Two weeks ago, I read How to Get Rich in American History. It’s a history book that describes the strategies Americans used to create wealth and improve their financial position over 300 years. One concept that got me thinking was from Chapter 2, “Fast Time, Slow Time.”

Roughly, the idea is that fast time and slow time are just what they sound like. During slow time, life moves at a steady pace. Change happens slowly, making it easy to digest. Fast time is the opposite: Life, or aspects of life, move rapidly. Change happens at lightning speed.

The author of the book applies this idea to the accumulation of wealth: Slow time is following a steady approach to accumulating wealth. Think of working for the same company, learning a skill, and saving money for a decade or two. Fast time is taking an accelerated approach to accumulating wealth. Think of opening a business at the right time, when demand from potential customers is high, and the business producing a life-changing profit for the owners after one or two years.

This got me thinking about things that affect change and the rate of change.

A major factor is that change is sometimes random. Life is unpredictable, and you should expect some curveballs. Who had a global pandemic on their radar in January 2020?  

When the rate of change and randomness are at normal levels, we’re in slow time. The change that we experience doesn’t feel like it alters life much. It feels manageable. Think 2019.

When the rate of change and randomness are elevated, we’re in fast time. The change feels extraordinary or life-altering. Adapting to this level of change can be difficult. Think 2020 and COVID-19.

Life isn't stable; it can change suddenly. You have to expect both slow change and rapid, surprising change. This being the case, how have people leveraged both slow time and fast time to accelerate their progress?

The author made a great point:

Those who can live in the present while building in the expectation for change —even if they aren’t always sure just how or when it’s coming—have a leg up on those who presume the brave new world of tomorrow will actually arrive tomorrow (or, on the flip side, never).

My take is that many people who realize outsize gains during fast time do so because they positioned themselves well during slow time. They planned for change and took steps during slow time that would give them an advantage when (or if) change occurs.

In the book, Norman McGhee is a great example. For 10 or 15 years, he studied business from the bottom up, despite racial headwinds. By his mid-thirties he was worth very little, but he understood business. When the Great Depression hit (fast time), many people lost their homes. McGhee, leveraging his knowledge of business, bought 100 foreclosed homes, which he turned into rentals. He borrowed 100% of his costs and banked on the homes’ values rising. McGhee knew a business opportunity would present itself to him one day, and he wanted to be prepared to act decisively when it did. This investment helped McGhee become one of the most prominent black businessmen of his era. His success in real estate allowed him to break the racial barrier on Wall Street and become one of the first black stockbrokers.  

Change often begins slowly and then takes off, seemingly all at once. During slow time, spotting that change or at least understanding that the future will look different than the present in unanticipated ways is key. If you can do this, you can plant seeds during slow time that will produce an excellent harvest during fast time, when rapid change occurs.

One insight that resonated with me when I read How to Get Rich in American History was about retirement. The author said that one of the 25 financial ideas that have worked throughout history is “Do not obsess over early retirement.” His point was that throughout history, most people who became wealthy didn’t stop working. Their wealth made them self-sufficient, so they spent their time doing what they wanted. Often, they wanted to work (and many wealthy early retirees go back to work). Retirement has historically meant having control over what you choose to pursue and work on, not choosing to not work.

I agree with this point. In 2023, I shared the insights I gained from taking extended time off. My conclusion was that “[m]y retirement plan is to never retire.” You can see my explanation here.

After reading 300 years’ worth of history, the author came to a conclusion similar to mine. It’s good to know that my stance is supported by history.

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A few weeks ago, I came across a podcast in which a history professor turned real estate investor shared what he’d learned from researching 300 years of Americans climbing the economic ladder. He spent over 10 years reading history and trying some of the strategies himself. He shared everything in his book, How to Get Rich in American History, which I read last week.

There are lots of good takeaways in this book. One of them is that most financial advice we think is timeless hasn’t held throughout history. Today I’ll share the seven strategies that Americans used throughout history to get ahead:

1. Built their own business
2. Took a large income in someone else’s business
3. Combined several small incomes to create excess income
4. Invested extreme portions of their income
5. Leveraged a high-payout opportunity with debt or risk
6. Invested steadily over a long period of time
7. Married well

Number 6 is valid, but timing matters because the stock market has had terrible periods. So, as much as timing the market is frowned upon now, history says you should time it when you use strategy #6.

These strategies are pretty straightforward. Using a combination of them intelligently is how people got ahead in life over the last 300 years.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to leverage the power of books using AI. I toyed with some ideas, but I was never able to find workarounds for several issues. Today I learned that I wasn’t the only one working on this. Google was too. Thursday, Google announced Expert Intelligence (see here).

The product allows anyone to use Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) to ask questions of books; well, e-books, to be exact. Users can now upload books to Gemini Notebook, which makes it possible for them to interact with the book’s contents. They can ask questions, create audio overviews (i.e., personalized podcasts), search the contents of the book, etc. And this can all be done with one book or multiple books.

It’s still early, and this product is new, but I think it could transform how people make use of book content.

Last week I read Afro Sheen, the autobiography of George E. Johnson, founder of Johnson Products Company (JPC). I learned about Johnson last month when he died and I read the Wall Street Journal’s write-up of his life (see here). The article intrigued me and reminded me of John H. Johnson (no relation), another Chicago entrepreneur who had a dramatic influence on Black culture over many decades. John H. Johnson’s autobiography (see here) was one of my favorite reads in 2024 and really solidified for me the power and influence of media companies that serve niches.

George E. Johnson’s autobiography is full of stories about encountering and overcoming challenges, and one key personality trait that I picked up on was Johnson’s ability and desire to self-educate. He didn’t have much formal education; he dropped out of high school. But his desire to succeed and lift himself out of poverty fueled an insatiable desire to learn his way out of problems and learn new things just for fun. Two vivid examples from the book stuck with me.

Johnson was notoriously afraid of flying. He had to fly for business, but he hated it. He decided that the best way to overcome his fear of flying was to learn how to fly a plane. Learning to fly forced him to learn the principles of aviation. Once he understood why certain things happen to airplanes, his fear of flying was cured. He even took things to the next level and bought a single-engine plane so he could fly himself for business and pleasure.

Johnson recognized early on that marketing directly to the Black community was difficult. But when color televisions became popular in the 1960s, Johnson saw an opportunity. Not only did he learn how television advertising worked, he took it further. He recognized that advertising on shows that didn’t serve his target customer didn’t make sense. Wanting to make sure his ads spoke directly to his target customer, he decided to create a TV special that his customers would love. In 1969, …& Beautiful aired. It featured Redd Foxx, Della Reese, Wilt Chamberlain, and others. Johnson had learned television advertising and television production.

…& Beautiful led to Johnson meeting Don Cornelius, then a disc jockey at a local Chicago radio station. The two partnered on a new TV concept called Soul Train, which became a multi-decade television success and skyrocketed the sales of JPC products nationwide. Johnson was an advertiser on Soul Train and owned 50% of the show at one time (read the book to find out how generous he was to Cornelius). Through Soul Train, Johnson learned about syndication. CBS, ABC, and NBC turned the show down, but Johnson purchased airtime on independent stations in nine markets with large Black populations. The result was that Johnson and his team set the stage for Soul Train to become the first nationally syndicated television show. Johnson learned the business of TV and used it to supercharge JPC’s marketing efforts and sales.

Johnson’s life is a great rags-to-riches story. Its through line is continual self-education and drive by someone who refused to be defined by his starting position in life.

A few months ago, I read Richards J. Heuer’s Psychology of Intelligent Analysis. It’s one of my favorite reads of 2026 because it’s one of the best books about how to analyze complex situations that I’ve read. It provides an easy-to-understand framework (I’m a big fan of frameworks). Other books on this topic didn’t have as much substance and sometimes left me with more questions than answers. This framework is concrete and something I could begin using immediately.

After a few months, I’ve realized how invaluable this framework is, and I understand why it’s taught by the CIA to its analysts. When I’m reflecting on something complex, I run my thinking through this framework and it highlights where I’ve gone off track. It focuses on evidence and facts to disprove multiple hypotheses. That leads to more-rational thinking because it limits the influence of emotions. Another unexpected benefit is that I can use this framework to spot the flaws in others’ thinking.

This framework is useful, but it requires a huge shift in my thinking that feels uncomfortable because it goes against my psychological biases. I thought I could just flip a switch and automatically begin thinking in accordance with this framework, but that hasn’t been the case. I’m finding that I must put effort into actively using this framework. I must stop, remind myself of the framework, run my thinking through it, then go get additional information required to complete the analysis using the framework.

I’m glad I read this book and hope to have fully integrated its framework into my decision-making process by the end of 2026.

As I shared yesterday, I read The Bond King, a biography about famous investor Bill Gross and the investing empire he built with PIMCO. Two other things stood out to me about Gross’s story that I’ve been thinking about this week.

Even though he founded PIMCO, Gross wasn’t an entrepreneur. He started PIMCO as an experiment within the insurance company he was working for in the 1970s, Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company. Pacific Mutual gave him and a few others $5 million to test out their bond strategies. By taking the intrapreneur route, Gross could enjoy a comfortable salary, not spend months or years trying to raise money from LPs for a fund, and use the resources and infrastructure of his employer. PIMCO made Gross a billionaire even though he wasn’t an entrepreneur and his risk was significantly reduced.

The other thing that stood out to me was the culture at PIMCO. It was sharp-elbowed and competitive, which helped them for decades. They pushed the boundaries, and it doesn’t sound like it was a fun place to work. It was an intense pressure cooker that paid extremely high salaries. People hated it, but they couldn’t leave. The culture Gross created ended up being a big part of the reason he was forced to leave abruptly.  

Bill Gross and the PIMCO story are fascinating. He’s a super-eccentric guy. He accomplished a lot, but his eccentric ways had many downsides.

I’ve read several books about decision-making this year. One of the best was What Intelligence Tests Miss. One day, I’ll write up in detail what I learned from the book, but for now I want to share some of what I found interesting. It distinguishes between IQ and rationality and explains that high IQ doesn’t equate to good decision-making.

One thing that stuck with me was what the author called “dysrationalia,” which is the inability to behave rationally despite having adequate intelligence.  

And what does rationality mean? Setting appropriate goals, taking the appropriate action given your goals and beliefs, and having beliefs that make sense given the available evidence.

You can be highly intelligent and still be irrational. This is because smart people can hold beliefs that aren’t grounded in reality and/or make decisions that don’t align with their goals. Said differently, you can be smart and still exercise poor judgment.

This book goes into a lot more detail about traps that lead to poor judgment. If you’re interested in understanding how smart people make bad decisions, you should consider giving this book a read.

I recently finished reading What Intelligence Tests Miss. It was the best book I’ve read on decision-making, and I’ve read several other books on this topic. The others were all good, but this is the first book that dove deep into the outsize impact that rationality has on decision-making and the differences between IQ and rationality. It explains in great detail why people with extremely high IQs sometimes make irrational (i.e., stupid) decisions. I also found its taxonomy of reasoning errors a helpful visual. It explains what causes bad decisions (cognitive bias) and how to catch them so you can identify and correct bad thinking during your decision-making process.

I want to make sure I retain and apply what I read in this book, so I’m challenging myself. I want to create a digest of this book and use it to write a post that synthesizes what I learned.

After I’ve read a book, I always get a lot out of creating a digest and using it to synthesize what I learned in a post, but it takes a ton of time and energy, which is why I haven’t done one in a few months. But this book has me excited, and I think it’s worth the time and effort.

My goal is to have both the digest and the synthesizing post done by the end of the month. Wish me luck!

Yesterday, I shared a post (see here) that includes my reading stats for 2025. After writing it, I realized that since I began my book-a-week reading habit in April 2024, I’ve read 100 books in roughly 100 weeks. For whatever reason, that hadn’t occurred to me before yesterday. It made me feel accomplished and motivated, and it feels like a material milestone that I want to keep extending. So now I’m more motivated than ever to read a book every week!