给大家分享一篇对我消费观念影响很大的文章，叫《Everything Must Be Paid for Twice》。
翻译过来是：买所有东西，都必须支付两次。
这个观念非常反常识，因为在大多数人的观念里，我们买一个东西，花钱买了就是买了，买到了就是拥有了。
什么叫支付两次？
但在这篇文章里，作者提出了一个说法，叫第一代价和第二代价。
第一代价很好理解，就是你掏出去的那笔钱。
比如买一本书、办一张健身卡、或者报一个网课。 钱离开账户的那一刻，第一代价就付清了。
但在作者看来，这只是账单的上半部分。
真正的下半部分，是第二代价——你使用这件东西所需要付出的时间、精力和意志力。
你买的网课得听完，你办的健身卡得去，只有这笔账也还完，你当初付的那笔钱才算真正花出去了。
「你花钱买到的，只是一张兑换券。能不能兑现，取决于你愿不愿意付第二代价。」
你现在也可以回想一下，你生活中有多少东西，是钱都花出去了，但价值一点都没兑现？
买的课，听了两节就直接躺收藏夹里了；办的健身卡，一年可能就去个两三次……
你会发现，生活里很多东西，钱虽然是花出去了，但价值其实一点都没兑现。
从这个角度看，很多我们以为「买到了」的东西，其实从来就没真正属于过我们。
很多人都知道芒格有一面墙的书，知道他那句「我这辈子遇到的聪明人，没有一个不每天读书的」。
但读书不只是买书，而是读书后把书里的东西拆开，和你已经知道的东西对比、碰撞、重新组装，最后变成你自己的思维框架，也就是你的跨学科思维模型。
买书是第一代价，读完是初级的第二代价，而把书里的逻辑真正内化、用来解释和判断现实世界，才是完整的第二代价。
大多数人读书，其实只付到了一半的第二代价。
那出路在哪？
作者说，办法是把开关推向另一边：停止无节制地支付第一代价，把精力放回到你已经欠着的那些第二代价上。
我觉得这个建议是对的，尤其是在买任何东西之前，需要先问自己一个问题：我有没有打算为这件东西付出第二代价？
我们之前花了非常多的时间，浏览了很多平台算法强制推荐给你的信息，买了很多没必要买的东西。
不是”我觉得应该”，不是”我计划以后”，而是现在，这件事有没有一个位置在我的时间和精力里？
如果没有，就先不买。
作者在文章最后说，支付第二代价就像在一片没有地图的荒野里慢慢开路。
走得很慢，一路上会绊倒，但全程都是新的领土。熬过最难受的那一段之后，那片荒野就变成了你自己的地盘。
买到，从来不等于得到。
得到，要靠你自己走完剩下的那一半路。
附《Everything Must Be Paid for Twice》全文
One financial lesson they should teach in school is that most of the things we buy have to be paid for twice.
There’s the first price, usually paid in dollars, just to gain possession of the desired thing, whatever it is: a book, a budgeting app, a unicycle, a bundle of kale.
But then, in order to make use of the thing, you must also pay a second price. This is the effort and initiative required to gain its benefits, and it can be much higher than the first price.
A new novel, for example, might require twenty dollars for its first price—and ten hours of dedicated reading time for its second. Only once the second price is being paid do you see any return on the first one. Paying only the first price is about the same as throwing money in the garbage.
Likewise, after buying the budgeting app, you have to set it all up, and learn to use it habitually before it actually improves your financial life. With the unicycle, you have to endure the presumably painful beginner phase before you can cruise down the street. The kale must be de-veined, chopped, steamed, and chewed before it gives you any nourishment.
If you look around your home, you might notice many possessions for which you’ve paid the first price but not the second. Unused memberships, unread books, unplayed games, unknitted yarns.
I can’t know for sure, but I have the sense that in pre-consumer societies, there was less emphasis on paying first prices (i.e. getting things into your possession) and much more on paying second prices—doing the work necessary to use what you have, and becoming someone who always does. Imagine a plow, purchased for its features, but which never gets pulled through the earth.
The miracle of industrialization has reduced many first prices tremendously, but has also given us many more of them to consider paying. With all the wonderful toys on offer, almost nobody feels like they have quite enough money, enough acquisition power. When a person receives a windfall, they immediately think of more first prices they can now pay.
But no matter how many cool things you acquire, you don’t gain any more time or energy with which to pay their second prices—to use the gym membership, to read the unabridged classics, to make the ukulele sound good—and so their rewards remain unredeemed.
I believe this is one reason our modern lifestyles can feel a little self-defeating sometimes. In our search for fulfillment, we keep paying first prices, creating a correspondingly enormous debt of unpaid second prices. Yet the rewards of any purchase – the reason we buy it at all — stay locked up until both prices are paid.
For example, you can pick up Moby-Dick for a dollar at a garage sale, but it’s a wasted dollar if you don’t subsequently pay a significant second price: sixteen hours of attending closely to long Victorian commentaries on whales and the men who hunt them. And you’ve got many more debts competing for those same sixteen hours — the more first prices you’ve paid alongside this garage sale dollar, the less you feel like you’ll ever have time to properly experience the legend of Captain Ahab, or do any other elective activities that require effort and initiative.
This scarcity feeling creates one of the major side-effects of our insurmountable second-price debt: we reflexively overindulge in entertainment and other low-second-price pleasures –- phone apps, streaming services, and processed food — even though their rewards are often only marginally better than doing nothing. This stuff is attractive because it takes little effort (and we’re tired from working to pay for so many first prices) but it can eat up a ton of time, depleting the second-price budget even further.
The only solution I can think of is to consciously throw the switch the other way: avoid paying any more needless first prices, and set your lifestyle around paying certain second prices, so you can finally enjoy the long-promised prizes waiting in your bookshelf, storage room, and hard drive. This was my original intuition behind the Depth Year concept—to designate a whole year in which you stop acquiring more ways to do cool things, and start doing the cool things in earnest.
(If you think you might want to do a Depth Year in 2022, feel free to join the Facebook group.)
Paying a second price, unpleasant as it sounds, is a process you can acquire a taste for, and when you do, it’s exhilarating. It’s like picking your way through unmapped wilderness – the going is slow and there’s lots to trip over, but it’s new territory the whole way, and after the initial discomfort you feel very alive. Then when you come out the other side, this new territory has become part of your usual range, and you’re tougher and more interesting.
Figuring out how to pay the second price isn’t hard. You just have to notice that moment you usually think about packing it in, and stay with it instead of doing something else.
In other words, when you hit the weeds, you go into them instead of away. The awkward B major chord on the guitar – get your fingers in place anyway, and see if you can relax into the position just a bit more. The part where Ishmael goes on at length about historical whale drawings – try to understand why it matters to him. It is in these unfamiliar moments that the rewards appear.