It is better to be approximately right, than precisely wrong. — Warren Buffett

It is better to be approximately right, than precisely wrong.

Author: Warren Buffett

Insight: We live in an age that rewards precision. Your GPS knows exactly where you are. Your bank account down to the cent. Your productivity app measures work in minutes. So there's something almost radical about Buffett's suggestion that getting the direction roughly correct matters more than nailing the details of the wrong path. This shows up constantly in decisions that actually matter. A person might spend weeks perfecting a five-year plan, only to miss the obvious truth that their career is heading somewhere they don't want to go. Someone obsesses over the exact calories in their diet while missing the broader pattern that they're eating foods that make them feel terrible. We get so caught up in having a precise answer that we forget to ask if we're answering the right question in the first place. The counterintuitive part? Being approximately right usually means you're willing to move, adjust, and learn as you go. Being precisely wrong often means you're locked into a false confidence—you sound certain, you feel certain, but you're just certain about the wrong thing. Buffett made billions by being roughly right about what makes a good business, then leaving room to be proven wrong. It's a lot harder than it sounds, because our brains crave the comfort of certainty, even a false kind.