I have the hardback which is 203 pages, not including credits and footnotes. The book has 24 chapters that are unnumbered, so the chapters are fairly short. The book is well-written and an easy read. Much of what never changes is human nature. The wisdom arose from my personal examination of how each of these chapters applied to me.
The author starts with a personal story about snow skiing with two friends one morning and then deciding not to ski with them that afternoon. His friends were killed in a snow slide that afternoon. If he had said yes to more skiing he would have almost certainly died with them. Why did he decide not to ski? He has no idea.
He takes this event and begins to look at risk. Risk is what you don't see. The book then looks at happiness since much of risk is unpredictable. Keeping expectations low leads to more happiness in the author's opinion. He makes a good case.
The book moves from one topic to the next. It looks at the power of compounding interest and compounding decisions. Good decisions lead to good outcomes. It looks at incentives. Much human behavior can be forecast by knowing the incentives that the human actors are subject to. Sometimes it's "follow the money" and sometimes it's just "fitting in." In my experience, understanding the financial incentives goes a long way to predicting the actions of the people I'm dealing with.
The author ends with what I increasingly think is the most important observation - people are a product of their experienced environment. People will disagree, and they will, in many cases because their life experiences differ. What seems obvious to one is not to another because they haven't had the same life experiences. He notes that "Wounds heal, Scars last."
The book finishes with a series of questions that the reader can ask rather than a series of the author's conclusions. I'm trying to ask these questions of myself to better understand how to read "what never changes" so I don't get blindsided.
If the subject interests you, I highly recommend the book. It gives short bursts of wisdom that I intend to try to apply to my life.
Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes
4.6 | 3,734 ratings
Price: 17.72
Last update: 01-08-2025
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