the africanomist

Garnacho switching from the LW to the RW.

Warren Buffett on why the gap between smart and really successful has nothing to do with intelligence: A question he believes most high achievers never stop to ask themselves is this: "Why do smart people do things that interfere with really getting the output they're entitled to?" For Buffett, the answer comes down to habit, character, and temperament. "Everybody here has the ability absolutely to do anything I do and much beyond. And some of you will and some of you won't, but it will be because you get in your own way. It won't be because the world doesn't allow you to. It will be because you don't allow yourself to." The real gap between smart and really successful is measured in daily behaviour. To prove it, Buffett offers a deceptively simple exercise. Pick the person in the room you admire most. Write down why. Then pick the person you can stand the least and write down what turns you off about them. "You won't find it's a bunch of things like throwing a football 70 yards or anything of the sort." What you'll find are behaviours and attitudes that have nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with conscious choice. And here's what makes this exercise powerful: Those admirable qualities are not out of reach. "The qualities of the first one that you admire are qualities that you, with a little practice, can make your own — and which if practiced will become habit forming." But Buffett doesn't stop there. He adds the warning that gives this whole framework its urgency: "The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken." At his age, he admits, his habits are fixed. But for everyone earlier in the journey, the window is still open and the decisions made today compound quietly for decades. "At your age, you will have the habits 20 years from now that you decide to put into practice today." The framework is simple. Identify what you admire in others and make those behaviours your own. "Ben Franklin did that a few hundred years ago and it still works today."