Most people go through life not really getting any smarter. Why? They simply won’t do the work required.
大多數人一生中並沒有真正變得更聰明,為什麼呢?因為他們根本不願意付出必要的努力。
It’s easy to come home, sit on the couch, watch TV, and zone out until bedtime rolls around. But that’s not going to help you get smarter.
回到家中,坐在沙發上看電視,直到睡覺時間來臨,這樣的生活方式很簡單,但卻無法讓你變得更聰明。
Sure, you can go into the office the next day and discuss the details of last night’s episode of Mad Men or Game of Thrones. And yes, you know what happened on Survivor. But that’s not knowledge accumulation; that’s a mind-numbing sedative.
當然,你可以在隔天進辦公室,討論昨晚《廣告狂人》或《權力的遊戲》的細節。是的,你知道《生存者》上發生了什麼。但這並不是知識的累積;這只是一種令人麻木的鎮靜劑。
You can acquire knowledge if you want it. In fact, there is a simple formula, which if followed is almost certain to make you smarter over time. Simple but not easy.
如果你有心,便能獲得知識。事實上,有一個簡單的公式,只要遵循,幾乎可以確定會讓你隨著時間變得更聰明。雖然簡單,但並不容易。
It involves a lot of hard work.
這需要付出大量的努力。
“The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.”
“人類能做的最美好的事情,就是幫助他人獲得更多的知識。”— Charlie Munger — 查理·芒格
We’ll call it the Buffett formula, named after Warren Buffett and his longtime business partner at Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger. These two are an extraordinary combination of minds. They are also learning machines.
我們稱之為巴菲特公式,這是以沃倫·巴菲特和他的長期商業夥伴查理·芒格的名字命名的。這兩位是非凡的智慧結合,他們同時也是學習的機器。
“I can see, he can hear. We make a great combination.”
“我能看見,他能聽見。我們的搭配非常出色。”
—Warren Buffett, speaking of his partner and friend, Charlie Munger.
—沃倫·巴菲特談及他的夥伴與好友查理·芒格。
We can learn a lot from them. They didn’t get smart because they are both billionaires. They became billionaires, in part, because they are smart. More importantly, they keep getting smarter. And it turns out that they have a lot to say on the subject.
我們可以從他們身上學到很多。他們之所以成為億萬富翁,部分原因是因為他們聰明,而不是因為他們本身就是億萬富翁。更重要的是,他們不斷變得更聰明。結果發現,他們在這個主題上有很多見解。
How to Get Smarter
如何提升自己的智慧
Read. A lot. 多閱讀。
Warren Buffett says, “I just sit in my office and read all day.”
沃倫·巴菲特說:“我整天坐在辦公室裡看書。”
What does that mean? He estimates that he spends 80% of his working day reading and thinking.
這是什麼意思?他估計自己在工作日中有 80%的時間用來閱讀和思考。
“You could hardly find a partnership in which two people settle on reading more hours of the day than in ours,” Charlie Munger commented.
“你幾乎找不到一個像我們這樣的夥伴關係,兩個人約定每天閱讀更多的時間,”查理·芒格評論道。
When asked how to get smarter, Buffett once held up stacks of paper and said, “Read 500 pages like this every week. That’s how knowledge builds up, like compound interest.”
當有人問他如何變得更聰明時,巴菲特曾舉起一疊紙,說:“每週讀 500 頁這樣的內容。這就是知識的累積,就像複利一樣。”
All of us can build our knowledge, but most of us won’t put in the effort.
我們每個人都能夠增進自己的知識,但大多數人卻不願意付出努力。
“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.”
“上床前要讓自己比醒來時更聰明。”— Charlie Munger — 查理·芒格
One person who took Buffett’s advice, Todd Combs, now works for the legendary investor. After hearing Buffett talk, he started keeping track of what he read and how many pages he was reading.
一位聽從巴菲特建議的人,托德·科姆斯,現在為這位傳奇投資者工作。在聽完巴菲特的演講後,他開始記錄自己所讀的書籍及其頁數。
The Omaha World-Herald writes:
奧馬哈世界先驅報報導:
Eventually finding and reading productive material became second nature, a habit. As he began his investing career, he would read even more, hitting 600, 750, even 1,000 pages a day.
最終,找到並閱讀有價值的資料成為了他的第二天性,變成了一種習慣。當他開始他的投資生涯時,他每天閱讀的頁數甚至達到 600、750,甚至 1000 頁。Combs discovered that Buffett’s formula worked, giving him more knowledge that helped him with what became his primary job—seeking the truth about potential investments.
康布斯發現巴菲特的公式行之有效,讓他獲得了更多知識,幫助他進行主要工作——尋找潛在投資的真相。
But how you read matters, too.
但你閱讀的方式同樣重要。
You need to be critical and always thinking. You need to do the mental work required to hold an opinion.
你需要具備批判性思維,並時刻保持思考。你必須進行必要的心理工作,以形成自己的觀點。
In Working Together: Why Great Partnerships Succeed, Buffett comments to author Michael Eisner:
在《攜手合作:為什麼偉大的夥伴關係會成功》一書中,巴菲特對作者邁克爾·艾斯納這樣評論:
Look, my job is essentially just corralling more and more and more facts and information, and occasionally seeing whether that leads to some action. And Charlie—his children call him a book with legs.
看,我的工作本質上就是不斷收集更多的事實和資訊,偶爾看看這是否能促成某些行動。而查理——他的孩子們稱他為「有腿的書」。
Continuous Learning 持續進修
Eisner continues: 艾斯納接著說:
Maybe that’s why both men agree it’s better that they never lived in the same city, or worked in the same office. They would have wanted to talk all the time, leaving no time for the reading, which Munger describes as part of an essential continuing education program for the men who run one of the largest conglomerates in the world.
也許這就是為什麼兩位男士都認為,他們最好從未住在同一個城市或在同一個辦公室工作。他們會想要一直交談,沒有時間去閱讀,而芒格將閱讀視為經營全球最大綜合企業之一的男士們必不可少的持續教育計劃的一部分。“I don’t think any other twosome in business was better at continuous learning than we were,” he says, talking in the past tense but not really meaning it. “And if we hadn’t been continuous learners, the record wouldn’t have been as good. And we were so extreme about it that we both spent the better part of our days reading, so we could learn more, which is not a common pattern in business.”
“我不認為商界中有任何其他的雙人組比我們更擅長持續學習,”他說,雖然用過去式,但其實並不完全如此。“如果我們不是持續學習者,成就就不會這麼好。我們對此非常投入,以至於幾乎每天都在閱讀,以便學習更多,這在商界並不常見。”
It Doesn’t Work How You Think It Works
它的運作方式並不是你所想的那樣
If you’re thinking that they sit in front of a computer all day obsessing over numbers and figures, you’d be dead wrong.
如果你認為他們整天坐在電腦前,專注於數字和數據,那你就大錯特錯了。
“No,” says Warren. “We don’t read other people’s opinions. We want to get the facts, and then think.” And when it gets to the thinking part, for Buffett and Munger, there’s no one better to think with than their partners. “Charlie can’t encounter a problem without thinking of an answer,” posits Warren. “He has the best thirty-second mind I’ve ever seen. I’ll call him up, and within thirty seconds, he’ll grasp it. He just sees things immediately.”
“不,”沃倫說。“我們不會去看別人的意見。我們想要獲得事實,然後再進行思考。”而在思考的過程中,對於巴菲特和芒格來說,沒有比他們的夥伴更適合一起思考了。“查理遇到問題時,總能迅速想到解決方案,”沃倫說。“他的思維速度是我見過的最快的。我打電話給他,三十秒內,他就能理解問題。他總是能立刻看清事物。”
Munger sees his knowledge accumulation as an acquired, rather than natural, genius. And he’d give all the credit to the studying he does.
芒格認為他的知識積累是一種後天獲得的天賦,而非自然的天才。他將所有的功勞都歸於自己的學習努力。
“Neither Warren nor I is smart enough to make the decisions with no time to think,” Munger once told a reporter. “We make actual decisions very rapidly, but that’s because we’ve spent so much time preparing ourselves by quietly sitting and reading and thinking.”
“沃倫和我都不夠聰明,無法在沒有時間思考的情況下做出決策,”芒格曾對一位記者說。“我們能夠非常迅速地做出實際決策,這是因為我們花了大量時間靜靜地坐著、閱讀和思考,來為自己做好準備。”
How Can You Find Time to Read?
你怎麼能找到時間來閱讀?
Finding the time to read is easier than you think. One way to help make that happen is to carve an hour out of your day just for yourself.
找時間閱讀比你想像中要容易。幫助實現這一點的一種方法是每天抽出一小時專門留給自己。
In an interview he gave for his authorized biography The Snowball, Buffett told this story:
在他為授權傳記《雪球》所做的訪談中,巴菲特分享了這個故事:
Charlie, as a very young lawyer, was probably getting $20 an hour. He thought to himself, “Who’s my most valuable client?” And he decided it was himself. So he decided to sell himself an hour each day. He did it early in the morning, working on these construction projects and real estate deals. Everybody should do this, be the client, and then work for other people, too, and sell yourself an hour a day.
查理,作為一名非常年輕的律師,當時每小時可能賺 20 美元。他心裡想:“誰是我最重要的客戶?”於是他決定是自己。因此,他決定每天賣自己一小時。他在早上早些時候開始這樣做,專注於建築項目和房地產交易。每個人都應該這樣做,成為自己的客戶,然後也為他人工作,每天賣自己一小時。
It’s important to think about the opportunity cost of this hour. On one hand, you can check Twitter, read some online news, and reply to a few emails while pretending to finish the memo that is supposed to be the focus of your attention. On the other hand, you can dedicate the time to improving yourself. In the short term, you’re better off with the dopamine-laced rush of email and Twitter while multitasking. In the long term, the investment in learning something new and improving yourself goes further.
考慮這一小時的機會成本是非常重要的。一方面,你可以查看 Twitter、閱讀一些網上新聞,並在假裝完成應該專注的備忘錄的同時回覆幾封電子郵件。另一方面,你可以把時間用來提升自己。在短期內,透過多任務處理,電子郵件和 Twitter 帶來的多巴胺刺激會讓你感覺更好;但從長期來看,投資於學習新知識和自我提升會更有意義。
“I have always wanted to improve what I do,” Munger comments, “even if it reduces my income in any given year. And I always set aside time so I can play my own self-amusement and improvement game.”
“我一直希望能改善我所做的事情,”芒格評論道,“即使這會在某一年減少我的收入。我總是會留出時間來進行自我娛樂和提升的活動。”
Reading Is Only Part of the Equation
閱讀只是整個方程式中的一部分
But reading isn’t enough. Charlie Munger offers:
但僅僅閱讀是不夠的。查理·芒格提出:
We read a lot. I don’t know anyone who’s wise who doesn’t read a lot. But that’s not enough: You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.
我們閱讀了很多。我不認識任何一位有智慧的人不閱讀大量書籍。但這還不夠:你必須具備一種性格,能夠抓住想法並做出明智的行動。大多數人無法抓住正確的想法,或者不知道該如何運用它們。
Commenting on what it means to have knowledge, in How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler writes: “The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”
在《如何閱讀一本書》中,莫提默·阿德勒寫道:“那些自認知道自己在想什麼卻無法表達的人,通常其實並不清楚自己的想法。”
Can you explain what you know to someone else? Try it. Pick an idea you think you have a grasp of and write it out on a sheet of paper as if you were explaining it to someone else. (See The Feynman Technique and here if you want to improve retention.)
你能把自己所知道的解釋給別人聽嗎?試試看。選擇一個你認為自己掌握的概念,像是向別人解釋一樣,把它寫在一張紙上。(參考費曼技巧,如果你想增強記憶效果。)
Nature or Nurture? 天生還是後天?
Another way to get smarter, outside of reading, is to surround yourself with people who are not afraid to challenge your ideas.
除了閱讀,讓自己變得更聰明的另一種方法是與那些敢於挑戰你想法的人為伴。
“Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.”
“透過大量閱讀,成為一位終身自學者;培養好奇心,並努力每天變得更智慧。”— Charlie Munger — 查理·芒格