What I'm Reading: Charlie Munger’s Interview with Todd Combs

[Outliers] Charlie Munger’s Interview with Todd Combs

I’m excited to share this previously unreleased 2022 conversation between Charlie Munger and Todd Combs. As with any Munger talk, the subjects are both deep and wide. I’ve pulled out the ideas that most resonated with me. You’ll learn how Munger recognized people worth betting on, chose problems worth solving, and turned a long attention span into …

Farnam Street

Some of my highlights

Charlie Munger: Well, I think the great lesson of these careers is what I call The Wooden Lesson. And Wooden had the best basketball coaching record in the world, and nobody else was even close. How did he do it? The answer was, he concentrated almost 100% of the playing time on his top seven players. And of course, they got better and better during all the extra playing time. And that’s what happens when you give so much power to a Wooden or a Buffett or something. You’re doing the Wooden system, and it works like gangbusters, and as an investor, if you can find somebody, even as a mini-Wooden or a mini-Singleton or a mini-Buffett, and play them, and when they have a hell of a run, certainly that can be a very good way to invest.

Charlie Munger: Well, I like the fiduciary gene. Think of the difference between somebody like George Washington, who voluntarily left power, setting an example. And these paranoid rulers who come into power and start killing people to stay in power, trying to subvert the systems and so forth. And of course, the George Washingtons are way the hell better. I don’t know exactly how you make George Washingtons and why you get Kim Jong-Un or something some other place. But certainly, the George Washingtons are better. What maybe the current world is teaching us is, our forefathers who gave us term limits, they understood human nature. They were trying to prevent some major rifts, and it has worked pretty well so far.

Charlie Munger: I just stay away from the problems that can’t be fixed and pick the ones that can — I don’t like unlimited failure. I don’t want to fish forever and never catch a fish. I have to have some reinforcement. And so I pick some things that can be done and do them. But I do think that if you’re reasonably obsessed with something, even if it’s intermittent, and you have a long attention span, you keep working over the serious problems, that you’ll stumble into an answer. That’s half the secret of life.