The Buffett Formula - How To Get Smarter

来源: https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2013/05/the-buffett-formula-how-to-get-smarter

Most people go through life not really getting any smarter. Why? They simply won’t do the work required.

It’s easy to come home, sit on the couch, watch TV and zone out until bed time rolls around. But that’s not really going to help you get smarter.

Sure you can go into the office the next day and discuss the details of last night’s episode of Mad Men or Game of Thrones. And, yes, you know what happened on Survivor. But that’s not knowledge accumulation, it’s a mind-numbing sedative.

But you can acquire knowledge if you want it.

In fact there is a simple formula, which if followed is almost certain to make you smarter over time. Simple but not easy.

It involves a lot of hard work.

单词：

1. required：必需的，必修的
   例：You have now added all of the required certificates. 现在，您已经添加了所有必需的证书。

2. zone out：出神，发呆
   例：Find a quiet place outside, in your room, in your car — anywhere you feel comfortable, and just zone out for five or ten minutes.
   在外面找一处安静的地方，在你房间里，你车里——任何你感觉舒服的地方，出个五分钟十分中的神吧。

3. roll around：流逝，周而复始
   例：Don’t wait for January 1 to roll around just so you can do what most everyone else does without fail: Make New Year’s Resolutions and then don’t keep them.
   别等到大年初一过去，于是你就跟周围大多数人一样，弄出来一个宏伟新年计划并永远束之高阁。

4. numbing：麻木的
   例：If you are too busy with mind numbing work – stop it.
   如果你忙于让你思想麻木的工作——停下来吧。

5. sedative：镇静剂

We’ll call it the Buffett formula, named after Warren Buffett and his longtime business partner at Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger. These two are an extraordinary combination of minds. They are also learning machines.

“I can see, he can hear. We make a great combination.” —
Warren Buffett, speaking of his partner and friend, Charlie Munger.

We can learn a lot from them. They didn’t get smart because they are both billionaires. No, in fact they became billionaires, in part, because they are smart. More importantly, they keep getting smarter. And it turns out that they have a lot to say on the subject.

How to get smarter

Read. A lot.

Warren Buffett says, “I just sit in my office and read all day.”

What does that mean? He estimates that he spends 80% of his working day reading and thinking.

“You could hardly find a partnership in which two people settle on reading more hours of the day than in ours,” Charlie Munger commented.

When asked how to get smarter, Buffett once held up stacks of paper and said “read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge builds up, like compound interest.”

单词：

1. build up：逐渐变大
   例：The collection has been built up over the last seventeen years.
   这些收藏是在过去的17年里逐渐收集的。

2. compound interest：复利
   例：A savings account is an excellent way to learn about the power of compound interest.
   一个储蓄帐户就是学会理解储蓄复利作用的一条绝佳的方法。

All of us can build our knowledge but most of us won’t put in the effort.

One person who took Buffett’s advice, Todd Combs, now works for the legendary investor. After hearing Buffett talk he started keeping track of what he read and how many pages he was reading.

The Omaha World-Herald writes:

Eventually finding and reading productive material became second nature, a habit. As he began his investing career, he would read even more, hitting 600, 750, even 1,000 pages a day.

Combs discovered that Buffett’s formula worked, giving him more knowledge that helped him with what became his primary job — seeking the truth about potential investments.

But how you read matters too.

You need to be critical and always thinking. You need to do the mental work required to hold an opinion.

In Working Together: Why Great Partnerships Succeed Buffett comments to author Michael Eisner:

Look, my job is essentially just corralling more and more and more facts and information, and occasionally seeing whether that leads to some action. And Charlie — his children call him a book with legs.

Continuous learning

Eisner continues:

Maybe that’s why both men agree it’s better that they never lived in the same city, or worked in the same office. They would have wanted to talk all the time, leaving no time for the reading, which Munger describes as part of an essential continuing education program for the men who run one of the largest conglomerates in the world.

“I don’t think any other twosome in business was better at continuous learning than we were,” he says, talking in the past tense but not really meaning it. “And if we hadn’t been continuous learners, the record wouldn’t have been as good. And we were so extreme about it that we both spent the better part of our days reading, so we could learn more, which is not a common pattern in business.”

单词：

1. corral：捉住; 圈住
   例：Within hours, police corralled the three men Lewis had named.
   在几个小时之内，警察捉住了刘易斯指名的三名男子。

2. conglomerate：企业集团
   例：the world's second-largest media conglomerate.
   世界第二大传媒集团。

3. twosome：两人一组
   例：We do everything as a twosome, from sharing our commute to working out to eating lunch.
   我们做什么事都在一起，一起坐车上班，一起吃午饭。

4. tense：紧张的，时态
   例：It was as though Corinne was already dead: they were speaking of her in the past tense.
   就好像科琳已经死了似的：他们当时在用过去时态谈起她

It doesn’t work how you think it works.

If you’re thinking they sit in front of a computer all day obsessing over numbers and figures? You’d be dead wrong.

““No,” says Warren. “We don’t read other people’s opinions. We want to get the facts, and then think.” And when it gets to the thinking part, for Buffett and Munger, there’s no one better to think with than their partners. “Charlie can’t encounter a problem without thinking of an answer,” posits Warren. “He has the best thirty-second mind I’ve ever seen. I’ll call him up, and within thirty seconds, he’ll grasp it. He just sees things immediately.”

Munger sees his knowledge accumulation as an acquired, rather than natural, genius. And he’d give all the credit to the studying he does.

“Neither Warren nor I is smart enough to make the decisions with no time to think,” Munger once told a reporter. “We make actual decisions very rapidly, but that’s because we’ve spent so much time preparing ourselves by quietly sitting and reading and thinking.”

How can you find time to read?

Finding the time to read is easier than you think. One way to help make that happen is to carve an hour out of your day just for yourself.

单词

1. carve out：凭自身努力获得 例：Carve out some time to work. 留出一些时间来工作。

In an interview he gave for his authorized biography The Snowball, Buffett told the story:

Charlie, as a very young lawyer, was probably getting $20 an hour. He thought to himself, ‘Who’s my most valuable client?’ And he decided it was himself. So he decided to sell himself an hour each day. He did it early in the morning, working on these construction projects and real estate deals. Everybody should do this, be the client, and then work for other people, too, and sell yourself an hour a day.

It’s important to think about the opportunity cost of this hour. On one hand you can check twitter, read some online news, and reply to a few emails while pretending to finish the memo that is supposed to be the focus of your attention. On the other hand, you can dedicate the time to improving yourself. In the short term, you’re better off with the dopamine laced rush of email and twitter while multitasking. In the long term, the investment in learning something new and improving yourself goes further.

单词：

1. dopamine：多巴胺

2. lace：花边，系…的带子
   例：She finally found the perfect coat, a beautiful creation trimmed with lace.
   她最终找到了那件完美的大衣，款式漂亮、饰有花边。

“I have always wanted to improve what I do,“ Munger comments “even if it reduces my income in any given year. And I always set aside time so I can play my own self-amusement and improvement game.”

Reading is only part of the equation.

But reading isn’t enough. Charlie Munger offers:

We read a lot. I don’t know anyone who’s wise who doesn’t read a lot. But that’s not enough: You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them

单词：

1. temperament：性格
   例：His impulsive temperament regularly got him into difficulties.
   他容易冲动的性格经常使他陷入困境。

2. grab：抓住
   例：I managed to grab her hand.
   我设法抓住了她的手。

3. sensible：明智的
   例：It might be sensible to get a lawyer.
   找个律师可能会是明智的

Commenting on what it means to have knowledge, in How To Read A Book, Mortimer Adler writes: “**The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks**.”

Can you explain what you know to someone else? Try it. Pick an idea you think you have a grasp of and write it out on a sheet of paper as if you were explaining it to someone else.

单词：

1. grasp：抓牢，紧握 例：He grasped both my hands. 他紧紧地抓住我的双手。

Nature or Nurture?

Another way to get smarter, outside of reading, is to surround yourself with people who are not afraid to challenge your ideas.

重要句子

1. In fact there is a simple formula, which if followed is almost certain to make you smarter over time. Simple but not easy.
   (实际上，这里有一个很简单的公式，如果你照做了就必将随着时间推移变得越来越聪明。但是公式本身虽然简单，做起来却并不容易)

2. read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge builds up, like compound interest.
   （每天读像这样的500页。就像复利一样，知识就是这么逐渐增多的）

3. You need to be critical and always thinking. You need to do the mental work required to hold an opinion.
   （你需要保持批判性并一直去思考。你要开动脑筋去想出观点）

4. Munger sees his knowledge accumulation as an acquired, rather than natural, genius. And he’d give all the credit to the studying he does.
   （芒格把自己知识的积累看做是一种习得的天赋，而非天生如此。并且将其全都归功于自己所做的功课）

5. One way to help make that happen is to carve an hour out of your day just for yourself.
   （每天为自己挤出一小时，是帮助它实现的一种方式）

6. It’s important to think about the opportunity cost of this hour.
   （考虑这一小时的机会成本很重要）

7. I always set aside time so I can play my own self-amusement and improvement game.
   （我总会留出一些时间，用在对自己的“自育自乐”）

8. The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks
   （如果一个人无法表达他的想法，那说明他还没有想清楚）

单词：

1. required：必需的，必修的

2. zone out：出神，发呆

3. roll around：流逝，周而复始

4. numbing：麻木的

5. sedative：镇静剂

6. build up：逐渐变大

7. compound interest：复利

8. corral：捉住; 圈住

9. conglomerate：企业集团

10. twosome：两人一组

11. tense：紧张的，时态

12. carve out：凭自身努力获得

13. dopamine：多巴胺

14. lace：花边，系…的带子

15. temperament：性格

16. grab：抓住

17. sensible：明智的

18. grasp：抓牢，紧握