How to lose time and money
This post is a translation of Paul Graham's essay " How to lose time and money ".
When we sold our startup in 1998, I suddenly became rich. I had to think about how not to lose this wealth. I knew that it was possible to turn from a rich person into a poor one, just like from a poor person into a rich one. But while I spent several years learning the path from poverty to wealth, I knew practically nothing about the path from wealth to poverty. Now I had to learn this in order to avoid it.
I began to pay attention to how states are lost. If you asked me how rich people become poor when I was a child, I would say that they spend all their money. This is what we are shown in films and books, because it is the most vivid way. But in fact, the greatest amount of wealth is lost, not because of excessive spending, but because of unsuccessful investments.
It is difficult to spend money without noticing it. The average person is difficult to pull more than a few tens of thousands of dollars, and not to think: "I spend a lot." At the same time, if you start trading in derivative securities, you can lose a million dollars (substitute your figure) without blinking an eye.
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For most people, spending on luxury goods signals danger, while investments do not. Luxury goods indicate self-indulgence. And if you did not inherit this money and did not win it in the lottery, you already know for sure that self-indulgence can cause problems. Investments do not cause this signal. You do not spend this money - you just transfer it from one asset to another. That is why people who want to sell you an expensive item say: "This is an investment."
The solution to this problem is to develop a new signal. This is not an easy task, because the fear that prevents you from spending too much is so fundamental that it may be in our genes, while the fear of unsuccessful investments requires training, and sometimes it simply contradicts intuition.
A few days ago, I realized that the same rule can be applied to time. The most dangerous way to waste time is not idleness, but doing unnecessary work. When you have fun, you know that you are indulging your desires. The signal starts very quickly. If I woke up one morning, sat down on the sofa and watched TV all day, I would feel that something was going wrong. Even the thought of it makes me grimace. I would feel ill at ease if I watched TV for 2 hours, not to mention a whole day.
At the same time, I had days that I could just as well spend in front of the TV. If I asked myself what I did that day, the answer would be - nothing. I feel bad on such days, but still not as if I had spent the day lying on the couch in front of the TV. If I had spent all day in front of the TV, I would have thought that I was dying. But the same danger signal does not start in those days when I do nothing, because I do what seems to be a real job. Parsing mail, for example. You do it sitting at your desk. This is not entertainment. So it seems to work.
Over time, as with money, avoiding pleasure is no longer enough to protect oneself. Perhaps it worked in pre-industrial society. Nature and nurture force us to avoid indulging our desires. But the world has become more complex: now the most dangerous trap is the behavior that passes through our alarm signals, because it seems like a virtue. And the most offensive is that it is not even entertainment.
When we sold our startup in 1998, I suddenly became rich. I had to think about how not to lose this wealth. I knew that it was possible to turn from a rich person into a poor one, just like from a poor person into a rich one. But while I spent several years learning the path from poverty to wealth, I knew practically nothing about the path from wealth to poverty. Now I had to learn this in order to avoid it.
I began to pay attention to how states are lost. If you asked me how rich people become poor when I was a child, I would say that they spend all their money. This is what we are shown in films and books, because it is the most vivid way. But in fact, the greatest amount of wealth is lost, not because of excessive spending, but because of unsuccessful investments.
It is difficult to spend money without noticing it. The average person is difficult to pull more than a few tens of thousands of dollars, and not to think: "I spend a lot." At the same time, if you start trading in derivative securities, you can lose a million dollars (substitute your figure) without blinking an eye.
')
For most people, spending on luxury goods signals danger, while investments do not. Luxury goods indicate self-indulgence. And if you did not inherit this money and did not win it in the lottery, you already know for sure that self-indulgence can cause problems. Investments do not cause this signal. You do not spend this money - you just transfer it from one asset to another. That is why people who want to sell you an expensive item say: "This is an investment."
The solution to this problem is to develop a new signal. This is not an easy task, because the fear that prevents you from spending too much is so fundamental that it may be in our genes, while the fear of unsuccessful investments requires training, and sometimes it simply contradicts intuition.
A few days ago, I realized that the same rule can be applied to time. The most dangerous way to waste time is not idleness, but doing unnecessary work. When you have fun, you know that you are indulging your desires. The signal starts very quickly. If I woke up one morning, sat down on the sofa and watched TV all day, I would feel that something was going wrong. Even the thought of it makes me grimace. I would feel ill at ease if I watched TV for 2 hours, not to mention a whole day.
At the same time, I had days that I could just as well spend in front of the TV. If I asked myself what I did that day, the answer would be - nothing. I feel bad on such days, but still not as if I had spent the day lying on the couch in front of the TV. If I had spent all day in front of the TV, I would have thought that I was dying. But the same danger signal does not start in those days when I do nothing, because I do what seems to be a real job. Parsing mail, for example. You do it sitting at your desk. This is not entertainment. So it seems to work.
Over time, as with money, avoiding pleasure is no longer enough to protect oneself. Perhaps it worked in pre-industrial society. Nature and nurture force us to avoid indulging our desires. But the world has become more complex: now the most dangerous trap is the behavior that passes through our alarm signals, because it seems like a virtue. And the most offensive is that it is not even entertainment.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/99330/
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