Poor Charlie's Almanack
Charlie Munger's speeches and essays on mental models, misjudgment and how to think
Charlie Munger's talks and essays, collected by Peter Kaufman in 2005 and reissued in a compact edition by Stripe Press in 2023. The centerpiece is The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Munger's catalog of the two dozen or so biases that push people into bad decisions: incentives, social proof, consistency, the urge to grab the first plausible explanation and stop thinking. Around it sit his commencement speeches, his case for a latticework of models borrowed from many disciplines rather than one, and a lot of jokes at the expense of academics and fund managers. It is read less as an investing manual than as a guide to thinking clearly, and its ideas have spread well beyond finance. The original hardback is heavy and expensive; the 2023 edition fixed both.
People on record
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Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Warren BuffettRecommends
Investor · Berkshire Hathaway chairman
In the 2010 letter he plugged his partner's collected talks. It came with a joke. Shareholders should buy a copy and carry it around, he wrote, because it would make them look urbane and erudite.
Source: Berkshire Hathaway: 2010 Chairman's Letter
Aimed at the same thing
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Deep Work
The case that uninterrupted concentration is a rare and valuable skill
On record from 6 of 62 tracked people: 5 recommend it, 1 has discussed it - Book$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Business Adventures
John Brooks's twelve New Yorker stories about Wall Street and 1960s corporate America
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 recommend it - Book$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Digital Minimalism
A philosophy for using much less technology, on purpose
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it, 1 has discussed it - Book$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 1990 study of total absorption and what makes it happen
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 recommend it - Book$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
The Anxious Generation
Jonathan Haidt on what smartphones and social media did to childhood after 2010
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it, 1 has discussed it - Book$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life
Penguin Press
Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2023 book on vision, work, failure and giving back
On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it
Book entry · notes paraphrased from cited sources, quoted excerpts copied from the transcript they link to. Not medical advice. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by anyone listed. How this works.