The Warren Buffet Method Of Reading

I found this excerpt in the "Snowball: Warren Buffet and The Business Of Life" by Alice Shcroeder. It will change how you read!

Until now, Warren’s efforts to get along with people had had mixed results. He charmed adults, except for his teachers. He felt ill at ease with his peers, but had always managed to make a few close friends. He desperately wanted people to like him and especially not to attack him personally. He wanted a system. In fact, he already had one, but he wasn’t using the system to its full effect. Now, lacking any other resources, he began to work harder at it.

Warren had found this system at his grandfather’s house, where he read everything he could get his hands on at a blazing pace, just as he did at home. Browsing the bookshelf in the back bedroom... One of them was special—not a biography but a paperback written by former salesman Dale Carnegie, enticingly titled How to Win Friends and Influence People. He had discovered it at age eight or nine.

Warren knew he needed to win friends, and he wanted to influence people. He opened the book. It hooked him from the first page. “If you want to gather honey,” it began, “don’t kick over the beehive.”…

I am talking about a new way of life, Carnegie said. I am talking about a new way of life.

Warren’s heart lifted. He thought he had found the truth. This was a system...

But it took numbers to prove that it actually worked. He decided to do a statistical analysis of what happened if he did follow Dale Carnegie’s rules, and what happened if he didn’t. He tried giving attention and appreciation, and he tried doing nothing or being disagreeable. People around him did not know he was performing experiments on them in the silence of his own head, but he watched how they responded. He kept track of his results. Filled with a rising joy, he saw what the numbers proved: The rules worked.

Now he had a system. He had a set of rules.

But it did you no good to read about the rules. You had to live them. I am talking about a new way of life, said Carnegie.

Warren began to practice. He started at a very elementary level. Some of it came naturally to him, but he found that this system could not be applied in an automatic and easy manner. “Don’t criticize” sounded simple, but there were ways to criticize without even realizing it. It was hard not to show off, not to display annoyance and impatience. And admitting you were wrong was easy sometimes and very difficult at other times. Giving people attention and sincere appreciation and admiration was one of the hardest. Someone sunk in misery much of the time, as Warren was, found it hard to focus on others, not himself.

Nevertheless, he gradually worked out for himself that the dark years of junior high were living proof that ignoring Dale Carnegie’s rules didn’t work. As he started to gain his footing in high school, he continued to practice the rules in encounters with others.

~ Excerpt From “The Snowball: Warren Buffet and The Business of Life” by Alice Schroeder