Games are won by players who focus on the playing field -- not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard.
Interpretation
Focus on the process rather than the outcome to achieve success.
Warren Buffett emphasizes the importance of concentrating on the task at hand, or the process of playing the game, instead of fixating on the end results. This approach encourages players to improve their skills and performance, fostering a mindset that values effort and dedication over mere results.
In practice
In a motivational speech to students about achieving their goals.
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.
One’s objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out and get it over. Your problem won’t improve with age.
I never considered my dreams wasted energy; they were invariably linked to some form of action. When I dreamed about having a lemonade stand, for example, it wasn't long before I set up a lemonade stand.
Success is about honour, feeling morally calibrated, absence of shame, not what some newspaper defines from an external metric.
If you are going to be successful, you need to give up the phrase, "I can't" & all of its cousins, such as "I wish I were able to.
It doesn't matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success.
In a competitive industry, only paranoid incumbents - those constantly striving for betterment - have any hope of surviving.
Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung...We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play—and by “we” I mean society—in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.
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