Caring Too Much About What Others Think

Your time is limited. Don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

— Steve Jobs

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’

And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that you are going to die, is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

Your time is limited. Don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Everything else is secondary.”

Jason Zweig on Richard Feynman

What I love about Feynman was his determination to think for himself and to be honest about his own limitations. In his books, he tells remarkable stories that can help even humanists think like scientists.

When Feynman was young, his wife, Arlene, was dying. Every day, she would send him little gifts at his office to show how much she loved him. Among them were bespoke pencils she’d had made with lettering along the lines of “I LOVE YOU, RICHARD. ARLENE.” (I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was something like that.) Embarrassed lest his colleagues see these emotional messages on his pencils, Feynman scraped them off with a knife. Soon, the next round of pencils arrived. This time, the message on them read: WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK?” From that, he – and all his readers since then – have learned the importance of disregarding the opinions of others when important matters of the heart (or mind) are at stake.

My other Feynman story involves the time he was asked by the state of California to sit on the committee that approves science textbooks for schoolchildren. He requested a copy of every single book on the list and read each from cover to cover. At the final committee meeting, the other members all said their favorite book was X. To Feynman’s astonishment, they had picked the book with the prettiest cover but without a word of text. It turned out that none of them had even opened the textbook; they liked how the cover looked and picked it as “best” on that basis alone. From that I learned the importance of always reading the source material, rather than relying on someone else’s representation of it. It still amazes me how many people who say “studies have shown that…” have never read the studies they are citing.”

Amos thought people paid an enormous price to avoid mild embarrassment and he himself decided very early on it was not worth it …

About Amos Tversky From “The Undoing Project” P. 97

‘He never knew what time of the day it was,’ said his daughter, Dona. ‘It didn’t matter. He’s living in his own sphere and you just happened to encounter him there.’ He didn’t pretend to be interested in whatever others expected him to be interested in … ‘He just skipped family vacations,’ says his daughter. ‘He’d come if he liked the place. Otherwise he didn’t.’ The children didn’t take it personally: They loved their father and knew that he loved them. ‘He loved people,’ said his son Oren. ‘He just didn’t like social norms.’

‘Amos thought people paid an enormous price to avoid mild embarrassment,’ said his friend Avishai Margalit, ‘and he himself decided very early on it was not worth it.’ “

“It’s very important,” said Mr. Buffett, “always to live your life by an inner scorecard, not an outer scorecard.”

In 2008, Mohnish Pabrai and Guy Spier paid $650,100 for a charity lunch with Buffett. Spier, a hedge fund manager based in Zurich, later recalled the meal in his 2014 memoir, The Education of a Value Investor, which I helped him write.

What stood out most for him from this three-hour masterclass with Mr. Buffett was one life-changing piece of advice.

“It’s very important,” said Mr. Buffett, “always to live your life by an inner scorecard, not an outer scorecard.”

Mr. Buffett illustrated this by asking: “Would you prefer to be considered the best lover in the world and know privately that you’re the worst—or would you prefer to know privately that you’re the best lover in the world, but be considered the worst?”