1: “Some Scandinavian canoeists succeeded in getting through all the rapids of Scandinavia.”

Charlie Munger, the longtime business partner of Warren Buffett and Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, was delivering a commencement address to the 2007 USC School of Law graduates.

“They thought they would continue their success by tackling the big whirlpools in northwest America,” he continued.

Things didn’t work out so well. “The death rate was … continue reading

1: “If you’ve ever seen a picture of your mother or father as a young adult, you know how startling it can be,” Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz write in The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.  

“They seem like people we might have met along the road rather than the parents who created us,” the authors observe.  “They often appear less burdened, more … continue reading

1: Warren Buffett is one of the most successful business people in history.  Berkshire Hathaway, the firm where he serves as Chairman, is valued at over $1 Trillion.  Warren’s personal net worth is more than $150 Billion.

So how does this business titan spend his time? 

We might be surprised, says Charlie Munger, his long-time business partner and former Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.

“If you watched him … continue reading

1: “Invert.  Always invert.” Charlie Munger loved to quote the great algebraist Carl Jacobi.

Inversion is defined as: “A reversal of position, order, form, or relationship.”

Charlie is telling us the power of “turning the question backward.”  Because “many hard problems are best solved only when they are addressed backward” he writes in  Poor Charlie’s Almanack. 

So that was his approach when he was invited to give a … continue reading