In this interview with Morningstar, Mohnish Pabrai discusses Charlie Munger’s philosophy of focusing on continuous improvement and not dwelling on past achievements. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
Pabrai: So what I found is that all of his (Munger’s) energies were focused on taking the next step forward.
And they were not focused on looking back and saying wow that’s… I’ve covered a lot of distance behind me.
Anyone else looking at Charlie would say forget what’s in front of you, the daily General CEO, or whatever else, or Berkshire’s money, you dropped it today it’s fine the history is so impressive, but that’s not how he thought.
And that’s also not how Warren Buffett thinks. So I try to learn from that. So used to be like a lot of other what is normal for humans is we look back, we did well at school, or we did well in a business, or we did well at my investment fund or whatever else.
Or Dakshana and so on, and say oh this is great you know. But I I think that it’s a better mental model to focus the energies going forward. So I don’t think in terms of what is success?
I think my dad was not a religious guy but he had a area where he used to go and say his prayers in the morning and he had a quote in that prayer area, it was in English it said, “Success is not a summit or a peak, anything you do can be done better.”
So the way I look at it is that I’ve been very lucky, a lot of lot, luck plays a big role in how where we end up, right place, right time, right people etc.
So there’s a lot of luck involved in everything that happens in life, especially the good things that happen in life.
And so my focus is more on how can I… what is the next problem, or next milestone, and let’s focus our energies on that.
You can watch the entire discussion here:
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