The metrics we worship mean nothing until we’ve earned the scars to understand them.
I’m a data guy to my core. I judge my sleep by the number flashing on my Oura Ring, not by how refreshed I feel. My golf swing isn’t adjusted by guesswork but by forty-plus metrics recorded after every shot. Spreadsheets and dashboards are my comfort zone; measure what matters. Yet I must admit, data and theory, for all their utility, can’t replicate the nuanced understanding that comes from lived experience. That gap – between knowing and doing – is where most of life’s truly valuable education hides. Call it experiential learning, on-the-job training, scar tissue wisdom; whatever the label, the common thread is simple: some lessons refuse to live in textbooks.
Take the big decisions, those that can define an entire life: Who will I share it with? Should we have children? How do I disagree with my boss without torching my career – or my integrity? Show me the MBA elective that solves those riddles. They’re too lumpy, too personal, too tangled in emotion to reduce to neat equations. They are the courses you only pass after graduation, because the only curriculum is lived experience, and the tuition fee is paid in uncertainty.
Remember learning to drive? A printed road rules handbook warned you about blind spots, but the first time a motorcycle materialised inside one, your pulse wrote the real chapter. Suddenly that textbook paragraph carried gravity, smell, and tyre noise. Experiential learning does this: it grafts context onto information, turning abstract risk into embodied caution you’ll never un-feel.
In a world where social media feeds compress entire disciplines into 30-second explainers, it’s dangerously easy to confuse recognition with mastery. Books at least drill deeper, but even their richest chapters freeze the moment the covers close – they can walk you to the threshold, not across it.
Investing is a perfect micro lab for this phenomenon. Ask any bright twenty-something to define “compound interest” and they’ll ace the definition. Ask the same person whether they can actually leave $50 a week untouched through boredom, market crashes, and TikTok FOMO – that’s a different exam entirely. As Morgan Housel writes in The Psychology of Money,
“Doing well with money has little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave.”
You don’t know your personal risk tolerance until the S&P sheds 5% in an afternoon and your phone lights up red. You don’t know if you’ll chase a shiny new ETF after one podcast, or double down on Bitcoin at 3 a.m. because a stranger on Discord said “wagmi” (crypto slang for “we’re all gonna make it”). The theory is tidy; behaviour is not.
That’s why my most common advice to novice investors is brutally low-tech: pick an affordable, plain vanilla index fund, automate the weekly debit, and press go. Don’t overthink the Sharpe Ratio or the Average Dollar Cost on day one. First, prove that you can show up – rain, shine, or meme stock hurricane. Skip that step and you risk learning the real definition of risk: as Carl Richards puts it,
“what’s left over when you think you’ve thought of everything.”
The market doesn’t grade on a curve; it grades on emotional stamina.
The same “just start” principle applies far beyond finance. Want to be a better communicator? Schedule the awkward conversation you’ve rehearsed a thousand times in your head. Dream of launching a side project? Ship a minimum viable version before the weekend. Jeff Bezos calls these “two-way doors”- reversible bets where, if things flop, you simply step back through and try again. Most of us treat them like a tightrope over Niagara Falls when, in reality, they’re revolving doors spinning politely at the mall.
Progress demands that we let the current version of ourselves be proved wrong in public. That’s painful but priceless. Every past version of you believed things the current version no longer does, and the only mechanism that upgrades those beliefs is action. Every résumé bullet, every scar, every awkward apology is a receipt for lessons future you will spend with interest.
So, if you’ve been waiting for the perfect masterclass, the flawless strategy, or the incontrovertible data set – exhale. If the choice in front of you is a two-way door – walk through it now. Action is the only sensor that exposes blind spots and tempers judgment. Each move writes fresh data to the hard drive we call experience, turning borrowed ideas into personal operating code. Delay often masquerades as prudence, but more often it’s paralysis dressed in spreadsheets.
Begin, adjust, repeat – there’s no other formula.
Dan Rickard
Director of Investment Strategy, Your Future Strategy
The views expressed in this article are opinions only and do not constitute personal financial advice.
The metrics we worship mean nothing until we’ve earned the scars to understand them.
I’m a data guy to my core. I judge my sleep by the number flashing on my Oura Ring, not by how refreshed I feel. My golf swing isn’t adjusted by guesswork but by forty-plus metrics recorded after every shot. Spreadsheets and dashboards are my comfort zone; measure what matters. Yet I must admit, data and theory, for all their utility, can’t replicate the nuanced understanding that comes from lived experience. That gap – between knowing and doing – is where most of life’s truly valuable education hides. Call it experiential learning, on-the-job training, scar tissue wisdom; whatever the label, the common thread is simple: some lessons refuse to live in textbooks.
Take the big decisions, those that can define an entire life: Who will I share it with? Should we have children? How do I disagree with my boss without torching my career – or my integrity? Show me the MBA elective that solves those riddles. They’re too lumpy, too personal, too tangled in emotion to reduce to neat equations. They are the courses you only pass after graduation, because the only curriculum is lived experience, and the tuition fee is paid in uncertainty.
Remember learning to drive? A printed road rules handbook warned you about blind spots, but the first time a motorcycle materialised inside one, your pulse wrote the real chapter. Suddenly that textbook paragraph carried gravity, smell, and tyre noise. Experiential learning does this: it grafts context onto information, turning abstract risk into embodied caution you’ll never un-feel.
In a world where social media feeds compress entire disciplines into 30-second explainers, it’s dangerously easy to confuse recognition with mastery. Books at least drill deeper, but even their richest chapters freeze the moment the covers close – they can walk you to the threshold, not across it.
Investing is a perfect micro lab for this phenomenon. Ask any bright twenty-something to define “compound interest” and they’ll ace the definition. Ask the same person whether they can actually leave $50 a week untouched through boredom, market crashes, and TikTok FOMO – that’s a different exam entirely. As Morgan Housel writes in The Psychology of Money,
You don’t know your personal risk tolerance until the S&P sheds 5% in an afternoon and your phone lights up red. You don’t know if you’ll chase a shiny new ETF after one podcast, or double down on Bitcoin at 3 a.m. because a stranger on Discord said “wagmi” (crypto slang for “we’re all gonna make it”). The theory is tidy; behaviour is not.
That’s why my most common advice to novice investors is brutally low-tech: pick an affordable, plain vanilla index fund, automate the weekly debit, and press go. Don’t overthink the Sharpe Ratio or the Average Dollar Cost on day one. First, prove that you can show up – rain, shine, or meme stock hurricane. Skip that step and you risk learning the real definition of risk: as Carl Richards puts it,
The market doesn’t grade on a curve; it grades on emotional stamina.
The same “just start” principle applies far beyond finance. Want to be a better communicator? Schedule the awkward conversation you’ve rehearsed a thousand times in your head. Dream of launching a side project? Ship a minimum viable version before the weekend. Jeff Bezos calls these “two-way doors”- reversible bets where, if things flop, you simply step back through and try again. Most of us treat them like a tightrope over Niagara Falls when, in reality, they’re revolving doors spinning politely at the mall.
Progress demands that we let the current version of ourselves be proved wrong in public. That’s painful but priceless. Every past version of you believed things the current version no longer does, and the only mechanism that upgrades those beliefs is action. Every résumé bullet, every scar, every awkward apology is a receipt for lessons future you will spend with interest.
So, if you’ve been waiting for the perfect masterclass, the flawless strategy, or the incontrovertible data set – exhale. If the choice in front of you is a two-way door – walk through it now. Action is the only sensor that exposes blind spots and tempers judgment. Each move writes fresh data to the hard drive we call experience, turning borrowed ideas into personal operating code. Delay often masquerades as prudence, but more often it’s paralysis dressed in spreadsheets.
Begin, adjust, repeat – there’s no other formula.
Dan Rickard
Director of Investment Strategy, Your Future Strategy
The views expressed in this article are opinions only and do not constitute personal financial advice.