QUOTE OF THE DAY

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

— Dale Carnegie

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THE MAIN STORY: INTELLECTUAL SPARRING PARTNERS

Overview

We’re all hoping to start 2023 off the right way. It’s a wonderful time of year when the collective hope for a better future permeates the air.

Many of us have spent much of the last week or so relaxing around loved ones and hopefully gaining perspective that’ll carry well into the new year.

A few weekends back, if you remember, I (Shawn) wrote about forming a New Year’s resolution premised around a “stop-doing list,” as opposed to exacting grand plans for new self-improvement habits that may be quickly forgotten.

If you seek something new to your life, though, I have a suggestion.

What to add

Find an intellectual sparring partner who can share ideas, challenge your thinking, and fuel your creativity.

This is someone that you build such a deep intellectual chemistry with that you may actually enjoy disagreeing with them because you know the conversation will spawn constructive original thinking and learning.

The writer and investor Sahil Bloom calls these relationships “a cheat code for life.”

Buffett and Munger

For a specific example, look no further than Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. These two perfectly embody the idea and have served as each other’s intellectual sparring partners for decades.

Undoubtedly, they wouldn’t have achieved the career success they did along the way without each other while building a lifelong friendship at the same time. The two are famous for their collaboration on investing ideas as well as their willingness to disagree.

Such trusted pushback launches us in new, previously unattainable directions.

Your sparring partner

If no one in your life comes to mind for this, make it an intentional goal in 2023 to find someone who can help you grow emotionally and intellectually.

If you already have someone like this in your life, the Munger to your Buffett per se, then aim to schedule more sparring sessions with them this year.

In his famous “This is water” speech, David Foster Wallace says, “A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.”

Your intellectual sparring partner should help fend off the natural biases that lead to arrogance. At least, that’s what Sahil Bloom believes.

The best relationships

The proposition is a compelling one. In essence, finding a sparring partner or engaging with them more frequently necessitates strengthening our relationships with others.

This is, of course, an important thing to do broadly. Perhaps, though, it’s most important to do so with your current or potential sparring partner.

I know that the friendships I treasure most are ones where we can go months without contact and then quickly submerge into a passionate, niche discussion that leaves me wiser than before.

Takeaways

I’d add to Bloom’s comments that intellectual sparring partners are a “cheat code.”

All healthy friendships should be mutually beneficial to some extent. Meaning, finding your Charlie Munger is one thing, but building a whole network of people who challenge and enrich you exponentially magnifies the positive effects.

On this point, we can only hope to build such a valuable network over an entire lifetime. But if we don’t start today, we’re surely missing out on incredible perspectives and education, leaving us blinded by our own worldview whether we realize it or not.

The point is to ensure that we surround ourselves with people who add to our happiness, make us smarter, call us out on our mistakes, and keep us grounded.

Life is simply too short to fall into isolation or include people who subtract from our experiences.

I hope, then, that in 2023 you can find your intellectual sparring partner. Or engage with those who fill that role for you more often.

Or even find additional sparring partners who you can use to build a web of mutually-beneficial, perspective-changing relationships.

Who’s your intellectual sparring partner for this year going to be?

Dive deeper

For more insights this weekend, I’d encourage you to revisit Trey Lockerbie’s interview from last year with Alex Lieberman on building a personal moat and his mental health stack.

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!

That’s it for today on We Study Markets!

See you later!

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