Tips, Tricks & Lifehacks, Vol. 10
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Have you ever spoken to an audience? And then it's time for Q, N, A, as you generously invite questions and no one raises their hand. Have that feel.

Are you a sports fan? While I am too, do you watch a lot of sports on T, V? I do to do you enjoy doing so with family and friends? The more the maria excEllent, I have an obvious suggestion, most people don't put into play that can make your every sports gathering feel a little more connected.

And many investors come up with a theses and buy a stock to really good things to do. But what's a third thing that most of them do not do that would make everything easier going forward? Well, it's time for the tenth episode in one of my favorite recurring series on, all right, a investing that mental tips, tricks and life acts. Volume ten this week only on will break or investing.

It's the road break er investing podcast with multi full cofounder David gardener.

Welcome back to rule break her investing a delighted have you joining with me this week? We're going to have some fun together. Let's get smarter, shall we? It's the latest.

It's number ten in our historical running series of metal tips, tricks and life hacks. The series started with volume one on june fifth of two thousand sixteen. The most recent was valentine's day of this year every fourteen th twenty twenty four. And I candid them up. So in the history of this recurring episodes ies, i've now cheered sixty seven mental tips, tricks and life hacks over nine previous episodes with no repeat.

So if you find your curiosity Sparked by anything I share with you this week, and this series seems like your jam, well, the good news just google rule breaker investing mental tips, and you will find all sixty seven previous tips in addition to the seven new ones I get to share with you this week. Now, before we get started, let me ask, are these earth shattering, life improving, unforgettable tips? Absolutely not.

I mean, maybe, but these are hacks, a lot of life hacks. This series is designed to make life more elegant, fun and navigable. I'm coaching you very explicit here, and like any good life coach might do, aiming most of all for your success. So these are things we've worked for me that I hope work for you too.

They can be quite small, by the way, like in volume three from march two thousand and seventeen when I suggested you stop taking elevators as most of the time, you'll get where you want to go quicker if you take the steps, and you'll get more healthy steps in if you stop taking elevators. Now obviously, if you have luggage or a huge climb, feel free to take the elevator. Or best selling author and pinks wine taste test, which I shared with you on valentine day this year, a taste test experience that I describe in detail and that I completely recommend to anyone who wants to spice up, create some clarity at a future social gathering.

So all that and sixty four more are in our past. But that was, this is now IT gets started with metal tip trick or life hack number one. And yeah, i'd say this ones a trick in his book building a second brain, which was my book of the year for the year twenty twenty two.

Author chicago 4， shares a little bit about earnest hemingways, productivity, creativity. Trick chicago begins by saying that hemingway would always end a writing session only when he knew what came next in the story. So instead of exhAusting every last idea and bit of energy, he would stop when the next plot point became clear.

This meant that the next time he SAT down to work on his story, he knew exactly where to start. He built himself a bridge to the next day, using today's energy and momentum tiago rights to fuel tomorrow's writing. And so our author calls IT the headway bridge.

And that is mental tip trick, or life act number one. It's a trick that hemmingway bridge, a wonderful trick to enable your next session. I many times as a writer and is a stock picker, I often think I need to finish IT all right now.

I need to be able to clear the decks and get everything out of my head now. But the problem with that, especially if you're writing something longer, is you start the next day without any real clue what to do. Some people call IT writing block.

You end up sitting there trying to figure out how you should start. And so the headway bridge is a wonderful aid against confusion, ambiguity, lack of productivity. I've used this in many ways over the last couple of years.

I'll give a really silly example. I love games. Anybody who listens this podcast knows that about me. I love video games, one form of game. I have many, many video games in my house, and I played many over the years.

And probably my greatest fault as a gamer is I fall in love with big, long, triple a games to take forty to eighty hours to complete, and I play about twenty five of them, twenty five hours of a game. And then another game comes out, shiny squirl, and I go on by that other game. And now I have two games, and I haven't finished the first, and I dive into the second and I decide i'm GTA get all the way through.

But then somewhere in the middle of that game, as another game comes out, I find i'm at the end of a chapter or maybe I ve fulfilled a quest and I I have the sense of completion. But that is enabling me to continue to have this problem of not finishing games because mentally, I got to know a place where I think i'm kind of finish for now. And then, as IT turns out, even though only on chapter five of eight, I never come back to the game.

So as one example, you can hemingway bridge yourself if you're a fellow video, by not finishing that last quest or that last task or goal on your mobile phone or your playstation five. You can just move right up to the point where I would be so exciting to click done or hear the next conversation in the story. And you stop, you save IT right there so that you are indeed excited to come back with your hemingway bridge the next day and continue that game.

And maybe in my kiss maybe yeah actually start finishing some of your games. You know there's a great question that's asked in the book, a more beautiful question by warn burger past guest numerous times on this podcast, certainly a friend and author that I hope you've gotten know through this podcast if you had already found his wonderful books. And one of the beautiful questions he writes about is this one is a productivity enabling question that speaks to the hemingway bridge.

Here's that beautiful question, war. And asks, what is the one thing I can do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? I'm going to say that question again because I want you to let that sit with you for a little while and realize it's one of the more powerful questions you can ask even on a daily basis.

What is the one thing I can do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? And to close up trick number one, the hemingway bridge, a great answer is the hemingway bridge is developing a habit of not quite finishing things so that you're already to get right back into IT when you come back to work. So that is at least one of the things you could do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary sure has for me.

All right, onto metal tip trick or life act number two. This one is a life act, and this is for investors, and I call IT my five and three. In fact, to the top of this week show, I said that investors do two good things.

We come up with a fees and we buy a stock. Those are two good things. But there's a third thing we could be doing, especially for a serious about this series, about improving, about boosting our portfolio games and beating the market.

There's a third thing most people don't do, and i'm about to share IT with you now if you're a long time mudflow rule brekfast and or multi full stock advisor member, you may recognize one of about to say. But this was a feature that we used in multiple ll rule breakers and stock advisor, the two services I helped oversee for nineteen and seventeen years, respectively. So thirty six combined years of stock picking.

And this was so helpful. My five and three framework, it's a concept that anybody can use, whether you are subscribed to the multi full or not. It's the way that we form up.

Our view of a stock is how we summarize the investment case for a stocks. So the five stands for five future events that, if they go well, start to prove out our thesis. And the three stands for three potential future events that, if they happen, start to show that things aren't working out in the way we thought they would be in our thesis.

So think of these as flags. The five or five Green flags that we're looking for. The three are three red flags. Were hoping not to see. Now the reason we came up with this framework initially is that we wanted to give our members a quick study, a quick bulleted summary of why we like a stock and what we're looking for, for that stock. So a quick way to come back.

Maybe you'd read our initial report and then you come back some weeks or months later, you're like, what is the hypothesis, the thesis for this stock and what are we looking for? And I intentionally wanted to focus you on what's going to happen next. And I think that's the real key to the five and three. It's not looking backwards at the reasons that we like the company two years before we recommended IT, that can count too. But the five and three very specifically focuses us on what's gonna happen in future so that next quarter earnings report or next year's product launch and the Better u.

And I can articulate ahead of time what we're hoping to see and in a premack tum like way what we're also hoping not to see, the Better off we're going to be as investors or so again, it's great to come up with the thesis and even Better to buy a stock and hold up over time. But the third step that many of us don't perform that is so helpful to your growth as an investor is to set down some specific things in future you're hoping to see and hoping not to see to let yourself be guided by that. Now the final question you might be asking is, well, why five in and three, one out, three and five or four and four or twelve and two? Well, in general, keep in mind we're researching stocks that we want to like.

We're looking to buy things. So naturally, as I thought about what stock I wanted to recommend next, i'm looking for the more positive things. Otherwise, I probably couldn't want to recommend the stock at all.

So looking for what is positive, which, by the way, works really well in life, not just an investment research, looking for what will work well, made a lot of sense to me as a stock picker. But I also do think it's important to have those three red flags in your mind as an investor at all time. Some investors only have the Green flags.

They don't have any red flags to know what could go wrong and what to be looking for. That might be an early indicator. Something not working after that stock is very helpful. So I think you should always have more Green flags and red flags if you're serious about buying, becoming part owner of a company with its stock.

And let's just summarize the benefits of the five and three really quickly by saying, first of all, IT does provide you if you take the time to do IT, IT gives you a quick short hand of your thesis and what you're looking for going. forward. Then second, when that company does come out with its next quarter earnings report or the quarters going forward, you now have something to focus on beyond just whether they meet or beat wall street expectations.

You're actually looking at the guts of the business and seeing what happened and whether your expectations, your thesis is coming true or not. So IT makes you look a little bit deeper then just that days number. And finally, if you actually take the time to record this, if you hold onto IT in your second brain, I use ever note many people use other notes apps.

If you save you're five and three and update them from time to time, you will have a running record of your thinking for that particular stock. I don't think it's necessary to do a five and three for every stock, but for any serious holding for any any stock would be five percent or more of your portfolio. I highly recommend the five and three number two, this week, a life hack on to number three.

While we started with a trick, we then went to a life hack number of three and four are both mental tips. Let's go with mental tips here. Number three, a little bit of story telling.

What are my basic approaches to any speech or presentation where i'm in attendance, i'm in the audience, is to constantly be forming. As you sit there and listen constantly, be forming the most interesting question, the most beautiful question you can think of during that person's talk. Because inevitably, in many cases, i'm thinking of corporate conferences, offsides, all kinds of gatherings of people where there's A Q na after.

Inevitably, with that q na after, there will be that call for questions. And in my experience, the majority the time, would you agree with this as well? People are pretty cheapest, and no one really raises their hand except me.

I always do. And I would say at least seventy percent of the time in such situations, I actually get off the first question and right away because i'm already so the key is you don't even have to be a great listener. I'm not sure I am, but you have to listen hard enough and think hard enough to come up with an engaging question, one that interests you, that would likely interest the rest of the audience.

You've been thinking about IT for the last fifteen or thirty minutes. You're already with your hand up right away getting in your good question. There are several good things going on when you act on number three here, mental tip, which all call always be ready with a question.

The first is that if you do this, you always get your question in there and you get IT answered. You never put yourself in the position of competing with, let's say, seven other hands up, which typically happens over the course of A Q na by the end. Often there too many hands up and time runs out.

So when you put your hand up first, human nature will decree that in the vast majority incenses, you will be the only person with their hand write up. So you're gone to get your question answer. That's good thing number one.

Good thing number two, speakers particularly appreciate first question. Now I realized a lot of people fear public speaking. I know I have a lot of listers who don't want to do any public speaking. And i'm also speaking in some of you who love to speak in public or simply have to because of positions of responsibility.

And if you've been that speaker and you've given a talk and you open IT up for Q N A, as i've done in a few hundred speeches over the course the last thirty years, when that Q N A begins, IT is slightly stressful to see. No, he hands go up and maybe you're put in the position of asking or even begging the audience somewhat upgraded as to whether they're sure that no one has a question. Well, when you put up your hand right away in the audience, you are helping the speaker, and that is a gift, and that is good thing.

Number two, when you're always ready with the question, number three, the speaker will notice you and the speak will remember you. And depending on the context, this can be very useful. For example, if you are hoping to meet the speaker or in someone, influence him or her, you really stand out as the person who asked a question, the person who asked the first question.

Again, I know this from experiences being on the other side of the podium. I can fairly easily remember and pick out afterward from the sea of faces those few who took the time to ask me a question. And on a side note, when you're always ready with a question in the audience, you're effectively introducing yourself in some ways to the audience as well.

If you lace your question with a little humor, you can make a very positive impression. And in some context, that's really helpful too. In the last good thing I want to say about always being ready with the question is if the presentation of speech is an event where different people are taking different sides, or in which you'd like to be influential for one viewpoint winning out, you actually have a subbed opportunity to set the Q, N, A in motion down a specific route.

Thanks to asking the initial question. Now this isn't always the case, but if you ask an interesting and good question that's well received and locked some inside, often additional questions later on, will harkin back to your question so you have an opportunity to set or at least influence in some senses, the agenda. So there you go.

Several good reasons in future. When you find yourself in a gathering and you know A Q is coming, spend the time put in the mental energy. Mental tip number three here, to always be ready with a question.

Your hand up right away, IT is a gift to the speaker. The rest of the audience enter yourself, all right, onto metal tip trick or life hack. Number four, this one also a mental tip, although kind of a trick too.

So I found myself in a gathering where somebody was giving a talk a few years ago, and there is a blackboard behind that person, and that person had written in big block capital letters, the word failure, F A I L U R E. That was the only thing on the blackboard behind her. And as I looked at that word of, of course, he was giving a talk and speaking to failure, which is why I was on the blackboard.

But as I looked at that word, this is a mental tip. This is also the kind of a trick I started to realize, because I love to play with language. I start to realize there's something you can do with the letters of the word failure on one of these podcasts.

Years ago, I mentioned that, and I know some of you out there were a real minority, but I know i'm speaking to some people who do this too. Whenever I am driving around on the highway or in town, I find myself looking at people's license plates and trying to puzo out not just what their personality plate, a phrase I prefer over a vanity plate, because I think plates that says something have personality and our fun. And we're in a Better world when we have personality place.

But when people have numbers, I start calculating the numbers of their place. I look for a new relationships like, oh, IT goes three, six, one, eight, yeah. Cause three times six is eighteen. So that makes sense. And the person didn't intend IT, but i'm just sitting there.

I don't know maybe it's a weapon against board and but doing calculations to find numerical relationships in other people's license plates, I realized i'm way off topic here, but my point is I guess I really like to scrutinize numbers and letters. So there I was in that room, I think, was a classroom. And I was looking at the word failure.

And I started to play with IT. In this way, if you take the first letter of the word failure, that's the letter f, go from the first to the last. So f at the end of failure is e okay? And then go back again to what's left to the first and go back again to what's left on the last.

So if you're with me here, we're going from failure. We're going f then over to e and then back to a at the start and then back to our on the other side. And if you're spelling along with me, you realized we just spelled the word fear.

F on the front of failure. E on the back, then back to the a, then back to the r. And maybe I was born during this talk, but I started to realize that's kind of interesting because a lot of people talk about the fear of failure or how how much we fear fAiling.

And certainly, as an investor, i'm aware that so many of us are wired biologically to believe that the pain of loss is three times the joy of gain that's been proven through behavioral economics. This is hardwired into our biology. I've often talked about this on rule breaker investing.

It's very important, dear, listen, especially if you're new to rule break investing to realize that most of us are trying to protect against the downside far more and we get excited about the upside. And you might still be excited about the upside, but a lot of people are protecting the downside. And IT really hurts if you have one stocks drop, IT often takes three stocks to go up to bring you back to, even psychologically.

So this is true of our fellow human beings. But if you're playing the failure game here with me and you're reading the letters very carefully, if we've taken out fear from failure, if we take out the f, the e, the a and r, what are you left with? Well, it's right there in the middle.

It's I L U. Now, I don't know about you, but when I see I L U, the first thing that comes to mind for me is I love you. And what is the opposite of fear, which which we've just got rid of by taking the letters away? Well, I believe in opposite of fear is is love.

And so when you cast away fear, when you take F E A R out of failure, your left with I, L. you. And if you believe in god, IT, as I do in the god, is love. And even if you don't, but you're still trying to be the best version of yourself.

And you recognize the universal, inexplicable, we might even say, all powerful force of love that I think you have to appreciate with me as we gaze at the word failure one more time on a chocked board that you can systematically kick out fear. And all that's left is a beautiful message for you and that you could share with others, especially, by the way, with kids who love to play letter and word games, kids who, by the way, are often afraid of failure. So there you go, mental tip, trick or life hack.

Number four, a mental tip, though, kind of a trick to failure, minus sphere equals I L U. All right, onto mental tip trick or life hack. Number five will call this one a life hack.

I mentioned the top. I love to watch sports. I love to watch sports on TV with family and friends. And I do something because I was taught this by my dad.

I grew in an era where initially television sets had bunny ear and tennis, and you had to get up off the couch or your chair and walk over and turn the analog channel die just before the remote control came into our society. So at the age of fifty eight, some of you might be there with me. You you remember a time even before remote, but once the remote control showed up, and we were growing up as kids, my dad did something very simple, which i've done.

I don't do IT every time. IT doesn't always make sense. But man, if IT doesn't have an effect, a good one over time, it's as simple as this.

My friends just mute the TV during commercials. So you have family and friends over for that nfl game this coming weekend. Everybody's having fun. In my experience, having been to some of these gatherings, typically the host is leaving the commercials on the whole time.

People are trying to have conversation or other interaction outside of the game because we've just gone to commercial and the person leaves the loud TV or home theater on during the commercials. So you're blasting the rest of the family with ads, and especially the kids. You are allowing the power of commercialism in your household.

And IT became automatic in my house anyway, as our kids grew up for me, just as my dad did before me, to mute the television during ads. You know, I debated whether not to even include this one in this podcast, cause to me, IT seems so obvious. And I realized, by the way, sometimes ads can be fun, and we don't do this during the super bowl, where part of the point is to watch the ads.

But even though this seems fairly obvious to me, i've realized sometimes in life IT isn't obvious to everybody else. And so sometimes it's worth saying something, even if it's obvious to you, because you may not IT may well not be obvious to most other people. So I may have helped you with this one or maybe you're like, dave, is that that the best you could bring here for number five this week? And my answer is yes, that is the best I could bring.

I could also, by the way, have regaled you with the huge benefits to sports fans of digital video recording technology. These days, IT started A T. vo. These days it's baked into most cable services.

And of course, I make a big point of recording most of the games that I watch, typically starting thirty minutes into the game so that I can skip all of the ads, not even having a mute, but still, if the games about two hours and you start about thirty minutes late and you skip the ads all the way through, you're right there watching live near the end. And which is very helpful if you have friends or family that might start texting you about the ends of games. It's very helpful to be watching that part live.

But you can skip a lot of ads without ever muting your TV. So yes, that's another fairly obvious life back here in the year twenty twenty four. But I I thought I just say something all right on to number six.

And this one is a trick, metal tip trick or life at number six is a trick in this ones from the world of fund raising. Now fund raising is not my world. Once we started the multiply full foundation a few years ago, I found myself newly in the position of occasionally asking people for money.

So I started to learn a little bit more about this world. But I am certainly still a nea fight. Those of you who do work in the world of fundraising, this author ism is probably common place.

But I think most of us don't work in the world of fundraising. So when I first heard this, IT was kind of an eye out for me. And it's a trick.

I think it's effective if you're asking for money. So here, IT is the afterism. If you ask someone for money, you will get their advice.

If you ask someone for advice, you may well get some of their money. Say that again really quickly. Ask for money, you get advice.

Ask for advice, you might get money. So this dynamic is very true. And why does that work for fundraisers? Well, when you know someone is a development officer, you're going out to lunch.

They are take you out to lunch, update you on the school that you have supported in the past or the organization that you are funding or maybe interested in funding. Often what they do if they're good, is they they want to hear what you think of their updates and what they're doing. A huge mistake for them would be to lead off right away and say, obviously, we would love to have your donation again.

I see you gave this much last year. We're hoping you could nudge that up five percent this year and go right for the juggle most good funding raisers, instead socialized where all social creatures, they spend time to ask you. And this is not cynical if they're good at IT.

This is earnest and authentic and effective. They spend time building relationship with you to find out whether you have advice for them and or their organization. And turns out, if you start to share that, you feel connected with that person, you feels if they're listening, especially if they're actually going to act on what they're hearing, you are naturally much more predisposed to financially support that organization.

Then, of course, if they had done the opposite. So for those of you in fundraising, you probably already knew this. For those Younger people who might one day be in fund raising, this is helpful to know if you didn't already.

But i'm also as we closed this one out, number six, i'm also speaking to everybody like you and me who are on the receiving end of pitches. And this is a little bit of forewarned is for armed. So realized that sometimes development officers, especially people, are good at what they do, might very intentionally seek out your advice and just realize the unfolding dynamic.

That is probably their intention. And if you notice IT ahead of time, you can protect yourself a little bit more, especially if you're trying not to give money. We're not always trying to support everything, obviously, right, because we can we have to choose this one over that one.

So I think not only is this good advice for those raising money, I think it's also very good for those on the receiving and to understand this dynamics. So there you go, mental tip trick or life act. Number six, if you ask for advice, you have a Better chance of getting money, all right.

And now onto our last one this week. Number seven, it's a life hack ChatGPT your music streaming services, your digital music platforms, ChatGPT a playlist to add more fun and meaning to your life. These days, many of us have a music streaming platform of choice.

Spotify, obviously a very prominent one. I include panda because i'm a long term user of pandora. And once you start with one of these platforms, you tend not to bounce to another one.

You might love apple music. Some people have amazon music. The list goes on of these services for me.

I use pandora because that's what i've used creating unique channels of for family members, friends and occasions over the course of about twenty years now. So again, that's my platform of choice. But this works just as well for spotify or others. And here's the idea.

I started to figure out about ten years ago, one of the things I love to do as a board gamer, as a gamer, is I love to have immersive music when I have friends over to play a game with me, music that would fit in with that particular game. A quick example, terraforming mars is one of the best games that have come out in the last ten years. A lot of people who are serious board gamers know this game.

Most of the world is not a serious board gamer. Most people listening me probably right now have never heard of the game. Terrible ming mars.

I've played dozens of times. IT is a fantastic deep strategy game, takes an order to learn three to play. IT has multiple expansions. I own them all. But when I have friends over to play terraform mars overhead, in my music speakers, in my game room, I want something that feels thematic. And in the past I would try to imagine what would be something that would work, something maybe kind of like a spot, like spacing music that's all instrumental that could or maybe it's more like action vibe, like I know another, the halo series of video games has great space, action music, whatever I chose. I didn't really know enough tracks or artists to come up with a good station.

And when ChatGPT showed up about a year and a half ago in my life, I start to realize, oh my gosh, for every board game that I play, that I want to have immersive theme music with IT, I can simply ask ChatGPT to generate me a short list of tracks that could stand up for me, a pen dora station that would perfectly fit terraforming mars. And so indeed, on my streaming music platform of choice, I now have dozens and dozens of unique theme med channels theeing specifically to a single board game that I like to play and replay. And you can extend that a little bit further.

I'm in the process of writing my final stock market book. I've lightly tly references this here and there. IT won't be out for a while, but I mean, the process of writing IT.

And just before I put pender paper, I realized, you know what else I can do a ChatGPT I can have IT suggest a series of tracks that I can thumb up and thumb down and improve over time with pandora. That would perfectly fit the theme of the book that i'm writing. That would be a perfect writing companion for me.

As I go through the many hours of writing about a two hundred page book, my final stock market book, I could have the perfect music to go along with that. And I didn't know ahead of time what the artists or tracks might be, but simply describing for ChatGPT the vibe I was shooting for, i've ended up with a delightful channel that attends my every writing session. So whether you're a writer or artist in any form, whether you're a gamer, like many of us, I hope, are, and even more will be, I realized life hack, this case number seven, to clothes out.

This week, you can ChatGPT your music streaming platform to add joy and meaning. All right, well, that was a moly array of mental tips, tricks and life acts. As we close this out this week, let me just do a fly by a summary of what we covered, seven of them this week in order.

Number one, the hemmingway bridge. For your creativity and productivity. Number two, the five and three, such a helpful framework, a life act for serious investors.

Number three, always be ready with a question. Number four, look really hard at failure, really closely put IT on the rock board. And what is in the very gooey tue tasty middle of failure?

Now, you know, number five, mute the TV during commercials. Dude, I probably didn't need to tell you this. Number six, ask for money, and you'll probably just get advice.

Ask for advice though, and you may well get money unless someone else is playing this trick on you. In which case, forewarned is forearmed in number seven, ChatGPT up your music life to add joy. So there you have IT seven more tips, tricks and life hacks. I hope you found at least one, at least one this week life improving and maybe we're sharing out with friends and family full on.

As always, people on this program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the male full may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy our self stocks by sollie on what you hear. Learn more about Robert er investing at rbi, that fool at com.