Paper Boy

One thing I keyed upon in T. Boone Pickens' autobiography was his description of his paper route, which hearkened back to the bios of Warren Buffett (The Snowball) and the autobio of Edward Thorp, the guy who while a math professor developed the system of card-counting that eventually made casinos change their models, before he want on to found Princeton-Newport Partners and become an early instance of the academic crossover to Wall Street and a quant who made a bunch of money.

The paper route, for all of these guys, was a place where they learned focus and work ethic as well as process optimization. That is, they all worked hard to figure out systems that let them do a little bit more with their time.

At the same time, a reader has to wonder about the extent to which this paper route story is really true, and the extent to which it becomes part of the mythology of the self-made man. I certainly don't doubt that all these guys delivered papers, that's no doubt true, and I'm also willing to believe that they worked really hard while doing so and learned valuable lessons. But the narrative that "I have worked hard from a very young age and have always striven to improve myself and that's why I'm super rich [and you're not]" can be a little bit self-serving.

But not all of them add in or accentuate the "and you're not" note. Buffett's dedication to the Giving Pledge is clear, Pickens gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Oklahoma St (overweighting athletics more than I'd like). I'm not sure about what Thorp has given money to, but he is just super cool. I just read this interview https://www.barrons.com/articles/why-edward-thorp-only-owns-berkshire-hathaway-1521547200 which makes me want to read more.