PDF Summary:Same as Ever, by Morgan Housel

If you’re looking for a crystal ball to help you see into the future, you might want to invest in a mirror and a history book instead. In Same as Ever, Morgan Housel argues that you can’t predict the future, but you can learn certain rules of human behavior and society that remain constant over time. These rules will help you make reasonable assumptions about the future—and that’s as close as it gets to having a crystal ball.

Housel is a New York Times best-selling author, financial expert, and journalist. In Same as Ever, he shares 23 rules that explain human behavior, clarify history, and give clues about the future. Our guide organizes Housel’s 23 rules into two key insights: 1) You can’t predict the future, but 2) you can learn to navigate an uncertain world. Throughout the guide, we compare Housel’s perspective with ideas from other experts on human behavior, such as Daniel Kahneman, Robert Greene, and James Clear.

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Rule #4: People Aren’t One-Dimensional

We often expect role models to have only positive traits, which creates unrealistic expectations. Exceptional abilities and troubling traits often come from the same personality characteristics. For example, persistence can turn into stubbornness, and discipline can become rigidity. Housel suggests that you accept exceptional people as complete packages rather than trying to separate good traits from bad.

(Shortform note: The idea of accepting the flaws and vulnerabilities of our role models may feel alien. As Tara Brach notes in her book Radical Acceptance, Western society teaches us that to be worthy of love and praise, we need to “fix” our flaws and vulnerable parts—not accept and show them. One possible path to accepting people’s flaws and vulnerabilities is to recognize them as important and inevitable parts of existence. As Brach notes, we’re all imperfect. Having flaws and vulnerabilities doesn’t mean that there’s something “wrong” with someone—just that they’re human, like everyone else.)

Rule #5: People Hide Their Struggles

We tend to think others have it easier or better. Housel argues that people’s public personas typically mask their struggles and difficulties. We see only the polished, filtered version of others’ lives, businesses, and careers, while being acutely aware of our own challenges. However, everyone deals with problems they’re not disclosing. For example, a successful entrepreneur’s social media may highlight achievements but rarely reveal the setbacks and failures she faced along the way. Being aware of this tendency can help you be more forgiving of yourself and others, and recognize that most accomplishments come from ordinary people who persevered—not from people who didn’t struggle.

Envy, Our Shared Hidden Struggle

When we think others have it better than us, we often start envying them. According to Housel, this is pointless because we envy what we see from the outside, but we don’t know the struggles hidden behind closed doors. In The Laws of Human Nature, Greene points out that envy is itself one of those hidden struggles.

Envy is hidden because no one wants to consciously acknowledge envy. Doing so would mean admitting to feelings of inferiority—to want something someone else has, we have to admit that the other person has it, which makes them superior. As a result, envy is rarely expressed as envy, even to ourselves. But it’s still there, morphing into other negative emotions to stay hidden.

Envy is a struggle because, as Greene explains, we transform it into something else in our efforts to hide it. Often, we’ll decide that the person has whatever we don’t because she’s lucky, ambitious, or underhanded—she doesn’t actually deserve it. Then, we can feel anger or resentment at the unfairness. Not only does this distract us from our own goals and progress, but in extreme cases, it can motivate us to harm the person triggering our envy.

Principle #2: Future-Proof Your Mind

Understanding human behavior is helpful, but you can also actively shape how you think about the future and the actions you take in response. When it comes to thinking about the future, Housel shares several strategies to help you manage how you think about it, rather than stress over the specifics of what will happen when. By adopting the right mindsets, you can future-proof your mind: teach yourself how to think about the future and deal with it productively. This section will discuss five strategies for future-proofing your mind that Housel refers to throughout his book:

1. Manage your expectations
2. Make the most of hardship… and beware ease
3. Be an optimistic pessimist
4. Lose the need for certainty
5. Understand how compounding works

Strategy #1: Manage Your Expectations

To avoid being unprepared for the future, start by having reasonable expectations. Housel argues that your happiness depends more on your expectations than your circumstances. The smaller the gap between what you expect and what happens, the more content you’ll be. This means that you won’t find happiness if you focus exclusively on improving your circumstances but let your expectations skyrocket.

Instead, Housel suggests managing your expectations with the same effort you put into improving your circumstances. Doing so will help narrow the gap between them. This approach leads to more happiness than solely trying to improve your circumstances, since your expectations are often easier to control than your circumstances. For example, if you expect steady progress rather than instant success in your career, you’re more likely to appreciate small wins along the way.

Manage Your Focus to Reign In Your Expectations

One way to manage your expectations is to manage your patterns of thought—specifically, manage what you focus on. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman explains that considering overall life satisfaction is a difficult question. Usually, we jump to an easier question, such as “what is my mood right now?”, focusing on significant events (both achievements and failures), or recurrent concerns (like illness). This creates a focusing illusion: **Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it. **Your mood is largely determined by what you focus on.

The focusing illusion leads to mispredictions of happiness. When you forecast your future happiness, you overestimate the effect a change will have on you (like getting a promotion), because you overestimate how salient the thought will be to future you. In reality, future you has gotten used to the new environment and now has other problems to worry about.

To narrow the gap between your circumstances and your expectations, avoid falling for the focusing illusion. The following antidotes can help:

• To evaluate your life satisfaction, create a life rubric that lists the factors you value, such as health and relationships, along with their corresponding weightings. Then, score each of the factors. This might make you happier and grateful for what you have, rather than focusing on single sore points that stick out.

• Choose to spend time on pleasurable activities that will engage your focus. You pay little attention to the TV as you passively watch, but you retain focus in social interaction or playing team sports.

• Reflect on your past experiences to inform future ones—how much did buying something in the past make you happier today? What activity are you really thankful to your past self for doing? Do more of what you appreciate your past self for having done.

Strategy #2: Make the Most of Hardship… and Beware Ease

Although you can’t know what will happen in the future, you can be sure that it will involve some measure of hardship. Housel believes any worthwhile accomplishment inherently requires difficulty and pain. You have to pay a price for an achievement, either in stress, uncertainty, inefficiency, or discomfort. Instead of trying to eliminate all challenges and discomforts, recognize that enduring pain is part of what makes your accomplishments valuable and worthwhile. Instead of looking for shortcuts to avoid the discomfort, get through it to reach the goal on the other side.

Further, Housel argues that major innovations arise from periods of crisis rather than prosperity. Stress focuses attention by creating a level of urgency and motivation that comfortable times can’t match. When people face existential threats or economic collapse, they collaborate more effectively, pursue radical ideas, and overcome bureaucratic obstacles that seem insurmountable in normal times. While a completely carefree life might sound appealing, it could prevent the very struggle that drives innovation and meaningful achievement. For example, if you’re training for a marathon, you must endure physical pain and setbacks, but it’s precisely that struggle that makes crossing the finish line so meaningful and rewarding.

A Stoic Approach to Hardship

In The Obstacle Is the Way, Ryan Holiday agrees that life constantly tests us by throwing obstacles in our path. Our options are to give up on our goal—or to turn the obstacle upside down and use it to advance our purpose. Holiday explains that choosing to view obstacles in an empowering way is a major tenet of Stoicism, an ancient philosophy founded in Greece in the third century BCE. Next time you face a challenge, apply the following Stoic strategies to make the most of it:

1) Learn from crises: Rather than being distracted or misdirected by fear, view crises as learning opportunities. Observe and study them dispassionately; learn from others’ mistakes so you don’t make the same ones.

2) Focus on what you can change: Understand what’s within your control and what isn’t, and focus on the things you can do something about. For instance, you can’t control the economy, weather, disasters, or other people’s feelings and actions. But you can control your attitude, emotions, judgments, and responses. You control how you see and respond to obstacles.

3) Turn obstacles upside down: In every situation or obstacle, there’s a hidden opportunity that you can turn to your own benefit. Learn to flip the obstacle upside down so you can see it. For example, if you get dumped by a long-term romantic partner, you can choose to see it as an opportunity to find someone new, with whom you’re even more compatible.

Strategy #3: Be an Optimistic Pessimist

Just as hardship and progress are intertwined, optimism and pessimism are more effective together. Housel says pessimism helps us prepare for risks, while optimism gives up hope for the future despite uncertain evidence. To be an optimistic pessimist, remember that life is full of unavoidable, constant setbacks that don’t prevent eventual progress. For example, when learning a new skill like playing an instrument, expecting setbacks and mistakes (pessimism) helps you prepare and stay patient, while maintaining hope that you’ll improve over time (optimism) keeps you motivated to continue practicing.

Housel shares the story of Admiral Jim Stockdale, a Vietnam prisoner of war and an optimistic pessimist. During his time as a POW, he knew he’d have to endure torture for many months or even years, but he still had unwavering faith that he’d eventually be released. After he was freed, someone asked him who had the hardest time in captivity, and he said it was the optimists. They naively believed they would be freed soon, so their spirits were crushed with every new day that passed. Stockdale’s approach balanced absolute faith that things would eventually improve (optimism) with acceptance of the long-term nature of his situation (pessimism).

How to Embody Stockdale’s Mindset

Admiral Stockdale’s balanced approach to his difficult circumstances has inspired other authors, including Jim Collins (Good to Great). He agrees that Stockdale endured because he was able to confront and manage the brutal reality of his day-to-day life in the camp without losing hope. Collins believes this psychological duality is a characteristic of great business leaders. He dubs it the “Stockdale Paradox”—a stoic acceptance of business realities coupled with an unwavering faith in eventual triumph. To cultivate a leadership style that balances an unvarnished pursuit of facts and good-faith attempts to address those facts, Collins suggests four guiding principles:

• Run meetings with a focus on dialogue and inquiry by asking your team for information and insights, and posing tough questions to unearth assumptions. This will increase understanding and help you notice risks outside of your line of sight.

• Cultivate an atmosphere where dissent and debate have an impact on decision-making. This will encourage people to speak up when they disagree.

• When setbacks happen, conduct detailed autopsies without finger-pointing, to ensure the same mistake doesn’t happen twice.

• Prepare for unavoidable hardships by implementing alarm bell mechanisms: procedures that enable team members to raise urgent concerns to decision-makers.

Strategy #4: Lose the Need for Certainty

Housel believes that humans value certainty over accuracy. However, in attempting to get certainty about what will happen, we delude ourselves with definitive but inaccurate predictions. Instead, Housel says you should adjust how you think about the future: Recognize that certainty is an illusion and practice probabilistic thinking.

For example, say a group of people who want to know whether there will be a natural disaster over the next year asks two experts. Expert 1 says there will definitely be a natural disaster. Expert 2 says there’s a 45% chance of a natural disaster. Most people will follow Expert 1’s lead because they were definitive, even though Expert 2’s estimate is probably more accurate.

(Shortform note: While Housel offers probabilistic thinking as an alternative for inaccurate predictions, following his advice might require rethinking how we typically interpret probabilities. That’s because we usually fall for what Gardner and Tetlock (Superforecasting) call the “wrong-side-of-maybe fallacy,” where we interpret any prediction higher than 50% to mean something will happen and anything lower than 50% to mean it won’t. For example, if a meteorologist correctly predicts a 70% chance of rain, it means that if we were able to replay that day hundreds of times, it would rain in 70% of those replays. But when a meteorologist predicts a 70% chance of rain, we think it means it will rain. If it doesn’t, we think she was wrong.)

Strategy #5: Understand How Compounding Works

As we’ve seen, seemingly small changes, accumulated over time, create massive outcomes, but humans often don’t have the patience to wait for them. Housel writes that progress is gradual and often invisible, while setbacks are sudden and command attention. Understanding the dynamic of compounding versus our natural human impatience can help you keep your eyes on the prize.

To leverage compounding, Housel suggests you prioritize projects that are sustainable over time and maintain perspective during challenging times. For example, consistently dedicating a small amount of time each day to learning a skill—even when progress feels slow—can lead to remarkable improvement over the years through steady, compounding effort.

How Habits Compound

Although you can’t control all of the small, interconnected actions that compound into success or catastrophe, there’s one area of your life where you have control: your habits. In Atomic Habits, James Clear advocates implementing small 1% improvements in behavior that, over time, compound into full-blown behavior change and positive habits.

In addition, Clear offers a visual for understanding why it’s hard to focus on slow, sustainable improvements rather than breakthrough moments when you achieve a goal. From the outside, this breakthrough may seem like an “overnight success.” But time is required for small changes to have an effect, and there will be a period at the beginning where the line of progress moves horizontally. This is the plateau of latent potential where disappointment occurs because you don’t see any signs of improvement yet. But if you continue making small behavior changes, the plateau will eventually curve sharply up and continue to ascend. All the benefits of your hard work to change your behavior wait on the other side of the plateau of latent potential.

Principle #3: Future-Proof Your Plans

In addition to future-proofing your mind, you can future-proof your plans by limiting four vulnerabilities: size, complexity, efficiency, and complacency. This section discusses five strategies Housel offers for protecting yourself from these vulnerabilities:

1. Think long term.
2. Keep it simple.
3. Keep it less than perfect.
4. Keep it manageable.
5. Don’t let down your guard.

Strategy #1: Think Long Term

To maximize your chances of success, prioritize long-term goals over immediate results. Housel explains that long-term thinking can be far more profitable than most people realize, largely because so few can maintain it. Long-term thinking requires patience and resilience—qualities that are tested when short-term setbacks occur. Many people abandon their long-term strategies at the first sign of difficulty, missing out on the substantial rewards that come from staying the course. As a result, those who maintain a long-term perspective often achieve greater success, precisely because they’re willing to endure challenges that cause others to quit.

To help you turn your long-term plans into reality, Housel reminds you that thinking long term doesn’t exempt you from experiencing short-term hardships. Accept them and don’t let go of the plan. In addition, be flexible with your timeline. If you expect your plans to succeed by a strict deadline, you’re putting yourself at the mercy of factors beyond your control. For example, if you’re launching a small business, you might face slow customer growth. But by staying committed and adjusting your strategy, you can still build a thriving business over time.

How to Break Free From Short-Term Thinking

While short-term challenges are indeed discouraging, Greene (The Laws of Human Nature) offers another explanation for why long-term thinking is difficult to maintain. Our brains evolved to look for immediate rather than far-off danger. This was beneficial when all our problems were animal-like—eat, sleep, avoid predators, and so on. We didn’t need to understand complex situations or reason; we needed to notice the most dramatic elements of a situation and react quickly. Now, however, this evolutionary adaptation works against us. The world is more complicated, and long-term dangers are larger problems than most of what we’ll encounter in the present.

Greene says you can break out of short-term thinking by adopting a farsighted perspective, which involves simulating hindsight and giving yourself perspective unclouded by emotions. There are three elements to a farsighted perspective:

• Detachment. When you encounter a problem or decision, try to look at it without emotion. This can help you put your short-term challenges in perspective and avoid getting discouraged and quitting on your long-term goals.

• Completeness. When you encounter a problem, there will be some obvious, attention-grabbing elements. Look at all the context, not just what’s most obvious.

• Prediction. For every possible decision, consider the negative consequences, new problems that might arise, and long-term goals.

Strategy #2: Keep It Simple

Housel says we often pursue complex approaches when simpler ones would be more effective. Complexity is comforting because we feel it gives us control and signals that we put effort into the process. However, Housel believes that most fields are governed by a few core principles rather than countless details.

To avoid being seduced by complexity that doesn’t improve results, start by identifying the few variables that drive most outcomes in any situation. Then, embrace simple but effective solutions that leverage these proven variables. For example, if you’re a small business owner, you might focus on building strong customer relationships and managing cash flow—two core factors—rather than getting bogged down in overly detailed marketing strategies or complicated financial models.

(Shortform note: While Housel argues that complexity is comforting because it gives us a sense of control and effort, it may be comforting because it releases us from effort. Shane Parrish, author of The Great Mental Models, argues that complexity bias—the tendency to see easy things as complicated—is a mental shortcut. If we label something as too complex, we’re excused from trying to understand it. To sidestep complexity bias, Parrish suggests employing the principle of Occam’s razor, which states that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.)

Strategy #3: Keep It Less Than Perfect

In addition to avoiding unnecessary complexity, you should avoid extreme efficiency. Housel argues that pursuing flawless efficiency often creates unexpected vulnerabilities and prevents adaptability. Think of flawless efficiency as a perfectly tuned machine where every cog fits together without any slack—while this might seem ideal, it leaves no room for error or adjustment. If a single cog jams or breaks, the entire machine seizes up and stops working. In contrast, a machine built with a bit of flexibility—some slack between parts—can absorb shocks and keep running even when one part fails.

Similarly, building some inefficiency into your schedule creates space for adaptability and resilience. Resist the cultural pressure to be constantly productive and allow yourself time for unstructured thinking. This seemingly inefficient use of your time is essential for solving complex problems and developing creative solutions. For example, regularly set aside time to read and reflect without an agenda.

(Shortform note: The key to keeping it less than perfect might be flexibility: knowing when to push for efficiency and when to let go—and adapting to the choices you make. For example, Steve Jobs dropped out of college because he was spending his parents’ money on classes that weren’t helping him find direction for his life. For him, college was inefficient. He spent the next few months living frugally, even walking miles to get free meals. During this time, he sat in on classes that piqued his interest but had no practical use, such as calligraphy. While this was arguably an inefficient use of his time, it paid off. He applied what he learned in that class when he created the Mac decades later: He focused on ensuring the computer had aesthetically pleasing typography.)

Strategy #4: Keep It Manageable

Housel writes that pushing good ideas beyond their natural limits often transforms them into failures. There's an optimal scale and pace for growth, beyond which things break down. To keep your good ideas manageable, let them grow at their natural pace and to their natural limit, instead of using artificial methods to create exponential, rapid growth. For example, when starting a fitness routine, you might gradually increase your workouts over months rather than trying to do intense daily sessions immediately. This will prevent injury and burnout, making your progress more sustainable.

Strategy #5: Don’t Let Your Guard Down

Finally, remember that no success is permanent enough to allow complacency. Housel says that many people let their guard down after achieving some success because they assume it’s there to stay. This complacency leads them to stop working on their skills and become less vigilant to potential problems. Worse, extended periods of stability and ease inherently create the conditions for future instability and chaos. Housel argues that, when things are calm, people become complacent and take on more risk, which eventually leads to a crisis.

To avoid crises born from complacency, never rest on past achievements. Instead, continue learning and evolving to keep up with changing times and secure new successes. For example, if you stop updating your skills after a promotion, you may find yourself unprepared when industry standards shift.

Inflation: Too Much of a Good Thing

Another way to understand Housel’s advice to fight complacency and keep things manageable is by comparing it to economic phenomena. In Naked Economics, Charles Wheelan explains that there are limits to the speed an economy can grow. Firms can only produce items at a certain pace—a pace that depends on the availability of labor, factories, time, and other resources. Problems can arise when an economy is pushed faster than this pace. For example, when consumers have easy access to cheap capital, they flood the marketplace with demand for items. When firms can’t keep up with demand, the market becomes unbalanced, with demand exceeding supply, leading to price hikes.

Complacency also contributes to inflation. When individuals, businesses, or policymakers assume that positive economic conditions will persist without careful management, they overlook warning signs of inflation. In addition, they allow excessive spending or loose monetary policy to continue unchecked, fueling further price increases.

This results in inflation: a continual and somewhat rapid increase in prices of almost everything in an economy, including both goods and services. Inflation is problematic because the purchasing power of each dollar decreases. This means that if you have $100, you might be able to buy four shirts today, but a month from now, you might only be able to buy two shirts. Left unchecked, inflation can turn into an economic crisis and prove that too much of a good thing—like cash in hand—can become a major problem.