In this podcast, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner shares his latest volume of mental tips, tricks, and life hacks with seven unique strategies to make life smoother, smarter, and a bit more joyful. From the Hemingway Bridge to transforming “FAILURE” into an unexpected love message, get ready for a dose of elegance, insight, and a little Rule Breaker flair.
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This video was recorded on Nov. 06, 2024
David Gardner: Have you ever spoken to an audience, and then it’s time for Q&A, as you generously invite questions, and no one raises their hand. How’d that feel? Are you a sports fan? Well, I am, too. Do you watch a lot of sports on TV? I do, too. Do you enjoy doing so with family and friends, the more the merrier? Excellent. I have an obvious suggestion most people don’t put into play that can make your every sports gathering feel a little more connected.
Many investors come up with a thesis and buy a stock. Two really good things to do. But what’s a third thing that most of them do not do that would make everything easier going forward? Well, it’s time for the 10th episode in one of my favorite recurring series on Rule Breaker Investing. That’s Mental, Tips, Tricks and Life Hacks Volume 10. This week, only on Rule Breaker Investing.
Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. A delight to have you joining with me this week. We’re going to have some fun together. Let’s get smarter, shall we? It’s the latest. It’s number 10 in our historical running series of Metal, Tips, Tricks and Life Hacks. The series started with Volume 1 on June 15th of 2016. The most recent was Valentine’s Day of this year, February 14th, 2024, and I counted them up.
In the history of this recurring episodic series, I’ve now shared 67 mental tips, tricks and life hacks over nine previous episodes with no repeats. If you find your curiosity sparked by anything I share with you this week, and this series seems like you’re jam, well, then good news. Just google Rule Breaker Investing Mental Tips, and you will find all 67 previous tips in addition to the seven new ones I get to share with you this week. Now, before we get started, let me ask. Are these earth shattering life improving unforgettable tips? Absolutely not. Maybe, but these are hacks. A lot of life hacks. This series is designed to make life more elegant, fun, and navigable. I’m coaching you very explicitly here. Like any good life coach might do, aiming, most of all, for your success. These are things that have worked for me that I hope work for you too. They can be quite small, by the way, like in Volume 3 from March 2017, when I suggested you stop taking elevators.
As most of the time, you’ll get where you want to go quicker if you take the steps and you’ll get more healthy steps in if you stop taking elevators. Now, obviously, if you have luggage or a huge climb, feel free to take the elevator. Our best-selling author Dan Pink’s wine taste test, which I shared with you on Valentine’s Day of this year, a taste test experience that I describe in detail and that I completely recommend to anyone who wants to spice up create some hilarity at a future social gathering. All that and 64 more are in our past, but that was then, this is now. Let’s get started with mental, tip, trick or life hack number 1.
Yeah, I’d say this one’s a trick. In his book “Building A Second Brain,” which was my Book of the Year for the year 2022, author Tiago Forte shares a little bit about Ernest Hemingway’s productivity, creativity, trick. Tiago begins by saying that Hemingway would always end a writing session only when he knew what came next in the story. Instead of exhausting every last idea and bit of energy, he would stop when the next plot point became clear. This meant that the next time he sat down to work on his story, he knew exactly where to start. He built himself a bridge to the next day using today’s energy and momentum Tiago writes to fuel tomorrow’s writing. Our author calls it the Hemingway Bridge, and that is mental, tip, trick or life hack number one. It’s a trick, the Hemingway Bridge, a wonderful trick to enable your next session.
I many times, as a writer and as a stock picker, I often think I need to finish it all right now. I need to be able to clear the decks and get everything out of my head now. But the problem with that, especially if you’re writing something longer, is you start the next day without any real clue what to do. Some people call it writer’s block. You end up sitting there trying to figure out how you should start. So the Hemingway Bridge is a wonderful aid against confusion, ambiguity, lack of productivity. I’ve used this in many ways over the last couple of years. I’ll give a really silly example. I love games. Anybody who listens to this podcast knows that about me.
I love video games, one form of game. I have many, many video games in my house, and I’ve played many over the years, and probably my greatest fault as a gamer is I fall in love with big long AAA games that take 40-80 hours to complete and I play about 25 of them, 25 hours of a game. Then another game comes out Shiny, Squirrel, and I go and buy that other game and now I have two games, and I haven’t finished the first, and I dive into the second, and I decide I’m going to get all the way through it. But then somewhere in the middle of that game, as another game comes out, I find I’m at the end of a chapter, or maybe I’ve fulfilled a quest, and I have this sense of completion, but that is enabling me to continue to have this problem of not finishing games because mentally, I’ve got into a place where I think I’m kind of finished for now.
Then as it turns out, even though I’m only on Chapter 5 of 8, I never come back to the game. So as one example, you can Hemingway bridge yourself if you’re a fellow video gamer by not finishing that last quest or that last task or goal on your mobile phone or your PlayStation 5, you can just move right up to the point where it would be so exciting to click “Done” or hear the next conversation in the story, and you stop, you save it right there so that you are indeed excited to come back with your Hemingway bridge the next day and continue that game. Maybe in my case, maybe, yeah, actually start finishing some of your games.
There’s a great question that’s asked in the book a more beautiful question by Warren Berger, past guest numerous times on this podcast. Certainly a friend and author that I hope you’ve gotten to know through this podcast if you hadn’t already his wonderful books. One of the beautiful questions he writes about is this one. It’s a productivity enabling question, and it speaks to the Hemingway Bridge. Here’s that beautiful question Warren asks. “What is the one thing I can do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary?”
I’m going to say that question again because I want you to let it sit with you for a little while and realize it’s one of the more powerful questions you can ask, even on a daily basis. What is the one thing I can do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? To close up trick number 1, the Hemingway Bridge, a great answer is the Hemingway Bridge is developing a habit of not quite finishing things so that you’re ready to get right back into it when you come back to work. That is at least one of the things you could do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary. It sure has for me. Onto mental, tip, trick or life hack Number 2.
This one is a life hack, and this is for investors. I call it my five and three. In fact, at the top of this week’s show, I said that investors do two good things. We come up with a thesis and we buy a stock. Those are two good things. But there’s a third thing we could be doing, especially if we’re serious about this, serious about improve about boosting our portfolio games and beating the market, there’s a third thing most people don’t do, and I’m about to share it with you. Now, if you’re a long time Motley Fool Rule Breakers and/or Motley Fool Stock Advisor member, you may recognize what I’m about to say, but this was a feature that we used in Motley Fool Rule Breakers & Stock Advisor two services I helped oversee for 19 and 17 years respectively. So 36 combined years of stock picking.
This was so helpful, my five and three framework. It’s a concept that anybody can use, whether you’re a subscriber to the Motley Fool or not. It’s the way we form up our view of a stock. It’s how we summarize the investment case for a stock. The five stands for five future events that, if they go well, start to prove out our thesis and the three stands for three potential future events that if they happen, start to show that things aren’t working out in the way we thought they would be in our thesis. Think of these as flags. The five or five green flags that we’re looking for, the three or three red flags we’re hoping not to see. Now, the reason we came up with this framework initially is that we wanted to give our members a quick study, a quick bulleted summary of why we like a stock and what we’re looking for for that stock. A quick way to come back.
Maybe you read our initial report, and then you come back some weeks or months later, and you’re like, what is the hypothesis, the thesis for this stock, and what are we looking for? I intentionally wanted to focus you on what’s going to happen next, and I think that’s the real key to the five and three. It’s not looking backwards at the reasons that we liked the company two years before we recommended it. That can count two, but the five and three very specifically focuses us on what’s going to happen in future. That next quarter’s earnings report or next year’s product launch, and the better you and I can articulate ahead of time what we’re hoping to see and in a premortem like way, what we’re also hoping not to see, the better off we’re going to be as investors.
Again, it’s great to come up with a thesis and even better to buy a stock and hold it over time. But the third step that many of us don’t perform that is so helpful to your growth as an investor, is to set down some specific things in future you’re hoping to see and hoping not to see to let yourself be guided by that. Now, the final question you might be asking is, Well, why five and three? Why not three and five or four and four or 12 and two? Well, in general, keep in mind, we’re researching stocks that we want to like. We’re looking to buy things. Naturally, as I thought about what stock I wanted to recommend next, I’m looking for the more positive things. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t want to recommend the stock at all.
Looking for what is positive, which by the way, works really well in life, not just in investment research, looking for what will work well made a lot of sense to me as a stock picker. But I also do think it’s important to have those three red flags in your mind as an investor at all times. Some investors only have the green flags. They don’t have any red flags to know what could go wrong and what to be looking for, that might be an early indicator or something not working out for that stock is very helpful. I think you should always have more green flags than red flags if you’re serious about becoming part owner of a company with its stock. Let’s just summarize the benefits of the five and three really quickly by saying, first of all, it does provide you if you take the time to do it. It gives you a quick shorthand of your thesis and what you’re looking for going forward. Then second, when that company does come out with its next quarter’s earnings report or the quarters going forward, you now have something to focus on beyond just whether they meet or beat Wall Street expectations.
You’re actually looking at the guts of the business and seeing what happened and whether your expectations, your thesis is coming true or not. It makes you look a little bit deeper than just that day’s number. Finally, if you actually take the time to record this, if you hold on to it in your second brain, I use Evernote. Many people use other Notes apps. Save your five and three and update them from time to time, you will have a running record of your thinking for that particular stock. I don’t think it’s necessary to do a five and three for every stock, but for any serious holding for any stock that would be 5% or more of your portfolio, I highly recommend the five and three, number 2 this week, a life hack. Onto number 3. Well, we started with a trick. We then went to a life hack. Numbers 3 and 4 are both mental tips.
Let’s go with mental tip here, Number 3. A little bit of storytelling. What are my basic approaches to any speech or presentation where I’m in attendance. I’m in the audience is to constantly be forming, as you sit there and listen, constantly be forming the most interesting question, the most beautiful question. You can think of during that person’s talk. Because inevitably in many cases, I’m thinking of corporate conferences, off sites, all kinds of gatherings of people where there’s a Q&A after. Inevitably, with that Q&A after there will be that call for questions. In my experience, the majority of the time, would you agree with this, as well? People are pretty sheepish and no one really raises their hand.
Except me, I always do. I would say at least 70% of the time in such situations, I actually get off the first question and right away because I’m all ready. The key is, you don’t even have to be a great listener. I’m not sure I am, but you have to listen hard enough and think hard enough to come up with an engaging question, one that interests you, that would likely interest the rest of the audience. You’ve been thinking about it for the last 15 or 30 minutes. You’re already with your hand up right away getting in your good question. Now, there are several good things going on when you act on Number 3 here, mental tip, which I’ll call always be ready with a question.
The first is that if you do this, you always get your question in there and you get it answered. You never put yourself in the position of competing with, let’s say, seven other hands up, which typically happens over the course of a Q&A. By the end, often there are too many hands up and time runs out. When you put your hand up first, human nature will decree that in the vast majority of instances, you will be the only person with their hand right up. So you’re going to get your question answered. That’s good thing number 1. Good thing number 2, speakers particularly appreciate first question.
Now, I realize a lot of people fear public speaking. I know I have a lot of listeners who don’t want to do any public speaking, and I’m also speaking to some of you who love to speak in public or simply have to because of positions of responsibility. If you’ve been that speaker and you’ve given a talk and you open it up for Q&A, as I’ve done, in a few hundred speeches over the course of the last 30 years, when that Q&A begins, it is slightly stressful to see no hands go up.
Maybe you’re put in the position of asking or even begging the audience somewhat awkwardly as to whether they’re sure that no one has a question? Well, when you put up your hand right away in the audience, you are helping the speaker, and that is a gift. That is good thing. Number 2, when you’re always ready with a question. Number 3, the speaker will notice you and the speaker will remember you. Depending on the context, this can be very useful. For example, if you are hoping to meet the speaker or in some way influence him or her, you really stand out as the person who asked a question, the person who asked first question. Again, I know this from experience being on the other side of the podium, I can fairly easily remember and pick out afterward from the sea of faces, those few who took the time to ask me a question. On a side note, when you’re always ready with a question in the audience, you’re effectively introducing yourself in some ways to the audience, as well. If you lace your question with a little humor, you can make a very positive impression.
In some contexts, that’s really helpful too. The last good thing I want to say about always being ready with a question is, if the presentation or speech is an event where different people are taking different sides or in which you’d like to be influential for one viewpoint, winning out. You actually have a subtle opportunity to set the Q&A in motion down a specific route thanks to asking the initial question. Now, this isn’t always the case, but if you ask an interesting and good question that’s well received and unlock some insight, often additional questions later on will hearken back to your question, so you have an opportunity to set or at least influence in some senses, the agenda.
There you go several good reasons. In future, when you find yourself in a gathering and you know a Q&A is coming, spend the time, put in the mental energy, mental tip number 3 here to always be ready with a question. Your hand up right away. It is a gift to the speaker, the rest of the audience, and to yourself. Onto mental tip trick or life hack number 4. This one also a mental tip, although a trick, too. I found myself in a gathering where somebody was giving a talk a few years ago, and there was a black board behind that person, and that person had written in big block capital letters the word failure, F-A-I-L-U-R-E. That was the only thing on the black board behind her.
As I looked at that word, of course, she was giving a talk and speaking to failure, which is why it was on the black board. But as I looked at that word, this is a mental tip. This is also, though, a trick. Because I love to play with language, I started to realize there’s something you can do with the letters of the word failure. On one of these podcasts, years ago, I mentioned that, and I know some of you are out there. We’re a real minority, but I know I’m speaking to some people who do this, too. Whenever I’m driving around on the highway or in town, I find myself looking at people’s license plates and trying to puzzle out not just what their personality plate, a phrase I prefer over a vanity plate, because I think plates that say something have personality and are fun, and we’re in a better world when we have personality plates. But when people have numbers, I start calculating the numbers of their plates. I look for numerical relationships like, oh, it goes 3, 6, 1, 8, because 3*6 is 18, so that makes sense.
The person didn’t intend it, but I’m just sitting there. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a weapon against boredom. But I’m doing calculations to find numerical relationships in other people’s license plates. I realize I’m way off topic here. But my point is, I guess, I really like to scrutinize numbers and letters. There I was in that room. I think it was a classroom, and I was looking at the word failure, and I started to play with it in this way. If you take the first letter of the word failure, that’s the letter F, go from the first to the last. F, at the end of failure is E, and then go back again to what’s left on the first and go back again to what’s left on the last. If you’re with me here, we’re going from failure. We’re going F, then over to E, and then back to A at the start and then back to R on the other side, and if you’re spelling along with me, you realize we just spelled the word fear. F on the front of failure, E on the back, then back to the A, then back to the R.
Maybe I was bored during this talk, but I started to realize, that’s interesting because a lot of people talk about the fear of failure or how much we fear failing, and certainly, as an investor, I’m aware that so many of us are wired biologically to believe that the pain of loss is three times the joy of gain. That’s been proven through behavioral economics. This is hard wired into our biology. I’ve often talked about this on Rule Breaker investing. It’s very important, dear listener, especially if you’re new to Rule Breaker investing to realize that most of us are trying to protect against the downside far more than we get excited about the upside, and you might still be excited about the upside, but a lot of people are protecting the downside, and it really hurts.
If you have one stock drop, it often takes three stocks to go up to bring you back to even psychologically. This is true of our fellow human beings. But if you’re playing the failure game here with me and you’re reading the letters very carefully, if we’ve taken out fear from failure, if we take out the F, the E, the A, and the R, what are you left with? Well, it’s right there in the middle. It’s ILU. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I see ILU, the first thing that comes to mind for me is, I love you? What is the opposite of fear, which we’ve just gotten rid of by taking the letters away? Well, I believe an opposite of fear is love.
When you cast away fear, when you take F-E-A-R out of failure, you’re left with I-L-U. If you believe in God as I do that God is love and even if you don’t, but you’re still trying to be the best version of yourself and you recognize the universal inexplicable, we might even say all powerful force of love, then I think you have to appreciate with me as we gaze at the word failure one more time on a chalkboard that you can systematically kick out fear, and all that’s left is a beautiful message for you and that you can share with others, especially, by the way, with kids who love to play letter and word games. Kids, who, by the way, are often afraid of failure. There you go.
Mental tip trick or life hack number 4, a mental tip, though, a trick, too, failure minus fear equals I-L-U. Onto mental tip trick or Life hack number 5, we’ll call this one a life hack. I mentioned at the top, I love to watch sports on TV with family and friends, and I do something because I was taught this by my dad. I grew up in an era where initially television sets had bunny ear antennas, and you had to get up off the couch or your chair and walk over and turn the analog channel dial. Just before the remote control came into our society so at the age of 58, some of you might be there with me. You remember a time even before remotes, but once the remote control showed up and we were growing up as kids, my dad did something very simple, which I’ve done. I don’t do it every time. It doesn’t always make sense, but, man, if it doesn’t have an effect, a good one over time, it’s as simple as this, my friends. Just mute the TV during commercials. You have family and friends over for that NFL game this coming weekend.
Everybody’s having fun. In my experience, having been to some of these gatherings, typically, the host is leaving the commercials on the whole time people are trying to have conversation or other interaction outside of the game because we’ve just gone to commercial, and the person leaves the loud TV or home theater on during the commercials so you’re blasting the rest of the family with ads and especially the kids. You are allowing the power of commercialism in your household and it became automatic in my house, anyway, as our kids grew up for me, just as my dad did to mute the television during ads. I debated whether or not to even include this one in this podcast because to me it seems so obvious, and I realize, by the way, sometimes ads can be fun, and we don’t do this during the Super Bowl, where part of the point is to watch the ads. But even though this seems fairly obvious to me, I’ve realized sometimes in life, it isn’t obvious to everybody else, and so sometimes it’s worth saying something, even if it’s obvious to you because it may well not be obvious to most other people, so I may have helped you with this one, or maybe you’re like, Dave, is that the best you could bring here for number five this week, and my answer is, yes, that is the best I can bring.
I could also, by the way, have regaled you with the huge benefits to sports fans of digital video recording technology these days, I started with Tivo. These days, it’s baked into most cable services, and of course, I make a big point of recording most of the games that I watch, typically, starting 30 minutes into the game so that I can skip all of the ads, not even having to mute.
But still, if the game is about two hours and you start about 30 minutes late and you skip the ads all the way through, you’re right there watching live near the end, which is very helpful if you have friends or family that might start texting you about the ends of games. It’s very helpful to be watching that part live, but you can skip a lot of ads without ever muting your TV. Yes, that’s another fairly obvious life hack here in the year 2024, but I thought I’d just say something. On to number 6, and this one is a metal tip trick or life hack number six is a trick, and this one’s from the world of fundraising. Now, fundraising is not my world. Once we started The Motley Fool Foundation a few years ago, I found myself newly in the position of occasionally asking people for money. I started to learn a little bit more about this world, but I am certainly still a neophyte.
Those of you who do work in the world of fundraising, this aphorism is probably commonplace. But I think most of us don’t work in the world of fundraising. When I first heard this, it was an eye opener for me and it’s a trick. I think it’s effective if you’re asking for money. Here it is the aphorism. If you ask someone for money, you will get their advice. If you ask someone for advice, you may well get some of their money. Say that again, really quickly. Ask for money, you get advice. Ask for advice, you might get money. This dynamic is very true. Why does it work for fundraisers? Well, when you know someone is a development officer or you’re going out to lunch, they’re taking you out to lunch to update you on the school that you have supported in the past or the organization that you’re funding or maybe interested in fund often what they do if they’re good is they want to hear what you think of their updates and what they’re doing.
A huge mistake for them would be to lead off right away and say, obviously, we would love to have your donation again. I see you gave this much last year. We’re hoping you could nudge that up 5% this year and go right for the jugular. Most good fundraisers, instead, socialize. We’re all social creatures. They spend time to ask you, and this is not cynical. If they’re good at it, this is earnest and authentic, and effective. They spend time building relationship with you to find out whether you have advice for them and/or their organization. It turns out, if you start to share that, you feel connected with that person, you feel as if they’re listening, especially if they’re actually going to act on what they’re hearing, you are naturally much more predisposed to financially support that organization than, of course, if they had done the opposite. For those of you in fundraising, you probably already knew this.
For those younger people who might one day be in fundraising, this is helpful to know if you didn’t already. But also, as we close this one out number six, I’m also speaking to everybody, like you and me, who are on the receiving end of pitches, and this is a little bit of forewarned is forearmed. Realize that sometimes development officers, especially people who are good at what they do might very intentionally seek out your advice and just realize the unfolding dynamic that is probably their intention, and if you notice it ahead of time, you can protect yourself a little bit more, especially if you’re trying not to money. We’re not always trying to support everything, obviously.
Because we can’t. We have to choose this one over that one, so I think not only is this good advice for those raising money, I think it’s also very good for those on the receiving end to understand this dynamic. There you go, mental tip trick or life hack number six. If you ask for advice, you have a better chance of getting money. Now on to our last one this week number 7. It’s a life hack. ChatGPT, your music streaming services, your digital music platforms, ChatGPT a playlist to add more fun and meaning to your life. These days, many of us have a music streaming platform of choice, Spotify obviously a very prominent one.
I include Pandora because I’m a long term user of Pandora, and once you start with one of these platforms, you tend not to bounce to another one. You might love Apple music. Some people love Amazon music. The list goes on of these services. For me, I use Pandora because that’s what I’ve used, creating unique channels for family members, friends, and occasions over the course of about 20 years now. Again, that’s my platform of choice, but this works just as well for Spotify or others, and here’s the idea. I started to figure out about 10 years ago. One of the things I love to do as a gamer is I love to have immersive music when I have friends over to play a game with me, music that would fit in with that particular game. A quick example. Terraforming Mars is one of the best games that have come out in the last 10 years. A lot of people who are serious board gamers know this game. Most of the world is not a serious board gamer. Most people listening to me probably right now have never heard of the game Terraforming Mars. I’ve played it dozens of times. It is a fantastic deep strategy game.
Takes an hour to learn, three to play. It has multiple expansions. I own them all. But when I have friends over to play Terraforming Mars, overhead, in my music speakers in my game room, I want something that feels thematic. In the past, I would try to imagine what would be something that would work, something maybe like a spa like spacey music that’s all instrumental that could work or maybe it’s more like action vibe, like I don’t know, the halo series of video games has great space action music.
Whatever I chose, I didn’t really know enough tracks or artists to come up with a good station, and when ChatGPT showed up about a year and a half ago in my life, I started to realize, oh, my gosh, for every board game that I play, that I want to have immersive themed music with it, I can simply ask ChatGPT to generate me a short list of tracks that could stand up for me, a Pandora station that would perfectly fit Terraforming Mars, and so, indeed, on my streaming music platform of choice, I now have dozens and dozens of unique themed channels themed specifically to a single board game that I like to play and replay, and you can extend that a little bit further. I’m in the process of writing my final stock market book. I’ve lightly referenced this here and there. It won’t be out for a while, but I’m in the process of writing it, and just before I put pen to paper, I realized, you know what else I can do with ChatGPT?
I can have it suggest a series of tracks that I can thumb up and thumb down and improve over time with Pandora that would perfectly fit the theme of the book that I’m writing, that would be a perfect writing companion for me as I go through the many hours of writing about a 200 page book, my final stock market book. I could have the perfect music to go along with it, and I didn’t know ahead of time what the artists or tracks might be. But simply describing for ChatGPT, the vibe I was shooting for, I’ve ended up with a delightful channel that attends my every writing session. Whether you’re a writer or artist in any form, whether you’re a gamer, like many of us I hope are and even more will be, I’ve realized life hack, in this case, number 7, to close out this week, you can ChatGPT your music streaming platform to add joy and meaning. That was a Motley array of mental tips tricks, and life hacks, as we close it out this week.
Let me just do a fly by a summary of what we covered. Seven of them this week in order, number 1, the Hemingway Bridge for your creativity and productivity. Number 2, the five and three. Such a helpful framework, a life hack for serious investors. Number 3, always be ready with a question. Number 4, look really hard at failure really closely. Put it on a chalkboard, and what is in the very gooey, Chewy, tasty middle of failure. Now you know. Number 5, mute the TV during commercials. Dude, I probably didn’t need to tell you this. Number 6, ask for money, and you’ll probably just get advice. Ask for advice, though, and you may well get money. Unless someone else is playing this trick on you, in which case, forewarned is forearmed, and number 7, ChatGPT up your music life to add joy. There you have it. Seven more tips, tricks, and life hacks. I hope you found at least one this week life improving, and maybe worth sharing out with friends and family. Fool on.
