It doesn't come as a complete surprise to learn that investor Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Buffett's longtime business partner, are avid readers, but nevertheless is Farnam Street's article "The Buffett Formula — How To Get Smarter" an inspiring read.

Warren Buffett says, "I just sit in my office and read all day."

What does that mean? He estimates that he spends 80% of his working day reading and thinking.

"You could hardly find a partnership in which two people settle on reading more hours of the day than in ours," Charlie Munger commented.

When asked how to get smarter, Buffett once held up stacks of paper and said "read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge builds up, like compound interest."

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"Neither Warren nor I is smart enough to make the decisions with no time to think," Munger once told a reporter. "We make actual decisions very rapidly, but that's because we've spent so much time preparing ourselves by quietly sitting and reading and thinking."