Warren Bu ett: “Really Successful

People Say No To Almost Everything”

When Bill Gates rst met Warren Bu ett, their host,
Gates’ mother, asked everyone around the table to
share the single most important factor to their success.
Gates and Bu ett both gave the same one-word
answer: “Focus.”

Michael Simmons Follow

Jan 7 · 12 min read

When I tell people that Warren Bu ett follows the 5-Hour Rule and
spends 80% of his time reading and thinking, they have an immediate
and predictable reaction: “Well, he can do that because he’s Warren
Bu ett, one of the richest people in the world. I could never do that.”

While this response may help people feel better about themselves,
it certainly won’t make them smarter.

Because the reality is: Bu ett has spent most of his time reading and
thinking since he was in grade school. Having more money or
managing a large company doesn’t magically give you free time.
Having free time is never the default. People don’t just fall into huge
blocks of free time unless they retire. Rather, free time is the result of
strategy. It’s the result of looking at time di erently.

Curious about Bu ett’s unique strategies, I’ve read several books about
him, read most of his annual letters to stockholders, and watched
nearly all of his interviews.

And make no mistake about it… behind Bu ett’s jovial demeanor

is the most stone-cold, ruthless prioritizer (in a good way) in the
world.

Below are the top six strategies Warren Bu ett has used throughout his
career in order to have lots of reading and thinking time. I invite you to
copy them so you can have more time to do what’s most important to
you everyday.

As you read these strategies, be aware that these aren’t just random
strategies that are thrown together like the typical listicle you see
online. There’s a deeper pattern that most people miss — his #1 mental
model.

Bu ett Strategy #1: Kill busy work

Bu ett has eliminated almost all of the obligatory CEO tasks from his
schedule:

• He never talks to analysts (Bu et estimates that 20% of the typical

public CEO’s time is spent talking to Wall Street).

• He rarely talks to the media.

• He doesn’t attend industry events.

• He has lived outside of NYC in Omaha, Nebraska for almost his

entire career.

• He barely attends any internal meetings like typical CEOs.

What’s important to see here is that these decisions don’t happen by

accident. They require continually resisting immense social pressure.
We get insight into how Bu ett deals with distractions and obligations
via his personal pilot, Michael Flint. Bu ett once walked Flint through
his three-step strategy for prioritization [1], and I invite you to try it
right now in order to truly get the message:

1. First, Bu ett had Flint write down his top 25 goals on a piece
of paper. Go ahead and write your goals down now.

2. Next, he had him circle the top 5. So far, nothing special.

3. Finally, he had Flint take the 20 goals he did NOT circle and
put them on an “avoid-at-all-cost” list. This is the step where
you see Bu ett’s true prioritization genius. At this point, most
people would simply just focus on the top 5 goals and
intermittently work on the rest of the goals. Not Bu ett though. He
advised Flint: “No matter what, these things get no attention from
you until you’ve succeeded with your top 5.”

Bu ett’s strategy gets at a few fundamental truths:

• 20% of our priorities typically account for 80% of our results.

Bu ett’s top ve priorities are 20% of 25. For more on the 80/20
 Rule, read my article: This Is Exactly How You Should Train
Yourself To Be Smarter [Infographic]

• The real threats to our time are not obvious distractions that
we know are wrong. Rather, the real threats are the wolves in
sheep’s clothing — activities which make us feel like we’re working
hard, but that do not ultimately move the needle. Bu ett’s three-
step approach inoculates against these!

• The real challenge to prioritization is saying, “No!” It’s easy to

say yes. What’s hard is saying no to busy work that gives you the
satisfaction of checking an item o your to do list — meeting an
obligation to someone else, doing an easy task, writing an email.

Bu ett Strategy #2: Only work with people

you could see yourself working
with forever
“If you can’t see yourself working with someone for
life, don’t work with them for a day.” — Naval Ravikant

Similar to how Bu ett audits his work activities, he also audits who he
works with.

Bu ett ONLY works with CEOs he trusts, who get results, and who he
can see himself working with for decades. As a result, he does
incredibly little negotiation and due diligence before he buys a
company, and doesn’t actively manage the CEOs of the business he
owns. Furthermore, he enjoys the conversations he has with the CEOs.

(Notice the word “trust.” Bu ett has passed up on purchasing many

companies with attractive nancials who had CEOs he did not trust.)

Bu ett applies the same criteria to the people on his team — many of
them have been with him for decades.

Bu ett Strategy #3: Keep things super,

super simple
Bu ett has cut out nearly all of the bureaucracy in his company.
Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio companies have nearly 400,000
employees, but its actual headquarters has only two dozen employees
or so. Here is a photo from the 2014 Christmas Party of one of the
largest companies in the world:

Bu ett’s personal life is also very simple. He lives in a modest home

(the same one he has been in for 60 years), and he only spends
$100,000 per year personally.

As we grow in our careers, in our companies, and in our lives, it’s

extremely easy to add complexity. In fact, it’s the norm.
As you get more pro t, it’s normal to hire more employees. As you earn
more money, it’s normal to spend more and more.

What’s truly powerful and unique is to keep things simple. That takes
e ort and skill. And, that is part of Bu ett’s genius.

It’s odd to say this, but one of the world’s richest people may also be
one of its biggest minimalists when you compare the lifestyle he could
live to the one he chooses to live.

Bu ett Strategy #4: Focus on a few, high-

quality bets
Warren Bu ett only makes a handful of investments per year.

I remember when I rst heard this, I was shocked. “How can the
wealthiest investor in human history do so few deals?”

William Thorndike gives us the answer to this question in his book, The
Outsiders:

“Bu ett believes that exceptional returns come from concentrated

portfolios, that excellent investment ideas are rare, and he has
repeatedly told students that their investing results would improve if at
the beginning of their careers, they were handed a twenty-hole punch
card representing the total number of investments they could make in
their investing lifetimes. As he summarized in the 1993 annual report,
‘We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease
risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor
thinks about a business and the comfort level he must feel with its
economic characteristics before buying into it.”

Bu ett explains his philosophy in the following clip from the Becoming
Warren Bu ett documentary:
 Warren Buffett On The Circle Of Competen…
Competen…

In short, Bu ett says:

“The trick in investing is just to sit there and watch

pitch after pitch go by and wait for the one right in
your sweet spot. If people are yelling, ‘Swing, you
bum,’ ignore them.”

Bu ett Strategy #5: Focus on long-term

bets
Bu ett holds his bets for extraordinarily long periods.

According to investor William Thorndike, author of The Outsiders…

“He has held his current top ve stock options for over twenty years on
average. This compares with an average holding period of less than one
year for the typical mutual fund. This translates into an exceptionally
low level of investment activity, characterized by Bu ett as “inactivity
bordering on sloth.”

(I wrote more about how Bu ett focuses on a few big bets in this
article.)

Bu ett applies a similar concept to investing in knowledge that will pay

him back forever. In the only authorized biography of Bu ett, his
biographer comments on what she learned from him:
“The things you do learn and invest in should be knowledge that is
cumulative, so that the knowledge builds on itself. So instead of
learning something that might become obsolete tomorrow, like some
particular type of software [that no one even uses two years later],
choose things that will make you smarter in 10 or 20 years. That lesson
is something I use all the time now.”

(I wrote more about how knowledge compounds in Why Successful

People Spend 10 Hours A Week On “Compound Time”)

Bu ett is not alone in thinking long-term.

Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, the largest accelerator in

the world, refers to long-term thinking as “one of the few arbitrage
opportunities left in the market.” Je Bezos measures the success of
new programs over seven-year time frames, while most other public
companies think in three-month increments. (I go deeper into Bezos’
long-term thinking philosophy in this article.)

Bu ett Strategy #6: Avoid the technology

bandwagon
One would think that the greatest investor of all time (the GOAT if you
will) stays on top of the latest technologies in order to stay up-to-date.

Interestingly, the opposite is true. Here are few examples:

• He has never had a computer at his o ce

• He has never used a stock ticker

• He does NOT have a smartphone

These unique choices show a few things about Bu ett:

• Bu ett is very clear on what data he needs to know in order to

make an investment.

• He is con dent enough in his thinking that he is willing to NOT do

what is popular .

• He proactively removes potential distractions from his

environment rather than depending on willpower.
Here’s How To Apply Bu ett’s Core
Mental Model
Now, you understand. Warren Bu ett’s free time to read and think isn’t
just a uke. He’s designed his life for it.

And these aren’t random strategies… They are all derived from a
critical mental model — the 80/20 Rule — the fact that 20% of e orts
cause 80% of the results across many areas of our life. In each domain
of his life — relationships, investments, technologies, priorities — Bu ett
is a master at ruthlessly prioritizing the few things that matter and
cutting out everything else.

So, now the question is: how do you actually consistently and
masterfully apply the 80/20 Rule to your life.

While Bu ett’s 3-step process is extremely helpful on a theoretical level,

I’ve also found it lacking on a practical level. It misses a lot of the
nuance that can derail the plans of us mere mortals.

For example, simple putting something on an “avoid-at-all-cost” list is

not enough. It takes work and skill to avoid these tasks in my
experience. In addition, prioritization takes time, which means you
need to make it a new habit, and creating consistent habits take hard
work and skill.

So, here is the adapted 13-step process I use so you can prioritize your
schedule with the 80/20 Rule:

1. Determine your true values. When you prioritize without having

clear values, your goals often end up feeling empty. Without your
own north star, the goals you set are often the result of the values
of the cultures you have previously been in. Therefore, your goals
aren’t truly your goals. I rst learned about value setting in Value-
Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decision-making.

2. Determine your true goals. Without setting clear goals, your

daily priorities become overwhelmed with urgent tasks that have a
short-term payo that make you feel good. Having clear values-
based goals keep you focused on what matters short-term and
long-term.
3. Set aside time for prioritization. I recommend setting aside the
following blocks in your calendar as a bare minimum: 15 minutes
daily, 1 hour weekly, 3 hours quarterly, 1 day yearly.

4. Make a list of everything you have to do. Getting it out of your

head and onto paper is cathartic, and it gives you the fodder for
the rest of the steps. I learned the power of this step from David
Allen’s Getting Things Done.

5. Circle the top 20% of priorities that will give 80% of the
results. This is where you separate the wheat from the cha . It’s
where you rise above information overwhelm and get perspective
on what really matters and can move the needle.

6. Practice the 80/20 Rule like you would any other skill.
Applying the 80/20 Rule doesn’t just mean asking yourself,
“What’s most important?” and then moving on. Prioritization is a
skill. By learning and then using di erent mental models such as
the bottleneck analysis, ICE method, or the critical path approach,
you get di erent ways of seeing your priorities. Every time you set
your priorities is an opportunity to practice becoming better at
prioritization.

7. Identify the single most important priority. The 80/20 Rule is

fractal. Meaning that within each 80/20 there is another 80/20.
So, if you narrow down a list of 25 priorities to ve priorities, you
can then apply the 80/20 Rule again to focus on the one priority
that gives you 80% of the results of the ve priorities. I learned the
power of narrowing down priorities another level via The One
Thing.

8. Do your “one thing” rst. When our day starts, we have the most
energy and the least distractions. This makes it the perfect time to
tackle the hardest, most important activity. If you leave your one
thing for later in the day, it will probably not get done on that day.
I learned about managing my days based on my energy levels in
The Power Of Full Engagement.

9. Collect and measure metrics primarily on your “one thing.”

The mind loves metrics, especially public metrics. This is why
social media platforms can so e ectively train us to maximize our
followers, likes, and comments. When these vanity metrics
increase, we feel like we’re making progress and doing important
 work. But, at the end of the day, if you run a business, what
matters more is tracking pro t rst. If you run a non-pro t, what
matters more is improving the world. If you are trying to reduce
loneliness, what matters more is how many high quality
interactions you have with close friends. My business changed
overnight when I took the time to identify the few metrics that
really mattered and then focused religiously on them. Once you do
this, your mind automatically and subconsciously thinks about
maximizing these important metrics rather than vanity ones.

10. Put everything else on your “avoid-at-all-cost” list. Just as

Bu ett suggests you do.

11. Create a pre-mortem for your “avoid-at-all-cost” list. Here’s the

key… the reality is that it takes a ton of energy and discipline not
to do certain items on your “avoid-at-all-cost” list. If you are not
deliberate, you will likely fall into old habits. To make sure this
doesn’t happen, I recommend doing a pre-mortem. With a pre-
mortem, you envision your day and ask yourself, “Let’s assume I
fall into old habits and get distracted. What was the cause?” By
being aware of potential distractions before they happen, we
drastically increase the odds of avoiding them.

12. Practice saying no. Similar to how applying the 80/20 Rule is a
skill, so too is saying no. The skill is recognizing areas where we
should say no, but don’t and then devising a solution for each
situation that actually works.

13. Get both accountability and coaching. In my experience, I often

resist the things that are most important, because they require me
to confront my fears and self-sabotaging beliefs. Therefore, I
always operate more e ectively when I share my priorities with
others every day and every week, and when a coach forces me to
be brutally honest with myself and gives expert feedback.
Accountability helps me put my foot on the accelerator. Coaching
helps me remove my other foot from the brake.

Each of these steps is absolutely critical. Miss one of them and your
ability to pick and follow through on the right priorities plummets.

***
We all have 24 hours in a day. Therefore, “hustling” harder can only get
us so far.

Focus is one of the 20% of skills that give us 80% of results in our
life. It allows us to accomplish in one year what might take someone
else a decade. Furthermore, by focusing on the few things that matter
at work, we get back time in our personal life to be healthy and spend
time with loved ones.

But remember this: To get the full bene ts of focus, we need to look at
it as di cult skill that takes years of practice to develop. Focusing
sounds simple, but it requires huge emotional and cognitive resources
to follow through on consistently. This is why everyone touts the power
of focus, but few people actually truly focus.

Warren Bu ett’s strategies inspire us all to be one of the few who do.

***

[1] Disclaimer: Keep in mind that I came upon the story of Bu ett’s pilot
through a chain of people I trust, and it has been written about in several
top publications. At the same time, I take it with a grain of salt. Thank you
to a commenter below who shared this article, I’m not sure if it happened
at all, in part, or not at all. Either way, the advice is sound and has had a
big impact on my life.