When it comes to investing like Buffett, remember less is more.

Ego and misleading emotions can do more harm than good.

Focus more on a company than on its stock.

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It’s been nearly three decades since I started seriously saving for retirement outside of a workplace retirement account, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I had saved up a couple of thousand bucks – a fair amount of money for me at the time – and opened an online brokerage account when the internet itself was still fairly new. Armed with a degree in finance and a book containing much of the Oracle of Omaha’s collective investing wisdom (The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, by Lawrence Cunningham), I was on my way to making a fortune in the stock market.

And I did ... all right. As I look back now, I know I could have done better. But I have no complaints.

What I do have is a much better developed appreciation for Warren Buffett’s brilliance – something that’s been on my mind quite a bit now that he’s only a few weeks away from stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway’s (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) CEO and resident stock-picking guru.

If I could do it all over again, here’s how and why I’d be a better student of Buffett’s ways.

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It’s curious. A price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio may be the only meaningful fundamental-based way of comparing one stock to another. Yet of all the investing advice Buffett’s doled out over the course of his life, I don’t recall him ever explicitly saying anything about using a P/E multiple when evaluating particular tickers – something I’ve at times been obsessed with doing.

That’s not to say he’ll pay any price for a compelling company. As he’s famously said, “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price,” indirectly acknowledging that they’re not all the same in terms of valuation. I’ll simply say that my picky P/E standards have probably hurt my performance more than they’ve helped. Good stocks tend to consistently command strong valuations; cheap stocks are cheap for a reason.

Here’s another idea that Warren Buffett has never directly voiced, but certainly touched on: He said, “When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients.” The simpler version of this warning was worded as “Those who cannot fill your pocket will confidently fill your ear.”