Rules for Winning the Game of Life | Adam Robinson | Knowledge Project Podcast 47

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Three rules for the ‘great game’ of life: connect, delight, expect magic.

  In December 2016, on stage at the 92nd Street Y before about a thousand people, Tim Ferriss asked Robinson what lessons he had learned that year. He blurted out ‘three things’ with no idea what they were, then improvised them. First, connect with others above all. Second, create fun and delight for the other person in any situation. Third, lean into every moment and encounter expecting magic or miracles. A lifelong introvert who had lived in the world of ideas, he was surprised to find that he believed every word. They became the core of his novella An Invitation to the Great Game, drafted in 10 days.

• 02

  Don’t chase happiness—point your attention at the task or at other people.

  Happiness, love and success are found by not looking for them: hunt for love and you stop being lovable. Citing Viktor Frankl, Robinson calls happiness a byproduct of full engagement. Asked whether he was happy mid-interview, he said he had no idea; he was too absorbed. Attention belongs in only two places: the task at hand or other people. Doubt, fear or loneliness signals that it needs redirecting. His complaint about self-help is that it fixes attention on the one thing it shouldn’t be on: yourself.

• 03

  Technology hijacks attention by reflecting your views or provoking outrage.

  Platforms make money once your attention is captured, and only two levers make you click. They mirror what you already believe, making the internet ‘one big confirmation bias engine,’ or they show what infuriates you. Robinson sees a loneliness epidemic. He typed ‘How can I learn’ into Google: after English and Spanish, singing and coding, the top five included ‘to love myself.’ Friends got the same result—a question too private to ask even a best friend.

• 04

  To change minds, change the questions people ask or offer more inspired answers.

  Every institution answers a question. Democracy answers how everyone can have a say. Slavery answered how to extract value without paying people—a horrific answer, not the question itself, since Wikipedia answers the same question by offering people intrinsic reward. New questions are hard to plant, so offering better answers is usually easier. Useful personal questions: ‘How can I create fun and delight for this person?’ turns a job interview into a game. ‘Who do I need to be here?’ beats ‘What do I need to do?’

• 05

  Surprise means your model of the world is wrong—so ‘it makes no sense’ is a signal.

  Robinson treats surprise as a learning opportunity and a way to find opportunities. When a pundit says it makes no sense that 10-year yields stay below 3% or that gold keeps falling, that person has a dozen logical reasons contradicted by reality. A stronger force is at work, and many investors are still on the wrong side of the trade. ‘If you want to find gold, it’s where things don’t make sense.’ His own insights arrive unbidden, and he works out the logic afterward. As Chesterton put it, you discover truth by logic only if you found it first without it.

• 06

  Investing means anticipating the anticipation of others—watch which group of traders is right.

  Robinson calls intrinsic value ‘a fraud’ because Graham never defines it beyond ‘value justified by the facts.’ Even a true value is useless if nobody else believes it. He sees technical analysis as confirmation bias. Following Keynes, who multiplied a Cambridge college portfolio through the Depression, he waits for groups of traders to disagree and asks who is usually right. When bond and stock traders split, bond traders are ‘right and early’ almost every time; he watches the LQD/IEF ratio. Metal traders rank highest for simple models, physical goods and long horizons. Economists and central bankers rank last. He stresses this isn’t investment advice.

• 07

  A trend is the spread of an idea, and trend changes start in three ways.

  Drawing on Everett Rogers’s Diffusion of Innovations (innovators, early adopters, early and late majority, laggards) and Schopenhauer’s three stages of truth, Robinson sees trends begin in three ways. A long uptrend suffers a sudden ‘air pocket’ drop, then a bounce that fails. A parabolic rise collapses without a bounce. Or a long sideways stretch shifts shares from bored holders to patient ones before a big move, as with Bitcoin. A stock knocked down that doesn’t get up, like an injured football player, is telling you something.

• 08

  When results stall, change what you’re doing, not how hard you do it.

  Most people double down: more effort, more money, more of the same. Follow Emerson—life is an experiment if you conduct it like one. Comedians like Chris Rock tweak one line a night and cut what doesn’t get laughs. McDonald’s ‘Would you like fries with that?’ reportedly came from a teenage employee’s experiment. If unsure, step in the opposite direction: a runner whose times stall despite more mileage could try less. Robinson once spent two years testing ways to explain one concept; once something works, stick to the script.