Short and sweet: a wealth of common sense

Pope Francis urged preachers to convey “one idea, one feeling and one invitation to action” in a maximum of ten minutes.

“After eight minutes the preaching gets scattered and no one understands it,” he said. “Never go longer than 10 minutes! This is very important.”

Amen.

In his investment classic Winning the loser’s game, Charley Ellis tells a great story about healthcare and simplicity:

Please keep in mind the observation of two of my best friends who are at the height of their distinguished careers in medicine and medical research. They agree that the two most important discoveries in medical history are penicillin and hand washing (which stopped the spread of infections from one mother to another by the midwives who delivered most babies before 1900). Besides, my friends say, there is no better advice for living longer than to quit smoking and wear a seat belt when driving. The lesson: Advice doesn’t have to be complicated to be good.

French author Patrick Modiano has written more than twenty books. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014. A book reviewer Modiano once said that he believes he more or less always writes the same novel:

Modiano says that just like any other novelist he always writes the same book‘we always make the same novel.’ [translation: It is always the same novel.] Modiano perhaps more than most. The mania to look back is always there. His characters collect scraps of old evidence, manuscripts, photos, police files, newspaper clippings. They follow in the footsteps of disappeared people and snoop into the world of others like unemployed private detectives who can’t find anything else. They have what I consider to be Modiano’s own interest in the streets of Paris, especially those in the suburbs, and they incessantly quote addresses, consult old telephone books and call telephone numbers no longer in service.

The lessons from each of these stories are as follows:

Get to the point. Short and sweet. In the immortal words of Steven Pressfield“No one wants to read your shit.”

Pressfield explains:

1) Streamline your message. Concentrate it and reduce it to its simplest, clearest and easiest to understand form. 2) Make its expression fun. Or sexy or interesting or scary or informative. Make it so compelling that someone would have to be crazy NOT to read it. 3) Apply that to all forms of writing, art or commerce.

Simple beats complex. People are attracted to complex solutions because complexity gives you the illusion of control. 90% of investing comes down to your choice of asset allocation. Keep it simple.

You don’t have to recreate the wheel. Stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before you. Learn from past successes and failures.

No one goes to church hoping to learn something about the Eleventh Commandment.

Good stories and advice rarely change, even though the world itself is constantly changing.

Further reading:
Writing lessons from a river flowing through it