notes from the NEW Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger turned into maxims:
1. Find a simple idea and take it seriously.
2. Good ideas are rare. When you find one bet heavily.
3. Humans have been writing down their best ideas for 5,000 years. Read them.
4. Avoiding stupid mistakes is more important than being smart.
5. Don’t work with anyone you don’t admire.
6. Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy.
7. Avoiding a bad habit is easier than breaking a bad habit.
8. Work on your best idea. Don’t diversify
9. Incentives rule everything around you.
10. Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.
11. The most important rule in management is: Get the incentives right.
12. The storyteller is the most powerful person in the world.
13. Education is the process whereby the ability to lead a good life is acquired.
14. Be dependable for your tribe.
15. Trust is one of the greatest economic forces on Earth.
16. Don’t over optimize for growth at the expense of durability.
17. Great businesses are built by going ridiculously far in maximizing or minimizing one or a few things. Think Costco.
18. The combination of scale and fanaticism is *very* powerful. Think Sam Walton.
19. Do the unpleasant task first.
20. Don’t multitask.
21. Learning is changing behavior.
22. Avoiding stupidity for a long time *is* genius.
23. Many hard problems are solved best when approached backwards.
24. Think of ideas as tools. When a better tool comes along use it.
25. Clip your business and personal expenses. Small leaks sink big ships.
26. Make friends with smart dead people. Adam Smith, Darwin, Cicero, Ben Franklin —whoever interests you. Read their writing. Steal their ideas. They don’t need them anymore.
27. Only focus on great businesses and great businesses have moats.
28. Dominating a niche can produce profit margins that make you salivate.
29. Telling people WHY increases compliance.
30. Stay in the game long enough to get lucky.
31. Stack cash to survive unexpected problems and seize unexpected opportunities.
32. Don’t confuse intelligence with invincibility.
33. Panic spreads and compounds quickly.
34. If you’re not winning —scale down and intensify.
35. Appeal to interest, not to reason.
36. Understanding opportunity cost is a superpower.
37. Don’t confuse the map for the territory.
38. People often interpret price as a signal for quality.
39. All human systems are gamed.
40. Beating back bureaucracy is a never ending battle.
41. The acquisition of knowledge is a moral duty.
42. Learning from history is a form of leverage.
43. Make sure your best players get the most playing time.
44. It is inevitable that bad things will happen to you. When they do get up, keep going, and remember the next maxim:
45. Self pity has no utility.
46. Find out what you are best at. Then pound away at it. Forever.
47. Envy is weakness.
48. The behavior of peer companies will be mindlessly imitated.
49. Emotion blurs judgement.
50. Only play games where you have an edge.
51. Avoid mob rule. Avoid demagogues. Avoid dogma. Avoid bureaucracy.
52. Optimize for independence.
53. Use money to buy freedom.
54. Aim for durability.
55. Keep the people who don’t matter from interfering with the work of the people who do.
56. What do you have an *intense* interest in? Do that for your living.
57. Self improvement has no end.
Principles Never Fail 