The legendary investor Charlie Munger once made a surprising confession:

Taking inspiration from Munger, this edition will be taking a break from our usual mission to make you smarter.

Today we’re going all-in on making you not stupid.

(That’s not as offensive as it sounds—promise!)

P.s. More action awaits you in our archives, including how Steve Jobs cultivated great taste, the personality trait shared by 1381 millionaires, and 40 principles relied on by the world’s greatest creatives. 

You Must Be Able To Throw Out The Junk

Sometime in the 1950s, the celebrated inventor Jacob Rabinow was on fire.

Within the span of a few short years, Rabinow cranked out inventions that advanced computer storage hardware, automated sorting systems, and audio recording technology.

He would eventually file over 200 patents and was celebrated as a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Clearly a man of bright ideas, many sought to understand how he came up with so many successful designs.

But Rabinow’s counterintuitive answer focuses less on thinking up good ideas and more on avoiding bad ones:

“You must have the ability to get rid of the trash which you think of,” Rabinow advises. “You cannot think only of good ideas, or write only beautiful music. You must think of a lot of music, a lot of ideas, a lot of poetry, a lot of whatever. And if you’re good, you must be able to throw out the junk immediately without even saying it. In other words, you get many ideas appearing and you discard them because you’re well trained and you say, ‘that’s junk.’ And when you see the good one, you say, ‘Oops, this sounds interesting. Let me pursue that a little further.’ And you start developing it. Now, people don’t like this explanation. They say, ‘What? You think of junk?’ I say, ‘Yup. You must.’ You cannot a priori think only of good ideas. You cannot think only of great symphonies. Some people do it very rapidly.”

Rabinow was then asked to clarify what he means by junk.

“It doesn’t work,” Rabinow responds, “or it’s old, or you know that it will not gel. You suddenly realize it’s not good. It’s too complicated. It’s not what mathematicians call ‘elegant.’ You know, it’s not good poetry.” 

The ability to detect your own junk is, according to Rabinow, a skill issue. “It is a matter of training,” he insists, “If you’re well trained in technology, you see an idea and say, ‘Oh, God, this is terrible.’ First of all, it’s too complicated. Secondly, it’s been tried before. Thirdly, he could have done it in three different easier ways. In other words, you can evaluate the thing.”

A person who comes up with excellent ideas is someone who comes up with a great number of ideas—mostly bad, some good, and a tiny portion of them excellent—and is adept at recognizing which is which.

In the same way that we must learn to recognize junk ideas so that we do not pursue them, so too must we learn to recognize junk moves so that we do not make them…

Don’t Lose The Stupid Game

After many years of honing his tennis serve, acclaimed American engineer Simon Ramo, had a startling epiphany about his favorite sport.

“People who play tennis think there is only one game called ‘tennis,’” writes Ramo. “Actually there are two, and I am not referring to clay courts or grass courts.”

One game is called “pro tennis.”

“In pro tennis,” Ramo explains, “the idea is to hit the ball so hard or place it so well, or both, that it either cannot be returned or else, if returned, provides an opportunity to guarantee that the opponent will not be able to return the next shot. With this idea in mind, all other details follow—where to stand, how to hit the ball, where to hit, how to practice the game and make yourself more skillful, how to study your opponent, where to put the emphasis of your time, resources, and skill.”

The second game is “ordinary tennis” where the winning strategy is something else.

“In ordinary tennis,” Ramo continues, “you win quite differently.” “In ordinary tennis, points are made as a result of your opponent's errors. The idea of the game is to make fewer errors than your opponent. From this basic principle follow where and how to hit the ball, where to stand, what strokes to favor, and how to apply your time and energy so as to win more matches.”

One game revolves around your rate of success and the other around your rate of error.

The following quote, whose origin is mysteriously hard to pin down (attributed in some cases to a Swedish ice hockey player and in other cases to various investors!) does a great job at summarizing this point:

“In expert tennis, 80% of the points are won, while in amateur tennis, 80% are lost. The same is true for wrestling, chess, and investing: Beginners should focus on avoiding mistakes, experts on making great moves.”

To improve rapidly in a new domain, start with a focus on becoming less stupid. Figure out where your error rate is high and the things you need to stop doing. Once you’ve reduced your error rate, you can go on the pro-ffensive and shift focus to improving your hit rate.

More broadly, remember: the smart moves you make in life are important but the stupid moves that you avoid can be just as crucial.

Reject The Runners Up

Saying no to bad ideas is necessary but insufficient.

Scott Belsky has come to realize that we must also say no to good ideas.

When you work alongside creatives, good ideas are rarely in short supply.

The great danger in an environment of abundant good ideas is that you will pursue too many—diluting your focus to the degree that it becomes impossible to achieve any.

“The mental hack here,” Scott shares, “is to identify the one new feature, product, or project that would make your year feel successful even if nothing else got done. Companies need surprisingly few things to really work in order to continue their growth, but these one or two things need to REALLY work.”

To identify these top priorities, Scott asks, “What is the one thing that you can get done and still feel successful, even if everything else fails?”

Once you have your #1 answer, be ruthless in rejecting the runners up.

Tell Them You’re Retired 

According to Naval Ravikant, successful entrepreneur and investor: 

“The year I generated the most wealth for myself was actually the year I worked the least hard. I was basically telling people, ‘I’m retired, I’m not working.’ Then, I had the time for whatever was my highest valued project in front of me.”

You can’t clear the decks to make space for what matters unless you’re able to reject competing distractions. 

If you’re not at liberty to declare retirement, at least upskill your ability to say “no”...

Determine Your Don’ts

With all this junk disposal and naysaying, you may find yourself using the word “no’ a lot more.

Professor Vanessa Patrick has conducted award-winning research on the science of “refusal.” 

Her 2012 study cautions saying “I can’t…” when saying no to yourself or others. 

Saying “I can’t…” (e.g., I can’t speak at your conference because I’m too busy) frames our refusal as though we are constrained by external forces. This made participants who said “I can’t…” feel resentful and less likely to stick to their goals. 

Saying “I don’t,” meanwhile, helped participants frame their refusal as a decision aligned with their values and commitments. Patrick has found that saying “I don’t…” (e.g., I don’t accept speaking work while I’m in the book writing process) makes it easier to assert our boundaries and stay consistent with our choices. 

For all the value that “no” can bring us, saying it can still feel uncomfortable in a world where “yes” is celebrated and encouraged.

But as our final protagonist discovered in dramatic fashion, maybe the two words aren’t so different after all…

Save A Seat For Yes

After releasing her global bestseller in 2010, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo had so many interested clients that she had a waiting list… for her waiting list.

What mind bending wisdom had Kondo imparted to drum up such rabid demand? 

“The key to success in tidying is to finish discarding first,” Kondo advises.

Hmm, sounds simple enough!

But while Kondo’s process, and any approach to tidying for that matter, must place the act of discarding front and center—her world-famous approach runs deeper than that. 

"Because the method includes throwing away anything that doesn’t spark joy, I’m often misunderstood as someone who recommends discarding everything. That’s not the case.” Kondo stresses. “When I was in high school, I thought tidying meant discarding things. Every day after school, I looked for things to throw away. Even though I kept throwing things away, my home did not feel tidy. This caused me a lot of stress. I was focused on the things I didn’t like. I focused on the negative. One day my stress reached a tipping point. I passed out in my room. I did not wake up for two hours. I am probably the only person in the world to pass out because of tidying too much.”

After Kondo awoke, she was hit by a second awakening:

“I had this strange voice in my head. The voice said, ‘Look at things more carefully.’ I don’t know if it was the voice of the tidying God or just my imagination. But when my mind opened and looked around my room, it felt as if everything in my room was shining. At that moment I realized my way of tidying until that day was wrong. I thought ‘That’s it!’ The important thing about tidying is not choosing things to discard—but choosing things to keep. I must choose only items that makes me happy—things that spark joy for me.”

Discarding is the most essential pillar of tidying but Kondo’s big realization was that it should never be the ultimate goal. It is simply the means to a more desirable end, which is as Kondo puts it, is to “take really good care of the things that matter to you,” and “so you don’t put too much energy into anything that doesn’t spark joy."

Remember as you reject, discard, and decline, that these activities are not the ultimate goal to focus upon or take pride in. Their purpose is to grant you the freedom to say yes to what matters most, to those rare initiatives that truly make a difference, and the few precious things in life that spark joy.

We can only get to “yes” if “no” has saved its seat.

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