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Warren Buffett’s Brilliant Wisdom on How We Waste Time, Money and Our Lives
Beware of the sunk-cost fallacy
William Penn was right when he said, “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”
Legendary investor Warren Buffett is renowned for his extraordinary financial acumen and investing wisdom.
He has become an icon of financial success, and his advice on managing our time and money has become the stuff of legend.
Buffett has a knack for boiling complex concepts into their essence and delivering them with humour, wit, and insight.
His take on how we waste time and money is no exception — he offers brilliant wisdom on identifying and avoiding these pitfalls and using our resources more thoughtfully and productively.
It’s a quote about using time, money and resources wisely.
“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks,” Buffett once said.
Let’s unpack Buffett’s profound statement. It applies to investing and in many areas of life.
Buffett’s quote applies to investing in several ways.
It is easy to get caught up in fixing the immediate issues of our investment strategy, but if the underlying problem is not addressed, the same issues will continue to resurface.
In the process, we waste more time and money.
Beware of the sunk-cost fallacy
Buffett’s statement reminds us to beware of sunk cost fallacy: the tendency to persist with a decision or course of action that has already incurred costs, even when the decision is no longer rational or beneficial.
In other words, people often feel that they must continue with a particular course of action, regardless of whether it makes sense, simply because they have already invested time, money, or effort into it.
It’s a cognitive bias.
