Mental Model #1: Destination Analysis
In his Stanford Commencement speech 2005, Steve Jobs read a quote, “if you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right”. It made him looking at the mirror in every morning, asking, “if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
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Years later, I read a best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. “Begin with the end in mind”, the most stick habit in my mind, is the second habit which I think every people would agree on. I mean, everyone should have a goal in their mind first, even before they start doing it, right?
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In Richer, Wiser, Happier, the book by William Green that tells a story about how Nick Sleep and Qais Zakaria ran a Nomad Investment Partnership – one of the best partnerships, with relatively high return, Nick has a similar approach: Destination Analysis. In every companies he invested in, he always identifies what is the destination of the founders and executives. From there, they know what really matters, and based on what are they doing, they assesses whether the company spend time only on it.
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One day I asked a random person, “what would you do if you only have 7 days to live?”. They replied, “I will spend all my time with my most loved ones. Family.”
Probably other stereotype answer would be, “I will go traveling around the world, spend all my money, get drunk and have fun. You only live once, brother”.
These people just inspire me to connect the dots that I encountered earlier in my life. Why these people don’t do exactly what they usually do? If Mr. Jobs is right about death as a useful intellectual concept, or Mr. Covey is right about habits of highly effective people. Then, does it mean these random people are not effective?
Based on Mr. Nick approach, are they considered as bad investments?
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In his interview with Joe Rogan, Elon musk was asked, “what’s a dream house for you? Is it like tony stark type?”
Musk initially replied, “yeah, definitely”, but then, he added with something that satisfies Mr. Jobs, Mr. Covey and Mr. Sleep principles. “does it really make sense to spend time designing and building a house or should I be allocating to achieve my goals? I should probably do the latter”
If our life expectation is only 45 more years to live, after deducting it for sleeping, eating, praying, commuting, and entertainment, then our productive time is probably only somewhere around 22.5 years. We can do a lot, even if your time is only hours. But, as Mr. Musk implied, if some “secondary” work keep bothering, it can drain our energy, or even dragging us farther from the ideal end.
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“Every time I spend something that are not aligned with my goals for too many hours or days in a row, I know I need to change something.”