Book recommendation, insights and inspiration to get stronger during the crisis
I spent most of the past two weeks devouring the book, “Antifragile: things that gain from disorder” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I highly recommend you pick up a copy for yourself and dive in too, sooner rather than later.
I cracked this book open after my Winter Expedition in Iceland and spent most of the past two weeks poring over its pages as I adjusted to COVID-19 changes and hunkered down to figure out my next steps in the new world we’re living in.
Antifragile is a dense and inspiring read that’s particularly powerful and relevant in this time of great disorder and uncertainty.
In this article, on top of passing along a book recommendation, I’m going to list out some of my takeaways and excerpts from the book that I think are particularly useful as we all work through this COVID-19 crisis.
Keep in mind that I had to cut myself off in order to keep the length of this article manageable. There are so many great nuggets in the book, it’s impossible to capture every angle, and I know I left a ton of stuff out. Also, I admit that I’m cherry-picking to an extent.
My goal here is to include enough to make the insights and connections clear, and give you an appetizing taste of the material so that you’r encouraged to buy the book and read the whole thing for yourself.
I’ll close off the article with tips to get stronger during this crisis, and examples of how I’m applying these concepts from “Antifragile” to my daily life (currently, a hermit’s life).
You cannot sit and moan about the world. You need to come out on top. (Chapter 23)
That’s one of the messages I keep coming back to: we need to find ways to not only endure this COVID-19 crisis, but to somehow get stronger as a result of this traumatic situation.
Before we get stronger, though, we need to make sure we’re safe first.
Table stakes, via negativa
In crazy times of uncertainty, it’s tough — if not impossible — to identify the right path.
However, it’s usually pretty easy to identify a wrong path.
So, let’s start via negativa and talk about what we know we should not do:
Via negativa: In theology and philosophy, the focus on what something is not, an indirect definition. In action, it is a recipe for what to avoid, what not to do — subtraction, not addition, say, in medicine. (Glossary)
Subtractive Knowledge: You know what is wrong with more certainty than you know anything else. An application of via negativa. (Glossary)
Maps: A reader, Jean-Louis, a mapmaker, writes to me: “As a mapmaker, I learned a long time ago that the key to good mapmaking is precisely the info you choose to leave out. I have made numerous clients notice that if a map is too literal and precise, it confuses people.” (Additional Notes, Afterthoughts, and Further Reading)
1. Don’t do things that increase your risk of exposing yourself or others to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
2. Don’t do things that increase your risk of going to the hospital.
For example:
- Don’t leave the house if you don’t need to.
- Don’t go over to friends’ houses.
- Don’t get your haircut.
- Don’t go to the gym.
- Don’t go to the store without wearing gloves.
- Don’t touch your face.
- Don’t eat without washing your hands first.
- Don’t do intense Wim Hof Method breathing exercises standing up
- Don’t panic.
It’s a weird and crappy way to live (though, it could be worse), and it’s probably going to be like this for a while.
Recognize your new roles and responsibilities in this new landscape.
If you accept these table stakes, let’s talk now about how to gain from this state of disorder.
Takeaways and excerpts, relevant to COVID-19
On using uncertainty to your advantage
Antifragile excerpts:
Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind. (Prologue)
The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. (Prologue)
And antifragility determines the boundary between what is living and organic (or complex), say, the human body, and what is inert, say, a physical object like the stapler on your desk. The antifragile loves randomness and uncertainty, which also means — crucially — a love of errors, a certain class of errors. Antifragility has the singular property of allowing us to deal with the unknown, to do things without understanding them — and do them well. (Prologue)
… depriving systems of stressors, vital stressors, is not necessarily a good thing, and can be downright harmful. (Chapter 1)
My takeaways:
- Steel yourself to embrace the volatility and uncertainty of this crisis.
- Find ways to use this time to learn, grow and get stronger.
- Do things that make you feel alive.
On feedback and responsibility
Antifragile excerpts:
If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud. (Prologue)
Compromising is condoning. The only modern dictum I follow is one by George Santayana: A man is morally free when … he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. This is not just an aim but an obligation. (Prologue)
There is another dimension to the need to focus on actions and avoid words: the health-eroding dependence on external recognition. People are cruel and unfair in the way they confer recognition, so it is best to stay out of that game. Stay robust to how others treat you. (Chapter 9)
The traditional understanding of Stoicism in Literature is of some indifference to fate… It is about continuously degrading the value of earthly possessions… And the key phrase reverberating in Seneca’s oeuvre is nihil perditi, “I lost nothing,” after an adverse event. Stoicism makes you desire the challenge of calamity. (Chapter 10)
An intelligent life is all about such emotional positioning to eliminate the sting of harm, which as we saw is done by mentally writing off belongings so one does not feel any pain from losses. The volatility of the world no longer affects you negatively…Seen this way, Stoicism is about the domestication, not necessarily the elimination, of emotions. It is not about turning humans into vegetables. My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking. (Chapter 10)
My takeaways:
- You can’t and shouldn’t try to control other people.
- Instead, focus on controlling yourself and how you respond.
- Commit to taking care of yourself, giving honest feedback and holding people accountable.
On preparing for the future
Antifragile excerpts:
A system that overcompensates is necessarily in overshooting mode, building extra capacity and strength in anticipation of a worse outcome and in response to information about the possibility of a hazard. And of course such extra capacity or strength may become useful by itself, opportunistically. We saw that redundancy is opportunistic, so such extra strength can be used to some benefit even in the absence of the hazard. Tell the next MBA analyst or business school professor you run into that redundancy is not defensive; it is more like investment than insurance. And tell them that what they call “inefficient” is often very efficient. Indeed, our bodies discover probabilities in a very sophisticated manner and assess risks much better than our intellects do. (Chapter 2)
What makes life simple is that the robust and antifragile don’t have to have as accurate a comprehension of the world as the fragile — and they do not need forecasting. (Chapter 8)
My takeaways:
- Be hopeful, optimistic and opportunistic.
- Don’t worry about trying to predict the future.
- Build redundancies that make catastrophes navigable.
On comfort and goals
Many, like the great Roman statesman Cato the Censor, looked at comfort, almost any form of comfort, as a road to waste. (Chapter 2)
The glass is dead; living things are long volatility. The best way to verify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations. Remember that food would not have a taste if it weren’t for hunger; results are meaningless without effort, joy without sadness, convictions without uncertainty, and an ethical life isn’t so when stripped of personal risks. (Chapter 25)
Education, in the sense of the formation of character personality, and acquisition of true knowledge, likes disorder; label-driven education and educators abhor disorder. Some things break because of error, others don’t. Some theories fall apart, not others. Innovation is precisely something that gains from uncertainty: and some people sit around waiting for uncertainty and using it as a raw material, just like our ancestral hunters. (Chapter 25)
My takeaways:
- The goal is not to be comfortable.
- The goal is to be alive: strong, healthy and happy.
- Stress, risks and volatility help you learn — they help you wake up and feel alive.
- Focus on actions, results, impact and your own definition of success.
On ideas, passions, strategy and how to get there
Antifragile excerpts:
Like tormenting love, some thoughts are so antifragile that you feed them by trying to get rid of them, turning them into obsessions. Psychologists have shown the irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about them, the more your ideas end up controlling you. (Chapter 2)
The barbell (or bimodal) strategy is a way to achieve antifragility… Monogamous birds put it into practice by cheating with the local rock star and writers do better by having as a day job a sinecure devoid of writing activities… The first step toward antifragility consists in first decreasing downside, rather than increasing upside; that is, by lowering exposure to negative Black Swans and letting natural antifragility work by itself. (Chapter 11)
A barbell can be any dual strategy composed of extremes, without the corruption of the middle — somehow they all result in favorable asymmetries. (Chapter 11)
There are so many fields in which the middle is no “golden middle” and where the bimodal strategy (maximally safe plus maximally speculative) applies. Take literature, that most uncompromising, most speculative, most demanding, and riskiest of all careers. (Chapter 11)
My takeaways:
- Go after crazy, weird, fun projects right now that add fuel to the fire inside you.
- Strengthen yourself so that you’re not fragile, then have fun and go with your gut.
- Focus on yourself. You know when you’re doing something you love.
- Be creative, passionate and responsible.
- Load up on the extremes.
On preparing for and managing a crisis
Antifragile excerpts:
Note that globalization has had the effect of making contagions planetary — as if the entire world became a huge room with narrow exits and people rushing to the same doors, with accelerated harm. Just as about every child reads Harry Potter and joins (for now) Facebook, people when they get rich are starting to engage in the same activities and buy the same items. They drink Cabernet wine, hope to visit Venice and Florence, dream of buying a second home in the South of France, etc. Tourist locations are becoming unbearable: just got to Venice next July. (Chapter 18)
My takeaways:
- Take aggressive action early in the face of potentially catastrophic, uncertain threats. For example, see Taiwan’s response to COVID-19, hat tip to Ben Thompson at Stratechery.
- This way the costs are known and the harm is manageable.
- Alternatively, delayed action makes you fragile. You will save on the early, relatively moderate costs short-term, and expose yourself to far greater costs long-term. For example, see the way the US government responded to COVID-19.
Tips to get stronger during this crisis
Assuming you have the table stakes covered, you and your family are safe, and your downside is low, here are some ways to think about getting stronger during the crisis.
Start a project that makes you feel: 1) alive; and 2) like you’re helping others make the COVID-19 situation better, like you’re contributing, fighting the good fight. For me, as you might have guessed, this means focusing on new writing projects, with an emphasis on articles (like these) that I hope others find useful during these crazy times.
Explore your passions, get creative and learn something new. For me, this means reading lots of books (like Antifragile!). I’m also looking to explore drawing and podcasting.
Build healthy habits. Spend your time doing things that you’ll be proud of when you look back at how you responded to the COVID-19 crisis. For me, this means a daily routine aligned with my 2020 goals of breathing exercises, solid sleep, cold showers (ice dips as possible), walks outside and push ups.
Finally, please don’t take my emphasis on the “upsides” here to mean that I’m diminishing the downsides of this crisis.
It’s a surreal and scary situation.
Many people have died across the globe already. Sadly, many more will follow.
This crisis also threatens jobs, economies, lifestyles, values, foreign relations, and more.
I don’t take any of that lightly, and you shouldn’t either.
That being said, I hope this article gives you some useful ways to think about your own positive response to this crisis.