The Perryman Operating System

I read a good blog post this morning from Farnam Street entitled The Munger Operating System: How to live a life that really works.   It is based on the commencement address that Charlie Munger gave at the USC Law School in 2007.  As Farnam states, "the commencement speech is an excellent response to the Big Question:  How do we live a life that really works?"  I summarize Munger's major points here.

• To get what you want, deserve what you want.  Trust, success, and admiration are earned.
• Learn to love and admire the right people, live or dead.
• Acquiring wisdom is a moral duty as well as a practical one.
• Learn to fluency the big multidisciplinary ideas of the world and use them regularly.
• Learn to think through problems backwards as well as forward.
• Be reliable, Unreliability can cancel out the other virtues.
• Avoid intense ideologies.  Always consider the other side as carefully as your own.
• Get rid of self-serving bias, envy, resentment, and self-pity.
• At the same time, allow for the self-serving bias in others who haven't removed it.
• Avoid being part of a system with perverse incentives.
• Work with and under people you admire, and avoid the inverse when at all possible.
• Learn to maintain your objectivity, especially when it's hardest.
• Concentrate experience and power into the hands of the right people - the wise learning machines.
• You'll be most successfully where you're most intensely interested.
• Learn the all-important concept of assiduity: Sit down and do it until it's done.
• Use setbacks in life as an opportunity to become a bigger and better person.  Don't wallow.
• The highest reach of civilization is a seamless system of trust among all parties concerned.

Some of these ideas could be added to my list of leadership/life maxims.  I like the idea of having a framework on which to base your life.  It will help with goal setting, decision making, spiritual guidance, financial health, discipline and other aspects of life.  

I am going to work on my operating system.  I am going to call it the Perryman Operating System -POS.