Charlie Munger would say that any year in which you have not changed your opinion about somethings is a wasted year. Here are some things that I have changed my mind about

1

Old thinking: Winners don’t quit and quitters don’t win.

New thinking: It’s okay to quit after reasonable effort.

When I was in school and college, teachers threw this old quote of Vince Lombardi “Winners don’t quit and quitters don’t win.” It’s a good advice. If you are learning algebra or coding, you can’t give up too soon because the way to learn is to wrestle with the problem, fail and restart. In fact, the more you analyze what went wrong, the better you’ll get at it. Likewise I am told that founders who failed at their first venture are more valuable because they have experienced failure and know what not to do. Likewise in investing, mistakes are a part of the game.

So “don’t quit” is a good advice. Like hammer is a good tool. But you can’t screw and unscrew using a hammer; you can’t oil an engine with a hammer and you cant remove rust using a hammer. In other words, while hammer is a good tool it has its limitations. And that advice of “don’t quit” also has limitations and you can’t apply it universally.

What limitations? In micro economics there is a powerful idea of tradeoffs. We all have limited resources at our disposal. There are only 24 hours in a day and only 365 days in a year and only about 70 to 80 years of life. That’s it. It does not matter where you live, how rich you are, how powerful you are- your time is limited. Now, would you fill it with useless social media reels, tweets and posts? Or would you want to make your life count? You can do one or the other. Just one and not both. That is tradeoff.

Since Vince Lombardi was a sports coach, I will let another famous sports coach counter that. Rahul Dravid tried several years to get into the Indian cricket team but without success. In an interview he candidly said that if he hadn’t gotten selected after a few more seasons, he would have given up cricket and moved onto get an MBA. I liked what Dravid said, more than what Lombardi said because Dravid was being practical about conserving resources (time and money) and if one venture doesn’t work out, he was willing to move onto another.

Likewise if you are in business and your favorite venture goes south then after a reasonable amount of time and effort, maybe you need to write it off and move on. If you are in investing and your favorite stock goes south and decides to stay there, then write it off and move on. We need to conserve what we still have rather than throwing more good money and time at a bad problem.

Jeff Bezos understands this. When the Kindle Fire phone flopped, he wrote it off. But Kumar Mangalam Birla, despite Vodafone Idea being a cash guzzler is willing to pump in more money into the business. I will still give Birla the benefit of doubt and say, he knows something that I don’t and he is probably right.

So “don’t quit” is a good advice as is “quit after a reasonable effort”. If I could I would rewrite the serenity prayer as follows:

God give me the courage to persevere when I must,

Serenity to quit when I must

And the wisdom to know one from the other.

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I will continue on this topic in the subsequent blogs. I have been suffering from writer’s block although some friends wonder why…that is why am I calling myself a writer and they further say, it’s not a bad thing for the world because nobody missed anything. Nonetheless, I have decided to write small and simple blogs instead of a lengthy one.