On the merits of suffering
And my interview with Moez Kaba, managing partner of Hueston Hennigan
Nvidia is a 30-year-old company that designs software and semiconductors. Its market cap is now over $2 trillion, making it the third most valuable company in the world. As you can see from this chart, it’s been a slow burn.
One of its founders, Jensen Huang, is now CEO of the company. There’s a clip making the rounds from his recent talk at Stanford University:
Jensen Huang says: “People with very high expectations have very low resilience. And unfortunately, resilience matters in success. I don’t know how to teach it to you except for ‘I hope suffering happens to you’.”
Someone on twitter said this is classic Asian-dad energy. At any rate, it’s a classic take - enduring suffering makes you resilient, and resilience is necessary for long-term success.
Jensen Huang’s take seems to be a counterpoint to the more recent school of thought best represented by Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel’s take is that failure is overdetermined - there are many causes for failure, and that failure is demoralizing. I never quite understood the first point, because success is also overdetermined (anyone here bought a house in March 2020?). But I agree that failure is demoralizing - with any new venture, we should aim for small wins to build momentum and stay in the game.
There’s a similar dichotomy in personal finance. The old-school advice is “skip Starbucks and invest that money in an IRA”. Enduring some sacrifice today is worth the payoff. The newer school is best represented by Ramit Sethi. His take is that we should focus more on increasing income. To enjoy the most out of life, we should spend even more on the categories that are most important to us.
I’m a big fan of this idea from Ramit - after living in NYC for 4 months, I realized that I loved getting groceries from Citarella and Whole Foods. So it’s permanently changed how much I spend on food.
And I think we should earn more. I earned more as a legal recruiter in January than I did in my last year as a biglaw associate. Earning more has energized me and made me more satisfied with work.
But I think lawyers as a community have lost sight of the importance of thrift.
Successful entrepreneurs brag about how little they spend. Successful law firm partners brag about how much they spend.
Successful entrepreneurs talk about how they still fly coach. Successful law firm partners talk about how they bought a house in Tahoe.
I don’t have a satisfactory answer for why that is. But I do know it’s a trap. If you’re spending like your peers, you’ll be locked into the same lifestyle as them, and you won’t be resilient to changes, because you can’t experiment.
That’s why I’m still fond of a peanut butter raisin sandwich. It's both familiar and novel. It's also nutritious, inexpensive, durable, and easy to prepare.
I owe this humble sandwich a debt of gratitude. I couldn't have made it through law school without it. I never got tired of it. It showed up at my exams. It showed up at the bar.
When I was in college, I'd go through the grocery doing arithmetic: the ratio of protein to fat to carbs to dollars. I was optimizing for the first three in that order, and minimizing the last figure.
I can afford to eat much nicer foods than peanut butter raisin sandwiches now. But I still have my staples. A can of tuna fish, a bottle of kefir. I'm grateful that I can appreciate simple foods and know how to do well with less.
So I encourage you to consider - what is it that you do that helps you be more resilient?
p.s. p.s. you might like my interview with Moez Kaba, managing partner of Hueston Hennigan, the elite trial firm. Moez’s father drove a cab, and now Moez is one of the most sought-after trial lawyers in the country. And he’s only 42. This is one of my best episodes - listen to it here.