Streamline Your Mind

From successful businessmen to politicians and entrepreneurs to investors, a penchant for reading seems to be a common trait existent in many of the world's top leaders.  From President Obama to former NFL quarterback Fran Tarkenton, many start their days scouring the local and national newspapers and favorite blogs. 

"The Week" published a wonderful article in 2013 describing Warren Buffett's and Charlie Munger's reading habits.  Here's an excerpt:

Warren Buffett says, "I just sit in my office and read all day." 

What does that mean? He estimates that he spends 80 percent 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 he "read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge builds up, like compound interest."

The article goes on to describe how possible Buffett successor, Todd Combs, has heeded his bosses advice and reads up to a thousand pages on some days! 

Confirmation Bia$

The recent attacks in Paris, I hope we can all agree, were tragic.  As the friends and relatives of the victims continue to mourn, we turn on the news every morning to updates on the search for the suspected attackers.  And, in the aftermath, social media fills up with opinions on the Syrian refugees immigrating to America in search of a better life and, more importantly, peace.  Fear abounds as to whether potential terrorists will use the opportunity to enter the country and plot further attacks on our own soil. 

Log in to Twitter or Instagram to find yourself inundated with fiery opinions and impassioned debates of commenters either siding for or against the 31 governors who have decided to not welcome Syrian refugees into their states.  58 comment responses later and nothing has been resolved.  The end result:  a lot of mud-slinging, anger-fueled rage, hot tempers, and little resolution.  What we DON'T have is a significant amount of level-headed, clear minded, well reasoned discussion.  How does this happen every time a new hot button issue arises?  How do we not improve our ability to better resolve a discussion and not take the bait some attention seeking poster hangs out there in a Facebook rant?  Why, after so many of these episodes, do we still constantly let our emotions impede our reasoning?

Well, one reason might be that social media provides a platform for this type of conversation - a back-and-forth exchange where one can take time to flesh out his argument, use a thesaurus to find a bigger, more complicated word, and dial up a Wikipedia article or two to find under-scrutinized pieces of information to back his side prior to hitting "reply".  But the root of the problem goes deeper than that.  We are pushed to partake in these disputes because of Confirmation Bias.

Of Wrestling and Life

I am extremely biased, but I strongly believe wrestling is one of the toughest, most challenging, character building, and valuable activities that a person can participate in.  Few other sports pit one competitor against another in an environment that requires as much mental preparation as full-body strength, endurance, and coordination.  MMA may be one of the few exceptions.

I was fortunate enough to have had a semi-successful high school wrestling career - placing 8th my junior year and 3rd my senior year at the Indiana State Wrestling Tournament - before walking on to a Big Ten wrestling team.  On the nurture side, outside of family influence, the sport probably did more to shape my life, my values, and my belief system than maybe any other external factor to this point.  Wrestling involves many intricacies that can be applied to numerous - maybe most - obstacles encountered throughout a lifetime.  With that, I have compiled a list of lessons wrestling can teach that apply to life in general:

Instant Gratification in Poker and Investing

Poker and investing are similar activities.  Each a game of skill, where the end result doesn't necessarily reflect how well the game was played in the short term, but long term results are heavily influenced by constantly playing hands that offer positive expected value.  In the short term, randomness plays an important and unavoidable role; in the long term, those vagaries flesh themselves out.

Poker player, value investor, and Seeking Alpha contributor, Bram de Haas participated in a brief Seeking Alpha Q&A session that highlighted many of the similarities.  de Haas discusses that "one difference is that a hand of poker is settled in a matter of minutes or seconds . . . " while an investment can take years to come to fruition.  Timeframe is a factor that needs to be considered with the investor that the poker shark can ignore.  He further notes that he is less prone to judge his investments by their outcome as opposed to analyzing his application of value investment theories in reaching an investment decision.  His goal, it seems, is mastery of the approach; the results will take care of themselves.  His methods may need some tweaking every now and again, but he won't change course on a whim.  Lessons derived from the RESULTS of an individual poker hand or an investment are meaningless.