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It’s common knowledge that Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are two of the most successful men in the world. Back in 1998, Buffett gave a lecture alongside Gates at the University of Washington, where they shared how crucial forming good habits early on was to their current success.
Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, consistently outperforms the S&P 500 in returns. For instance, Berkshire Hathaway’s compounded annual gain over the last 60 years was 19.9%, almost doubling the S&P 500’s 10.4% annual return in that same period, according to the company’s 2024 annual report. (1)
Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975 with his friends, believing that chip technology would allow everyone to someday own a computer at home, and now we can’t imagine our lives without a computer in our pocket at all times.
It’s no surprise that their advice to students decades ago still resonates with investors today.
Buffett was clear in his advice: IQ doesn’t matter as much as you think it does when it comes to success.
“Everybody in this room has more than enough IQ to do my job,” Buffett said. “The big thing is rationality. I always look at IQ and talent as sort of representing the horsepower of the motor.”
In other words, you can be the smartest, most talented person in the room, but if your habits are poor, you won’t get far:
“In terms of the output — the efficiency with which the motor works — that depends on rationality because a lot of people start out with 400-horsepower motors and get 100-horsepower of output. It’s way better to have a 200-horsepower motor and get it all into output.”
Buffett reiterated that anyone in the room can achieve what he has in his career, but that some won’t “because you’ll get in your own way — it won’t be because the world doesn’t allow you to — it’ll be because you don’t allow yourself.”
He suggested the students take a look around the room and find the peer they respect the most, and write down the qualities they truly admire about that person.
He then suggested following that up by doing the opposite — find the person they “can stand the least in the whole group” and write down the qualities about that person that rub them the wrong way.
Once you know what those good qualities are, you can build up strong habits that bring those qualities forward in you, and put to rest the bad qualities within yourself that remind you of the person you don’t want to emulate. This is how you convert all your horsepower into output.