👋 Hey friend,
I recently finished reading Buffett & Munger Unscripted, which collects passages from the last three decades of Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meetings.
I selected one of my favorite highlights regarding general wisdom. It’s an heuristic that I think is quite useful to focus on the right things, and let go of the stuff that just clutters your mind.
I share the nugget below!
👤 Doers
💡Nugget
🟠 Warren Buffett:
… We are just looking for decent businesses. We try to think about two things: things that are important and things that are knowable. Now, there are things that are important that are not knowable. In our view, the questions that you raised [about macroeconomic developments] fall in that. There are things that are knowable but not important. We don’t want to clutter our minds up with those. So, we say, ‘What is important and what is knowable? And what among the things that fall within those two categories can we translate into some kind of an action that is useful for Berkshire?’
We do think we know something about what Coca-Cola, Gillette, Disney, and our operating subsidiaries are going to look like in ten years. We care a lot about that; we think a lot about that and we want to be right about that. If we’re right about that, other things are less important. And if we started focusing on those other things, we would miss a lot of big things.
Coca-Cola went public in 1919. A share cost $40. And the first year it went down a little over 50%, to $19 per share. There were some problems with bottler contracts, various kinds of problems. If you’d had perfect foresight, you would have seen the world’s greatest depression staring you in the face, when the social order even got questioned. You would have seen World War II, you would have seen atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs. You would have seen all kinds of things. And you could always find a reason to postpone why you should buy that share of Coca-Cola. But the important thing was to see they were going to be selling one billion eight-ounce servings of beverages a day this year, or some large number. And that the person who could make people happy a billion times a day around the globe ought to make a few bucks off doing it. And so that $40, which went down to $19, has to be worth well over $5 million now with dividends reinvested. If you developed a view on other subjects that in any way forestalled you acting on this more important, specific narrow view about the future of the company, you would have missed a great ride. So that’s the kind of thing we focus on.
…
If we’re right about the business, the macro factors aren’t going to make any difference. And if we’re wrong about the business, macro factors are not going to bail us out.
If you found this nugget interesting, I published all my kindle highlights from the book Buffett & Munger Unscripted (with visuals and personal notes) in this blog post.
Related insights…
Often founders know what their problems are, but not their relative importance. [3] They'll come in to talk about three problems they're worrying about. One is of moderate importance, one doesn't matter at all, and one will kill the company if it isn't addressed immediately. It's like watching one of those horror movies where the heroine is deeply upset that her boyfriend cheated on her, and only mildly curious about the door that's mysteriously ajar. You want to say: never mind about your boyfriend, think about that door!
— Paul Graham, What I’ve Learned From Users.
Over the long run, well-run businesses create a lot of value irrespective of the macroeconomic environment. Do we seriously think Amazon, JPMorgan, Michelin, Nestlé, Siemens, Tesco, Walmart, Zara, and other excellent businesses are held hostage to inflation and fiscal deficit?
— Pulak Prasad, What I Learned About Investing From Darwin.
What’s New…
My book, 80 Nuggets to Become Better, Richer, and Wiser is now available in physical format!
The book has been live as a kindle ebook since July, but I never published the physical book because I wasn’t happy with the printing quality — there were issues with the ink.
But after making a few tweaks (mainly removing the heavy background color of the visuals), it now looks awesome and it’s officially ready to ship!
The book is a collection of 80 timeless insights I’ve been sharing through these newsletter emails, since I started it back in 2022 until July 2026. It comes from over 50 of the best entrepreneurs, investors, and practical thinkers, in their own words.
💥 Stuff I Loved
I hope you enjoyed today’s letter!
Talk you soon,
Your nuggets friend Julio :)