In January, I joined a book club for copywriters.

In the last 11 months I’ve been taken on a tour of unusual and interesting corners of the literary world like propaganda, immortality and social upheaval.

This month we’re ploughing our way through The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.

It’s a popular, zeitgeisty book. 

And it’s my kind of read.

It’s full of short, sharp chapters crammed with stories, snippets & takeaways about money and what makes people tick.

Here's an extract from the first chapter which lays the groundwork for what’s to come:

Everyone has their own unique experience of how the world works.  And what you’ve experienced is more compelling than what you learn second-hand.  So all of us – you, me, everyone – go through life anchored to a set of views about how money works that vary wildly from person to person. 

What seems crazy to you might make sense to me.  That’s not because one of us is smarter or has better information.  It’s because we’ve had different lives shaped by different and equally persuasive experiences.

Housel continues:

Your personal experience with money makes up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.  So equally smart people can disagree about how and why recessions happen, how you should invest your money, what you should prioritise, how much risk you should take, and so on.

Simply put:

How we treat money has little to do with how much money we have, and everything to do with how we think about money based on the money experiences we’ve had.

This is why some folk insist on paying their share of the bill and not a penny more (even if they’ve got bundles of wonga tucked away in their piggy banks), whereas others throw their money around like confetti at a wedding even if the loan sharks are beating down their door.

Of course, the idea that our past experiences shape our present reality isn’t all that unusual.

It’s a well-worn intro to many a self-help book.

Doesn’t matter if you’re writing about money, relationships, entrepreneurship, life or anything else…

Tweak a few words here, a few words there, add a couple of stories and Bob’s your uncle - you’ve got yourself Chapter One.

(you’re welcome)

I will say this though:

Based on my travels around the self-help sections of many Waterstones and WH Smiths across London, there’s another topic which doesn’t get talked about like Housel talks about money, yet which works exactly the same way.

That topic?

Time.

I don’t mean in the sense that “time is money”.

I mean that our attitude and approach to managing time is also a combination of learnt habits and behaviours from our past.

Even though we might think – really, truly, deeply think - that our approach to money, time, or anything else is based on reality, it’s a slam-dunk copper-bottomed fact that it’s not.

As Housel says, it’s probably based on 0.00000001% of how the world works.

This is good news for anyone who’d like to fine tune their relationship with time.  It means there’s more (much, much more) for us all to see.

And if you’re looking for a fresh perspective on time (and managing your time in particular) you might like to check out my time management challenge, Time Conqueror.

I’ll be re-opening the doors to the challenge on Monday.

So if this sounds interesting, keep your eyes peeled.  You can clock more details then.

That’s all for today.

Have a great weekend.

- Tom