That never happens (usually)

Much of what happens every day is brand new.

Google sees over a billion search queries every day for phases that have never been searched before (8B searches/day, roughly 15% are brand new).

Or like I shared earlier this year, people keep beating insane odds to win the Powerball, and a freshly sorted deck of cards has likely never been in that order before.

The same is true when it comes to business and investing — things happen all the time that have never happened before. Stanford professor Scott Sagan puts it this way:

“Things that have never happened before happen all the time.”

Being aware of that makes for an interesting way to view the world. You can’t go expecting every little thing to occur, because any given scenario has a small chance of happening, but you can be prepared for something to happen that is outside of your plan.

So how do you prepare for that? Simply by being ready. Allow extra time for travel in case of an unexpected slowdown. Keep more money in savings in case you need it. Keep an extra backup of your data. You can do little things to give yourself a buffer throughout life.

Ultimately, as he shared in his book “The Psychology of Money“, author Morgan Housel says:

The correct lesson to learn from surprises is that the world is surprising.

Surprises will happen, so just don’t be surprised by the next surprise.