warren buffet – From the desk of Adam Thomas

It works for one of the world’s richest men

Warren Buffet, one of the world’s richest men, has a strategy to figure out what he needs to work on going forward.

After thinking about his top 25 priorities, he ranks them in order of importance from one to twenty-five. He crosses a line under the fifth one.

Every priority under that line he never thinks about again.

Three things stand out about that exercise:

He takes an enormous amount of work off his mental plate. By getting rid of 20 priorities he cares about, he has much more energy to focus on the five that matter.
He gets used to killing his darlings. Instead of priorities becoming a part of his identity, he keeps them at a distance where they stay ideas. They don’t become emotional.
His practice trains him in making the right decision. If five priorities matter, you are going to start learning what’s important faster than if you allowed yourself the opportunity to pick when you wanted to.

This exercise is a simple, yet powerful example of setting your boundaries.

Like setting priorities, this is difficult because you take away your escape route.

Failure isn’t a choice.

Any time you decide something, whether it’s inside or outside your comfort zone, circle of competence, or philosophy there is a chance to choose failure. Make enough decisions and it’s a certainty. There is no getting out of it either. No one stays undefeated.

What is a choice is how you frame it.

Failure as feedback – If failure is feedback then you understand the failure as a growth point. The world has told you something and it’s time to go back into the shed, figure out the lessons, and ship something else. It doesn’t affect the who, just the how.

Failure as fear – If failure is fear then you understand failure as a personal hit. The world has told you something about you, and it’s time to go back into the shed and work on yourself until it makes sense. It doesn’t affect the how, just the who.

Failure as “false”– If failure is false then you understand failure as never existing. The world has told you something and you aren’t listening. It doesn’t affect anything.

The best default is the first. But there are times where the other two have use.