1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Same as Ever
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—try as you might—you can’t predict the future or ensure that your plans will turn out the way you hope. But you can learn certain rules of human behavior and life 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.
(Shortform note: Other experts, called superforecasters, have a different approach to making confident predictions about the future. In Superforecasting, Dan Gardner and Philip Tetlock explain that instead of relying on fixed rules about human behavior...
Want to learn the ideas in Same as Ever better than ever?
Unlock the full book summary of Same as Ever by signing up for Shortform.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x better by:
- Being 100% clear and logical: you learn complicated ideas, explained simply
- Adding original insights and analysis, expanding on the book
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Here's a preview of the rest of Shortform's Same as Ever summary:
Same as Ever Summary Part 1: You Can’t Predict the Future
The first rule of trying to predict the future is that you can’t. Although we crave certainty about what will happen in the next few days or decades, Housel makes clear that we can’t ever know for certain. We organize his insights into three major blind spots that keep us from seeing far ahead: our misunderstandings about innovation, risk, and ramifications. We explore Housel’s insights on these blind spots below.
Insight #1: We Can’t Predict Risk
Our limited perspective of the world—what we are aware of or can imagine—leads us to underestimate what we don't know. However, the biggest risks are precisely the events no one sees coming. No one prepares for them, so the damage they cause is exponential.
Since you can’t predict the biggest risks, Housel says you should prepare for the unexpected. Instead of trying to make a perfect plan that accounts for every risk, try to be nimble and resilient enough to recover from unexpected setbacks. In financial planning, for instance, this means saving more than you need and taking on less debt than you can handle.
(Shortform note: One reason why it’s hard to predict risk is the availability bias: our tendency to make...
Same as Ever Summary Part 2: You Can Learn to Navigate an Uncertain World
If the future is so uncertain, how can you make plans or pursue your goals? Housel offers several insights that can help you find your way forward. To boost clarity, we've organized Housel's remaining ideas into three principles for navigating an uncertain world:
- Understand human behavior
- Future-proof your mind
- Future-proof your plans
Principle #1: Understand Human Behavior
Instead of trying to predict events, Housel suggests you redirect your efforts to anticipating reactions. Keep an open mind about the specifics of what the future holds. As events unfold, try to anticipate how people will react based on fundamental motivations, including fear and greed.
Why Human Behavior Can Be Baffling
In The Laws of Human Nature, Robert Greene agrees that understanding human behavior can help us anticipate the future, but he argues that this is often challenging. He explains that our feelings and actions aren’t nearly as conscious as we’d like to think. In the earliest times, organisms evolved to sense...
What Our Readers Say
This is the best summary of How to Win Friends and Influence People I've ever read. The way you explained the ideas and connected them to other books was amazing.
Shortform Exercise: Anticipate Human Behavior
Housel believes that understanding human behavior can help you anticipate and prepare for the future. Apply his rules of human behavior to a situation you’re pondering. For example, imagine you want to predict whether a close friend will accept a new job offer in another city.
Describe a situation whose outcome you’d like to predict. Be as detailed as possible. What’s the current situation? Who’s involved? What are the possible outcomes? For example, your friend might accept the job offer, decline it, or negotiate to work remotely.
