Munger and Buffett didn't out-think the world so much as out-read it, one biography and one annual report at a time.
In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time — none, zero.
Biography, physics, psychology, history — Munger read far outside investing, on the theory that big ideas travel.
A concept from biology, like natural selection, or physics, like critical mass, turns out to explain business and behavior too.
Enough borrowed frameworks, connected across disciplines, become a working model of how the world actually operates.
As recounted in Poor Charlie's Almanack, Munger's own children described him as "a book with a couple of legs sticking out," a nod to just how many hours a day he spent reading.
Buffett has said he spends the large majority of his working day reading annual reports, newspapers, and books, and has advised young people to "read 500 pages like this every day."
Munger's reading spanned biography, physics, biology, and history — the raw material for what he called the "latticework of mental models."
Read every day, not only when you have a specific problem to solve.
Read outside your discipline — biography, science, history — not just your professional field.
Treat books as the fastest, cheapest way to borrow the hard-won experience of others.
Keep a stack of unread books; run out of reading material and you run out of new models.
Reread the best books — the first pass is comprehension, the second is insight.
Follow curiosity even when it doesn't obviously pay off; the latticework is built sideways as often as forward.
Read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.