On Writing: Warren Buffett, London Review of Books personals, kGTD

On Writing: Warren Buffett, London Review of Books personals, kGTD Matt Nov 29

9 comments Latest by Donald

Warren Buffett: Clear thinking leads to clear words
U.S.News & World Report has a special feature on America’s Best Leaders. In it, Warren Buffett gives good quote [via GE]:

“Be a nice person…It’s so simple that it’s almost too obvious to notice. Look around at the people you like. Isn’t it a logical assumption that if you like traits in other people, then other people would like you if you developed those same traits?”

“You’re thinking that the investors, bankers, and regulators are the people you need to survive. Put them all aside, and give priority to talking to your people and your customers about what is wrong and what you have to do.”

“Our favorite holding period is forever.”

“Berkshire is my painting so it should look the way I want it to when it’s done.”

“You don’t need to play outside the lines. You can make a lot of money hitting the ball down the middle.”

Personals that poke fun
Taking the piss of yourself is a good way to disarm your audience, show you’re confident, and prove you can take a joke. Book Lovers Seek Lovers, Buttered or Plain talks about the personals column in the London Review of Books and how people there intentionally present themselves in a negative light.

The magazine’s lonely hearts have described themselves over the years as shallow, flatulent, obsessive, incontinent, hypertensive, hostile, older than 100, paranoid, pasty, plaid-festooned, sinister-looking, advantage-taking, amphetamine-fueled, and as residents of mental institutions. They have announced that they are suffering from liver disease, from drug addiction, from asthma, from compulsive gambling, from unclassified skin complaints and from reduced sperm counts. They have insulted prospective partners. As one ad starts, “I’ve divorced better men than you.”

Kate Fox, a cultural anthropologist and author of “Watching the English,” compared the London Review personals to an advertising campaign several years ago that showed people recoiling in revulsion from Marmite, the curiously popular gloppy-as-molasses yeast byproduct that functions as a sandwich spread, a snack or a base for soup (just add boiling water).

“An advertising campaign focusing exclusively on the disgust people feel for your product strikes a lot of people as perverse,” [Kate Fox, a cultural anthropologist] said in an interview. But when Britons exaggerate their faults, she said, they are really telegraphing their attributes. “It does speak of a certain arrogance, that you have the confidence and the sense of humor to say these things,” she said.

What kGTD did for summer vacation
It’s a common plight: Emails sit. Blog posts go unwritten. Audiences wonder what happened: “Anyone there?” Ethan at kGTD decided to spin a lengthy absence in a humorous way. His technique was a lot more friendly than, say, “Working on a new business, can’t talk now.”

I missed you. Honest. I meant to write, but, you know: one leaves for summer camp, young love blossoms on the pine tree lined shores of lake Menominee and I forget to write my hometown sweetie (that’d be you). Except in this case “summer camp” is code for “kick starting a new business” and “love blossoms” is code for “immediate need to generate cash flow to cover all those new expenses like insurance, beer, a fridge in the studio for the beer”. Despite this subtext, it’s still a timeless story of learning about life, love, getting to first base, stealing second, being tagged out and spending the rest of the summer alone on the archery range…

So this is mostly just a “hello again”. If you’ve dropped me an email and I owe you one, drop me another. My inbox is empty, but my backlog of kGTD emails is long and I may be declaring email bankruptcy on that folder.

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9 comments so far

Eugene Loj 29 Nov 06

The most successful people I know are also the most pleasant to be around. They’re always dispensing free advice and will make the time where none exists. They never complain about money or worldly troubles. I’m envious of that lifestyle.

Where do you draw the line between being a nice person and a good business person? I rarely see both qualities in most business people.

JF 29 Nov 06

Interesting. I’ve often found this quality in great businesspeople. In fact I’ve found it more there than in anyone else.

Jon Crosby 29 Nov 06

@Eugene:

I think many people perceive good business people as being tough negotiators and then link this to being cold or mean. Great negotiators know how to create situations that benefit both sides, which ends up being both nice and good business at the same time.

Anonymous Coward 29 Nov 06

Yes, great negotiators are always empathic. They know what pleases and motivates the other side. They become it. That is why they are successful.

August 29 Nov 06

Two things:

1) The NYTimes is doing its best to describe the LRB personals to an audience that, generally speaking, doesn’t get them. And the NYT writer doesn’t quite get them either. They understand the technique, but not the point.

2) There is substantial evidence, going back quite a long time, that your Warren Buffet headline got it backwards. Clear thinking doesn’t lead to clear language, it’s the other way around. Language structures the way we think, not vice versa. If you use language clearly, your thoughts will be more organized and straightforward. This is actually one of the reasons literature continues to be mandatory in most countries; exposure to and experience with well-formed language leads to well-formed thoughts and a clearer, more robust set of thought processes.

(Mandatory at school, that is.)

brad 29 Nov 06

@August

Actually this bit of the NYTimes article seemed to get the point pretty well, especially in the last sentence.

The subtlety (if that is what it is) of these courtship techniques may well be lost on people used to American-model personal ads, in which stunning, good-sense-of-humored characters seek soul mates for walks in the rain and cuddles by the fire. But while the ads in the London Review, a twice-monthly literary journal favored by the British intelligentsia, are weird in the extreme, they are also peculiarly English. This is a country where open bragging is considered rude and unironic sentiment makes people cringe with embarrassment.

My friends in England always complain that Americans don’t do irony; it’s one of the great cultural differences between us (and of course it’s a broad generalization with plenty of exceptions, but there’s some truth to it).

Joe B 29 Nov 06

This passage caught my eye in this recent Fortune article about a get-together on Richard Branson’s Necker Island:

My whole time on Necker, I was struck by how gracious, upbeat and generous Branson was with all the interlopers on his island. He’s got a knack for striking up a cheerful conversation with anyone about anything – technology, food, sports, indigenous birds. At one point I mentioned my impressions of our host to News Corp.’s Philips, who works closely with Rupert Murdoch. “That’s something I’ve noticed about these moguls,” he replied. “They’re almost always the most optimistic person in the room.”

In my experience, optimistic people are also generally nice to others and pleasant to be around.

Donald 30 Nov 06

I visited a very interesting site, they have a vast collection of books which have been categories and are presented to viewers in an easy-to-search format. You should check it out.

http://www.khichdee.com/category-catid-11-paraid-0.htm

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