20-slot punch card rule
Imagine a lifetime card with only 20 punches: every big decision has to earn one
Picture a ticket with twenty slots, one punch for every investment you will ever make, and no more once the card is full. Faced with that limit, people think much harder about each choice and put real weight behind the few they are sure of, instead of dabbling in something new every week. The frame gets borrowed for careers, projects and commitments as a way of forcing focus. It is a check to run before a decision, not a literal count.
People on record
Sorted by strength of stance
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
A lesson he likes to teach business students, according to Charlie Munger. Only twenty punches for a lifetime of investments. You would think much harder about each one and load up on the few you were sure of. At Florida in 1998 he added that perhaps three, five or seven of those twenty would make someone rich, and that nobody gets rich trying a new idea every day.
Source: CNBC Make It: Warren Buffett loves teaching this 20-slot rule at business schools
Aimed at the same thing
Other entries filed under focus or productivity.
- ProtocolFREE, no cost
Environment design
Change the room instead of relying on willpower
On record from 7 of 62 tracked people: 2 do it, 5 recommend it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Time blocking
Give every hour of the workday a job before the day starts
On record from 7 of 62 tracked people: 5 do it, 2 recommend it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Deep work blocks
Long, scheduled, distraction-free sessions on one cognitively hard task
On record from 6 of 62 tracked people: 5 do it, 1 recommends it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Deliberate wandering
Unplanned, inefficient exploration kept on purpose as the counterweight to efficiency
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 recommend it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Digital declutter
A 30-day break from optional tech, then reintroduce deliberately
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 recommend it - ProtocolFREE, no cost
Hard thinking before lunch
Book the mentally demanding work for the morning and stop making big calls late in the day
On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 do it
Protocol 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.