Why Something Like the Elephant’s Paycheck Blueprint is Important

A lot of peo­ple tell me that there’s noth­ing new in my book.

I know they’ve read it, because that’s true.

Other peo­ple tell me that there are lots of dif­fer­ent ways to invest.

Also true (but doesn’t mean they’ve actu­al­ly read my book).

So why is my book impor­tant?

Because of the human ele­ment of invest­ing. The emo­tion­al com­po­nent. It’s not about the tech­nique, but does the tech­nique work with or against human behav­ior. Especially the behav­ior of peo­ple who can’t seem to stick with their plan.

I was read­ing Radical Focus (my new com­pa­ny likes OKRs). A few pas­sages caught my atten­tion and remind­ed me of the mes­sage I’m try­ing to share. About why hav­ing a sim­ple plan, one that moti­vates and makes invest­ing fun, is impor­tant.

You need a process that helps you make sense of the work you need to do, and keeps you on track even when you are tired. The process reminds you what to do, even when you don’t feel like doing it.

That helps you under­stand why you need a blue­print for invest­ing. It is also impor­tant though to have fun. To get coached pos­i­tive­ly. When some­thing is fun or reward­ing (and we real­ize it in the moment) it requires less willpow­er to par­tic­i­pate in.

When peo­ple want to lose weight, they do bet­ter with Weight Watchers than willpow­er. When peo­ple want to get fit, they do bet­ter with per­son­al train­ers than willpow­er. That’s because willpow­er is a finite resource. This was shown in a famous 1996 study by Roy Baumeister, in which sub­jects for­bid­den to eat a bowl of radish­es were able to work twice as long on unsolv­able math prob­lems than those who had been for­bid­den to eat fresh­ly baked choco­late cook­ies. (I also learned that it doesn’t take much willpow­er to skip eat­ing radish­es.) After a long day of not quit­ting your job, killing your cowork­ers or hit­ting Reply All on that email chain, try­ing to turn down a slice of birth­day cake is beyond anyone’s will. You need a process that helps you make sense of the work you need to do, and keeps you on track even when you are tired. The process reminds you what to do, even when you don’t feel like doing it. The orig­i­nal OKR sys­tem was just a way to set smart stretch goals. But the sys­tem around it—commitment, cel­e­bra­tions, check ins—makes sure you con­tin­ue to make progress toward your goals even[…]

Notice the com­ment about cel­e­bra­tions and check-ins. They’re not just coin­ci­den­tal to the invest­ing activ­i­ty. They’re the point about the prac­tice. You should read the book if only for the met­rics you can track that make invest­ing feel reward­ing in the moment, and encour­age the behav­ior by cheer­ing you on with short-term wins along the way to your long term wealth.