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More Art Than Science
Rule Breaker Investing is about the unknown. You’re trying to piece together where the future is headed. The future is unknowable! Thus, by definition you’re making stuff up. You’re imagining, later hoping. It’s fundamentally more art than science… more poetry, than rationalism.
Now, I love both art and science. I hope you do too. People who only orient toward one are missing half the picture. We need to integrate these things, and see each for what it is:
Art is rooted in the unknown. Artists can perhaps copy forms — follow someone else’s map, if you will. But they are ultimately judged and valued by their ability to navigate us to new places.
Science is rooted in the known. You are still trying to discover, but in a completely different way: Asking the best questions we can, we gather what data we see, and form hypotheses.
G.K. Chesterton had this right. In his book Orthodoxy, Chesterton sided with art. He wrote, “The poet [here, artist] only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician [here, scientist] who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”
The logician investor seeks precision: numbers, searchable data. The numerical. A very left-brain approach to investing. These are the people who screen for stocks, who use numerical parameters. Maybe algorithmic-driven.
That’s not what we’re doing at Rule Breaker Investing. We’re looking CEOs in the eye. We’re looking the future in the eye as best we can — as best we can piece it together — and we know we’re going to get it wrong a substantial amount of the time. Again, if you have your math right, you’re never wrong. But even if you have your art right, you can still be wildly wrong.
So yes, for me, this unknown quality feels more like art, with its concomitant risks. We’re splashing paint on a canvas, as opposed to coolly, even coldly, pushing an abacus.
Ultimately, the greatest investors see and integrate both.
But most present-day investors that I encounter need more art. They’re only intending science.
The Lighthouse
While many humanistic concepts “go back to the Greeks,” the phrase self-actualization only showed up in the 20th century, most famously popularized by American psychologist Abraham Maslow. He put it at the top of the pyramid of his “hierarchy of needs.” If we can get there, we have gone beyond merely fulfilling our biological and egotistical needs to our psychological ones. We have, in effect, maximized our potential.
You may already be familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy (if not, spend 3 minutes with this). But do you know the wisdom of Positive Intelligence genius Shirzad Chamine?
Shirzad says we approach this in the wrong order:
“Oh, my God!” we think. “I have to figure out what my Big Achievement will be on this earth.” Then we must focus and achieve it… and having achieved it: “I’ll be self- actualized!” Right?
Wrong.
Each of us, with no map or guide, is standing at the edge of a dark forest. There is a lighthouse in the distance: Self-Actualization.
Getting to the lighthouse is a goal taken one step at a time. At any given step, Chamine urges:
“Take the step that has more light in it.”
Only after you take that step, will the next be revealed.
Light symbolizes positive emotions we are drawn to like empathy, curiosity, creativity, fulfillment; their opposites are fear, anxiety, self-doubt.
So with several choices in front of you, ask, “Which step has more light?” Take that step, and as a consequence, there’ll be more light on your path. And the next step will be revealed.
As you keep taking each new step toward the light, things will get brighter… and you will discover tools you didn’t know about, new friends you now recognize as crucial. “Every step is full of discovery and growth,” Shirzad says, “and you keep getting closer and closer to the lighthouse…”
And yet, surprise ending: You will never make it to the lighthouse.
“Nobody is ever fully self-actualized… Every step you take you are becoming more and more your true self.”
The value lies in the journey to becoming your authentic, unique, best self.