The best books for thinking about the meaning of one’s life and work

The subtitle of Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals caught my eye. I wanted more ideas about time management and assumed that’s what I’d find here. I didn’t think about the word “mortal”—a big mistake! Be prepared for the perspectives this book puts on your “finitude,” i.e., the finiteness of your life. “Time management is all life is.”

The title of Burkeman’s book refers to the 80 years (rounded) that, on average, we are granted to live our lives. As I write this, I am somewhere in my 4,270th week or so. So, this concept has more meaning when one is past that 4,000 number. Our mortality is what this book is really about and how you should live your life in that context.

Two key points stood out to me as important principles for serving advisors clients in the second half of life, and also for advisors who have reached this age. First, your time is finite, and second, do only what’s most important. Also know that age brings clarity, and you must read this book to truly get how you might want to think about living your life.

Happier is the primary reason for living. The author makes the point that we should be asking, “How can I be happy now and in the future?” Don’t do things that are designed solely for the future, you deserve to be happy today and in the future. 

Include this thought in your client discovery thinking with questions like, “What would it mean to spend the only time you ever get in a way that truly feels as though you are making it count?”

My wife and I recently went to Puglia, Italy where we lived for a month as a gift to us. We visited local towns, learned, saw, chilled, ate pasta and pizza, and lived happily in the moment. This book helped encourage me to use my life in this way, happier. What I would have loved to tell my younger self is to have taken this bucket-list trip well before turning 85. 

These thoughts led me to a quote from Johnny B. Truant: “If your life is to matter, it’s not going to matter to the universe. It’s up to you to make your life matter in the only way you can: by doing things that make a difference to you, to those around you, and to those whose lives you touch. Time is short. You have exactly now to do whatever it is you’re here to do, or to let the inexorable passage of hours and days and years kill your potential like fruit left to die on a vine.”

Your life is for you to implement importance and to help your clients implement importance. Together you need to define that.

The Psychology of Money is the best book about money to date on the realities of money and how people think and act, explaining why most of us feel the way we do about money. Every advisor must read this book and most clients as well.

The author makes the point that behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. However, ordinary folks with no financial education can be wealthy if they have a handful of behavioral skills that have nothing to do with formal measures of intelligence. In other words, how you behave is more important than what you know. 

Your personal experiences with money make up maybe 0.00000001% of what's happened in the world, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works. So, all of us go through life anchored to a set of views about how money works that vary wildly from person to person. The challenge for us is that no amount of studying or open-mindedness can genuinely recreate the power of fear and uncertainty. 

The author’s findings suggest that individual investors’ willingness to bear risk depends on personal history, not intelligence, or education, or sophistication. Dumb luck of when and where you were born also play critical roles. We are often and usually driven by what goes on in our minds that likely has little to do with moving the markets. Behavior and chance have massive impacts and we need to understand that.

Think about Housel’s statements, like, “The line between “inspiringly bold” and “foolishly reckless” can be a millimeter thick and only visible with hindsight.” Also note, “Risk and luck are doppelgängers.” “The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up every morning and say, “I can do whatever I want today.” And so many more lessons! This book is brilliant!

This book is pragmatic and less complex than any sales-oriented book I have ever read. The simplicity and truths make 100% sense like, “Happy cows give more milk, and happy salespeople tend to sell more.” And, “There’s a much better way to close sales and find happiness than walking on hot coals and repeating mantras. I didn’t know that for certain until I did the research for this book.” 

The author, correctly in my view, discounts the value and importance of the huge piles of sales books that give sales advice that seems formulaic and manipulative. His focus is real and on mindset, saying, being happier is likely to make you more successful. Instead of just discussing how to close more sales he presents ways you can be happier.

Successful salespeople are pragmatists. They are realistic about their own abilities. They focus their efforts on activities that are actually likely to increase their sales. Most popular self-help books are based solely on the views of the author, without reference to any data.

Despite the ready availability of a vast amount of research dealing with the subject discussed in self-help books, the big sellers “seem to be completely disconnected from that evidence. What they are selling are made up easy answers, personality, and gimmicks.”

The book discusses self-confidence, self-esteem, and the need to have self-compassion. He discusses honesty, sincerity, grit, empathy, self-awareness, emotions, connection, and strategies for success in this highly readable book.

One of the best business books ever on the things a business and its executives have to do to reach the pinnacle of a quality business. Note that while they don’t all stay there, there are elements a company must do to be great. When those elements are no longer followed, the companies do decline but this book outlines the keys on which to focus.

It’s as “simple” as the author’s points, “Good is the enemy of great. And this is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great.” And “Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good – and that is their main problem.”

This is about your business as well as your clients. As I see it, regardless of the successes you have achieved to date, you must continue to be dissatisfied enough to want to get better. This is also what your competitive advantage will be. You have to believe others are always nipping at your heels.

As the author says, great companies did not focus principally on what to do to become great; they focus equally or more on what not to do and what to stop doing. The good to great companies paid little attention to managing change, motivating people, or creating alignment.

Under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation, and change largely melt away. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice. Though rare, if the company has a culture of discipline, and its people are disciplined, you don’t really need hierarchy.