"The third principle is to **resist the allure of middling priorities**. "There is a story attributed to [[Warren Buffett]]—although probably only in the apocryphal way in which wise insights get attributed to [[Albert Einstein]] or the [[Buddha]], regardless of their real source—in which **the famously shrewd investor is asked by his personal pilot about how to set priorities**. I’d be tempted to respond, “Just focus on flying the plane!” "But apparently this didn’t take place midflight, because [[Warren Buffett|Buffett]]’s advice is different: **he tells the man to make a list of the top twenty-five things he wants out of life and then to arrange them in order, from the most important to the least. The top five, [[Warren Buffett|Buffett]] says, should be those around which he organizes his time**. But contrary to what the pilot might have been expecting to hear, **the remaining twenty, [[Warren Buffett|Buffett]] allegedly explains, aren’t the second-tier priorities to which he should turn when he gets the chance. Far from it. In fact, they’re the ones he should actively avoid at all costs**—because they’re the ambitions insufficiently important to him to form the core of his life yet seductive enough to distract him from the ones that matter most." --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[self-control]], [[discipline]], [[attention]], [[focus]], [[priorities]], [[work-life-balance]], [[character]], [[personal-values]], [[counter-intuitive-thinking]], [[teaching-anecdotes]] **Source** -- [[202410130434 - B - Four Thousand Weeks]]