written by JOHN MARK MINES | DECISION-MAKING, REGRET, TRADE-OFFS
Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.
Dolly Parton
A Bug’s Life
One day in late autumn some ants were gathering grain for winter. The grasshopper, however, was not. Starving, with his fiddle under his arm, he begged for a bite to eat.
“What!” they cried in surprise. “Haven’t you stored anything away for the winter? What were you doing all summer?”
“I was so busy making music,” the grasshopper replied, “that before I knew it the summer was gone.”
The ants shrugged in disgust. “Making music, were you?” they cried. “Very well; now dance!”1
Balancing Your Budget
No tune, from Mozart to Michael Jackson, can stave off starvation. To weather hard times, preparation is key. Best not fiddle about.
Yet life is about more than survival. Winter is but a single season. Is there room for both food and fiddles?
Balance sounds nice, yet extremist caricatures abound. Ants slave away while grasshoppers mess around. Penny-pinching Ebenezer Scrooges contrast sparing-no-expense John Hammonds. The hedonism of the Wolf of Wall Street mocks the strict chastity of Les Misérables’ Javert. In fiction, nothing is in moderation.
These exaggerated extremes personify trade-offs in decision-making. They simplify a wide spectrum into a single choice between fun and frugality. Yet this trade-off occurs daily. Should we spend or save? Enjoy or invest? Splurge or sacrifice?
trade-off /ˈtrādˌôf/
noun: a balance achieved between two desirable but incompatible features.
While this is not an easy question to answer, conventional wisdom clearly has a favorite. Survival requires sacrifice. From winter to parenting to retirement, life overflows with needs. Like the ants, the future belongs to those who prepare for it.
Ancient lessons in sowing and reaping have not lost their potency. Investment in the present produces returns in the future. Money makes money, like children having children. “All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge,” says successful investor Naval Ravikant, “come from compound interest.” The only way to compound is to invest.
Considering conventional wisdom, the ants are clearly wiser than the grasshoppers. Temperance trumps indulgence. Unfortunately, convention wisdom is wrong.
Thank Me Later
Time-tested teachings preach the importance of preparation, discipline, and sacrifice. Solomon liked ants just as much as Aesop. “Go to the ant, you sluggard,” he said. “Consider its ways and be wise! It stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.” Score another in favor of frugality.
Jesus too preached preparation. In his Parable of the Ten Virgins, five were foolishly found wanting. When their guest of honor arrived, their lamps ran out of oil. How embarrassing. For this transgression, they were locked out of the banquet and publicly disowned. Yikes.
Modern teaching followed suit. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey tells his readers to “begin with the end in mind.” He encourages you to imagine your own funeral: who would attend, what they say, and what they remember. He uses this exercise to amplify long-term principles over daily distractions.
To Covey, the moment that matters most is the end. Like an inheritance, every act in the present contributes to a legacy left for future generations. The future is always watching.
Christianity would agree. According to Revelation, all the deeds you’ve ever done are documented for review at the last day. Your resume will determine your eternal destination. Indeed, when it comes to Heaven and Hell, it pays to “begin with the end in mind.”
Hindsight Ain’t 20/20
Unfortunately, the future is uncertain: your funeral could come in a few decades, or a few days. Compound interest takes a long time; to enjoy retirement savings, you must survive long enough to get there. Even Solomon knew that tomorrow is not guaranteed.
Furthermore, the future is shifty. The rubric we use to judge ourselves varies over time. As we mature in wisdom and stature, so do our principles. Beginning with the end in mind requires a good amount of guesswork.
Memory, too, is tricky. When we look back at our lives, the mind isn’t an objective observer. Instead, the story is polluted by various biases and fallacies. When it comes to memory, we have more to worry about than just rose-colored glasses.
Daniel Kahneman devised an experiment to show just how misleading hindsight can be. He asked subjects to place their hands in really cold water for 60 seconds, and again for 90 seconds. This time, though, the water was one degree warmer for the last 30 seconds. Afterward, they were asked which process they’d rather repeat.
Objectively, the subjects should choose the 60-second option. But they didn’t. They’d rather be cold for longer than shorter. The slight relief during the last 30 seconds was what they remembered most. Hindsight led them astray.
The same fallacy applies to life itself. Psychologist Ed Diener surveyed subjects about the desirability of the life of a very happy fictional woman named Jennifer. She had a good life full of friends, family, and travel, but unfortunately died at age 30.
Subjects rated her life as highly desirable. Then, Deiner added five additional years to Jennifer’s fictional life. These years, though, she was only “slightly happy.” Surprisingly, according to the surveys, these extra years significantly decreased the overall desirability of her life.
This research suggests a short life full of fun is more desirable than a long one full of toil. We’d rather be grasshoppers than ants. Billy Joel had it right: only the good die young.
Winter is Coming
The future is unknown, and not entirely in our control. From Aesop to Covey, conventional wisdom manages this uncontrollability through preparation and projection. The price, though, is the present.
This fixation inhibits growth. Change occurs in the present, not the future. The worst outcome is to toil without progress, to outwardly decay and inwardly stagnate until, eventually, winter wins.
Danger is the crucible of progress. Taking a chance means taking responsibility for future failures. It means facing regret. In a world of possibility, there is no way to know for sure, which is precisely the point.
Fortune favors the bold. America was founded by millions of people who crossed oceans without retirement savings. The world’s most valuable companies, from Tesla to Netflix to Apple, kissed bankruptcy on the path to success. Preparation is important but so is daring.
Modern life wasn’t crafted by those who kept their nose to the grindstone. It was made by those who saw the forest for the trees. To them, the future wasn’t something to guard against, but something to strive for.
Don’t sacrifice the present for the specter of the future. In the words of Ebenezer Scrooge, those shadows “May be,” not “Will be.” Tomorrow is still unwritten. So today, feel free to fiddle about. Buy a roasted goose. Take a chance. Who knows, in the end, you might be glad you did.
