Obsess Responsibly

The most important insights is to know that if you have an obsessive personality, if you really love what you do, then you have to put guard rails where something you do automatic. Even though it sounds kind of horrible, like it’s not like I dread driving my daughter to school. It’s the opposite. Actually, I want to drive her to school, but a lot of times kind of your obsession takes over and pushes it away.

People who go into investing. And by the way, what I’m about to say, even though I’m going to use investing as an example, it applies to almost any profession. If you are obsessed about anything you’re doing, the rest of the world can get pushed out. You could be an artist, a painter, or a litigator. If you absolutely have soul in the game, if you are obsessed with what you do, then you get sucked in. It occupies all the real estate in your mind.

Speaking for myself, even though being with my kids is incredibly important to me, that can get pushed out by inertia. Knowing that, I created guardrails in my life. These guardrails help me make sure that when my obsession with investing takes over, it doesn’t take over my life completely.

There are certain things I do. Two of my older kids are out of the house, but my youngest one is still at home, she’s 11. I drive her to school every single day when I’m in Denver. When I travel for business, I always try to take a member of my family with me, often my kids. For example, we just went to Omaha and I took both of my older kids with me.

On Friday night, and this is really my wife’s achievement, we have a family dinner and everybody gets together. On Fridays, I don’t really do meetings. I try to spend that day with my kids. Saturdays, too. Before going to sleep, I usually play chess with my daughter or we do puzzles.

Over time, these little things created relationships with my kids. My oldest son is 24, he doesn’t live at home, but I talk to him two or three times a day on the phone, sometimes more. That created a connection with my kids which is incredibly important to me. Without that connection, there would be a giant hole in my life.

The most important insight is this: if you have an obsessive personality, if you really love what you do, then you need to put up guardrails. Build in things that you do automatically, so they don’t get pushed out. It’s not that I dread driving my daughter to school, it’s the opposite, I love doing it. But a lot of times, your obsession takes over and pushes those things away.