Perhaps this makes us odd, but we do a great deal of thinking and brainstorming away from the computer. Really away from anything business related. We use our hobbies, walks, playtime with kids, cleaning around the house, taking out the trash, and reading as time to relax and reflect. Sometimes we come up with a new investment idea or imagine a new perspective for a current one. We think of new systems, processes, and ways to run Pilot more effectively. For the sake of conversation, we’ll call this “distracted thinking.”
When all you can think about is work, the thoughts and emotions of work occupy our entire mind and become greater than reality. Moving to a new place and keeping our hands busy with anything other than a keyboard lets the subconscious work. Stepping back and letting our mind rest gives us time to balance our thoughts and remove emotion. With emotions removed, our subconscious is free to think more critically, objectively, and creatively.
We also recognize few of the world's great ideas come from our business of investing. Most are somewhere else in art, philosophy, crafts, gardening, family, cooking, board games, and reading. Great beef stew needs consistent effort over many hours to perfect. Every great woodworking project is the result of many patient years of practice. Vegetable gardens take months, even years to yield healthy crops. The best coffee isn’t instant. Great ideas to live by exist everywhere and are often consistent across disciplines.
With so many of us forced to stay at home, now is as perfect a time as ever for distracted thinking through hobbies, board games, and working on projects we’ve wanted to finish. Hobbies are anything but a pure distraction from real work. They can act as a rudder to push us back on course and stabilize when our work occupies too much of our heads.
Nick considers himself a hobby farmer with a garden of grapes, tomatoes, kale, lettuce, and a chicken coop. He is also very proud of his grilling and cooking skills. Jason is designing a home remodel and can either be found in his full wood shop in his basement or perfecting his short game at the golf course. Alex and his fiancé Michelle are playing Catan with their friends and putting puzzles together. They briefly considered brewing kombucha, but fear they’d gone too far. We’ll have some great ideas all around as our lives open up again.
Our core hobby though is investing. We are always thinking of ways to be better stewards of our clients’ capital. Distracted thinking helps us remain calm and mentally balanced when making difficult and complex decisions that have lasting impact. Our distractions make us better at work.
Pilot Notes
Permanent Equity released results for a survey of 336 business owners who were asked about the impacts to their businesses.
Li Lu, a hedge fund manager admired by Charlie Munger, gave a speech about the practice of value investing which was outstanding.
Ian Cassel, who runs MicroCapClub and Intelligent Fanatics Capital Management, gave a keynote about The Art of Survival.
KKR wrote an in-depth report on what’s currently happening in markets around the world.
Tim Ludwig, a search fund investor, just hired a CEO for one of his companies and talks about the process in this Twitter thread.
If you know anyone who might enjoy reading our thoughts around business owners and interesting resources we come across, feel free to forward this along to them so we can keep them in the loop as well.
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