Chapter 127 - The Keys to Success Or Personal Efficiency
Today’s Chapter is based on the book “The Keys to Success Or Personal Efficiency” by Bertie Charles Forbes.
Bertie Charles Forbes (B.C. Forbes) was a Scottish-American financial journalist and author who founded Forbes magazine in 1917. Forbes remained the editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine until his death in 1954, and he was known for his unique approach to financial reporting that focused on the people behind businesses.
Here’s what I have learned:
Build Your Success
“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”
— Stephen Hawking
B.C. Forbes begins with a powerful, sobering truth: success isn't bestowed; it's forged. He shatters any illusion of shortcuts or inherited privilege as the primary key. True success demands personal ownership, relentless effort, and the courage to walk your own path, burdens and all. This foundational principle underpins everything else.
In fact, Forbes mentions that "Nobody can hand you a ready-made key to open the door of success. You must fashion your own key and find the combination of the lock for yourself. The road, often rocky, has to be traversed on foot. You, and you alone, can supply the motive power. You, and you alone, must put forth the necessary exertion. No one can remove from your shoulders the burden of the effort. You must do your own climbing.”
As such, Forbes recognizes that success starts through increased personal efficiency and the first step in achieving this is through self-awareness. Knowing your strengths allows you to leverage them and acknowledging your weaknesses allows you to compensate strategically, perhaps through partnership. Success stems from taking full responsibility for your capabilities and your trajectory.
"We get increased personal efficiency not alone by sheer development of personal power, but quite as often by various compensations. For example, I am lacking in 'personality,' so radically lacking that no amount of effort I can make will develop enough of it to match the fine analytic power of thinking and planning which I have as a native gift. What shall I do? Why, naturally I look for a partner who has personality but lacks power of analytic thought and organization, and we two make a team that can't be beaten."
— B.C. Forbes
Moreover, Forbes recognizes that this effort in self-improvement is the key to success based on his studies on careers of successful men. As he observes, “One comforting thought driven home to me by these studies of the careers of successful men, a thought which I record in this foreword in the hope that it will induce the reader to act, is that an earnest, persistent effort to cultivate one ‘success quality’ makes the cultivation of other helpful qualities very much easier. Indeed, the pursuit of one virtue often leads to the attainment of a group of equally valuable virtues.”
As such, Forbes suggests that the act of committing to a single strength—be it perseverance, creativity, or analytical thinking—creates a ripple effect, fostering a broader set of virtues. This interconnected growth is a testament to the power of consistent personal effort, encouraging us to start with one area of improvement and watch it transform our overall character and our chances to success.
This reminds me of how Benjamin Franklin viewed life as an opportunity to grow and refine one’s character in order to achieve moral excellence. His dedication to self-betterment is perhaps most evident in his meticulous plan to cultivate virtues and habits that he believed would lead to a fulfilling and virtuous life. Benjamin Franklin created a framework of thirteen virtues, each accompanied by concise precepts, that he aimed to master systematically. As he explained, "I proposed to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use rather more names, with fewer ideas annexed to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurred to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which fully expressed the extent I gave to its meaning."
As we have seen previously, his thirteen virtues were:
Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
Tranquillity: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
But more importantly, Franklin’s approach to his self-improvement project is truly remarkable. In fact, with the rigorous of a scientist, he created a small book to track his progress on a daily basis. While he was never able to reach perfection in terms of moral excellence, it brought him happiness to see his faults diminish along the way. As he once said, "Though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been."
"I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I ruled each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for the day. I crossed these columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of the virtues, on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day."
— Benjamin Franklin
Practice Your Thinking
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.”
— Henry Ford
B.C Forbes believed that thought is the pinnacle of human distinction and the engine of progress. As such, he mentions that it is primordial that one learns how to think. He places immense value on the human capacity for thought, viewing it as the distinguishing feature that sets us apart from machines and the cornerstone of progress. In an age increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence, his insights into the power of the mind resonate deeply. He argues that success hinges on our ability to think critically and creatively, a skill that requires intentional cultivation.
As a matter of fact, Forbes once said, “As civilization advances, thought becomes more and more vital to success. The time is coming when virtually all tasks not requiring human thought will be performed by machines. To rise above the level of a machine a man must develop the power of thinking. Become a thinker, learn to produce useful, valuable thoughts and ideas, and no machinery inventable by a thousand Edisons will ever be able to displace you."
One prominent figure that believes in the value of thinking is Henry Ford, whom B.C. Forbes is a big admirer. As a matter of fact, in his book, he quotes Ford who once said, “My advice to business men is to read a lot and think a lot, and work a lot. I started that way. I kept on thinking and I am still thinking. The habit of analysis, the ability to get under the surface of things and at the vital essentials, gives a man a tremendous advantage over those of his competitors who do not do likewise.”
Similarly, Forbes believed that it is important to practice your own thinking. In fact, he took a scientific approach to refine one’s thinking. Forbes explains that “You want to be prepared to do your thinking jobs over many times. That is the scientific method—trying, testing, and trying again, thus getting gradually nearer and nearer to the truth.”
"There are two main keys to success: Think and Work. And the first is: Think! If you want to learn to think effectively, first of all you must be alone for at least half-an-hour at a time—absolutely alone and uninterrupted. Men never think in crowds. In crowds they are governed by the animal herd instinct, which is directly and powerfully opposed to the thinking principle, which is strictly individual. A person must be alone."
— B.C. Forbes
This reminds me of the concept of “Labour of Thinking” that we have previously learned from Harvey Firestone, who believed that thinking is primordial in making good decisions and to run a successful business. Similarly to Forbes, Firestone was inspired by Henry Ford, who while known for making business decisions quickly, but in reality, “He reaches his decisions slowly and alone; he does not jump at anything, and so, when the time comes for execution, everything moves with marvelous rapidity because everything has been previously thought through and planned.“
Firestone explained that Ford was a master of delegating executive duties to others and made sure to have enough time on his own to think, and to plan and to watch. ****He would make sure to never assign any executive duties to himself and to have no social obligations.
“He has had the time to do this thinking and planning because he has used his time himself instead of permitting others to use it for him. And he is certain that plans will be executed for him, because he knows how to let men go when they grow too rich and lazy to execute.”
— Harvey Firestone
In fact, Firestone hated working with people that made quick decisions without having a long train of thought behind them. He once said, “I do not want to have around me the kind of man who can give me an instant decision on anything I may bring up, for, if he has not had the opportunity to give the question serious thought, then he is only guessing. And I can do my own guessing!” In fact, unless he was under an emergency, Firestone much preferred taking his time and to only make decisions after serious thinking and he was known for taking things one at a time. He once said, “One thing at a time is a pretty good rule—a rule that I never break.”
Educate Yourself
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
— Mark Twain
For B.C. Forbes, education is far more than formal schooling; it’s the lifelong accumulation and application of knowledge, wisdom and judgment. He observes that nearly every highly successful individual, regardless of their early academic opportunities, became deeply self-educated, constantly observing, absorbing, and exercising their mind.
As a matter of fact, Forbes once said, "Without education, no man or woman can reach the highest pinnacle of success. But education does not consist of school learning. Our education comprises the sum total of what we know.” As such, Forbes encourages us to learn through reading. Notably, he mentions that “Most financial and business leaders have also contrived to steep themselves in history, and particularly the biographies of the world's most famous achievers.”
This reminds me of the reason why this blog is called Biography Nuts. As Charlie Munger once said, “I am a biography nut myself. You learn economics better if you are Adam Smith’s friend. If you are making friends with the eminent dead, it will work better for you in life and education.”
“By long odds the chief means of self-education is systematic reading. Those who spend an hour or two hours daily on trains travelling to and from business have a splendid chance for systematic reading. They can soon accustom themselves to the crowd and the noise, and ignore them completely. Among the biographies every one should have read are—Lincoln, Washington, Franklin (Autobiography), Edison, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, just for a start.”
— B.C. Forbes
Furthermore, Forbes was prominent on the concept of compounding. He understood that by reading one or two hours per day, one could achieve great wisdom on a long period of time. As he once said, "The great thing is to devote at least one hour each day systematically. In a few years you will be astonished at how your mind has developed, as well as at your increased knowledge."
However, Forbes warns us to be selective with our time and to be selective with what we read. As he explains, “Education is really a matter of selection—a matter of selecting what we shall become interested in, selecting how we shall employ our time, selecting things that will increase our knowledge and wisdom and power, or the reverse.”
However, Forbes understood that knowledge isn’t solely earned through reading, but it could also be learned through experience and observation. In fact, he was greatly influenced by Sir Thomas Lipton, who once said, “Knowledge should be a compound of what we derive from books, and what we extract, by our observation, from the living world around us. Both of these are necessary to the well-informed man; and, of the two, the last is, by far, the most useful for the practical purposes of life. The man who can combine the teachings of books with strong and close observation of life, deserves the name of a well-informed man, and presents a model worthy of imitation.”
“Let me repeat, however, that whether poorly educated or well educated in youth, almost every notably successful man I have ever met clearly revealed that he had not gone through life lazily or with unobserving eyes or inattentive ears, but had exercised his mentality to the very limit."
— B.C. Forbes
This reminds me of the importance of being a seeker of information and of being a serious observer. In fact, Zell was a voracious consumer of information, always on the lookout for anomalities or disruptions in an industry. Having this macro perspective allows him to identify opportunities and to make better decisions. He tells us to always question and calculate the implications of broader events.
As an example, based on the simplest law of demand and supply, Zell started targetting small high-growth cities where there is no competing capital for his real estate projects. He identified that the largest fixed costs of real estate were taxes and utilities, and both were much lower in these second-tier cities and therefore his margins would be higher.
“The cost of construction was significantly less in smaller cities like Ann Arbor and—even more important—there was no competition. But the syndicators didn’t know those second-and third-tier cities even existed. So there was no real capital looking for assets in those smaller markets. Without competition, I could set the price—and the market.”
— Sam Zell
Furthermore, Opening our mind also means to pay attention to other people. Being a good listener can make all the difference, since you never know when or how you will learn something new. Similarly, in business negotiations, Zell quickly understood the value of listening and understanding what is truly important to the other person.
“This is perhaps my most fundamental principle of entrepreneurialism, and to success in general. But my experience with Mrs. D was also about the value of really listening, which is at the heart of any negotiation. Understanding what’s truly important to the other person out of the dozen or so things they might tell you. Mrs. D’s brother had to be taken care of. That was her bottom line. Homing in on that got the deal done.”
— Sam Zell
Beyond the Book
Read "Ben Franklin: The Thirteen Necessary Virtues" by Farnam Street
Read "Rich Thinking Versus Poor Thinking: Why it Matters" by Farnam Street
Read "Carl Braun’s Writing Lessons for Clear Thinking and Productive Communication" by Farnam Street
Read "Compounding Knowledge" by Farnam Street
Read "Tiny Gains. Massive Results." by Farnam Street
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