No Inputs, No Outputs
On Warren Buffett, our life diets, school lunches, and writing. Our inputs matter.
Growing up, I always packed my lunch for school. Etched in my mind are the numerous moments in preschool when I was the “lunch box kid”. The outcast who sat nibbling away at his PB&J sandwich with peanut butter oozing down the side, while everyone else ate off their plastic lunch trays. It didn’t bother me. In fact, outside of the occasional questioning on why I didn’t eat school lunch, I loved it. Whatever my mom packed me always delivered.
This set the tone for the rest of my schooling career. I can count on one hand the number of times I ate school lunch in high school. My school catered Papa John’s every week, and sometimes, I couldn’t resist the temptation of the greasy, cheese filled aroma that overwhelmed the cafeteria. I made the occasional exception, but I remained religious about packing.
My packed lunch wasn’t the one everyone raved about either. My friends never envied what I packed. I was a terrible lunch trading partner. I always got comments on how my lunch consisted of too many apples, yogurt, and PB&J. My friends argued I needed more Zebra cakes, Doritos, or Fruit Roll Ups, which had some truth. You still have to have your fun. Some weeks, I packed Oatmeal Crème Pies or Oreos, but I was an aspiring athlete and valued my time in the classroom. I couldn’t have pizza inducing me into a food coma during the afternoon while trying to learn calculus. I couldn’t be struggling to keep down my Cheetos while running repeats during track practice.
It was an emphasis on my health, but it was also watching what I put in my body because what I put in, I got out. How I ate determined how I felt. The inputs equaled the outputs.
I was watching the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting this weekend. A young girl stepped to the mic during Q&A with Warren Buffett. Seizing the opportunity of soaking up all the advice she could from someone who returned 140 times more than the S&P since 1964, she asked Buffett's advice for younger people. She sought general life advice and wondered how young people might think about informing their investment strategies. Buffett began to expand on the importance of who you surround yourself with.
"Who you associate with is enormously important. And don’t expect to make every decision right on that. But your life is going to progress in the general direction of the people you work with, admire, and befriend."
Yes, I am sure we have all heard the trope of "you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”, but it is a valid point. Buffett’s answer was similar. He mentioned that you should spend a lot of time with people who are better than you. It’s sage advice, but unpacking the underlying message is that those people become your inputs. Who you surround yourself with, you become. You look for someone to emulate, you look to those around you. You need advice, you ask those around you. They become an input to your system, you filter through the advice, sorting what works for you, and your actions are the output. The inputs matter to the output.
I can feel it in my writing. The writing flows when my consumption diet is fat on reading, but I have been reading less. It is not a matter of time. It has become less of a priority. I still love it, but sometimes I can’t resist the dopamine pull of my phone when I crawl into bed after a long day. I could be reading, but I resort to cheap dopamine.
When I resist that urge and read, I find the ideas and words spill out of me when it is time to write. I discover connections between two unrelated stories better. Writing and editing become much quicker. It is an abundance of ideas without much work. My inputs are much stronger, leading my outputs to be much better. However, the less I read, the more it feels like I am trying to pry words and ideas from the clutches of my brain. I am mired in indecisiveness on what to write and struggle to connect ideas to bring them to life. Reading is the input to the output of writing. Johnny Cash puts it best,
“Songwriting is a very strange thing, as far as I’m concerned. It’s not something where I can say, ‘Next Tuesday morning, I’m gonna sit down and write a song.’ I can’t do that. No way. But if I say, ‘Next Tuesday morning, I’m gonna go to the country and take a walk in the woods,’ then the probability is that next Tuesday night, I can write a song. You know, creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I do. I have to get fed. I have to get filled up in order to pour out.”
Regardless of whether it is food, people, or books, what you put in determines what you get out.
-Scantron
Appreciate you for reading.
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