Get To Good Enough & Move On

I just read Ramit Sethi’s personal finance book: I Will Teach You To Be Rich. In it, Ramit preaches about the importance of the 85 percent solution. He argues that most of us focus on the wrong things. We get caught in the weeds and fall prey to paralysis by analysis. His finance is the following:

Once your money system is good enough—or 85 percent of the way there—you can get on with your life and go do the things you really want to do.

RAMIT SETHI – I WILL TEACH YOU TO BE RICH

This really resonated with me. I have already written about the importance of focusing on the big rocks. Most of us aren’t passionate about most of the things we have to do. Naval Ravikant says that “the three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse.” I thought I could try to distill a shortlist of time-tested reproducible behaviours that generate 85 percent of the returns in Naval’s big three.

Note that the three buckets (happiness, health, and wealth) are not entirely separate nor exhaustive. It is simply a useful framework. It was “good enough” and I “moved on”.

*** Listen to your body and ask your health professional before trying any of the suggested behaviours in this article.

Happiness

Happiness is the hardest out of Naval’s big three to pin down.

Happiness can be defined in many ways. In psychology, there are two popular conceptions of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic happiness is achieved through experiences of pleasure and enjoyment, while eudaimonic happiness is achieved through experiences of meaning and purpose. Both kinds of happiness are achieved and contribute to overall well-being in different ways.

Cynthia Vinney, 2020 – What’s the Difference Between Eudaimonic and Hedonic Happiness?

Martin Seligman, one of the fathers of positive psychology, developed the PERMA+ Model to build on the traditional view of happiness.

• P – Positive Emotion
• E – Engagement
• R – Positive Relationships
• M – Meaning
• A – Accomplishments/Achievements
• The Plus (+) in PERMA
  • Optimism
  • Physical activity
  • Nutrition
  • Sleep

It is important to note that there are many such models of happiness and human flourishing. Furthermore, many of the happiness models include variables like accomplishments/achievements, physical activity, nutrition, and sleep that overlap with the health and wealth buckets. Lastly, it might be that getting to our baseline happiness level (mine appears to hover around 3.7/5) is more about limiting or eliminating the negative things in our lives than about adding new ingredients to the soup.

Big Three Behaviours

1. Spend quality time with people you care about (minimum three times per week).
   • Meaningful social interactions have been the bedrock of my well-being. Many studies link social relationships with longevity and flourishing. Working from home may have its benefits but seeing people every day may outweigh them. There are tradeoffs everywhere.
2. Take care of someone or something.
   • Live a life of service. Taking care of a pet, kids, elderly, or plants can contribute to most variables in the PERMA model simultaneously. It is somewhat of a cheat code.
3. Live an examined life.
   • I used the Daylio app to track my mood and habits for over 1000 days. There are many ways to practice self-reflection. This can be key in identifying the components of your life that contribute the most to your misery. Tim Feris suggests that we ask ourselves the following two questions
     1. What are the 20 percent of activities or people that are producing 80 percent or more of the results and positive emotional states that I want?
     2. What are the 20 percent of activities, responsibilities, or people that are producing 80 percent or more of the pain, the headache, and the negative emotional states that I would prefer not to have?

Health

Health is easier to quantify than happiness. It is less subjective. The positive effects of health also leak into our happiness levels and wealth status. The big three areas of physical health are sleep, movement, and nutrition.

Big Three Behaviours

1. Get 8+ hours of quality sleep per day.
   • Getting adequate sleep is a game-changer and affects all areas of life. Most of us don’t know we were sleep-deprived until we experience what it’s like to be well-rested.
2. Move daily.
   • Move every day. You don’t need to go to the gym. Choose physical activities that you’ll actually do sustainably. I try to walk every day since it is also a form of self-reflection and relaxation. I also play sports and do fitness classes to get some social interactions at the same time. You can focus initially on getting 10000 steps daily or 150 minutes of exercise per week. However, you’ll eventually want to transcend such artificial metrics and focus on moving because it makes you feel better.
3. Home cook most of your meals and buy a reusable water bottle.
   • Home cooking most of your meals will take care of many nutrition issues (the 85 percent solution). If you’re not sure what to eat, you can listen to Michael Pollan’s advice: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.“
   • The water bottle takes care of hydration. It’s wise to “drink more water and less of everything else.” (James Clear)

Wealth

Money is the easiest of the three to quantify. But money isn’t exactly the same as wealth. Having enough money is also linked with better psychological and physical outcomes. Of course, there are diminishing returns but we can learn to better spend our money to become wealthier, happier, and healthier.

The purpose of money is to allow us to live a better life. Set up a personal finance system that is “good enough” to get you there and get on with your life.

Big Three Behaviours

1. Automate your finances.
   • Take advantage of technology to automate your decision-making and pay yourself first.
   • Eliminate or minimize banking and investing fees. Setting up your money system is a one-time action that is guaranteed to save you thousands of dollars over a lifetime.
2. Save or invest at least 10 percent of your income.
   • This is often considered the golden rule of personal finance. Paying yourself automatically first is a great way to accomplish this. To do this, however, you’ll need to earn more than you spend. Sure you can find ways to cut spending, but I would argue it is often a better long-term strategy to find ways to increase your income. This advice assumes that your spending is somewhat under control in the first place. If not, then the “good enough” solution is to cut back on unproductive expenses.
3. Read daily.
   • It doesn’t need to be reading but investing in yourself tends to produce high returns over the long haul. I have found that getting a Kindle was key to reducing the friction of reading.

Act Now & Revisit

The key to reading articles such as this one is to act on them. You can use a commitment device to lock in your current motivation. Take advantage of the 80/20 Principle and the power of one-time actions.

If you’re already following the suggested guidelines above, then your challenge is to relax. Your challenge is to trust that what your doing is “good enough” to let go of everything else. Use urgency to get to 85% to flow through the rest of your life with ease.

Read This Next

• Pathological Productivity
• Life is a Jar
• Automate Your Finances
• What I Learned from Tracking my Mood for 1000 Days
• My 10-day Vipassana Silent Retreat Experience
• Make Contracts Work for You
• Build Wealth And Get On With Your Life
• What is your Rich Life?
• Atomic Habits – Book Notes
• What is your Investment Goal?
• The Wealthy Barber – Book Notes

Affiliate Links

• Read more – Kindle Paperwhite
• High-interest savings account and zero-fee credit card – Neo
• Invest automatically – Wealthsimple Invest Robo-Advisor
• Build your own portfolio – Wealthsimple Trade
• Save money and make a little – EQ Bank High-Interest Savings Account
• Take effective book notes – Readwise
• I Will Teach You To Be Rich – Ramit Sethi
• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant – Eric Jorgenson
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey
• Atomic Habits – James Clear
• Tao Te Ching – Lao Tzu (Translated by Stephen Mitchell)
• Why We Sleep – Matthew Walker
• Walking – Erling Kagge
• Food Rules – Michael Pollan
• The Wealthy Barber – David Chilton