Tap Dancing to Work

I listen to a lot of podcasts.

One of the podcasts I enjoy listening to is My First Million with hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri. It's not really related to investing or my work directly as they mostly talk about building and managing startup businesses, but I find the podcast very interesting and entertaining. Every so often I find that they drop some real great nuggets of wisdom.

Recently they did an episode where Shaan gives some advice on money. This was a fantastic little episode that I think is well worth listening to (link below in comments).

One of the pieces of advice that really stuck out for me is that people who get rich don't necessarily work harder than people who struggle with their finances. I think most people assume that in order to be successful you have to work very hard, and that is true to some extent. But it's not like everybody who works really hard gets rich or is successful.

What you work on and who you work with are far more important than how hard you work. The goal is not to work as hard as possible. In fact, the goal is actually to work hard enough to achieve your goals. So you have to spend some time thinking about what is best for you to work on, and then seek out great people in that area to work with.

The other thing you should try to do is identify that thing which is "play" to you but "work" to others. You should dabble until you find it because when you find that thing, it will change your life. You will be able to work harder than anybody else but you won’t think of it as work because you enjoy it so much. Warren Buffett calls it “tap dancing to work”.

When your work feels like play, you will do it a lot. And because you will do it a lot, you will get better, and success will usually follow.  This is especially true where results are not immediate. Lots of people will do things where they get an instant payback, but it’s harder to stick with something when the results are not immediate. Sometimes rewards from work come in a big "S" curve rather than a straight line. When this is the case, it takes some dedication to stick with it in order to receive those benefits. This is much easier when you enjoy the work.

Success is not guaranteed of course. Lots of people would love to be a professional athlete and they are willing to work really hard to achieve that goal, but they still fall short because it is just so hyper competitive. But in most things in business if you love it you can find ways to succeed, even if you suffer setbacks along the way. If you lack talent in certain areas, in business you can always partner with someone or hire someone who has the talents or skills that you lack.

To bring this all back to investing, I am attracted to businesses where the management clearly loves their business and what they do. As I said, this doesn't guarantee success but when you do find a manager who loves their business and thinks of it as "play" rather than "work" (or worse, a chance to get rich) it certainly improves your odds of getting a good result in your investment. If you can identify management like this, it can be another qualitative factor in assessing the probabilities of success.

But even if you're not an investor these are lessons that are well worth learning. If you spend the time, you can dramatically improve the trajectory of your life. I experienced the difference personally as I didn't figure out what was "play" to me and "work" to others until I was into my 30s. But when I found it, the trajectory of my life changed for the better immediately. It's definitely worth thinking about if you haven't yet found your "play".