Staring at a blank canvas is hard.
We suffer from the burden of choice. Do we paint, or draw, print, or splatter?
But constraints lead to creativity. We forced to see more opportunities when we create artificial limitations.
So try it. Set a word limit for that presentation, sign up for that half marathon, or only move on to the next hobby until you’ve given the current one a good shot.
Create constraints and see what doors they open.
I recently posted about the non-linearity of returns when looking at the success of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
I’ve since come across another example and I couldn’t resist sharing.
A couple of days ago, Seth Godin posted about how Netflix released their first-ever in-depth analysis on the hours watched for the top 18,000 shows on their network. Data file here.
I took the data and plotted it on a chart. Immediately, we can see non-linear results.
The top show, the Night Agent: Season 1, had over 800 million hours streamed. This was 3x the title in 10th place, FUBAR: Season 1, with 266 million hours watched. And 8x the title in 100th place, That 90s Show – Part 1, with 95 million hours streamed. Once you get down to the 1,000th title, the top title had 37x the watch time.
The spoils are always non-linearly distributed.
At previous points in my career I’ve allowed myself to think thoughts like, “I’m doing well,” “I’m crushing this,” and “I’m finding this easy”.
Over time I’ve spotted a pattern: whenever I allow myself to think these thoughts, something unexpected happens to humble me.
I doubt that’s coincidence.
I’m not advocating for a constant state of fear or paranoia. But I do think there is something about keeping close tabs on our confidence.
A quiet confidence coupled with an awareness that things could go wrong any moment—that’s healthy.
Excessive confidence to the point where we have blind spots to issues and errors—that’s a recipe for pain.
Long time readers of this blog know that I read Steven Pressfield’s War of Art on an annual basis—primarily to re-inject the important lessons about fighting Resistance into my soul.
Despite reading Pressfield’s non-fiction books annually, I have yet to read one of his works of fiction. So I decided to pick up ‘The Legend of Bagger Vance’.
Apparently he spent 30 years toiling before finally having a hit with this book.
As I turn each page, it’s proof that Pressfield turned up each day and fought resistance. It’s adding a little extra kick to what’s an enthralling story.
Most of the time, I find writing isn’t useful because I have something to say, it’s useful because I have something I need to figure out.
The drafts, the re-writes, the disagreements with myself; all of it serves to build conviction and clarity on a topic. That’s the real value.
Charles Darwin was known for hunting out any information or data that would disprove his hypotheses—especially the ones he held dearly.
Darwin had an antidote to confirmation bias before it was discovered almost 100 years later.
He knew that it’s easy to find the data to fit a given narrative. However, it’s actively seeking the information that will break our cherished beliefs that’s the hard, and worthwhile, work.
The Pareto Principle—also known as the 80/20 rule—is the gateway concept to understanding how results and success are non-linearly distributed.
In short, most of the spoils go to a few winners.
There’s no better recent example of this than what Taylor Swift has accomplished this year with gross tour sales. She grossed $1 billion in ticket sales in 60 shows.
To put this in perspective, the previous record holder for highest gross sales for a tour was Elton John, with $939 million in ticket sales across 328 shows.
Swift’s success isn’t a surprise, but the sheer scale of it in staggering.
We can spend all our time in a spreadsheet or the data to do the last calculation, perform the final sense check, and review the numbers one more time. But we should beware of false precision.
Do we really need exact coordinates for where we’re going? Or is a direction of travel more than enough for now?
Naval Ravikant has a great quote: play long terms games with long term people.
It fits well with Warren Buffett’s idea that it takes decades to achieve success, and less than 5 minutes to lose it.
Long term people self select into long term games, where staying alive and compounding matter more than flash-in-the-pan brilliance.
“Because I said so” was my least favourite sentence to hear from grown ups when I was a kid. I just didn’t get it. I always thought: but what’s the reason?
I chuckle now because I realise that little me wasn’t wrong.
In the book ‘Same as Ever’, Morgan House talks about how some of the biggest and most consequential things in our lives and in history happen by chance. He uses the analogy that the world often seems to be ‘hanging by a thread’.
When I think about my own life, I remember a moment when I was 17 years old and driving a few hours south to a music festival. I was driving alone but had 8 hours sleep the night before and was well caffeinated. I thought I was good for the drive. However, I fell asleep at the wheel on a busy, open, country road.
I woke up whilst still travelling at speed. My car was sliding on the gravel shoulder of the road, I slammed my foot on the break and sailed down into a wide, flat, grassy verge. Had I veered to the opposite side, I would’ve had an head on collision with another car (it was a very busy holiday weekend!). Or had I fell asleep at a different point along the road, I would’ve likely hit a fence or power pole.
It took me ten minutes for my hands to stop shaking, and 2 days before I had the courage to call my parents and tell them what had happened. Ever since then, the moment I feel even remotely tired on the road, I pull over and take a nap.
My life and future hung by a thread that day, and I’ve never forgotten how one tiny change in the whole equation could’ve ended in a different result.
Moments like these put a lot of things in perspective.
Maintenance costs are well understood.
But maintenance closures can cause an even greater number of headaches.
There’s a North London tube station, Kentish Town, that is currently closed for at least a year for maintenance and upgrade work.
There are tens of thousands of people in that suburb that have had to alter the way they commute for what will amount to more than 300 days.
Yet on Transport for London’s budget, I’m sure the inconvenience isn’t listed as a cost. Just because the cost is hidden, it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
I’m enjoying reading Morgan Housel’s book ‘Same as Ever’. It’s a short set of lessons about the things that do not change.
When the future is uncertain, rather than focusing on what changes may or may not be on the horizon, we stand to gain more by identify the things that will be ever consistent, and investing in those.
Jeff Bezos once used the example that in ten years time, people are still going to care about fast shipping and free delivery, so he’s willing to invest a lot in getting those things right.
Warren Buffett was asked at the height of the 2008 global financial crisis about the prospects for the global economy. He replied with a series of back and forth questions about the country’s favourite chocolate bar in 1962 and in 2008; in both cases, the answer was Snickers.
Human needs, wants, and behaviours haven’t changed, and won’t change much in the years ahead—at least in our lifetimes. It pays to focus on the things that are the Same as Ever.
Justin Welsh on X wrote about how “curiosity seems to always be the beginning of competence”.
His point was that if someone is curious, they’ll usually figure out the problem, and ultimately find success.
It raises a good question: what’s better to hire for first, curiosity or competence? And does the answer change if you’re optimising for the long term?
I was recently speaking with a reader and good friend, Barry.
In our conversation he said something that stood out to me, “Just put one foot in front of the other, and if you find you’re dancing on jello, that’s fine. You’ll figure it out.”
Dancing is better than walking.
Jello is better than mud.
Barry brought a bit of joy, whimsy, and levity to the metaphor that helped me see the journey with greater positivity. Thanks, Barry!
Note: Barry has been a long time reader, but and even longer term writer. He recently reached 3,000 posts on his blog, The Quotable Coach. It’s an extraordinary feat of consistency over the past 12 years.