Most people go through life not really getting any smarter. Why? They simply won’t do the work required. The Buffett Formula is the path to growing wisdom.
Warren Buffett says, “I just sit in my office and read all day.”
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.”
After hearing Buffett talk he started keeping track of what he read and how many pages he was reading.
“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.
“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.”
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.”
Another way to get smarter, outside of reading, is to surround yourself with people who are not afraid to challenge your ideas.
Originally published at Cogly.
