Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
Interpretation
It's often more effective to change your situation than to try to fix problems in a bad one.
Warren Buffett's quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing when a situation is untenable and advocating for a proactive change rather than futile attempts to fix deep-rooted issues. It suggests that sometimes, especially in business or life decisions, it is more beneficial to seek new opportunities instead of expending energy on correcting problems that are unlikely to resolve satisfactorily.
In practice
In a team meeting discussing project challenges, this quote can be used to advocate for a new project approach.
I have no views as to where it will be, but the one thing I can tell you is it won't do anything between now and then except look at you. Whereas, you know, Coca-Cola (KO) will be making money, and I think Wells Fargo (WFC) will be making a lot of money and there will be a lot - and it's a lot - it's a lot better to have a goose that keeps laying eggs than a goose that just sits there and eats insurance and storage and a few things like that.
If the world couldn't see your results, would you rather be thought of as the world's greatest investor but in reality have the world's worst record? Or be thought of as the world's worst investor when you were actually the best?
Cash never makes us happy, but it's better to have the money burning a hole in Berkshire's pocket than resting comfortably in someone else's.
I think you should read everything you can. In my case, by the age of 10, I'd read every book in the Omaha public library about investing, some twice. _x000D_ You need to fill your mind with various competing thoughts and decide which make sense.
The most common cause of low prices is pessimism - some times pervasive, some times specific to a company or industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces. It's optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.
Oneβs objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out and get it over. Your problem wonβt improve with age.
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.
Thus, the forces and value systems that are most threatened by this shift are becoming the most coherent and are rising to the top as minority or plurality powers. But they do not represent either the shift, the change, or the future.
I personally think that gentrification happens long before you start seeing white people in formerly people-of-color neighborhoods. It starts happening when we start telling the young, hard-working, quote-unquote 'smart' kids that they need to measure success by how far they get away from our communities.
Be transparent as wind, be as possible and relentless and dangerous, be what moves things forward without needing to leave a mark, be part of this collection of molecules that begins somewhere unknown and can't help but keep rising. Rising.Rising. Rising.
The world has changed from when I was a young teen feeling ashamed for being gay. The issue of gay marriage is now a political issue. That would have been unthinkable when I was young.
Sharing an idea you care about is a generous way to change your world for the better.
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