I love finding inspiration for my work from outside the investment or financial planning industry. So much of what I do is creative and emotional work and that allows me to look to a huge range of people for insight.

In a recent interview, Up in the Air director Jason Reitman had some really interesting things to say about planning and the role that experience plays in directing. Here’s the link (warning: may be NSFW based on two words I wish were missing) to a segment that is really good. It is pre-cued from minute 49:30 and the really interesting stuff happens at 52:00.

A few thoughts:

[1] You have to be prepared for whatever a scene is. Sure you have to plan, but the reality is that you don’t know what you have until you edit.

[2] It’s time to debunk the horrible myth that creative pursuits can be an exact science and that you’re the expert because you know everything from start to finish and there will be no mistakes.

[3] It is only from making hundreds of decisions every day and getting certain things right and certain things wrong that you start to build vocabulary and knowledge of how to create a scene

The reality of investing and financial planning is we really don’t know what is coming in the future. That might sound obvious, but so many in the industry pretend that they do know. Sure we can make some guesses based on the past, but these are nothing more than guess. When you add a bunch of assumptions to all the emotional issues we deal with it becomes obvious that investing is not a science. [Real people are emotional and at times we act irrationally. Markets are nothing more than a collection of real people and are therefore also often irrational.]

There is not a formula that works for every situation and every person.

We all realize that you should not be looking to hire a financial planner because they know everything. You should hire one who understands the value of the experience that comes from making hundreds of decisions in the past and understanding the process of dealing with what comes up in the future.

Look for someone that understands how to be a guide in an uncertain landscape and avoid the ones that spend all their time defending outdated maps.