I see scrubs and "playing to win" as just different levels of a metagame. The losers are those who are really playing for fun but think they're playing to win. Knowing what level you actually want to be on is key.
Here's a great essay on this. He posits that when you're at the right level, you're in flow.
> He posits that when you're at the right level, you're in flow.
Subjective measures such as flow can be useful. Yes, I use that as gut check.
Being my own devil's advocate, I also try to double check my "gut check"
Usually, my algo goes something like this
if getting it wrong going forward can inflict great damage than waiting too long despite obviously good choice,
1. if gut check says it's bad choice, despite no obvious objective evidence, hold back
2. if gut check says it's good choice, despite no obvious objective evidence, find supporting obvious objective evidence
Classic Example: hiring
1. gut check says candidate is bad, but no obvious red flag shows up, hold back from hiring said candidate or outright reject and look for another
2. gut check says candidate is good, but no obvious tell tale sign that they are really good. If the gut check is correct, then sooner or later the objective reality will produce the evidence so just look harder. If look super hard, still cannot find, then something is obviously wrong.
By the way, in case it wasn't clear, I think i have been too much of a "scrub" in the past. Getting into flow isn't typically a problem. In fact, it can be a problem as it's misleading.
I have a bad habit of digressing too far, so apologies as I try to get back to the topic of stop-loss (or check-in?).
If flow is important as part of your criteria, then a check-in to make sure you're still enjoying flow is important. Sometimes, we think we're not enjoying something because we were overly influenced by recent incidents. Or the inverse can be true.
So a 6 month check in can be useful and doesn't contradict using flow as the criteria.
"I thought this is the same as "scrubs" as per the David Sirlin quote.
Perhaps you have a distinction between the two I have not thought of."
It is the same, but I think there's more distinctions that "playing to win" and scrubs. There's also "playing a game that no one else is playing"
example: three people trying to get the same promotion. One guy is grinding, one guy is kissing up to his boss, the other is kissing up to the CEO.
You could say the first guy is a scrub, the second one is playing to win, and the third one is playing a game no one else is playing. Or you could say the first two are both scrubs. My point is that there are infinite levels of metagame. And people are playing different levels and want to be playing at different levels. So the second guy could think the first guy is a scrub, but if the first guy's just wants to the best X and doesn't care about getting promoted, maybe he's playing to win.
People's win criteria are all different. I would say a scrub is someone who has the win criteria of one metalevel while playing another. They are essentially playing a video game while looking at another screen. Mimetic desire makes it easy to be a scrub because you're using someone else's win criteria constantly while not understanding the game you're playing.
For Chao, I think being in flow is his win criteria, and he trusts that good things will happen if he is in flow. You could call it wu-wei or karma or faith.
All 3 have happened to me. Of course, I only realized after many years post-fact.
Sadly, there's no obvious way to prevent it other than to deny subjective measures like flow. Which is too restrictive.
I have come to accept this trade-off. Ha!
Whether other people are in actual flow or self-sabotage, that's less concern to me. I care more about whether I am fooling myself first.
Also, i cannot prove to my own self whether I am or not fooling myself.
Which ironically leaves me with one choice which is to actually trust in myself.
Not the kind of blind trust without specifics from woo-woo meisters.
I mean specifically, I have to trust that if and when I do make a mistake in me accidentally becoming a scrub, I have to trust that I will figure out actual, corrective efforts. And then add on preventive guard rails to prevent a relapse.
If and when the guard rails are not needed, I trust myself to ditch them.
If and when they get less effective, I trust myself to reinforce them.
And that when people tell me counterpoints, I am willing to change if they are right. (This is super duper hard cause I'm stubborn like hell! Haha)
In a 10-50-90 forecast for the range of outcomes from a probe, activity, or investment, if you were to cross the 10th percentile ("at least this much 90% of the time"), you would execute a graceful exit from the project. I think there are three parameters:
"10" is a lower limit, nominally 10th percentile, that, if crossed, means that you need to exit / withdraw immediately and go through a re-plan
"90" is an upper limit, nominally 90th percentile; if crossed means that you should consider increasing your investment - or at least go through a re-plan
"time horizon" is a schedule re-evaluation point ("a leash or an exploration budget to trigger an analysis of what you have learned") to see where you are relative to the 50% percentile (midpoint of the expected range of outcomes). If you want, you can also pick three limits: the soonest or earliest you can expect to see an impact, the average time you would expect an effect or response, and the "it's not happening" date where if you have not seen an impact by then it's probably (90% of the time) not going to happen.
---
I found the Cedric Chin essay profoundly disappointing. He celebrates John Malone as someone who made a lot of money but did as little as possible to improve his customers' lives. I think if I were watching "It's a Wonderful Life" with Cedric, he would get jazzed during the "Pottersville" sequence when George gets his wish and is never born, and you realize what Potters' selfish unbridled greed can do to a community. In Clayton Christensen's "How Will You Measure Your Life," he is clear on the risks of focusing on easily quantifiable and fast-changing metrics (like how much money you made last week or last month) and not paying attention to meaningful relationships that are resilient but will degrade if not adequately nurtured over time. (See https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2020/02/16/clayton-christensen-on-how-will-you-measure-your-life/ for my summary and analysis). I had dinner with some older men I had worked with in semiconductors. I was surprised at how bitter they were; they were estranged from their wives and children and were surprised that focusing solely on making money for 20 years had destroyed vital relationships in their lives.
I'm glad you sharing this here as well. I think more people should hear what you have told me over email about this. It's not as catchy as other stuff out there in the internet around the same topic, but i think what we have discussed in our past two 1-on-1 zoom calls may be more valuable.
Hopefully, we get to a point where we can bring out an even more polished version to share with the world.
I'm so looking forward to our next 1-on-1
> He celebrates John Malone as someone who made a lot of money but did as little as possible to improve his customers' lives.
I'll cite Cedric own words from the essay
> As I was reading Malone’s story, I remember thinking to myself: if I were in his shoes, would I be willing to play the game the way he played it? Or would I have spent some of that cash flow to upgrade systems, at the expense of expansion, market share, and better unit economics?
>
> **I’d like to think that I would’ve upgraded, that I would have had more empathy for my customers — but then does that make me a scrub?** (emphasis added)
And also,
> In other words, if I’d played the ‘customer-service’ game, it is likely that I would’ve failed, and sold to someone like Malone. But perhaps there was a way around it? The difficulty of business — and the difficulty of thinking about scrub behaviour in business — is that the rules are often only what you can discover to be true. (And even those rules may change, depending on the behaviours of competition). There is no explicit game designer to balance play in the markets; you are truly on your own.
Not defending Cedric per se. but I am not sure I would agree with the characterization of the verb "celebrates". Admire the ruthlessness of John Malone's achievement in a (very) narrowly defined game. Maybe yes. If that's the case, so am I.
I have only met him over a meal once, and is a fan of (most of) his essays. There's another essay (can't find it) of him recounting his experiences working in Vietnam for a startup where he was being more nurturing towards his subordinates and his boss telling him to not spend as much time with such subordinates and just focus on energy with the better subordinates to get stuff done.
In that piece, he wondered on hindsight whether he was too idealistic.
So as a person, we often expressed admiration for another person's achievement not because we want to be like that, but precisely because we can never be like that person. Due to some difference in personality bias.
Of course, I'm armchair psycho analyzing, i may be entirely wrong. Maybe I should ask Ced himself. Ha!
Or maybe I'm projecting. I don't think i can do what Malone did though i understand the rationale. And that's partly why I admire the clarity of Malone's strategy myself.
This leads me to a more general point.
If you care about externalities, at least to the point of non negative externalities, or even more idealistically, positive externalities, then you need to pick a game where the optimal strategy involves caring about those.
Game selection matters. We've heard of Product-Market-Founder fit from the startup world. Maybe Game-Player fit is the more generalized form of that.
For the stop-loss concept, I see a connection with your "course correction" idea. How do you know when to calibrate your course correction. Also similar to Observe and Orient in OODA
I see scrubs and "playing to win" as just different levels of a metagame. The losers are those who are really playing for fun but think they're playing to win. Knowing what level you actually want to be on is key.
Here's a great essay on this. He posits that when you're at the right level, you're in flow.
https://www.nextsmallthings.com/p/if-stuck-then-zoom-in-or-out
as for a new term, "Gut check time"?
> The losers are those who are really playing for fun but think they're playing to win
Interesting. I thought this is the same as "scrubs" as per the David Sirlin quote.
Perhaps you have a distinction between the two I have not thought of.
> Here's a great essay on this.
Yeah, I saw that one and I typically use google map zoom as my preferred metaphor. see my comment at https://www.nextsmallthings.com/p/if-stuck-then-zoom-in-or-out/comment/15285406
> He posits that when you're at the right level, you're in flow.
Subjective measures such as flow can be useful. Yes, I use that as gut check.
Being my own devil's advocate, I also try to double check my "gut check"
Usually, my algo goes something like this
if getting it wrong going forward can inflict great damage than waiting too long despite obviously good choice,
1. if gut check says it's bad choice, despite no obvious objective evidence, hold back
2. if gut check says it's good choice, despite no obvious objective evidence, find supporting obvious objective evidence
Classic Example: hiring
1. gut check says candidate is bad, but no obvious red flag shows up, hold back from hiring said candidate or outright reject and look for another
2. gut check says candidate is good, but no obvious tell tale sign that they are really good. If the gut check is correct, then sooner or later the objective reality will produce the evidence so just look harder. If look super hard, still cannot find, then something is obviously wrong.
By the way, in case it wasn't clear, I think i have been too much of a "scrub" in the past. Getting into flow isn't typically a problem. In fact, it can be a problem as it's misleading.
I have a bad habit of digressing too far, so apologies as I try to get back to the topic of stop-loss (or check-in?).
If flow is important as part of your criteria, then a check-in to make sure you're still enjoying flow is important. Sometimes, we think we're not enjoying something because we were overly influenced by recent incidents. Or the inverse can be true.
So a 6 month check in can be useful and doesn't contradict using flow as the criteria.
Recency bias is a real thing.
"I thought this is the same as "scrubs" as per the David Sirlin quote.
Perhaps you have a distinction between the two I have not thought of."
It is the same, but I think there's more distinctions that "playing to win" and scrubs. There's also "playing a game that no one else is playing"
example: three people trying to get the same promotion. One guy is grinding, one guy is kissing up to his boss, the other is kissing up to the CEO.
You could say the first guy is a scrub, the second one is playing to win, and the third one is playing a game no one else is playing. Or you could say the first two are both scrubs. My point is that there are infinite levels of metagame. And people are playing different levels and want to be playing at different levels. So the second guy could think the first guy is a scrub, but if the first guy's just wants to the best X and doesn't care about getting promoted, maybe he's playing to win.
People's win criteria are all different. I would say a scrub is someone who has the win criteria of one metalevel while playing another. They are essentially playing a video game while looking at another screen. Mimetic desire makes it easy to be a scrub because you're using someone else's win criteria constantly while not understanding the game you're playing.
For Chao, I think being in flow is his win criteria, and he trusts that good things will happen if he is in flow. You could call it wu-wei or karma or faith.
Oh I get it now. Thanks for the clarification, Chris!
The following response says more about me than it says about the topic.
> People's win criteria are all different
I get this and I fully agree.
I'm also concerned about self sabotage. I'm referring myself primarily.
Self sabotage can take place, in no particular order, as the following:
1. self-deception
2. rationalization as defined in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology)
3. muddled thinking
All 3 have happened to me. Of course, I only realized after many years post-fact.
Sadly, there's no obvious way to prevent it other than to deny subjective measures like flow. Which is too restrictive.
I have come to accept this trade-off. Ha!
Whether other people are in actual flow or self-sabotage, that's less concern to me. I care more about whether I am fooling myself first.
Also, i cannot prove to my own self whether I am or not fooling myself.
Which ironically leaves me with one choice which is to actually trust in myself.
Not the kind of blind trust without specifics from woo-woo meisters.
I mean specifically, I have to trust that if and when I do make a mistake in me accidentally becoming a scrub, I have to trust that I will figure out actual, corrective efforts. And then add on preventive guard rails to prevent a relapse.
If and when the guard rails are not needed, I trust myself to ditch them.
If and when they get less effective, I trust myself to reinforce them.
And that when people tell me counterpoints, I am willing to change if they are right. (This is super duper hard cause I'm stubborn like hell! Haha)
And so on.
Gosh, have I gone awfully off tangent? 😅
In a 10-50-90 forecast for the range of outcomes from a probe, activity, or investment, if you were to cross the 10th percentile ("at least this much 90% of the time"), you would execute a graceful exit from the project. I think there are three parameters:
"10" is a lower limit, nominally 10th percentile, that, if crossed, means that you need to exit / withdraw immediately and go through a re-plan
"90" is an upper limit, nominally 90th percentile; if crossed means that you should consider increasing your investment - or at least go through a re-plan
"time horizon" is a schedule re-evaluation point ("a leash or an exploration budget to trigger an analysis of what you have learned") to see where you are relative to the 50% percentile (midpoint of the expected range of outcomes). If you want, you can also pick three limits: the soonest or earliest you can expect to see an impact, the average time you would expect an effect or response, and the "it's not happening" date where if you have not seen an impact by then it's probably (90% of the time) not going to happen.
---
I found the Cedric Chin essay profoundly disappointing. He celebrates John Malone as someone who made a lot of money but did as little as possible to improve his customers' lives. I think if I were watching "It's a Wonderful Life" with Cedric, he would get jazzed during the "Pottersville" sequence when George gets his wish and is never born, and you realize what Potters' selfish unbridled greed can do to a community. In Clayton Christensen's "How Will You Measure Your Life," he is clear on the risks of focusing on easily quantifiable and fast-changing metrics (like how much money you made last week or last month) and not paying attention to meaningful relationships that are resilient but will degrade if not adequately nurtured over time. (See https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2020/02/16/clayton-christensen-on-how-will-you-measure-your-life/ for my summary and analysis). I had dinner with some older men I had worked with in semiconductors. I was surprised at how bitter they were; they were estranged from their wives and children and were surprised that focusing solely on making money for 20 years had destroyed vital relationships in their lives.
Thank you for commenting, @Sean!
> 10-50-90
I'm glad you sharing this here as well. I think more people should hear what you have told me over email about this. It's not as catchy as other stuff out there in the internet around the same topic, but i think what we have discussed in our past two 1-on-1 zoom calls may be more valuable.
Hopefully, we get to a point where we can bring out an even more polished version to share with the world.
I'm so looking forward to our next 1-on-1
> He celebrates John Malone as someone who made a lot of money but did as little as possible to improve his customers' lives.
I'll cite Cedric own words from the essay
> As I was reading Malone’s story, I remember thinking to myself: if I were in his shoes, would I be willing to play the game the way he played it? Or would I have spent some of that cash flow to upgrade systems, at the expense of expansion, market share, and better unit economics?
>
> **I’d like to think that I would’ve upgraded, that I would have had more empathy for my customers — but then does that make me a scrub?** (emphasis added)
And also,
> In other words, if I’d played the ‘customer-service’ game, it is likely that I would’ve failed, and sold to someone like Malone. But perhaps there was a way around it? The difficulty of business — and the difficulty of thinking about scrub behaviour in business — is that the rules are often only what you can discover to be true. (And even those rules may change, depending on the behaviours of competition). There is no explicit game designer to balance play in the markets; you are truly on your own.
Not defending Cedric per se. but I am not sure I would agree with the characterization of the verb "celebrates". Admire the ruthlessness of John Malone's achievement in a (very) narrowly defined game. Maybe yes. If that's the case, so am I.
I have only met him over a meal once, and is a fan of (most of) his essays. There's another essay (can't find it) of him recounting his experiences working in Vietnam for a startup where he was being more nurturing towards his subordinates and his boss telling him to not spend as much time with such subordinates and just focus on energy with the better subordinates to get stuff done.
In that piece, he wondered on hindsight whether he was too idealistic.
So as a person, we often expressed admiration for another person's achievement not because we want to be like that, but precisely because we can never be like that person. Due to some difference in personality bias.
Of course, I'm armchair psycho analyzing, i may be entirely wrong. Maybe I should ask Ced himself. Ha!
Or maybe I'm projecting. I don't think i can do what Malone did though i understand the rationale. And that's partly why I admire the clarity of Malone's strategy myself.
This leads me to a more general point.
If you care about externalities, at least to the point of non negative externalities, or even more idealistically, positive externalities, then you need to pick a game where the optimal strategy involves caring about those.
Game selection matters. We've heard of Product-Market-Founder fit from the startup world. Maybe Game-Player fit is the more generalized form of that.
For the stop-loss concept, I see a connection with your "course correction" idea. How do you know when to calibrate your course correction. Also similar to Observe and Orient in OODA
Yes, I hope to continue exploring this idea directionally. Unsure if it's possible to say something more precise than what's already been said.
Perhaps it's purely quixotic. But I'm in no hurry. :)