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 bedtime rolls around. But that's not 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; that's a mind-numbing sedative.
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.
“The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.”
— Charlie Munger
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. 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.
大多数人经历的生活并没有真正变得更聪明。为什么？他们根本不会做所需的工作。
回家很容易，坐在沙发上，看电视，然后分区，直到睡前滚来滚去。但这并不能帮助你变得更聪明。
当然，你可以在第二天进入办公室并讨论昨晚的“狂人”或“权力的游戏”剧集的细节。是的，你知道幸存者身上发生了什么。但这不是知识积累;这是一种令人头脑麻木的镇静剂。
如果需要，您可以获得知识。事实上，有一个简单的公式，如果遵循几乎肯定会让你随着时间的推移更聪明。简单但不容易。
它涉及许多艰苦的工作。
“人类可以做的最好的事情就是帮助另一个人了解更多。”
- 查理芒格
我们称之为巴菲特公式，以沃伦·巴菲特及其在伯克希尔哈撒韦公司的长期商业合作伙伴Charlie Munger的名字命名。这两者是思想的非凡组合。他们也是学习机器。
“我可以看到，他可以听到。我们做了很好的结合。“
-Warren Buffett，谈到他的伴侣和朋友Charlie Munger。
我们可以从中学到很多东西。他们不聪明，因为他们都是亿万富翁。他们成为亿万富翁，部分原因是因为他们很聪明。更重要的是，他们不断变得更聪明。事实证明，他们在这个问题上有很多话要说。
如何变得更聪明
读。很多。
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 week. That's how knowledge builds up, like compound interest.”
All of us can build our knowledge, but most of us won't put in the effort.
“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.”
— Charlie Munger
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
沃伦巴菲特说：“我只是坐在办公室里，整天读书。”
那是什么意思？他估计他花了80％的工作时间阅读和思考。
查理芒格评论说：“你很难找到一种伙伴关系，在这种伙伴关系中，两个人在阅读的时间比我们的更多时间更多。”
当被问及如何变得更聪明时，巴菲特曾经拿起一堆纸，说：“每周阅读500页。这就是知识积累的方式，就像复利一样。“
我们所有人都可以建立我们的知识，但我们大多数人都不会付出努力。
“比你醒来时更聪明地睡觉。”
- 查理芒格
一个接受巴菲特建议的人，托德康姆斯，现在为传奇投资者工作。在听完巴菲特的演讲后，他开始记录他的阅读内容以及他正在阅读的页数。
奥马哈世界先驱报写道：
最终找到和阅读生产材料成为第二天性，一种习惯。当他开始他的投资生涯时，他会阅读甚至更多，每天达到600,750甚至1,000页。
Combs发现巴菲特的公式起作用，给了他更多的知识，帮助他成为他的主要工作 - 寻求潜在投资的真相。
但你如何阅读也很重要。
你需要批评并始终在思考。你需要做一些意见所需的心理工作。
在共同努力：为什么伟大的伙伴关系成功，巴菲特评论作者迈克尔艾斯纳：
看，我的工作基本上只是收集越来越多的事实和信息，偶尔看看是否会导致一些行为。而查理 - 他的孩子们称他为一本有腿的书。
持续学习
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.”
It Doesn't Work How You Think It Works
If you're thinking that 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.
艾斯纳继续说道：
也许这就是为什么两个人都认为他们从来没有住在同一个城市或在同一个办公室工作更好。他们本来想要一直谈论，没有时间阅读，芒格称这是为世界上最大的企业集团之一的人们提供必要的继续教育计划的一部分。
“我不认为任何其他商业上的两个人在继续学习方面比我们更好，”他说，用过去时态说话，但并不是真正意义上的。 “如果我们不是连续学习者，那么记录就不会那么好。而且我们对此非常极端，以至于我们都花了很多时间阅读，所以我们可以学到更多，这不是商业中常见的模式。“
它不起作用你如何认为它的工作原理
如果你认为他们整天坐在电脑前对数字和数字进行着迷，那你就错了。
“不，”沃伦说。 “我们不读其他人的意见。我们想要了解事实，然后思考。“当它进入思维部分时，对于巴菲特和芒格来说，没有人比他们的伙伴更好地思考。 “没有想到答案，查理不会遇到问题，”沃伦说。 “他有我见过的最好的第三十二个头脑。我会打电话给他，在三十秒内，他会抓住它。他只是马上看到了事情。“
芒格认为他的知识积累是一种后天而非天生的天才。并且他将所有的功劳归功于他的学习。
“沃伦和我都没有足够的智慧做出决定，没有时间思考，”芒格曾告诉记者。 “我们做出了非常迅速的实际决定，但那是因为我们花了很多时间通过静静地坐着，阅读和思考来做好准备。”
你怎么能找时间阅读？
找到阅读时间比你想象的要容易。帮助实现这一目标的一种方法是为自己刻出一天的时间。
In an interview he gave for his authorized biography The Snowball, Buffett told this 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.
“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.
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. (See The Feynman Technique and here if you want to improve retention.)
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.
“Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.”
— Charlie Munger
巴菲特在一次采访中给出了他的授权传记“雪球”，他讲述了这个故事：
查理，作为一个非常年轻的律师，可能每小时20美元。他心想，“谁是我最有价值的客户？”他决定这是他自己。所以他决定每天卖一个小时。他早上就做到了，从事这些建筑项目和房地产交易。每个人都应该这样做，做客户，然后为其他人工作，每天卖一小时。
考虑这个小时的机会成本是很重要的。一方面，您可以查看Twitter，阅读一些在线新闻，并回复几封电子邮件，同时假装完成应该成为您关注焦点的备忘录。另一方面，您可以将时间用于改善自己。从短期来看，在多任务处理的情况下，您可以更好地使用多巴胺电子邮件和Twitter。从长远来看，学习新事物和提高自己的投入更进一步。
“我一直想改进我的工作，”芒格评论道，“即使它在任何一年都减少了我的收入。而且我总是留出时间，所以我可以玩自己的自娱自乐游戏。“
阅读只是方程式的一部分
但阅读还不够。 Charlie Munger提供：
我们读了很多。我不知道谁没有读过很多聪明人。但这还不够：你必须有一种气质来抓住想法并做出明智的事情。大多数人没有抓住正确的想法，也不知道如何处理它们。
Mortimer Adler在评论知识的含义时，在“如何读书”中写道：“说他知道自己的想法但不能表达的人通常不知道他的想法。”
你能解释一下你对别人的了解吗？尝试一下。选择一个你认为自己掌握的想法并将其写在一张纸上，就像你向别人解释一样。 （如果你想提高保留率，请参阅Feynman技术。）
自然还是培育？
在阅读之外变得更聪明的另一种方法是将自己包围在那些不怕挑战你的想法的人身上。
“通过贪婪阅读发展成为终身自学者;培养好奇心，努力每天变得更聪明。“
- 查理芒格