How to save your brain from itself
Charlie Munger's classic compendium reminds us that he truly is the Godfather of interdisciplinary mental models.
Author: Charlie Munger
About: How to achieve success by avoiding mistakes and thinking clearer
Rating: 4.5/5
Main ideas: Chase success in life by avoiding mistakes. Avoid mistakes by noticing and reducing your reliance on common cognitive biases (‘heuristics’ or ‘tendencies’) and improving your thinking through the use of interdisciplinary mental models. Learn widely, think deeply, improve constantly.
Summary and review
For those already familiar with the world of cognitive biases and mental models, Poor Charlie’s Almanack may not be the revolutionary read you’re anticipating. It’s ironic, because I believe it’s largely thanks to Charlie Munger’s influence that we know anything about mental models at all.
Munger’s influence led to Shane Parrish’s books on mental models. It led to Gabriel Weinberg and Laura McCann’s book, Super Thinking. And it led to James Clear’s blogging about the subject, which no doubt introduced the concepts to an audience bigger than the first two combined. (Seriously, why is everyone so obsessed with Atomic Habits?)
So much of what we know about mental models today is thanks to Munger’s early popularizing of these necessary cognitive tools.
To the reader well acquainted with mental models, then, Munger’s book may not come with many surprises. It does, however, offer a nice dose of motivation for those in the ‘hungry and getting after it’ phase. And this new edition is undeniably beautiful — check out that cover alone.
In his insistence on drawing on lessons from across disciplines, Munger’s appreciation for acquiring breadth in your learning is evident. Lowenstein’s touching Buffett biography recounts an expedition to the Australian rainforest: “all the while as their jeep went bounding through the jungle Munger was reading an obscure work of paleontology.”
If we picture Buffett and Munger as the pair they are so often presented as, it seems that Munger’s wide-ranging curiosity complemented Buffett’s more focused reading habits. Buffett’s ‘500 pages a day’, while no doubt covering a lot of ground, appears to be mostly focused toward a direct goal and purpose — understanding capital markets and their influences. Referring to Munger’s affinity for mental models and cognitive biases, Lowenstein notes that “it was Buffett, not Munger, who had the more natural touch when it came to applying them.”
If Buffett is the pragmatist, Munger is the academic. It’s a compelling picture for those of us who would love to spend our days as a “book with a couple of legs sticking out,” as Munger once described himself.
Did you read Poor Charlie’s Almanack? Let me know what you thought.
Relevant reads:
University of Berkshire Hathaway: 30 Years of Lessons Learned from Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger at the Annual Shareholders Meeting (Daniel Pecault & Corey Wrenn, 2017)
Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist (Roger Lowenstein, 2008 — originally published 1995)
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (Alice Schroeder, 2009)