How to be miserable. The Munger approach.
Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffet’s right hand man, has a unique approach to life and is full of opinions. I believe he will go down as one of the most original and best thinkers of his generation. My only knowledge of him was a few intermittent articles or videos on the internet. After reading Poor Charlie’s Almanack, I’ve come to appreciate his use of mental models.
Munger’s speech at Harvard Westlake high school is particularly interesting. The mental model that Munger uses here is inversion. Instead of approaching the question of how to lead a happy life he inverts the problem and approaches is as how to live a life of misery.

“Invert, always invert”. It is in the nature of things, as [Carl] Jacobi knew, that many hard problems are best solved only when they are addressed backwards.
7 things that guarantee misery
- Ingesting chemicals in an effort to alter mood or perception
- Envy
- Resentment
- Be unreliable
- Don’t learn from other people’s mistakes
- Don’t be persistent
- Minimize objectivity
To live a happy life one should avoid ingesting chemicals, minimize envy and resentment, learn from others mistakes, be reliable, persistent and objective. Easy right?
As a competitive person, envy is probably the hardest thing for me personally to avoid on the list. What about you?
