This checklist was motivated by Charlie Munger’s multidisciplinary approach to life, business, and investing that I published a few days ago. You can read it here.
Also, George Donelly, a mentor of mine whom I worked for in mid-2021 gave me this blunt feedback. He said, “If you want to be successful in life, you need to improve your consistency, follow-through, and attention to detail…
And to be consistent, and also pay great attention to details, I believe you need a checklist of your guiding principles. Here is mine, have a blast going through it.
- Use your multidisciplinary approach: there is no point having it if you won’t use it.
- Nothing stands alone in this world hence you need to think deeper and consider all important factors when making decisions or evaluating a circumstance
- Work from a checklist
- Use a standard game/program to learn certain things eg. a fitness app, strategy game(chess), or investing game(monopoly)
- Inversion – This is helpful when you find yourself in a difficult situation, or when you find it very hard to achieve something. Turn things upside down to get great insights.
- Start from what you want to achieve and move backward
- Start from what you don’t what to achieve – remove unimportant things
- In a difficult situation, invert always.
- Balance – work towards a balance in most of what you do. Not too much and not too small
- Don’t be an extremist
- Don’t be a blind optimist
- Don’t be a 100% pessimist
- Be obsessed, passionate, motivated, and driven to succeed but also take time off to evaluate what you’re doing.
- Have a full plan and set goals – think through whatever you want to do very well
- Set clear and detailed goals and objectives
- Review your goals always
- Kaizen: Life-long learning and improvement
- Read. Read what you like. Read foundational things
- Learn and seek advice from the right people
- Never stop learning
- Keep moving forward
- Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity
- Value
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- Make sure what you do is adding value and not just taking value
- Make sure what you do is legal
- Do it with integrity, honesty, and transparency
- Trust but verify
- Always do good and forgets who gets the credits
- Honesty is a very expensive gift, don’t expect it from cheap people
- Always look for win-win deals. Work on the other party’s interest and not reasons.
- Savings: Save 20% of all your income
- Always pay yourself first
- Increase or decrease it after 2 months depending on your experience
- Purchasing: Make sure you can afford double the amount of something before you buy it.
- Don’t go broke every time buying something
- Don’t borrow every time you want to get a deal.
- You can fund 20% and get honest partners to fund it
- Instead, you can help people sell their expensive stuff and earn a commission
- Except you’re filthy rich always find out the price of what you’re buying from multiple sources and avoid overpaying for it
- If you have money, there is no crime in getting a discount
- Investing: Decentralise your wealth as much as possible.
- Don’t hold all your wealth in your name
- Buy and hold things in your company name
- Invest in other trusted parties/people’s investments
- Let good people hold money for your long-term
- Hold several uncorrelated assets
- Hold crypto but on exchange and in non-custodial wallets
- Take your time to study especially while buying illiquid assets like real estate. The more time you put upfront will save you a lot of time solving unnecessary issues
- Business and work:
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- Love what you do
- Be free to choose what you want to work on
- Be authentic
- Think longterm
- Always check the metric of what you’re doing. Ensure you’re making progress and not just moving around like everybody else
- Get traction and keep going. Don’t stop
- Delegate to people who are best at what they do
- Get smart people with a lot of energy and high integrity
- Always work with the right partners. Any previous bad reputation is a no.
- Be as organized as possible
- People should take responsibility and be accountable
- Take small failures and keep going. People will forgive failure so far you’re honest and transparent
- Celebrate little and big achievements
- Say YES, and a lot of NO’s:
- Say no to the good so you can get the great
- Look at it as if you have a few businesses, deals, projects, and investments to make in life(about 20 – 50) and you can’t exceed them.
- Thank people for considering you for an opportunity but let them know you don’t have enough bandwidth to work on it now. Let them know is a problem with you and not them.
- Communication: communicate well and consistently in your relationship, business, and work.
- Always say less than necessary. Don’t talk too much
- Always say what, where, who, when and why something is to be done.
- Build your business/brand in public in front of the right people.
- Be transparent in your dealings and let them know what you’re up to.
- Be resilient and ensure you give heads-up, and keep getting back up no matter the disappointment.
- Use the 80/20 rule in your dealings and offerings
- Be reliable
- Promise less and deliver more
Thank you for taking your valuable time to read this post. I will add more as I become smarter and gain valuable real-world experience.
Please check out my other website and platforms.
- Filtaproperties.com: buy or sell farmlands, apartments, and smart homes in Ibadan
- Filta.ng: Buy construction materials and agro products in Nigeria – crypto accepted
