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My First Million

My First Million

The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.

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Charlie Munger's Worldly Wisdom Learning Framework

Reusability

A systematic approach to gaining broad competence by learning the 2-3 most important ideas from each major discipline, creating a toolkit of mental models that can be applied across different domains.

How It Works

Most disciplines have a few key principles that carry 80% of the explanatory power. By learning these core ideas from ~300 disciplines, you build a mental toolkit that allows cross-disciplinary thinking and pattern recognition.

Components

1

Identify major disciplines (biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, economics, etc.)

2

For each discipline, find the 2-3 biggest ideas that explain most phenomena

3

Study these ideas until you understand their mechanisms and applications

4

Practice applying ideas from one discipline to problems in another

5

Build a collection of mental models you can quickly access

When to Use

When building foundational knowledge for entrepreneurship, investment decisions, or complex problem-solving. For anyone seeking to become a generalist thinker.

When Not to Use

When deep specialization in one field is required. When time constraints prevent broad learning. In situations requiring immediate tactical expertise.

Anti-Patterns to Avoid

Learning ideas superficially without understanding their mechanismsForcing inappropriate models onto problems they don't fitNeglecting to update models when new information emerges

Example

Biology's key ideas include Darwinian evolution and genetics. These can be applied to business (companies evolve through market selection) or investing (look for companies with sustainable competitive advantages that help them survive market pressures).