Season 1 – Supermorning

The first season of Supermorning featured shorter daily posts. Well over 200 of these posts combined to describe a happy, healthy, wealthy, productive, and sustainable life.

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Digital Revolution: Too Much of a Good Thing?

Our final technological revolution is responsible for you being able to read these words. It’s all around us, and impacts our lives in countless ways. 

Much like the agricultural revolution gave abundant calories for our bodies, the digital revolution gives abundant information for our minds. 

And just like the quantity and quality of calories we consume greatly impacts our physical health, so the quantity and quality of information we consume shapes our mental health. 

The value of high quality information

Success requires hard work. But even more importantly, it requires the right work.

This is why the fortunes of people with similar backgrounds can vary so drastically. Several consecutive good or bad choices can make a huge difference over the span of an entire career. 

And the key to separating good and bad choices is access to high quality information. 

Getting the right information at the right time for making a series of great choices can really supercharge life. The right information is out there. It just needs to be found and applied. 

Excessive empty information

Information really is strikingly similar to food.

Healthy amounts of wisdom-rich information is great for you, while excessive low-quality information can cause all manner of problems. 

Unfortunately, our modern world gives ample opportunity to binge on excessive wisdom-free information. Indeed, the amount of zero- or even negative-value content on the internet is astounding. 

And just like empty calories, our primitive minds very easily get addicted to this endorphin-releasing empty information. 

It took decades to achieve decent levels of consumer awareness of the dangers of empty calories. I really hope this process will be faster for empty information. 

In nine days’ time, we’ll dedicate an entire week to this vital topic. 

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Techno-Scientific Revolution: Power and Change

The agricultural revolution gave us abundant food. The industrial revolution gave us abundant stuff. But it was not until the techno-scientific revolution that we truly became the rulers of the world. 

The God species

It’s now commonly accepted that we live in a new geological age called the Anthropocene: a time where human activity is the dominant force on the Earth’s systems. Indeed, we have superseded nature. 

The techno-scientific revolution has given us the power to destroy life on Earth or to turn our planet into a truly sustainable oasis of abundance and diversity. 

It’s still unclear what we’ll do with all this power.

Indeed, given that our primitive instincts remain unchanged after our incredibly rapid rise from common animal to God species, there’s real reason for concern. 

Rapid change

Science and technology are built in layers. Each step of progress is built upon dozens of previous innovations. And each new innovation opens up new possibilities for further progress. 

Over recent decades, this self sustaining spiral of technological innovation was best seen in the rise of several gigantic tech companies. 

The larger these companies become, the more they can spend on research and development (R&D). And the more they spend on R&D, the greater the rate of technological change.  

Time to evolve 

Responsible application of the power of the techno-scientific revolution will require substantial upgrades to our collective mindset. 

Billions will need to learn to not only think of themselves, but of their entire planet. And this evolved mindset needs to be strong enough to really impact consumer and voter choices. 

There are positive signs, but we certainly have a long way to go. We’ll get back to this journey next week. 

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Industrial Revolution: Welcome to the Age of Stuff

The industrial revolution started when we figured out that large mechanized facilities could produce lots of identical items at a low cost. 

This resulted in a tremendous increase in the amount of stuff the average citizen could afford. 

And, as with all our technological revolutions, this one comes with its own set of pros and cons. 

Incredible production growth

Yesterday’s post mentioned how the agricultural revolution drove a 20x population increase over the past four centuries. Well, the industrial revolution create a 100x increase in production over just the last two. 

Think about it… All the value the world produced in the entire year of 1820 can be produced in 3 or 4 days this year! 

This is the power of the industrial revolution. 

The good, the bad and the ugly

This revolution made capitalism a big thing. People could now deploy some capital up front and expect to see large returns from the greatly increased productivity it yielded. 

I wrote a previous post on the consequences of this revolution:

  • The good: Billions lifted out of poverty (still ongoing).
  • The bad: Minimal or even negative impact on health and happiness beyond a certain point. 
  • The ugly: Environmental destruction, social injustice and self-destructive behavior. 

Time to evolve

Our mission in the 21st century is simple: address the bad by stimulating the good and eliminating the ugly. 

As mentioned earlier, a sense of purpose is an excellent antidote to the disappointing absence of happiness from excess consumption. And there are few better purposes than improving other people’s lives. 

The good news is that there are encouraging signs of such a trend starting to develop among younger generations. This trend needs all the encouragement it can get 🙂

We’ll come back to that next week…

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Agricultural Revolution: At the Top of the Food Chain

It should be no surprise that the first major technological revolution catered to one of our most basic needs: food.

Not so long ago, most people were spending almost their entire lives working to put food on the table. Today, most of us spend less than an hour a day earning the money we need to buy food. 

This is the work of the agricultural revolution.  

Population explosion

To really understand the effect of the agricultural revolution, one needs to look no further than human population growth. 

Since the 17th century, when this revolution got started in the West, the number of humans on the planet increased almost by a factor of 20!

There were all sorts of theories that exponential human growth would outstrip food supply, leading to a great catastrophe. 

But that never happened.

Technology managed to keep up with exponential population growth. And today, those of us lucky enough to be born into the top 20% are much more likely to die from too many calories than too few. 

Primitive instincts

If Homo sapiens was in some way an enlightened species, this technology revolution would have been used to increase living standards rather than numbers.  

But, as would be the case for any other animal, our primitive instincts for consumption and procreation quickly devoured the excesses provided by technology. 

As a result, even though technology has given us a truly incredible increase in the amount of available food, there are still 1.9 billion people worldwide going hungry on a regular basis. 

Environmental impact

Agriculture uses huge amounts of land and water and produces lots of environmental pollutants and greenhouse gases. 

Animal products are the primary source of these impacts, despite providing only 18% of global calorie consumption. 

Animal welfare

Low-cost animal products often come from factory farms with terrible conditions for the animals.

Indeed, if we were to count all sentient beings in our quantification of global welfare, the agricultural revolution has caused tremendous global suffering. 

Time to evolve

Humanity has the capacity to reach the higher level of consciousness required to finally master this centuries old technological revolution.

If we do, we can enjoy the tremendous benefits of an abundant and diverse food supply without the huge problems outlined above. 

There are certainly some encouraging signs of growing societal awareness, but this process needs to be accelerated as much as possible. 

We’ll get back to that next week…

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Technology: Humanity’s Double Edged Sword

Biologically, you and I are very similar to our forefathers who lived as simple animals hunting and gathering on the African plains. 

The key difference between now and then is the degree to which we have used technology to manipulate our environment to our benefit. 

Technology has improved our lives in countless ways. We must acknowledge that and be very thankful for it.

But I’m sure you’ll agree that technology also has a dark side. 

Luckily, smart individual choices can allow us to tap all the awesome benefits from technology, while avoiding the problems it creates. 

That is the focus of the fifth chapter of Supermorning. 

Technology revolutions

There are four key technology revolutions that got us to where we are today:

  • Agricultural: Stupendous increases in food production.
  • Industrial: Stupendous increases in the production of stuff. 
  • Techno-scientific: Stupendous increases in rate of change and technological power.
  • Digital: Stupendous increases in the amount of easily accessible information. 

The astute among you will notice the recurring use of “stupendous increases”. That’s what a technological revolution does. It lets us do more.

And not just a little more – a stupefying amount more. 

More is better… up to a point

Both us and our environment have limited capacity. Hence, it’s only logical that stupefying increases only help up to a point. 

This is best captured by the marginal utility curve: the increase in benefit derived from increased use of a technology, good or service. 

At the start, the marginal utility of most technologies is highly positive. But as saturation is approached, marginal utility becomes insignificantly low or even negative. 

Humanity’s problems with technology all stem from our inability to stop our increased use when the marginal utility curve turns negative. 

A journey through the revolutions

To drive this point home, we’ll spend the rest of the week on a little trip through the four technological revolutions listed above. 

See you tomorrow when we see how the agricultural revolution gave us total caloric abundance. 

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Recap: Managing Wealth and Liberty

Wealth – be it tangible assets, intangible assets or personal liberty – is an awesome thing to have. But it doesn’t automatically make life all sunshine and roses.

One of the biggest challenges with wealth is effectively managing all the attractive options it puts at your disposal. Laying out these options was the focus of this week’s posts.

Let’s dive straight into the summary:

The checklist

  1. Carefully prioritize your investments.
    • There are many investment options in terms of tangible assets, intangible assets and personal liberty.
    • It pays to make clear priorities and first invest in those that will best enable others. 
  2. Buy your own time and energy.
    • One of the best things to do with any surplus income is to buy more of your own time and direct it towards your purpose. 
    • Willingly taking a pay-cut in exchange for greater freedom sounds crazy, but it really is awesome 🙂 
  3. Buy other peoples’ time and energy.
    • Any worthwhile purpose will require more skills, time and energy than you can ever have. 
    • There are several interesting ways to set up win-win collaborations for pursuing your purpose. 
  4. Enjoy sharing your wealth.
    • Giving from a position of abundance is one of the best win-win actions out there. 
    • However, you must first attain the position of abundance, otherwise giving can easily backfire. 

So, there you have it. In my experience, these are the best ways to manage wealth for the good of yourself, your loved ones and your society. 

It’s only been about one year since I started putting these ideas into practice. But so far, it’s been an awesome journey 🙂

I’m looking forward to experimenting further over the coming year and delivering deeper insights in next year’s edition of Supermorning Wealth! 

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The Freedom to Help Others

The ability to improve other people’s lives is one of the top perks of being wealthy, whether in terms of tangible assets, intangible assets, personal liberty, or, preferably, all of the above.

As the old saying goes: you cannot help others before you help yourself. 

While one can always find exceptions, I think we can all agree that helping others gets much easier if you get yourself to a good place first.  

Let’s look at some of the best ways wealthy individuals can help other people. 

Money

There are many worthwhile causes out there. In my humble opinion, two of the best are:

People reading this have most likely won big at the lottery of birth. It’s only right to support those who were not so lucky by fighting the vicious cycle of poverty and climate injustice. 

Skills

Freely applying your intangible assets to worthwhile causes is another great way to give back. 

The ideal is if this application of your skills to a truly worthwhile cause turns into your purpose. 

This will often blend with your payed occupation, but there are ways to offer your services to a truly worthwhile cause for a lower price. My sustainability research falls in this category. 

Time

Once you attain true personal liberty, you’ll likely find that you become busier than ever before. But the big difference is that you control your own deadlines. 

In other words, you have the freedom to prioritize other people whenever it’s really needed. 

Of course, you can also dedicate your time to worthwhile causes by volunteering. It helps to give your time to causes where your skills can really make a difference. 

Win-win

Humans have evolved a strong need to help each other. Without this instinct, our species would have died out many millennia ago. 

Building the wealth needed to fulfill this instinctive drive to help others is an excellent avenue to long-term life satisfaction. 

This makes generosity a true win-win. The recipients of your generosity obviously win, and you get rewarded with plenty of feel-good hormones. 

However, this awesome win-win scenario requires you to give from a position of abundance.

If your giving puts you under great pressure or strain, generosity can easily backfire. And this will slow or even reverse your progress towards abundance.

Thus, be sure to patiently build up your personal wealth to a comfortable level, and only then start to share it. 

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Buy Other People’s Time and Energy

Any ambitious purpose in life will require many different skill sets and much more than just your own time and energy. 

Hence, we need to find ways to involve other people with complementary skills in the pursuit of our purpose. 

Today’s post looks at some ways to get this done. 

Always ensure win-win collaboration

Before we get started, I must restate the fundamental ground-rule of any good collaboration: both parties must see a clear benefit. 

If this simple rule is not met, the collaboration will most likely fail. 

Hence, always have this at the very front of your mind when considering purchasing the time and energy of others. 

Spending money on your purpose

The simplest way to buy other peoples’ time is of course simply to pay them for doing something you need done. But this requires you to have the excess income with which to fund such investments. 

Buying other people’s time should simply be viewed as yet another potential avenue for investment.

For instance, if you’re lucky enough to already enjoy almost every aspect of your job, it can be better to use your surplus income to purchase other peoples’ time rather than your own. 

Paying with intangible assets

For those who have diligently invested in intangible assets, it’s possible to exchange things like skills, track record and contacts for valuable services.  

In research circles, for example, you can get students to work on problems of your choosing if they (or rather their supervisors) believe they will learn valuable skills from you. 

It’s also possible to leverage your track record to influence the scope of proposed projects to get funding for others to do work aligned with your purpose. 

I’m sure that similar opportunities are available in other professions. You just need to look for them 🙂

Sharing the rewards

Another great way to gain access to other people’s time is to ensure that they will also benefit greatly from the value you will create together. 

I’ve found this to be a particularly powerful mechanism in academic circles where people have some freedom to pursue common interests. 

Capitalizing on this mechanism requires good knowledge of what others are interested in. Sometimes it also needs a little compromise to sweeten the deal for them. 

The skill of collaboration

Whichever option you choose, the skill of getting others to enthusiastically work towards your purpose is a valuable intangible asset by itself. 

Make sure that your collaborators always win out of any joint venture you propose, preferably even more than yourself.

If they do, they’ll be happy to do it again. And again. And again…

Yep, assembling a team of willing and able collaborators is one of the best investments out there 🙂 

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Buy Your Own Time and Energy

One of the best things about personal liberty is the amount of control it gives you over our most precious resource: time. 

The freedom to proactively direct your own time and energy to a purpose you truly believe in is immensely satisfying. 

Today’s post discusses the practical steps to setting this up. 

How to buy your own time

As discussed at the start this chapter, any good investor will make sure they always have surplus income to invest. Putting this surplus income into tangible assets is the default choice. 

However, you can also choose to buy your own time with your surplus income. 

In practice, this means reducing your responsibilities at work in exchange for a lower salary. 

What, willingly take a pay cut!? Sacrilege!

Yep, for those stuck on the hedonic treadmill, this is a totally ridiculous thought. But there is method behind the madness 😉

Financing your own inspiration

When you put money into the stock market, you’re essentially financing other people to follow their inspiration and purpose. 

Buying your own time simply means that you’re redirecting this money to your own inspiration and purpose. 

If you trust in your purpose to create value for society, this move should make you much more valuable in the long run, increasing your earning capacity. 

And a greater earning capacity allows you to buy more of your own time, creating a beautiful virtuous cycle. 

A life satisfaction bonus

When you buy your own time by giving up some salary in exchange for reduced responsibility, you’ll certainly have some say in which responsibilities you give up. 

This gives you the opportunity to exchange your most unpleasant responsibilities for some additional time of total freedom. 

Such an exchange is guaranteed to strongly increase life satisfaction. 

Earn your freedom

To be safe, I would recommend such a move only after you have accumulated 1-2 years of financial resilience (see previous post). 

And when you reach that goal, only use your excess income to finance your freedom. In other words, don’t go down in salary beyond the point where your reduced salary can still support your lifestyle. 

Then set about proving that you’re a good investment 🙂

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Prioritizing Investments

Following last week’s discussion on the link between wealth and liberty, this week will focus on ways to direct this liberty towards an inspirational purpose. 

Taken together, liberty and purpose may just be the biggest win for yourself and your planet. 

But personal liberty comes with an important challenge: it opens up many more attractive options than you can realistically pursue.

Hence, we’ll start with a post on prioritization.

Enabling investments

The most valuable investments are those that open up other investment channels. 

For example, you’ll need high life efficiency and/or valuable skills to achieve the sizable surplus income needed for serious investments in tangible assets. 

Permanent improvements in health and inspiration offer the most direct route to the long-term productivity needed to build a good track record. 

Sometimes, it’s wise to direct most of your tangible asset investments towards important short-term financial goals that boost your productivity before shifting the balance to long-term financial freedom.

The most lucrative investments at any given moment will change from person to person.

It can therefore pay off to spend some quality time identifying the tangible and/or intangible assets that will give your life the biggest boost. 

Don’t spread yourself too thin

This is the single biggest challenge I’ve encountered in managing my personal liberty.

There’s just so many exciting options, and I instinctively want to pursue all of them. But when I do, progress becomes frustratingly slow, stress increases, and costly mistakes start creeping in. 

A game of chess

Since life is so interesting and complex, the best next investment of your time and resources will always be a moving target. 

Proactively keep your aim on this moving target instead of just getting bounced around by circumstances. 

But there is also a next level: a place where you, like a good chess player, are always thinking several moves ahead. 

Which series of enabling investments will best accelerate progress towards your purpose? In what order should they be made? 

Some regular structured thinking along these lines can give you a lot more return for the amount of effort you put in. 

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