Patience Is A Superpower: Charlie Munger and Sudoku

The world lost an intellectual and investing giant with the passing of Charlie Munger. He was due to turn 100 on January 1st. He passed away rather quietly and surprisingly for someone with such a large personality and admittedly big mouth. He did his one and only podcast interview about a month ago, and it is well worth listening to. He was extremely sharp and lucid, and, as usual, he had great wisdom to convey.

I have written a lot about Charlie Munger over the years, and obviously, I’m not alone, as his philosophy and wisdom influenced so many in the investing world. He was so free in sharing his most important lessons and insights, keys to investment success, and creating a life with very positive outcomes. He was particularly famous for saying that one of the keys to Berkshire Hathaway’s success was their ability to be consistently not stupid. 

The first rule of investing is to avoid losing money; the same goes for life. Avoid dumb mistakes jeopardize your health, relationships, finances, reputation, and personal freedom. He also strongly believed in inverting to help design a better life. It’s not always easy to figure out what we want, but it is fairly easy to determine what we don’t want. If we can avoid what we don’t want, then that leaves us the space and time to explore what we do want. Those actions that bring us meaning and make us feel that special sense of aliveness are where we should focus our time, talent, and treasure. 

This past year, and even more so over the last few months, I have consciously been focused on becoming more patient in all aspects of my life. Tennis has been a great laboratory for this, but so has driving processing actions by others or myself that would typically trigger a negative reaction in me, and through my more recent obsession, battling others online in Sudoku. I will touch on this in more detail shortly, but one of the hallmarks of Munger, Buffett, and so many other great investors is their ability and willingness to exercise great patience. 

The need to always be in action is the Achilles’ heel of so many people when it comes to investing. Buffett and Munger have always had the temperament, capital structure, personal wealth, and governance to do nothing and wait until they saw that proverbial fat pitch to swing at and to do so aggressively by putting a lot of capital on the line. They always had cash reserves and borrowing capacity because they were able to avoid making errors of optimism at the top and then be able to pick away at the carcasses at the bottom. They have always had capital when capital was scarce, along with having the ability to recognize opportunities when the odds were overwhelmingly in their favor and the courage to take action to take advantage of them. The results speak for themselves.

Here are a couple of quotes from Munger related to the power of patience.

Here is Warren Buffett’s perspective regarding patience.

I truly believe that patience is a superpower in life. That is not to say people should be infinitely patient and use that as a cover for doing nothing. I believe in disciplined inactivity in that one should be actively involved in life and have a body of experience and wisdom built up to know what a real opportunity is to distinguish it from the siren song of one masquerading as one but in reality is a poor risk-reward trade-off. And with this wisdom to know the difference, then all it takes is the courage and capital access to take advantage of such opportunities to dramatically improve one’s financial outcomes.

One of the ways I have tried to cultivate more patience, not only with others but particularly with myself, is to develop more compassion. By becoming more forgiving and gentle with myself, as well as others, I find that it is quite calming, and this calmness compounds and carries on throughout the rest of my day (and weeks) such that it becomes easier to become patient as triggering situations arise. It truly is a muscle that needs to be exercised, but once it is consistently, the rewards are enormous in terms of health and well-being and overall peace of mind.

In terms of tennis, I have found that the more patient and self-compassionate I have become, the more relaxed I am and the better I play. Everything seems to slow down in ways that help me play better but not too much such that my reaction time is compromised. I’m more able to get into a zone and play consistently. I have tried to deploy a much more curious mind when playing versus one of high expectations and judgment. It’s all about being committed to continuous improvement; holding myself to a high character standard is also part of that. This becomes easier to do when I am much more compassionate with myself after I make mistakes. It’s all part of the learning process, and not reacting negatively is not only something to acknowledge as progress but if it can evolve to morph into compassionate acceptance, no matter the outcome, which then becomes something to celebrate.

As I mentioned earlier, Sudoku has become an obsession of mine in my spare time. I played a long time ago when it first became popular, but it wasn’t until recently that I started doing the daily puzzle online, and then I discovered that I could actually battle others and advance to higher levels. At first, when I would enter a battle, I would be extremely tense and extremely hard on myself when I made mistakes or lost. It was as if going into battle, I knew that I was fragile emotionally and subject to being derailed at any moment in time when I made a mistake, saw how my opponent was progressing, or just became frozen. While my results were pretty good, I learned that a number was assigned to me and everyone I competed against, which represents how far we have advanced in terms of levels. It took me a few weeks before I even realized these numbers existed, but once I did, my goal went from trying to win at least 60% of my games, which, in the interest of full disclosure, has not been attained (58%), to advance to higher levels. This generally occurs when someone wins three games in a row. I also wanted to beat others with higher levels to gauge my progress. 

I bring all of this up because I learned that with practice, repetition, and a mindset shift, it was counterproductive to be amped up going into a battle. In addition, if I could remain calm yet vigorously alert and not get derailed when I make a mistake or lose a battle, I could continue to progress to higher levels and improve. Accepting that losses were inevitable and represent learning opportunities that happen to everyone, even players who have advanced to higher levels than myself, added to my sense of calm and focus. I have also learned that with some mistakes, a lot of information can be gathered, and there are often times when I will guess at a number, knowing I may be wrong, but even if I am, it will give me the next right answer. This has reinforced for me that perfection can be a powerful enemy, and there will be times when I just have to guess to keep the momentum going, which is much better than losing a lot of time due to paralysis by analysis.

Each season lasts a calendar month, and then everything resets. I achieved level 60 for November. I feel this is good, but I’ll only really know as I continue to compete in the months ahead. I do feel like it’s helping my overall cognition, processing speed, and overall well-being. It keeps the competitive juices flowing when I’m not on the tennis court while also balancing it with calm and no longer feeling any sense of intimidation before I start. I hope that I can take this same feeling, approach, and mindset to my next very competitive singles match.

Another thing I have learned in these past few months is that certain people express opinions that I not only totally disagree with but trigger great disdain within me. I have felt so tempted to lash out to tell them how stupid and deranged I think they are. And while I have discussed the importance of compassion in helping me become more patient when it comes to these types of people, I have zero compassion for them, and I don’t think I ever will. It’s with such people that I have to remind myself to be not stupid and not do anything I will come to regret because I do not currently have the ability to try to understand their victim ideology and why they spew such hate and lunacy. Maybe someday I will, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon. For this reason, I have to disengage and focus on the productive actions I can take to improve my outcomes.

So thank you, Charlie Munger, for teaching me such valuable lessons to help me become a better investor and, more importantly, a better person as well. I am a person who has hopefully become more thoughtful, conscientious, resilient, wise, humorous, honest, calm, serene, successful, personable, interesting, courageous, vital, and vigorous in how I live my life, interact with others and influence the legacy I hope to create. And now, I also feel worthy of adding patience to the list from what you have taught me and what I have learned on the tennis court and during my numerous Sudoku battles.