Pre-Work
note/develop🍃 #productivity #patience
David Ogilvy, the advertising legend, didn't stumble upon his best ideas by chance. Before creating his famous Rolls-Royce ad featuring "at sixty miles an hour the loudest noise comes from the electric clock," he spent three weeks immersed in research. Similarly, his team's three-week deep dive with Mercedes engineers led to a campaign that quadrupled sales. While we're often eager to rush to tangible action, Ogilvy understood that thorough pre-work—studying products, understanding market context, and developing clear motivation—creates the invisible foundation that makes execution seem effortless. The conceptualization, market positioning, and execution planning aren't just mental exercises; they're essential groundwork that becomes painfully expensive to retrofit later. In creativity, patience with preparation often determines the height of your success.
In the world of investing, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have mastered the art of doing nothing—productively. Their strategy involves extensive screening, resulting in long periods of apparent inactivity. But as Munger notes, "Hard work is an essential element in tracking down and perfecting a strategy or in executing it." This approach requires immense self-discipline, focusing more on learning and thinking than on constant action. Like a skilled bridge player, Munger judges his success not by immediate results, but by how well he plays each hand. This blend of patience and discipline is the hallmark of true mastery in investing.
What price does action carry? We have convinced ourselves that we need to be in motion. Action often appears the only way to triumph. Real value in action is a result of what you do not do. Your actions only drive substantial value when you have the mental bandwidth to overcome the obstacles you face. What you don’t allow yourself to get dragged into is the most important factor for how you maintain valuable action. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains, but in what one pays for it—what it cost us.” The best investors realize this is critical to making leveraged decisions. Introduced during the 2000 Berkshire Hathaway Annual meeting, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett gave a name to their strategy of inaction: ==sit on your ass investing.== Many of the best investors only make 1-3 investments per year. They use inaction as a way to combat action bias and do-something syndrome to create value with the actions they do take. Don’t waste valuable time and peace of mind.