Learning From Warren

Warren Buffett resigned as Berkshire Hathaway’s Chief Executive Officer December 31, 2025, after 60 years of leading the massive multinational conglomerate holding company.

In an article posted on December 18^th in The Atlantic online, the answer to how Buffett was able to amass over $160 billion in his career was five-fold:

“An alert, quick, accurate, and decisive mind that gives him the ability to form reliable investment judgments.

Simplicity of thought, getting right to the heart of the matter in analyzing each investment.

The ability to distinguish good investments from bad ones, and great investments from merely good ones – and the insight and conviction to stick with the best ones over time. Buffett, to paraphrase the investment guru Peter Lynch, never cut his flowers or watered his weeds.

The ability to stay focused over long periods and avoid distraction.

The mental agility to alter his strategy when he found a way to improve, such as when he came to more significantly emphasize the quality of a business in his decision making.”

“An alert, quick, accurate, and decisive mind” is something all adult learning leaders are trying to instill in their young learners. The problem with our current traditional K-12 system is that they don’t spend time developing this type of mindfulness. Instead, that system provides curriculum to be memorized so that students can perform well in high-stakes tests. Developing an alert, quick, accurate, and decisive mind requires large amounts of time when young learners are able to define, plan, execute, and evaluate their own learning – which includes reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development practice.

Likewise, our traditional K-12 system struggles with the ability to train young learners to get right to the heart of the matter, when it comes to learning goals. Instead, our traditional system is full of knowledge and skills that some state legislator or school board member felt important to learn, so it ends up in a district’s curriculum. Simplicity of thought translates to a strong individualized learning plan, where young learners respond to three questions: What do I want to learn today? How will I know I learned it? What modifications will I make to my learning plan if I don’t learn what I want to learn? Simplicity of thought, when it comes to a personalized plan, begins and ends with learning as the ultimate goal.

In the learning world, instead of investments, we focus on learning goals. Our traditional system creates the same learning goals for every learner, while some of those learning goals aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Students aren’t allowed to work on learning what they deem important. Instead, they are expected to learn things that are judged irrelevant in the world they live in. Sadly, “cutting flowers and watering weeds” occur too often in our current traditional K-12 system.

Our traditional K-12 system struggles with allowing young learners to stay focused over long periods of time. Instead, students are asked to move from subject to subject every forty-five minutes or so (this includes elementary students, even though most remain self-contained with one or two teachers). To become a strong reader, writer, problem-solver, and a person of strong character, these skills demand large chunks of time to master the requisite skills. If you’ve ever wondered why someone in high school has weak reading skills, just look at how long that high school student is given throughout their normal school day to improve their reading prowess. Likewise, there are too many distractions in the typical traditional school day. Bells, announcements, recess, lunch, schedule changes, and the like all interfere with a young learner’s ability to focus on their learning.

Finally, our traditional K-12 system does a poor job teaching our young learners how to attain the mental agility to alter their learning strategies and change course in pursuit of their learning goals. Our traditional K-12 system depends on lock-step adherence to curriculum guides, pacing schedules, and lesson plans that eliminate the individual learner’s ability to create a learning plan for themselves. Even if the learning outcomes are similar, each learner should have the freedom to define, plan, execute, and evaluate their learning in their own way.

Buffett’s five keys to better investing align well with the keys to better learning. The problem is our current K-12 system doesn’t emphasize any of it, for the most part.

Til tomorrow. SVB