Notes on Poor Charlie's Almanack by Charles Munger and Peter Kaufman

Over the last few months, I've been reading through Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, and today I finally finished it. It represents a pretty full collection of all of Munger's public lectures and most influential publications, a true compendium of practical wisdom.

It was nice to read this big, heavy, long book over an extended period of time because I got to develop a pretty good grasp of Charlie's way of thinking, seeing the same examples and patterns repeated across the talks and drawing my own connections.

It's amazing how passionate he is about improving education and providing people with much better mental models and checklists to avoid disaster and cognitive failure.

Below are my personal biggest takeaways and notes.

Intro
Multidisciplinary
Mental models

1 portrait of Charles munger
Parents encouraged reading and gave books as gifts for holidays 
Liked Cicero
Cicero, on a life well spent
Pride in a job well done
Self improvement so long as breath lasts
Daily learning something
Always return borrowed car with full tank of gas
Educating kids at dinner table
Morality tale and downward spiral tale
Admit mistakes and learn from them immediately 
Do the job right the first time. Don't make excuses when screw up. Just fix it. 
Kids had jobs
Taught kids to be skeptical and contrarian 
Always reading
Couch message in anecdote and deliver in group setting to not single out
Buying books for whole family
Ritual and tradition, buying kids suits
Desire to understand exactly what makes things happen
Intense focus
Figure out what ur best at and keep pounding away at it

Ch 2 munger approach to life, learning, decision making
Multiple mental models
Business as an ecosystem; everything related 
Willingness to change mind
Not buying or selling often
Big money is in the waiting not in the buying or selling
If can only invest 20 times in life, u will think much harder and load up on what believe in
Focus on what to avoid first
Think in 2 approaches: rational interests at play and subconscious psychological factors 
Circles of competence
Margin of safety like backup system in engineering
Checklist before doing deal
Honesty best policy

Ch 3 mungerisms: Charlie unscripted 
Profit more from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric 
Focus investing
Low diversification 
Wait for the fat pitch
Something not worth doing is not worth doing well
Reliability is extremely important
First step to success in anything is becoming interested in it
Have wide mental models array and use them all
Jump jurisdictional boundaries
Avoid ideology
Need to use all mental models as a checklist
Use advertising for Pavlovian conditioning
To persuade, appeal to interests not reason
Nonegalitarianism: focus on your best people instead of just fairness 
1 reward and punishment super response tendency
Granny's rule: eat your carrots before dessert; do unpleasant tasks before rewarding yourself
2 liking/loving tendency
3 disliking/hating tendency
4 doubt avoidance tendency
5 inconsistency avoidance tendency
6 curiosity tendency
7 kantian fairness tendency
8 envy/jealousy tendency 
9 reciprocation tendency
10 influence from mere association tendency
Always tell us the bad news promptly. The good news can wait. 
11 pain avoiding psychological denial
12 excessive self regard tendency
13 overoptimism tendency
14 deprival super reaction
15 social proof tendency
16 contrast misreaction
17 stress influence
18 availability misweighing
19 use it or lose it tendency
20 drug misinfluence
21 Senescence misinfluence
22 authority misinfluence
23 twaddle tendency
24 reason respecting
25 lollapalooza tendency

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