MADE SOUTH

My notes from Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger turned into maxims: 1. Find a simple idea and take it seriously.  2. Good ideas are rare. When you find one bet heavily.  3. Humans have been writing down their best ideas for 5,000 years. Read them. 4. Avoiding stupid mistakes is more important than being smart. 5. Don’t work with anyone you don’t admire. 6. Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy. 7. Avoiding a bad habit is easier than breaking a bad habit. 8. Work on your best idea. Don't diversify 9. Incentives rule everything around you. Look for them.  10. Great businesses are built by going ridiculously far in maximizing or minimizing one or a few things. Think Costco.  11. Learning is changing behavior.  12. Do the unpleasant tasks first. 13. Charlie has read hundreds of biographies. Do the same.  14. Stop multitasking. Concentrate. 15. Many hard problems are solved best when approached backwards. 16. Think of ideas as tools. When a better tool comes along use it. 17. Clip your business and personal expenses. Small leaks sink big ships. 18. Make friends with smart dead people. Adam Smith, Darwin, Cicero, Ben Franklin —whoever interests you. Read their writing. Steal their ideas. They don’t need them anymore. 19. Don't confuse intelligence with invincibility. 20. Bad things will happen to you. It’s inevitable. When they do get up and keep going and remember the next maxim. 21. Self pity has no utility.   22. Find out what you are best at. Then pound away at it. Forever. 23. Only plays games where you have an edge. 24. Avoid mob rule. Avoid demagogues. Avoid dogma. Avoid bureaucracy. 25. Optimize for independence. 25. Use money to buy freedom. 26. Develop durability. 27. What do you have an *intense* interest in? Do that for money. 28. Self improvement has no end.

One of the greatest lies told to 20 year olds is that they'll need a flippin degree to make it in life.

Solopreneurship is not about hacking the system. It's about re-designing the system. Flipping the script to create the kind of life you want with no outside approval or forced permission waiting.

This is going to sound kinda "woo woo" but... The best morning routine is NOT ice bath, meditation, exercise, journaling, sunlight viewing, etc etc. It's... Gratitude. I feel compelled to tweet about this rn because it's REALLY improved my life. And I hope it can help at least one person that reads this. How I do it: Every morning I count on my hand 5 things I'm grateful for. That's it. It literally takes 2 minutes. I usually do it on the toilet. It can be dumb stuff like "I'm grateful for the socks I'm wearing right now because they're keeping my feat warm." Or, it could be more important things like the people in your life. There are some scientific studies behind gratitude but I didn't read them. What I do know is that it makes my days 5x better. More positive. More smiley. Less anxiety. Less scarcity mindset. I also believe it's made me more successful, but that's not the goal with it. Give it a try!

After 42 years on this earth I can say with 100% certainty that you shouldn’t do business with people who treat servers poorly. It’s a sign of how they were raised and what your future relationship will look like.

Can anyone change my mind that running a small business won't teach you 10x more than an MBA?

You weren’t born to just pay bills and die