While reading some books on investing, I’ve been overwhelmed by the similarities the investment approach of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger has to the proper approach to life.

Buffett and Munger note that their investment approach eschews an obsession with macro policies. If you talk to most guys on the Street, their views change every day based on whether Bernake farted or gave a waiter a poor tip. Where are interest rates going? What about QE3? Everyone is looking for a quick trade.

In contrast, Buffett and Munger focus on investing in businesses that will be around in 20, 30, and 100 years. The market will rise and fall over the next 20 years. But people will still be drinking Coca-Cola. (“Unless you would buy the entire company, do not buy a share of stock.”)

Their approach resonates with me, as it mimics my approach to life.

I don’t worry that much about gender relations or broader socio-political trends. I’ll throw an, “American women are evil,” post out as some red meat to hungry dogs, but that’s not really my gig.

I lift weights, make money, read books, and juice. I’m going to buy my first investment property in 2013.

When I don’t know something, I immerse myself in it (warning: that’s a really boring book). I don’t get weighted down by negative people or losers.

When I get older, I’ll be juiced to the gills with testosterone and human growth hormone.

In 4 years the world will change. It won’t matter. I’ll adapt.

Eventually I’ll be really old. In 40 years the world will be completely different. I’ll be a grey-haired mean old bastard and still living the life.

Warren Buffett’s Best Investment Tip

(Dale Carnegie is dead, but his book on public speaking, The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking, is available here.)

Charlie Munger’s Secret to Getting Rich

To a point, you’re only as old as the choices you make. GladiatorGannon explains:

“Don’t be ordinary. The ordinary guy is brainwashed into thinking that he HAS to get married and have kids much younger than he needs to. This is the woman’s schedule, that is her emergency, not yours, and following her timetable throws away some of your biggest gifts and advantages. 15-25, women enjoy massive advantages dating. 25-30, it evens out, and from then on is strongly in your favor. If they conjob you into committing before you hit your peak, your best years are taken from you.

“The average 38 year old is a broken man because he was poured EVERYTHING he has into his marriage and his kids. Every time he wants to do something cool and interesting for himself, and develop himself (gym or school or whatever), he asks himself if he is going to do something for himself, or something for his kids, and chooses the kids. This is natural…the race to make it happen so early is not. He feels empty because he IS empty – he has poured EVERYTHING he has into other people.

“Let me tell you something from experience – if you start lifting hard at 18, and keep doing it till 38, you’ll be fucking huge and strong. If you keep doing martial arts, you’ll develop amazing skills, and you’ll be that cool kick ass guy at the gym that everyone looks up to. If you feel like going out, you don’t have to hang out with you married 30 something buddies, you can go out with young ass kicking MMA fighters that look up to you and talk you up everywhere you go.

“For the most part, years don’t make you old, kids and marriage make you old. And you don’t have to do that till the years are already making you old.

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Check out this post to avoid being ,”Too Soon Old, Too Young Smart.”

If you want to stay young at heart, follow me on Twitter – @playdangerously.

Whether you think of IQ as a generalized intelligence or g-factor, or just view IQ as representing a numerical measurement of smart or brilliant, we all want more IQ.

There’s two ways to increase your IQ. There’s the young man’s way and the old man’s way.

If you’re under 27, the single best way to boost your IQ is to learn until it hurts. As a young man, I would drop books out of my hands and begin shaking while struggling through material. I meditated until feeling the sensation of levitation. I exercised my brain until it hurts.

Young men should also read boring books for at least 2 hours a day. Sit still. You are not 5 years old and getting your first haircut. The Internet porn or whatever you want to look at is going to be there after you finish reading.

Once the window shuts on your youth, it is closed forever.

A young man’s brainpower is called fluid intelligence. Wiki offers a good explanation:

Fluid intelligence or fluid reasoning is the capacity to think logically and solve problems in novel situations, independent of acquired knowledge. It is the ability to analyze novel problems, identify patterns and relationships that underpin these problems and the extrapolation of these using logic. It is necessary for all logical problem solving, e.g., in scientific, mathematical and technical problem solving. Fluid reasoning includes inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning.

That’s why I keep telling young guys, “Don’t waste your twenties.” There is a very limited window of superior intellectual capacity. You need to fill every wrinkle in your brain up with as much challenging material as possible.

I’m too old for that shit now. Which brings me to old guy intelligence:

Crystallized intelligence is the ability to use skills, knowledge, and experience. It does not equate to memory or knowledge, but it does rely on accessing information from long-term memory.

Crystallized intelligence is about integrating everything you learned as a young man. It’s very easy for me to guess the age of an anonymous blog writer. Young guy’s posts lack any integration of knowledge. Everything is random.

Once you get older, you begin seeing the relationships between knowledge. You no longer think in dichotomies like, “Money or game?” You realize that money is game. Everything is connected.

The best example of old guy knowledge is Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is able to solve mysteries only because of his advanced background knowledge of the world.

For an old man to become smarter, he must increase his knowledge of the world. He must also spend more time reflecting upon his knowledge of the world.

If you wasted your youth, you’ll never be wise as an older man. You won’t have enough facts about the world to integrate and connect. If people over 40 seem so stupid, it’s because their youths were spent drinking beer, watching television, and getting. They never learned anything and have nothing to offer.

There is a way that young men and older men can increase their IQs. There’s a simple 3-to-5 minute warm-up one can perform each day.

• Countdown from 100, as quickly as you can. Don’t worry about wrong answers. Speed is what you’re going for.
• Create a list of 20 types of foods. E.g., 1-apple, 2-carrots, 3-spinach, 4-celery…
• Now do 20 verbs. 1-run, 2-skip, 3-jump, 4-fornicate …
• Attach a noun to each letter of the alphabet. E.g., a-ape, b-baboon, c-cat … z-Zionist.
• Pick a letter in the alphabet. Choose a new letter each day. Now do 10 words. f-frankly, f-fudge, f-frack, f-fuzzy …
• Then slowly countdown from ten. Take deep breaths.

That’s it. You’re done.

I’d link to the book that was taken from, but can’t remember the title. It was written by John McEnroe’s performance psychologist.

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Follow me on Twitter for more ways to increase your IQ – @playdangerously.

What would you do? Post your answer in the comments.

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After posting your answer, you should follow me on Twitter – @playdangerously.

If you saw this girl, would you find her intimidating?

If you said no, you’re lying to two people – me and yourself. There’s no need for bravado  She is as close to a 10 as it gets. Wars are fought over women who look like her.

When you start out in the game, approaching nearly any girl takes a bit of courage, which is why most men cannot do sober approaches. Approaching a chick like her, even if you’ve been at this for a while, is going to give you a bit of an adrenaline rush. How do you overcome your approach anxiety?

It is easy, and I will tell you why:

The chick you think is way too hot to approach is with some guy. If you saw that guy, you would not be all that impressed.

Seriously. Look around. Haven’t you ever seen a really hot girl with a guy and thought, “What’s she doing with him?”

You probably assumed the guy had a lot of money or something. It’s natural to have a hater’s response. “She’s a gold digger,” or to think like a loser, “If I were rich, then I’d get a girl like her!”

There are entire sites devoted to hating on guys who are with hot chicks. Just check out “The Dirty” or “Hot Chicks With Douchebags.”

The truth is that the guy isn’t nearly as special as you think he is. He doesn’t have a hidden billion dollar trust account. He just made the approach.

Here is that girl’s boyfriend:

It seems they’ve been together for a while, although even if this is a hoax, the point stands: For every chick you are too afraid to approach, there is a girl dating a guy you wouldn’t be impressed with.

So what’s stopping you from being the guy that some jealous hater scratches his head at and thinks, “What’s she doing with him?”

This will resonate (perhaps depressingly) with any Angeleno:

(Click on the image to enlarge.)

Roosh asked an interesting question:

Let’s say that I put you in a brand new city. For one year the rule is that you can only cold approach 5 girls a week. You can’t use internet. You can’t do typical club or street game where you’re doing mass approaches. But you still want to plow through a large number of women. What would you do? How would you adjust your game? What type of lifestyle would you aim for where women are coming to you?

I would get a style consult with Masculine Style. Follow these 5 fashion rules. I’d buy Starting Strength, Body of a Spartan, or Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 and follow the program to the letter.

I would juice. Your skin is your largest organ. What you eat comes out through your pores. Eat some vegetables and tell me you don’t smell better to women.

Don’t miss out on Cyber Monday deals for men.

Now you have the heavy lifting done. If you have good style and a body, women will start coming near you. In the real world, that’s enough. She comes to you, hovers around, and then you open her. In this challenge, however, you have to make her open you.

To get a woman to open you, you need to give her something to talk about. Be a douche bag and she will talk to you.

I would buy one accessory that pops. I got a white Nixon player watch on dc1000′s recommendation. The watch is gaudy as hell. That’s by design.

Women would always say something about the watch. Even a girl says, “That watch is gaudy,” she is talking to you, right? Wear some khakis and an Express men polo shirt; see how many women initiate conversation. A $125 watch will get you more sex than Rolex.

I often wear Ray-Bans at night. You know how many women have stopped to say, “What kind of douche bag wears sun glasses inside?!” As illogical as it may be, women are attracted to men that anger them.

Or maybe wear vibrant shoes. It can be anything. Just pop.

If I were only going to be in a city for a year and was putting my career on hold, I’d pick up a job working at a grocery store in a young, upscale and/or gentrifying neighborhood. (Guys always say, “I’d work as a bartender.” Good luck with that. If you’re lucky they’ll hire you as a bar back, i.e., a goon who carries up cases of beer from the basement cooler to the real bartender.)

I would get a dog. If you have a well-trained dog, women will stop you on the street to pet it and admire you.

The only thing cuter than a boy and his dog is a boy with a baby. If my friends had kids, I would babysit. Take a kid out in a stroller to the park where the au pairs work.

Find a sports bar. Wear a piece of sports apparel. Women will ask you about your favorite player or favorite team. If you’re in a major U.S. city, find out when soccer games are played. Often foreign women flock to those venues.

Follow the above advice and women will open you. There is better news.

You aren’t forced to stay silent like a coward until a woman opens you. The question is hypothetical. Indeed, waiting for a woman to give you permission to talk to her is pathetic.

Imagine how many women you will meet if you’re in shape, dress sharply, and roll out with a dog? Remember, you don’t need an invitation.

Shop Amazon – Cyber Monday Deals Week

I am no proponent of mindless consumerism. But often the best investment is saving money on something you’re already going to buy. I thus tend to do 90% of my shopping twice each year. If you planned on buying something, today is the day. Some guys already saved 30% of an Omega juicer. Nice.

Shop Amazon – Cyber Monday Deals Week

I’m going to pick up a video camera to start producing ebooks and other informative videos. Which one of these cameras should I pick up? I snagged some headphones for the gym, a heart rate monitor, and crown Condoms (the best) – a 100 pack for $13.23. I am also in the market for a new piece of carry on luggage to accommodate my 2013 travel schedule.

After you’ve finished shopping, come back. This week’s posts will include:

• How to Make Her Come to You
• Value Investing (in Yourself), including Warren Buffett’s Single Best Investing Tip
• How to Increase Your IQ by 5-10 Points
• What’s Getting Old Like for a Man?

Shop Amazon – Cyber Monday Deals Week

He was a mid-level manager who paid his dues working at various blue-chip companies. Because his reputation was sterling, my friend called him in for an interview at his company – a young start-up with a potentially huge upside.

Everyone liked the manager. He was given the standard offer: A significant pay cut with a nice slice of equity. He would earn less but be a part owner in the company.

“I talked it over with my wife. We can’t afford to take a 20% pay cut. It’s too risky.”

My friend begged him to reconsider. “You will fit in well at the company. The stock offer is generous. It’s a chance for you to potentially get rich.”

“My wife said we can’t swing it.”

Everyone was sorry to hear the manager’s answer.

Three months later, the stock split. This wasn’t a total surprise, as the stock had split twice before. The company brutalized its employees. But employees were true owners. To get paid as an owner you had better be prepared to work like one.

The manager’s shares had quadrupled in value. At last check, his shares would have been worth $1,044,450.

After taxes.

Thirty-five years old. One-million dollars. Cash.  Money in the bank.

The manger could blame his wife, the wind, or his God. He could tell himself that the grapes on the highest branches are the least sweet.

While he sings himself childish lullabies to help him sleep at night, others are deciding where to take their next vacation. Many are taking permanent vacations, retiring from work or taking on easier jobs with lower salaries and collecting yield.

In this lifetime, a man gets one or two chances to make a big move.

You’ll know it’s time to make your move when the decision hurts.

If the manager had left his stable job, he’d have taken a pay cut. He’d have to had cut costs substantially. His wife would have nagged him. Whenever they couldn’t pay a bill or eat out or pay for a babysitter, she’d have reminded him how much more money he’d have made at his old job.

If he had been willing to endure the pain of yesterday, today he’d be rich.

When it’s time, make your move.

(If the video doesn’t load at the right time, fast forward to 31:05.)

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Follow me on Twitter for fun and excitement – @playdangerously.