The future is unpredictable.

One irony of studying history is that we often know the outcome of an event, but have no idea of its cause, because the development of things is always complex and unpredictable. Many things in the world can be described as a slight change that affects the whole body, so you need to keep in mind that:

Predicting the future based on people's behavior rather than specific events. Although we cannot predict what the world will look like in 50 years, it is certain that people will still be plagued by many problems in the same way.

Be daring to imagine. No matter what the world looks like today, everything could change tomorrow, and the cause of the change could also be some seemingly insignificant small things. The development of things is like the compound interest principle of finance. A tiny change at the beginning may lead to huge subsequent developments.

Manage expectations.

As early as 275 years ago, Montesquieu wrote:

"If you wish to be happy, it is easy; but to be happier than other people, it is difficult, for we always believe others to be happier than they are."

The real situation does not have a great impact on people's emotions; what causes the impact is the huge gap between expectations and reality. It can be seen that to live a happy life, managing expectations is so important! Therefore, you need to do the following two points:

Constantly remind yourself that wealth and happiness are an equation, one side is what you have, and the other side is what you expect or need. Both sides of the equation are equally important. Accumulating wealth without controlling expectations will be meaningless, especially since controlling expectations is relatively easy.

Understand the law of expectations. We usually think that in order to improve ourselves and the world, we should strive to make progress. However, most of the time, this is not what we really want. What we really want is to feel the gap between the reality and our expectations. Therefore, the expectation side of the equation is not only very important, but also more controllable than changing the reality.

Good stories have a leverage effect.

In an ideal world, the influence of information should not depend on the narrator's storytelling ability. But in the real world, people tend to get tired, lack patience, and are emotionally unstable. They hope that complex things can be expressed in simple and understandable stories.

There are two things to note about exciting stories:

When discussing complex and difficult-to-understand knowledge, stories are like leverage. Expressing profound thoughts through a story can achieve twice the result with half the effort. Ken Burns once said: "Ordinary stories tell us that one plus one equals two. We all understand this and it makes sense. But a good story tells us that one plus one equals three." This is the leverage effect of the story.

The most convincing stories are things that people deeply believe in or come from their own personal experiences. As poet Ralph Hodgson succinctly put it: "Some things have to be believed to be seen." Even if a story is not so true, if it happens to satisfy people's desires or strengthen their beliefs, it can still be persuasive.

The rule of scale.

A good idea can quickly turn into a bad one once it is overemphasized. Warren Buffett once joked that even if nine women are pregnant at the same time, they cannot have a child after one month. The reason is that this kind of thing cannot be rushed. People often try to get more value out of something valuable, such as a profitable investment or special skill, by asking: "Great! Is there any way to get it faster?" We hope to double our efforts and achieve our goals quickly. Asking such questions is human nature.

If a person's body size is three times that of an average person, you cannot expect their physical ability to be three times that of an average person, as this does not conform to the laws of nature. When a person gets out of the bathtub after taking a shower, the water that runs off their body weighs about half a kilogram, which has almost no effect on the person; but if a mouse gets wet, it will become too heavy to climb, and a wet fly will be too heavy to fly.

"

"

It is clear that the same behavior has completely different effects on animals with different body types.

Each animal has an optimal body type for survival, and changes in body type must correspond to the appropriate form. We can call this concept the "optimal scale", which is a suitable state for things to maintain normal operation. If the scale is expanded or the speed is accelerated, the original matching will be broken. It applies to many things in life.

When a team grows from 4 people to 100 people, 100,000 people, or even 100 million people, people will respond to challenges and fulfill responsibilities in completely different ways.

Growth is a good thing, but being forced to grow, accelerating growth, and artificially intervening in growth often have the opposite effect. Most of the important things in life, whether it is love, career or investment, derive their value from two points: patience and scarcity. Patience means doing things step by step and letting things take their natural course; scarcity means cherishing the unique value that things eventually achieve.

Innovation is difficult to predict and often underestimated.

Facebook was originally a platform for college students to share weekend party photos. In less than 10 years, it has become the most famous social software in the world. All innovations are difficult to predict and easy to underestimate. The entire process from beginning to end is too complicated, and it is almost impossible to infer the direction of things with current tools and perspectives.

At this moment, someone may have invented or discovered something that will ultimately change the future, but we will not know until many years later. People's understanding of new technologies has always been like this.

There is a theory in evolutionary biology called Fisher's Law of Natural Selection. The theory holds that variation is power, and the more diverse a population is, the more likely it is to produce new features that can be selected for evolution. No one knows which feature is useful; this is not the principle of evolution. But if you create many features, useful features - no matter what - will eventually come into play.

People often feel that progress is too slow. In most eras, they feel that no useful inventions have appeared in 10 or 20 years. This is just because an innovative product takes 10 or 20 years to demonstrate its usefulness. Tiny innovations have enormous potential like seeds, which can eventually accumulate earth-shattering power.

In addition, people often underestimate the huge energy produced by the interaction of two small things. Take the laws of nature as an example: It is not a big deal for some cold air to blow from the north, and some warm air to blow from the south might be comfortable, but if the two meet over Missouri, a tornado will occur. This is the "emergence effect", which can generate huge energy.

New technologies are the same. One boring thing plus another boring thing may trigger something that changes the world. If you don't understand the power of exponential growth, you will find it hard to understand this point.

Sticking to long-term thinking is very difficult.

Long-term thinking is easy to advocate but difficult to implement. Most people know that adhering to long-term thinking is the right strategy in any field where the compounding effect exists, whether in investment, career, or interpersonal relationships.

However, saying "I want to make long-term plans" is a bit like standing at the foot of Mount Everest and pointing to the peak, saying "that is where my heart lies". It sounds nice, but the real test is to come.

Adhering to long-term thinking is more difficult than most people imagine. precisely because of this, true long-term thinking is more beneficial than people imagine.

• Don't think that following long-term thinking means you don't need to deal with short-term troubles. Instead, ask yourself: "How can I tolerate endless troubles?"

• Long-term thinking is like a "safety net" with deceptive nature that people mistakenly think they can avoid short-term problems that are painful and difficult to predict. However, the fact is just opposite -- the longer the time span, the more pain and suffering you will experience.

• Just sticking to long-term thinking is not enough. Your partners, colleagues, partners, and friends also need to adhere to long-term thinking.

• Only a few (actually very few) things are suitable as objects of long-term thinking. All other things have a shelf life.

Do not complicate simple things.

There is a strange phenomenon in human behavior: disdain for simple and effective things, and preference for complex and inefficient things.

"In his book 'The Road to Success', John Reed wrote:"

"When you first start studying a field, you feel like there are countless things to remember. Actually, this is not true. What you need to do is recognize the core rules that can govern this field - usually between 3 and 12. What you thought were millions of things you had to remember were just different combinations of core principles."

This is crucial. For example, the most basic things about health are to ensure a sufficient 8-hour sleep, exercise more, eat natural food, and have a moderate diet. But what is the most popular thing? All kinds of nutritional supplements, health tips, and pills.

Why do we pursue lengthy and complex things when the simple and clear ones are available? Because the pursuit of complexity gives people a sense of relief and control, and simplicity is easily mistaken for ignorance. Doing things in a simple way is like taking a leisurely walk, while doing them in a complex way is like running a mental marathon.

Effective empirical rules are not about avoiding complexity, but simplifying the difficult to understand content.

If you give up what is easy and seek what is difficult, if you seek complexity instead of simplicity, you will be counterproductive.

Edited by Jeffrey