Stop optimizing for today, start optimizing for tomorrow

Are you sufficiently investing in the relationships that matter?

Hi guys,

Hope you are well. I’m doing okay, Alhamdulillah.

I’ve been tired for most of this week, which is odd especially since I took time off work just last week. But somehow, I’ve been operating at maybe 60% efficiency and barely managing to tick the most important boxes off my TDL.

Ah well.

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During the week, I watched Hank Paulson's interview on Stanford GSB's YouTube channel. I had previously watched it maybe a year or two ago, but when the algorithm suggested it to me again, I figured “why not”.

Hank Paulson is a perfect example of ‘been there, done that’. He was the Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs, the global investment bank from 1999 to 2006. And then he was the Treasury Secretary (equivalent to Minister of Finance) of the United States from 2006 to 2009. Talk about achievement in both the private and public sectors.

Image from Bloomberg

Part of why Hank Paulson is so revered is that his time as Treasury Secretary corresponded with the 2008 global financial crisis and the great recession. At the height of the crisis, he led TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), a $700 billion bailout of top US banks to restore stability to the "world”.

** side note: One thing I find interesting is how many of the things economists and politicians call ‘global’ are often focused only on the high-income countries. For example, many economists will tell you that the last few years have been characterized by zero interest rates and aging populations “globally”. This is not the reality for those of us in places like Nigeria, but our relative economic insignificance means that it does not really matter.

Anyhoo, I was listening to his interview when I heard something I found interesting.

The future is fluid

Many of the people who read this newsletter are ambitious young people, generally aiming to 'achieve their dreams' one way or another. For the medical students, it is perhaps to become expert surgeons and consultants. The academics hope to someday be made Professor. The software engineers have their eyes not on FlutterWave or ULesson, but instead Facebook, AWS and Netflix.

And all of this is fine. But we sometimes forget that the 'top' organisations are consistently changing, and the Tier 1 firm you're optimizing for today might be a Tier 3 company in the future - and vice versa.

Hank Paulson mentioned that when he joined Goldman Sachs in 1974, it was around number 10 on the Wall Street league table. It might seem difficult to imagine today, but back then, there were bigger fish in the Investment Banking world. Had Hank decided to leave for Drexel Burnham Lambert or Shearson because he was chasing prestige, then perhaps he would not have achieved all that he has today.

As at 2011, ExxonMobil was the world's largest company by market capitalization with $406 billion. Just 10 years later in 2021, ExxonMobil had fallen to number 26! This is probably the point Hank was trying to make. The future is fluid, and over-optimising on the present will likely close your eyes to future opportunities.

You get out of things what you put into them

Somewhere around the 42nd minute mark, Hank started talking about his relationship with Wendy, his wife for over 50 years. Rather than diluting it with my comments, I am choosing to share exactly as he said it.

Every week - no matter how busy I was at Treasury or whatever - we would go for a long walk or a bike ride. And she tells the story of a time when we went on a bike ride but my mind was elsewhere. I rode the bike right into a gate and collapsed on the pavement…

These relationships, you get out of…I will just say this to you. Erm there is not a perfect job, there's nothing that's perfect. I've got as close to a perfect wife as you can have, but nothing - no marriage or anything - is going to be perfect. You get out of it what you put into it, and so you need to keep investing.

If you don't continue to invest in your marriage, no matter how much you're in love now, 10, 15 or 20 years from now you'll grow apart. So it's just like anything else, if you value it, you will keep it.

It seems like very marriage-specific advice, but I'll argue it is valuable to your relationship with your health, job, business, children or whatever else.

As you begin a new week, I hope you remember that the future is fluid and that optimizing for tomorrow is more important than optimizing for today. Also, are you sufficiently investing in the relationships that matter?

** Jara content:

“We went to see him play in Vegas in an AAU tournament the summer before his senior year,” McKillop tells me. “He played in one of the auxiliary gyms, not the main gym. There were very few people at the game, and even fewer coaches. I felt pretty good knowing that only a couple of guys were watching him.” McKillop waits a beat before the reveal.

“And he was awful. He threw the ball into the stands, he dropped passes, he dribbled off his foot, he missed shots. But never once during that game did he blame an official, or point a finger at a teammate. He was always cheering from the bench, he looked in his coaches eyes, and he never flinched. That stuck with me.”

- Bob McKillip, Steph Curry's first coach

Have a great week. ✨