‼14 ideas from Buffett and Munger I don’t want to forget: 1. The one thing that has surprised me all my life is how many people with high IQs do massively stupid things.
2. The real issue is mediocrity. There are too many .240 hitters on boards. Businesses often settle for a notch or two above mediocrity.
3. Unfortunately, Bertrand Russell's observation about life in general applies with unusual force in the financial world: "Most men would rather die than think. Many do.”
4. The sign above the players' entrance to the field at Notre Dame reads 'Play Like a Champion Today.'
I sometimes joke that the sign at Nebraska reads 'Remember Your Helmet.' Charlie and I are 'Remember Your Helmet kind of guys.'
We like to keep it simple.
5. You need an ability to not be driven crazy by extreme success.
6. It's so easy to get so busy that you no longer have time to think—and you pay a huge price for that.
7. We've had enough good sense when something was working well we keep doing it.
8. While an excess of self-regard is often counterproductive in its effects on cognition, it can cause some weird successes from overconfidence that happens to cause success.
9. We have been a student of other's folly, and it has served us well.
10. I like to deal with people where I feel a one-page contract would do the job.
11. Always try to simplify things to their essence–the fundamental or most important aspect of something—the core.
12. Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know.
13. In almost sixty years of investing, we've found it practically useless to give advice to anyone.
14. Berkshire was a small business at one time. It just takes time. It is the nature of compound interest. You can't build it in one day, or one week.
All of these highlights are from the book All I Want To Know Is Where I’m Going To Die So I’ll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger — A Study In Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin
