketer. Because he is the perfect example of waiting for the right moment to attack and do nothing when the time is not right. Cricket is a simple game for a batsman. Wait for the bad balls and don’t get out on the good balls. (this is easier said than done trust me)
In Investing
“Sit on your ass. You’re paying less to brokers, you’re listening to less nonsense, and if it works, the tax system gives you an extra one, two, or three percentage points per annum.” Munger
In investing you are better of not doing something than always acting on some information that you receive. This is because most of the information you get is to put it simply bullshit. It is just noise there is no signal.
Many people sell too early because they see this information and news and want to do something about it. They cannot simply sit there and do nothing. Some people also end up buying too much because they feel like they are not making any decisions but the reality is there are not a lot of great companies and in the process of us doing something we buy mediocre companies and lose money.
To conclude I will quote Buffett,
“I could improve your ultimate financial welfare by giving you a ticket with only twenty slots in it so that you had twenty punches – representing all the investments that you got to make in a lifetime. And once you’d punched through the card, you couldn’t make any more investments at all. Under those rules, you’d really think carefully about what you did, and you’d be forced to load up on what you’d really thought about. So you’d do so much better.”
Most of this article is inspired by the Safal Niveshak blog so give it a read.
Interesting find
Thats it!
Enjoy your weekend!