Finding Purpose: Lessons from a Murmuration

Game of Thrones, and its Song of Ice and Fire source material before it, connected with viewers around the globe for a variety of reasons. Arguably first among them was escapism. For an hour each week, viewers would disconnect from their lives and focus instead on this intoxicating fantasy realm, replete with magic, medieval brutality, and dragons. But even the most seemingly imaginative of otherworldly distractions requires some ties to everyday reality to land with an audience. For Games of Thrones, one such stark (and Stark) pronouncement that permeated the zeitgeist and became an everyday part of the cultural lexicon was the oft-repeated, ever-ominous assertion: Winter is coming. As clocks turn back in most of the western world, we must contend with the fact that, though we are still in the throes of autumn, winter has come, or at the very least is coming, bringing with it the annual productivity malaise that accompanies the season of darkness. Winter is the least productive season for businesses. That’s according to research from project management software company Redbooth, published in Forbes magazine1. The company analysed their data over a four-year period and found that in winter users completed 22.8% of their tasks on average, compared with 27.3% in the autumn, 25.4% in the summer and 24.5% in the spring. A report by British Summer Fruits2 found that during the colder months, 74% of people find it harder to get out of bed for work, while 37% are far more likely to call in sick. In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens proclaimed that, “Darkness is cheap.” Not, it seems, if you’re running a business contending with a seasonal productivity slump.

What milk do you want with your coffee? Which song of the millions at your fingertips do you want to start your day? Which of that growing stack of emails are you going to answer first? Choose this. Now that. Are you sure? And again. Choices, choices, decisions, decisions, all day, every day – and aren’t you feeling tired? By some estimates, adults today make 2,000 decisions an hour [1]. By others, 35,000 decisions a day [2]. Either way, it’s an overload. And it’s causing decision fatigue.

In the world of investing, Charlie Munger is a legendary figure, celebrated for his sage-like wisdom and insightful aphorisms. As Warren Buffet’s right-hand man, his approach is a testament to the power of effective decision-making and wisdom, which he famously accredits to his ‘multi-disciplinary’ approach—a rich mosaic of insights from various academic disciplines, including applied, organisational, and social psychology. Munger’s perspective is unique and practical because he harnesses these theories and translates them into real-world applications. His approach forms an interesting amalgamation, merging business acumen with psychological theories—a powerful combination that leads to meaningful, insightful, and profitable decisions.