Foreword by Karl-Mikael Syding,
The European Hedge Fund Manager Of The Decade
Finally: A Resolution to the Age Old Debate
on Choosing Happiness or Success
This book is dangerous. It will make you think painful thoughts about things you could (and should) do differently. But it will also make you explore powerful new frontiers of the mind.
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I met Ludvig in 2014. I had worked in high finance as a sell-side analyst, buy-side analyst; and a hedge fund manager, managing director and partner, but I wanted to broaden my perspective and share my insights with others.
But before finishing that story, I want to tell you that this book deals with a super-important concept. You must learn about homeostasis (and how to break out of it) because it’s what determines how well you adapt to change, and become future-proof in a world that’s changing faster than ever. Where youthful exuberance ends, homeostasis begins.
This book will give you the tools to stay young at heart and mind longer.
In 2010, my hedge fund (where I was one of three partners and portfolio managers) competed with thousands of other hedge funds and we won the to-date only award for European Hedge Fund Of The Decade (from 2000-2009).
The year before that I had accepted the award for Best European Hedge Fund at a gala in London, where I not-so-humbly had thanked the “long only crowd” for first pushing stocks up to ridiculous levels and then down in a crash, thus enabling a series of very profitable trades for our fund.
I never really identified the underlying reasons for why I received a physics award from the King of Sweden. Or why I was poached from a small bank to head the IT-research team at Sweden’s largest bank during the IT boom in the second half of the 1990’s. Or how I became partner and Managing Director at arguably Europe’s best performing hedge fund between 1999 and 2010. Ludvig, however, did connect the dots. He had a mental model for it.
Chances are you’re already well versed with Ludvig’s work through his website. If not, prepare to be amazed. Familiar as I am with his ideas by now, I still underlined something on almost every page in the book.
I’ve read dozens of books and listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts about the brain and body (and how to improve them). I’ve read books about philosophy and psychology, and followed dozens of blogs about “self-improvement. I am not a novice in these areas.
But this book is different. Sure, it is about those things, and Ludvig neatly synthesizes the big ideas from all those fields, but he also brings something completely new to the table: a powerful framework that (almost) anyone can use to become smarter and stronger, regardless of age.
* * *
I was born in 1972. My generation had it easier in many ways than the Millennials. Attention disruptors like MTV, Internet, social media, and smart phones didn’t exist in my world and calling out of state was prohibitively expensive.
I was fortunate enough to be a loner and an avid reader (starting early as a bullied 4-year old outsider), and I got a computer for my tenth birthday in January 1982. From that day onward, I spent all my waking time programming, reading computer magazines in English, and playing intricate text based games.
My being less socially inclined than most people thus proved a blessing in disguise, as it led me to spend hours upon hours in deep concentration and a state of flow, learning to decipher both English and coding at the same time, while my brain was still young and at its most malleable.
I had no idea of it at the time, but I was laying down a solid infrastructure in my brain; consisting of the habit of deep work and getting into flow as I was learning math, coding, logic, English, responsibility and discipline at the same time (if you’ve ever debugged a not-so-structured program you know what I mean).
Had I been born 20 years later, I’m sure I would have gotten lost among the siren calls from social media. I probably would have wasted my life on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Without the skills I acquired early in life—more or less by chance—I would have been left irrelevant to today’s economic landscape. I would have been doomed to eking out an almost vegetative subsistence in routine jobs with no future and an inability to concentrate and learn fast enough to propel myself forward, like a Homeostasis Dweller.
Reading this book might just be the thing that gives you the tools to avoid such a fate.
This book deals with all the important skills any ambitious person needs to equip himself with to thrive in the modern world; a world for which humans are dangerously maladapted.
We are constantly being manipulated; manipulated by clever marketers who specialize in hijacking our brains’ reward system, manipulated by our own biases and psychological blind spots, and manipulated by short-term instincts, fears and drives that couldn’t care less about our long term well-being, careers or network of friends.
I’ve often been content and complacent (in particular after a win), and prone to resting on my laurels. Had I read this book earlier and taken some of its most important concepts to heart (like The 4 Pillars of Wakefulness) I could have directed my natural drive, focus and energy in a better way; to optimize my learning, avoid stagnating, and break through plateaus in different areas of my life with more consistency.
Owing to this book, I’m now more alert to when I’m stagnating and losing momentum. Ludvig’s ideas about the importance of breaking out of homeostasis has inspired me to challenge myself in some way every day, to explore new paths, and to do uncomfortable things I don’t initially feel like doing.
I now make sure to regularly expose myself to novelty, variation and learning (to stimulate my prefrontal cortex). I also have a clearer mental model for how I can improve myself physically, psychologically and mentally.
It might sound unnecessarily ascetic (like a Spartan), but as Ludvig explains, you can learn to get addicted to progress instead of sugar or drugs. And the more successful you get, the more important this becomes.
Ludvig read something like 200 books in research for BOOH, and it shows. There are literally HUNDREDS of practical tips in it. I don’t expect anybody to consistently follow them all. I do, however, advocate that you re-read the book every few years to implement a handful of them each time, making sure they stick with you as life habits.
I’m often asked what my best advice would be for a young and ambitious person. Well, if you want to be productive and wealthy, yet happy and healthy, THIS is the book you should read; and the book I wish I had read many times over in high school and college.
Ludvig is living proof of his own theories. He used to be a lethargic and sugar-addicted gamer, but has—step-by-step—evolved into a picture of health and strength (physically as well as cognitively) by using the ideas from Breaking out of Homeostasis.
Here are but a few of the questions that will be answered when you read BOOH:
- whether to follow your passion or the money when choosing careers
- how to curate your network of friends and business acquaintances
- how to learn things deeper and faster
- how to focus better
- how to stay ahead of the pack
And here are some of my favorite passages from the book:
- “14 Tips For Staying Active All Day Long”,
- “The 4 Pillars of Wakefulness”,
- and, if you’re looking to improve your networking skills (or your pick-up game for that matter) read: “Throw Off the Chains of Amygdala Slavery”
This book is dangerous. It will make you think painful thoughts about things you could (and should) do differently. But it will also make you explore powerful new frontiers of the mind.
So if you can hang in there, and follow through on these ideas, you will be amply rewarded.
Before reading the book from cover to cover, I suggest you start by reading through the 13 Takeaways. Carefully.
Choose just one of them and ponder it for a minute or two, before finding the relevant chapter and reading how Ludvig arrived at that conclusion. Do you agree? Why? Why not? Will you implement it in your life? Think about it rather than merely process the information.
Does it feel hard and difficult? Good. That’s because you’re on the right way and in the process of Breaking out of Homeostasis.
With your momentum thus commenced, get on with the book and prepare to become a cognitively enhanced human. I already am.
Karl-Mikael “Sprezza” Syding
Former partner at Futuris, The European Hedge Fund Of The Decade
Author of “50 Lessons I Keep Forgetting”
Mikaelsyding.com
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