The Friday Coffee: A fresh start

Edition #9

It’s been over a year since the world went into lockdown. Today’s article is about what the experience has taught me. I hope it prompts you to reflect on what you’ve learned during this crazy year. Get your Friday morning (almost weekend) cup of coffee ☕️ ready, and enjoy this week’s edition.

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As a departure point, I recognize the hardship Covid has caused to millions. Although my article is focused on the pandemic's positive outcomes, I by no means wish to trivialise its horrors.

A fresh start

At the start of 2020, I suffered from busyness. I worked long hours at a fast pace, and when work was over, I tried to maintain the same pace in my personal life. My calendar was usually fully booked weeks in advance. Non-stop social commitments, exercise, hobbies, holidays, consumption. To feed this lifestyle, I worked harder, and to justify all the hard work, I had to “live” harder. Teetering on the cusp of burnout was a sign that you were doing things right.

Then Covid happened, and the treadmill’s plug got yanked from the wall. I wonder if divine powers saw what was happening and decided to intervene and force humanity to chill the hell out for a minute. Take a sabbatical. “Hit refresh”.

Similar to “where were you on 9/11?”, in many years from now, we’ll recount how, where and with whom we experienced the lockdowns. For each of us, the experience and associated learnings have been unique. For me, the lockdown triggered an opportunity to examine and declutter. Like a spring clean of my life.

This is what I learned.

Memento mori

Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning “remember you must die”. It is an ancient philosophical practice of reflecting on mortality and was followed by the likes of Marcus Aurelius and Socrates. More recently, it was indirectly referred to by Steve Jobs in his famous 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (with over 36m views on YouTube):

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. - Steve Jobs

It sounds trite, but your life is all there is. We know this, but tend to forget it. I’ve been scrutinizing how I spend the hours of each day to assess if they make my life more enjoyable and purposeful. Am I surrounding myself with long term people? Am I enjoying the now, or am I dreaming about a desired future state which may never materialise? Are the activities and people in my day a source or a drain of my energy? Am I angry, anxious or depressed, and if so, what am I doing about it?

If you found out that money was leaking out of your bank account each day and that there was nothing you could do to stop it, you’d panic. But why don’t we think similarly about time, and why are we willing to squander it so cheaply? Time is the currency of life, and it’s finite, making it the single most important asset we have.

Appreciating my mortality is terrifying, but it creates priority and meaning. Ultimately, it’s liberating.

Via negativa

“The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.” - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

In 2010, I backpacked through Africa with my brother. I departed from Park Station in Johannesburg with my rucksack packed to the brim. I was prepared for any situation. I even had a braai grid strapped to my back. But as the journey progressed, I came to realise how all this stuff was weighing me down. The thing with most stuff is that after the flash of pleasure when acquiring it, you’re stuck with the burden of maintaining it or the anxiety of potentially losing it. Bit by bit, I shed items, and by the time we reached Cairo (our final destination), I was carrying less than half the weight. Every item dropped, added to my freedom. That’s what’s so special about backpacking. It teaches you the beauty of less. But then I got absorbed back into the “real world”, and I slowly forgot what I had learned.

In March 2020, my wife and I were visiting South Africa for a week when the lockdowns hit, and we were stuck for 3.5 months with only what we had packed in our suitcases. Barring a few purchases of basic winter clothing, we got by with what we had. Unexpectedly, I was a backpacker again, and it was wonderful. Not only did I not miss most of my possessions back in Amsterdam, but I forgot about most of them. When we arrived home, my cupboards, bursting with clothing and shoes, reminded me of the braai grid on my backpack — deadweight squashing my liberty. My closet was a turkey, ripe for Marie Kondo’s plucking.

But my thinking along these lines has progressed beyond material possessions. We’re wired to think that positive outcomes lie in doing more. But we forget, saying yes to something means saying no to other possibilities. Related to this, is the idea of Via Negativa (acting by subtracting), introduced to me by Nassim Taleb, the author. It reads a bit like a riddle, so read carefully:

"We know a lot more what is wrong than what is right…negative knowledge (what is wrong, what does not work) is more robust to error than positive knowledge (what is right, what works). So knowledge grows by subtraction much more than by addition—given that what we know today might turn out to be wrong but what we know to be wrong cannot turn out to be right, at least not easily." - Nassim Taleb

Essentially, subtracting provides more certainty than adding. So, as an example, if your goal is to get healthy, you’re probably better off cutting bad habits before adding good habits.

This concept is so powerful, it’s the cornerstone of Warren Buffet’s investment philosophy. Rather than thinking of ways to make money, his number one investment rule is: “Never lose money”. His second rule is to remember the first one. It’s echoed by his partner, Charlie Munger: “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”

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So, in a nutshell, I’ve tried to adopt a “less mindset” and straighten my priorities. But it’s not always easy. It’s been a year since the lockdowns began, and the treadmill is plugged back into the wall. I can hear the “beep, beep, beep” as life is notching up the speed again.

But unlike the lessons I forgot after travelling in Africa, I’m going to try my best to remember what the pandemic has taught me.