The biases that cost money and the habits that compound.
Judge a decision by what was knowable when it was made, and keep the outcome in a separate column.
Reviewing a trade or a deal that went wrong, answering a question about a failure, and any post-mortem.
From Thinking in Bets · Annie Duke
Results come from a few outcomes, so the job is to survive long enough to be there when they arrive.
Position sizing, venture portfolio construction, and any moment of frustration that most of your effort seems to produce nothing.
From The Psychology of Money · Morgan Housel
Separate a bad year into your errors and the market's mood, name the errors specifically, and say whether the method changes.
Reviewing your own record, reading any manager's bad year, and the interview question about a mistake.
From Giverny Capital's 2025 annual letter, on a year of underperformance · François Rochon
Before estimating, ask what number is anchoring you and what the base rate is for cases like this.
Valuation, deal pricing, forecasting, and the behavioural finance questions in hedge fund and asset management interviews.
From Thinking, Fast and Slow · Daniel Kahneman
Duration beats brilliance in compounding; arrange your life and portfolio so you are never forced to stop.
Thinking about personal finance, about a long career, or about why survival matters more than any single year's return.
From Becoming Warren Buffett · 2017
Ask how many people ran the same method and are not in the sample before treating a record as evidence of skill.
Reading any success memoir, evaluating a manager's record, or presenting your own.
From How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market · Nicolas Darvas
The price of risk tracks the mood, so the useful time to buy is when the mood is worst, and the dangerous time is when it is best.
Any question about market timing, contrarian investing or what to do in a crisis.
From Berkshire Hathaway's 2008 letter to shareholders · Warren Buffett
Schedule the uninterrupted block first; the preparation that matters cannot be done in the gaps.
Planning interview preparation, or any period where learning something structurally complex has to fit around other work.
From Deep Work · Cal Newport
Decide what a business is worth before looking at the price, then act only when the price is far enough below.
Any stock pitch, any conversation about whether a market move is a reason to act, and any valuation that starts from the price.
From The Intelligent Investor · Benjamin Graham