80/20 Investors: Tap Dancing to Work Like Warren Buffett

Many books and articles have been written about Buffett and Munger, and rightly so. They represent the ideal 80/20 Investors who openly display and describe their modus operandi for everybody to copy – they are investors tap dancing to work.

Buffett is frequently quoted as “tap dancing to the office,” and Munger is typically seen reading or hanging out with his family and friends, and taking the occasional fly fishing trips.

There is no need for them to impress anybody, especially bankers or outside investors with fancy offices or corporate perks. They don’t have to appear overly busy with schedules filled up for three months
in advance.

Buffett’s office building has the typical charm of a provincial building that has seen its prime some time ago. It has been located far away from the gravity of finance in the middle of nowhere since he moved his partnership from his bedroom in 1962. “You can think here,” he says, “you can think better about the market; you don’t hear so many stories, and you can just sit and look at the stock on the desk in front
of you. You can think about a lot of things.”

Warren Buffett Simple Investing

Buffett reads what he likes to read, he works and meets with people he likes to meet and work with. He is always unruffled. And even though he eats like a young bachelor, with his regular cheeseburgers,
cherry cokes, and T-bone steaks, he has reached a respectable age of 85 and he doesn’t seem to slow down, if that is, we can say he was ever really in a rush.

Both Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger are proof that successful investing has been done for centuries without the need for complicated financial theory or expensive hardware and software. All successful investors in history followed some simple principles, and they didn’t over-complicate things or make their investing work-intensive.

In fact, they too seemed to obey the seasons for their investment operations. They were all individuals who acted independently of professional advice and of the general market consensus. They focused on the areas where they enjoyed a competitive edge. They always made sure that the odds were in their favor and that there was always some sort of Margin of Safety.

And when the odds were in their favor they bet big and they made huge profits. Profits that would carry their outperformance for many years into the future. They concentrated on the 20% of the tasks that made most of their profits and it paid out – in money and time! They tap dance to work, just like Buffett and Munger, investors tap dancing to work.

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