Stock Picking - A Waste of Time for the Average Investor?

I just read an article about Charlie Munger and his beginnings in the Investment Industry. Apparently, he had been working as a lawyer when someone arranged a meeting with Warren Buffet and convinced him to switch to Investing as well. From there onwards he hit the ground running and immediately managed to beat the market by a significant margin. I mean who joins the Investment Industry with no finance background and immediately beats the market (aside from the dude on YouTube who sells his Investing Masterclass)?

I am sure these people are very smart, but I really wonder what it is that constitutes their competitive advantage. So far, I've always thought that successful investors might just be able to look at a 10-k and make connections between these numbers that the average person doesn't detect. And that they probably have the better and more sophisticated financial models along with it. However, when you listen to e. g. Buffet and Munger, it seems that their message is always that the quantitative part of their business is just easy math. Sort of common sense.

Even though that's probably a humble understatement, I wonder if their advantage is maybe more innate and that it is something that you just don't learn in Business School or by watching Damodaran. E. g. that they can look at a business, the market, or the economy in general and cancel out all the noise and see things clearer as others do.

With that said, do you think it's just a waste of time to try to pick individual winners based on your own research and models? Meaning you should rather make sure to understand markets and finance on an abstract level and then put consistently money in an index fund and use your precious time for better things?