最受欢迎投资作家之一 Morgan Housel 新书《Same as Ever》
周末读了 Morgan Housel 于 11 月出版的英文新书《Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes》（中信已经拿了中文版权）。
他是风投公司 Collaborative Fund 的合伙人，也是前华尔街日报专栏作家和《The Psychology of Money（金钱心理学）》一书的作者。
可能是这年头投资人难出业绩，又需要保持声量和抚平市场/LP情绪，所以都在扎堆写鸡汤书。这本书也是一本类似的箴言合集。
它的原创观点很少（不如纳瓦尔那样善于总结和提炼），更多是旁征博引。许多观点聊得并不深入，如果你去买过这个领域的专著研读，就可以跳过书中相关篇幅。
摘录一些我划线的句段，总共 37 段。做了 AI 中英对照翻译 + 简单分类，方便你跳读。
（摘录大多是我已知信息的巩固。我觉得最有价值的增量信息，是最后的一个自省模板，有若干个小问题，可以每年定期问一问自己。）
**关注商业中的不变量**
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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once said that he’s often asked what’s going to change in the next ten years. “I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next ten years?’ ” he said. “And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.”
亚马逊创始人杰夫·贝索斯曾经说过，他经常被问到未来十年会发生什么变化。“我几乎从来没有被问到这个问题：‘未来十年不会发生什么变化？’”他说。“而我向你们提出，实际上第二个问题才是更重要的。”
Things that never change are important because you can put so much confidence into knowing how they’ll shape the future. Bezos said it’s impossible to imagine a future where Amazon customers don’t want low prices and fast shipping—so he can put enormous investment into those things.
永远不变的事物很重要，因为你可以对它们如何塑造未来充满信心。贝索斯说，无法想象未来亚马逊的顾客不想要低价和快速配送，所以他可以对这些方面进行巨额投资。
I cannot tell you what businesses will dominate the next decade. But I can tell you how business leaders let success go to their heads, becoming lazy and entitled and eventually losing their edge. That story hasn’t changed in hundreds of years and never will.
我不能告诉你哪些企业将主导未来十年。但我可以告诉你，商业领袖是如何因为成功而变得懒散和自以为是，最终失去竞争优势的。这个故事已经过去了几百年，将来也不会改变。
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One is highlighting this book’s premise—to base predictions on how people behave rather than on specific events. Predicting what the world will look like fifty years from now is impossible. But predicting that people will still respond to greed, fear, opportunity, exploitation, risk, uncertainty, tribal affiliations, and social persuasion in the same way is a bet I’d take.
一个重点是强调这本书的前提是基于人们的行为而不是具体事件来进行预测。预测五十年后世界会是什么样子是不可能的。但是预测人们在面对贪婪、恐惧、机会、剥削、风险、不确定性、部落归属和社会说服时仍然会以相同的方式作出反应，这是我愿意赌的一注。
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Entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant put it this way: “In 1,000 parallel universes, you want to be wealthy in 999 of them. You don’t want to be wealthy in the fifty of them where you got lucky, so we want to factor luck out of it. . . . I want to live in a way that if my life played out 1,000 times, Naval is successful 999 times.”
企业家和投资者纳瓦尔·拉维坎特这样说：“在1,000个平行宇宙中，你希望在999个宇宙中变得富有。你不希望在那50个宇宙中变得富有，因为那只是侥幸，所以我们要排除运气的因素……我希望以一种方式生活，如果我的生活重复1,000次，纳瓦尔成功了999次。”
**要善于追根溯源**
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An irony of studying history is that we often know exactly how a story ends, but we have no idea where it began.
研究历史的讽刺之处在于，我们通常确切地知道一个故事如何结束，但却不知道它从何开始。
Here’s an example: What caused the 2008 financial crisis?
这里有一个例子：是什么导致了2008年的金融危机？
Well, you have to understand the mortgage market.
嗯，你必须了解抵押贷款市场。
What shaped the mortgage market? Well, you have to understand the thirty-year decline in interest rates that preceded it.
什么塑造了抵押贷款市场？嗯，你必须了解它之前的30年利率下降。
What caused falling interest rates? Well, you have to understand the inflation of the 1970s.
什么导致了利率下降？嗯，你必须了解1970年代的通货膨胀。
What caused that inflation? Well, you have to understand the monetary system of the 1970s and the hangover effects from the Vietnam War.
是什么导致了通货膨胀？嗯，你必须了解20世纪70年代的货币体系以及越战带来的后遗症。
What caused the Vietnam War? Well, you have to understand the West’s fear of communism after World War II . . . and so on forever.
越南战争的原因是什么？嗯，你必须理解二战后西方对共产主义的恐惧……以及一直以来的种种原因。
**管理期望，降低预期**
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We spend so much effort trying to improve our income, skills, and ability to forecast the future—all good stuff worthy of our attention. But on the other side there’s an almost complete ignorance of expectations, especially managing them with as much effort as we put into changing our circumstances.
我们花费了很多精力来努力提高我们的收入、技能和预测未来的能力，这些都是值得我们关注的好东西。但另一方面，对于期望几乎完全无知，尤其是在管理期望方面，我们没有像改变环境那样付出同样的努力。
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The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you’re going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable expectations and take life’s results, good and bad, as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism.
（当被问到“你看起来非常快乐和满足。过上幸福的生活的秘诀是什么？”98岁的查理·芒格回答道：） 幸福生活的第一条规则是降低期望。如果你有不切实际的期望，你的整个生活都会很痛苦。你要有合理的期望，并以一定的冷静面对生活的结果，无论是好是坏。
**要善于讲故事**
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There is too much information in the world for everyone to calmly sift through the data, looking for the most rational, most correct answer. People are busy and emotional, and a good story is always more powerful and persuasive than ice-cold statistics.
世界上的信息太多了，每个人都无法冷静地筛选数据，寻找最合理、最正确的答案。人们忙碌而情绪化，一个好故事总是比冰冷的统计数据更有力量和说服力。
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Mark Twain was perhaps the best storyteller of modern times. When editing his writing, he would read aloud to his wife and kids. When a passage caused them to look bored, he would cut it. When their eyes widened, when they sat forward or furrowed their brow, he knew he was onto something, and he doubled down.
马克·吐温可能是现代最好的讲故事者。在编辑他的作品时，他会大声朗读给妻子和孩子听。当一段文字让他们显得无聊时，他会删掉它。当他们的眼睛睁大，坐直或皱起眉头时，他知道自己找到了什么，然后加倍努力。
**资产的估值要考虑市场情绪**
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To suppose that the value of a common stock is determined purely by a corporation’s earnings discounted by the relevant interest rates and adjusted for the marginal tax rate is to forget that people have burned witches, gone to war on a whim, risen to the defense of Joseph Stalin and believed Orson Welles when he told them over the radio that the Martians had landed.
假设普通股票的价值仅由公司的盈利按相关利率折现并根据边际税率进行调整来决定，就忘记了人们曾经烧掉女巫，凭一时冲动而发动战争，为约瑟夫·斯大林辩护，并相信奥森·威尔斯在广播中告诉他们火星人已经降落的事实。
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Investor Charlie Munger once noted that the world isn’t driven by greed; it’s driven by envy.投资者查理·芒格曾经指出，世界并不是被贪婪驱动，而是被嫉妒驱动。
**保持精简；不要盲目扩大规模**
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斯蒂芬·金在他的书《写作》中解释道：
This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. I figured the shorter the book, the less bullshit.
这是一本短小的书，因为大多数关于写作的书都充满了废话。我想，书越短，废话就越少。
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“For every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a change in size inevitably carries with it a change of form,” Haldane wrote.
对于每一种动物来说，都有一个最合适的大小，而大小的改变必然伴随着形态的改变。
A most convenient size.
一个非常方便的尺寸。
A proper state where things work well but break when you try to scale them to a different size or speed.
事物运作良好，但当你尝试将其扩展到不同的大小或速度时会出现故障的适当状态。
It applies to so many things in life.
它适用于生活中的许多事情。
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Schultz wrote in his 2011 book Onward: “Growth, we now know all too well, is not a strategy. It is a tactic. And when undisciplined growth became a strategy, we lost our way.”
舒尔茨在他2011年的书《向前》中写道：“我们现在深知，增长不是一种策略，而是一种战术。当无纪律的增长成为一种策略时，我们迷失了方向。”
There was a most convenient size for Starbucks—there is for all businesses. Push past it and you realize that revenue might scale but disappointed customers scale faster, in the same way Robert Wadlow became a giant but struggled to walk.
星巴克有一个最方便的规模 - 对所有企业都是如此。超过这个规模，你会意识到收入可能会增长，但失望的顾客增长得更快，就像罗伯特·沃德洛成为一个巨人，但却难以行走一样。
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Tire tycoon Harvey Firestone understood this well, and wrote in 1926:
轮胎大亨哈维·费尔斯通在1926年写道：
It does not pay to try to get the business all at once. In the first place, you can’t get it, so a good deal of your money is thrown away. In the second place, if you did get it, the factory could not handle it. And in the third place, if you did get it, you could not hold it. A company that gets business too quickly acts just about as a boy does who gets money too quickly.
一次性获取业务是得不偿失的。首先，你无法一次性获取到，所以你会浪费很多钱。其次，即使你真的获取到了，工厂也无法处理这么多业务。再次，即使你真的获取到了，你也无法保持住。一个过快获取业务的公司就像一个过快得到钱的男孩一样。
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An important thing about this topic is that most great things in life—from love to careers to investing—gain their value from two things: patience and scarcity. Patience to let something grow, and scarcity to admire what it grows into.
关于这个话题的一个重要事情是，生活中大多数伟大的事物——从爱情到事业再到投资——都从两个方面获得价值：耐心和稀缺性。耐心让事物得以成长，稀缺性让人们欣赏它所成长的样子。
**目标感，使命感**
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President Richard Nixon once observed:
尼克松总统曾经观察到：
The unhappiest people of the world are those in the international watering places like the South Coast of France, and Newport, and Palm Springs, and Palm Beach. Going to parties every night. Playing golf every afternoon. Drinking too much. Talking too much. Thinking too little. Retired. No purpose.
世界上最不幸的人是那些身处国际度假胜地，如法国南海岸、纽波特、棕榈泉和棕榈滩的人。每晚参加派对，每天下午打高尔夫球，喝得太多，说得太多，思考得太少。退休了，没有目标。
**反脆弱，适度悲观**
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A lot of progress and good news concerns things that didn’t happen, whereas virtually all bad news is about what did occur.
很多进展和好消息都与未发生的事情有关，而几乎所有的坏消息都是关于已经发生的事情。
Good news is the deaths that didn’t take place, the diseases you didn’t get, the wars that never happened, the tragedies avoided, and the injustices prevented. That’s hard for people to contextualize or even imagine, let alone measure.
好消息是没有发生的死亡，你没有得到的疾病，从未发生的战争，避免的悲剧和阻止的不公正。这对人们来说很难理解或想象，更不用说衡量了。
But bad news is visible. More than visible, it’s in your face. It’s the terrorist attack, the war, the car accident, the pandemic, the stock market crash, and the political battle you can’t look away from.
但坏消息是显而易见的。不仅如此，它直接冲击着你。这是恐怖袭击、战争、车祸、大流行病、股市崩盘以及你无法移开目光的政治斗争。
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Investor Howard Marks once talked about an investor whose annual results were never ranked in the top quartile, but over a fourteen-year period he was in the top 4 percent of all investors. If he keeps those mediocre returns up for another ten years he may be in the top 1 percent of his peers—one of the greatest of his generation despite being unremarkable in any given year.
投资者霍华德·马克斯曾经谈到一个投资者，他的年度业绩从未进入前四分之一，但在十四年的时间里，他是所有投资者中排名前4%的。如果他在接下来的十年里保持这种平庸的回报，他可能成为同行中排名前1%的顶级人物，尽管在任何给定的年份都不引人注目，但他是他那一代中最伟大的之一。
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Same in investing. I wrote in my book The Psychology of Money: “More than I want big returns, I want to be financially unbreakable. And if I’m unbreakable I actually think I’ll get the biggest returns, because I’ll be able to stick around long enough for compounding to work wonders.”
在投资中也是如此。我在我的书《金钱心理学》中写道：“与其追求高回报，我更想要财务上的坚不可摧。如果我能够坚不可摧，我相信我将获得最大的回报，因为我将能够坚持足够长的时间，让复利发挥奇迹。”
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Save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist.
像悲观主义者一样节省，像乐观主义者一样投资。
Plan like a pessimist and dream like an optimist.
像悲观主义者一样计划，像乐观主义者一样梦想。
**留白**
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Many people strive for efficient lives, where no hour is wasted. But an overlooked skill that doesn’t get enough attention is the idea that wasting time can be a great thing.
许多人追求高效的生活，不浪费任何时间。但一个被忽视的技能是浪费时间也可以是一件好事。
Psychologist Amos Tversky once said that “the secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”
心理学家阿莫斯·特沃斯基曾经说过：“做好研究的秘诀就是始终保持一点点闲置。你浪费了很多年，因为你不能浪费几个小时。”
A successful person purposely leaving gaps of free time on their schedule to do nothing in particular can feel inefficient. And it is, so not many people do it.
一个成功的人故意在日程安排中留下一些空闲时间，不做任何特定的事情，可能会感到效率低下。而事实上，确实如此，所以很少有人这样做。
But Tversky’s point is that if your job is to be creative and think through tough problems, then time spent wandering around a park or aimlessly lounging on a couch might be your most valuable hours. A little inefficiency is wonderful.
但特弗斯基的观点是，如果你的工作是要有创造力并思考复杂的问题，那么在公园里闲逛或毫无目的地躺在沙发上的时间可能是你最宝贵的时光。一点点的低效是美妙的。
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The New York Times once wrote of former Secretary of State George Shultz:
《纽约时报》曾经这样写道，前国务卿乔治·舒尔茨：
His hour of solitude was the only way he could find time to think about the strategic aspects of his job. Otherwise, he would be constantly pulled into moment-to-moment tactical issues, never able to focus on larger questions of the national interest.
他独处的时刻是他能够有时间思考工作中战略性方面的唯一方式。否则，他会被不断卷入一刻不停的战术问题中，无法专注于更大的国家利益问题。
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Albert Einstein put it this way:
阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦这样说：
I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. If my work isn’t going well, I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination.
我花时间在海滩上散步，这样我就可以倾听我内心的声音。如果我的工作进展不顺利，我会在工作日躺下来，仰望天花板，同时倾听和想象我内心的想法。
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Someone once asked Charlie Munger what Warren Buffett’s secret was. “I would say half of all the time he spends is sitting on his ass and reading.” He has a lot of time to think.
有人曾问查理·芒格沃伦·巴菲特的秘密是什么。“我会说他花费一半的时间就是坐在那里读书。”他有很多时间思考。
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The traditional eight-hour work schedule is great if your job is repetitive or physically constraining. But for the large and growing number of “thought jobs,” it might not be.
传统的八小时工作时间表适用于重复性或身体受限的工作。但对于越来越多的“思考型工作”来说，可能不适用。
You might be better off taking two hours in the morning to stay at home thinking about some big problem.
你最好在早上花两个小时呆在家里思考一些大问题。
Or go for a long midday walk to ponder why something isn’t working.
或者去午间长时间散步，思考为什么某件事情不起作用。
Or leave at 3:00 p.m. and spend the rest of the day envisioning a new strategy.
或者在下午3点离开，并花剩下的时间构想一种新的策略。
It’s not about working less. It’s the opposite: A lot of thought jobs basically never stop, and without structuring time to think and be curious, you wind up less efficient during the hours that are devoted to sitting at your desk cranking out work. This is the opposite of the concept of “hustle porn,” where people want to look busy at all times because they think it’s noble.
这不是说要少工作。相反，很多需要思考的工作基本上从不停止，如果不安排时间思考和保持好奇心，你在坐在办公桌前工作的时间里效率会降低。这与“奋斗色情”的概念相反，人们希望时刻看起来忙碌，因为他们认为这是高尚的。
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Nassim Taleb says, “My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill.” More than a measure of success, I think it’s a key ingredient. The most efficient calendar in the world—one where every minute is packed with productivity—comes at the expense of curious wandering and uninterrupted thinking, which eventually become the biggest contributors to success.
纳西姆·塔勒布说：“我对成功的唯一衡量标准是你有多少时间可以消磨。”我认为这不仅是成功的衡量标准，更是一个关键因素。世界上最高效的日程安排——每一分钟都充满了生产力——是以好奇漫游和不间断思考为代价的，而这最终成为了成功的最大贡献者。
**理解成功的代价**
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Part of this is simply understanding the costs of success.
成功的一部分就是理解成功的代价。
Jeff Bezos once talked about the realities of loving your job:
杰夫·贝佐斯曾经谈到了热爱工作的现实：
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If you can get your work life to where you enjoy half of it, that is amazing. Very few people ever achieve that.
如果你能让你的工作生活达到你喜欢的程度的一半，那真是太棒了。很少有人能够实现这一点。
Because the truth is, everything comes with overhead. That’s reality. Everything comes with pieces that you don’t like.
因为事实是，一切都有开销。这是现实。一切都有你不喜欢的部分。
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A simple rule that’s obvious but easy to ignore is that nothing worth pursuing is free. How could it be otherwise? Everything has a price, and the price is usually proportionate to the potential rewards.
一个明显但容易忽视的简单规则是，没有什么值得追求的东西是免费的。否则又怎么可能呢？一切都有代价，而这个代价通常与潜在的回报成比例。
But there’s rarely a price tag. And you don’t pay the price with cash. Most things worth pursuing charge their fee in the form of stress, uncertainty, dealing with quirky people, bureaucracy, other peoples’ conflicting incentives, hassle, nonsense, long hours, and constant doubt. That’s the overhead cost of getting ahead.
但很少有价格标签。你不用现金支付价格。大多数值得追求的事情以压力、不确定性、与古怪的人打交道、官僚主义、他人的利益冲突、麻烦、无聊、长时间工作和持续的怀疑的形式收取费用。这是取得成功的额外成本。
A lot of times that price is worth paying. But you have to realize that it’s a price that must be paid. There are few coupons, and sales are rare.
很多时候这个价格是值得付出的。但你必须意识到这是一个必须付出的代价。优惠券很少，打折销售也很少见。
**长期主义，时间复利**
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Long-term thinking can become a crutch for those who are wrong but don’t want to change their mind. They say, “I’m just early” or “Everyone else is crazy” when they can’t let go of something that used to be true but the world has moved on from.
长期思考对于那些错误却不想改变观点的人来说，可能成为一种借口。当他们无法放下一些曾经正确但现在世界已经超越的事物时，他们会说：“我只是早了一步”或者“其他人都疯了”。
Doing long-term thinking well requires identifying when you’re being patient versus just stubborn. Not an easy thing to do. The only solution is knowing the very few things in your industry that will never change and putting everything else in a bucket that’s in constant need of updating and adapting. The few (very few) things that never change are candidates for long-term thinking. Everything else has a shelf life.
做好长期思考需要辨别出你是在耐心等待还是固执己见。这并不容易。唯一的解决办法是知道你所在行业中极少数永远不会改变的事情，并将其他一切放入一个需要不断更新和适应的桶中。那些极少数永远不变的事情是长期思考的候选对象。其他一切都有一定的使用寿命。
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Time is compounding’s magic, and its importance can’t be minimized. But the odds of success fall deepest in your favor when you mix a long time horizon with a flexible end date—or an indefinite horizon.
时间是复利的魔力，其重要性不可低估。但当你将长期的时间视野与灵活的截止日期或无限期的视野相结合时，成功的机会将最大化。
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Benjamin Graham said, “The purpose of the margin of safety is to render the forecast unnecessary.” The more flexibility you have, the less you need to know what happens next.
本杰明·格雷厄姆说：“安全边际的目的是使预测变得不必要。”你拥有的灵活性越多，你就越不需要知道接下来会发生什么。
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And never forget John Maynard Keynes: “In the long run we’re all dead.”
永远不要忘记约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯的话：“从长远来看，我们都会死。”
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Another point about long-term thinking is how it sways the information we consume.
关于长期思考的另一个观点是它如何影响我们所消费的信息。
I try to ask when I’m reading: Will I care about this a year from now? Ten years from now? Eighty years from now?
我在阅读时尝试问自己：一年后我会在意这个吗？十年后呢？八十年后呢？
It’s fine if the answer is no, even a lot of the time. But if you’re honest with yourself you may begin to steer toward the more enduring bits of information.
如果答案是否定的，甚至大部分时间都是，那也没关系。但是，如果你对自己诚实，你可能会开始朝着更持久的信息方向前进。
35/
A decade ago I made a goal to read more history and fewer forecasts. It was one of the most enlightening changes of my life. And the irony is that the more history I read, the more comfortable I became with the future. When you focus on what never changes, you stop trying to predict uncertain events and spend more time understanding timeless behavior. Hopefully this book nudged you down that path.
十年前，我设定了一个目标，那就是多读历史，少看预测。这是我生活中最具启发性的改变之一。而讽刺的是，我读的历史越多，对未来就越有信心。当你专注于那些永恒不变的事物时，你就不再试图预测不确定的事件，而是花更多时间去理解那些永恒的行为。希望这本书能引导你走上这条道路。
**自问自省**
36/
I try not to give advice to people I don’t know, because everyone’s different and universal guidance is rare.
我尽量不给陌生人提建议，因为每个人都不同，普遍的指导很少。
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一套自问自省模板 ——
Who has the right answers but I ignore because they’re not articulate?
谁拥有正确的答案，但我忽略了，因为他们表达不清楚？
Which of my current views would I disagree with if I were born in a different country or generation?
如果我出生在不同的国家或时代，我会对我目前的哪些观点持不同意见？
What do I desperately want to be true so much that I think it’s true when it’s clearly not?
我非常渴望什么是真实的，以至于当它显然不是真实时，我仍然认为它是真实的？
What is a problem that I think applies only to other countries/industries/careers that will eventually hit me?
我认为只会影响其他国家/行业/职业的问题最终会影响到我吗？
What do I think is true but is actually just good marketing?
我认为是真实的，但实际上只是好的营销手段 ？
What haven’t I experienced firsthand that leaves me naive about how something works?
有什么我没有亲身经历过的事情让我对某件事的运作方式一无所知？
What looks unsustainable but is actually a new trend we haven’t accepted yet?
什么看起来不可持续，但实际上是我们尚未接受的新趋势？
Who do I think is smart but is actually full of it?
我认为聪明但实际上却充满自负的人是谁？
Am I prepared to handle risks I can’t even envision?
我是否准备好应对我甚至无法想象的风险？
Which of my current views would change if my incentives were different?
如果我的激励机制不同，我当前的观点中哪些会发生改变？
What are we ignoring today that will seem shockingly obvious in the future?
我们今天忽视了什么，在未来看来将会显得非常明显？
What events very nearly happened that would have fundamentally changed the world I know if they had occurred?
如果发生了哪些事件，它们几乎会彻底改变我所了解的世界？
How much have things outside my control contributed to things I take credit for?
我所掌控之外的事情对我所得到的荣誉有多大贡献？
How do I know if I’m being patient (a skill) or stubborn (a flaw)?
我如何知道我是在耐心等待（一种技能）还是固执（一种缺点）？
Who do I look up to that is secretly miserable?
我仰望的人暗地里是不幸的吗？
What hassle am I trying to eliminate that’s actually an unavoidable cost of success?
我试图消除的麻烦是成功所不可避免的成本是什么？
What crazy genius that I aspire to emulate is actually just crazy?
我渴望效仿的那个疯狂的天才其实只是疯狂的吗？
What strong belief do I hold that’s most likely to change?
我最有可能改变的强烈信念是什么？
What’s always been true?
什么一直都是真实的？
What’s the same as ever?
什么和以前一样？
（最后一个问题这里扣题了）