Tag: Frameworks

Content is what you know. Method is how you think. 

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To play well, you must find the method. To find the method… well, that’s part of the method. 

Today I met a cabinet rep who knew, off the top of his head, that the tambour door came in 24, 28, 32, and 36 inches. That’s the content, and, as one data point, it’s not yet impressive. But the fact he can rattle off seemingly every dimensional trait for multiple different cabinet styles and product lines across multiple brands? That’s beautiful. It’s like showing a chess master the opening few moves of a historical game and seeing him place it precisely. 

But content you can find in a book. Trivia is by its nature trivial. What you can’t find in a book: method. 

Repeatedly, he heard our proposals and improved them. He looked at a 79-inch space, listened to what I’d planned (two 36-inch cabinets, side by side), and proposed: a 30 and two 24s. Total: 78 inches. Gives you 6 more inches of cabinets. 

After he did this a few times, I isolated his method: 1) Map the dimensions of the space. 2) Subtract standard sizes from total length. 3) Find the combination that leaves the minimum remainder.

The content — knowing the sizes — is the raw material. The methods — including “subtract to find the minimum remainder” — is what makes him good at it.

A chess-master friend of mine thrives in certainty but buckles when he arrives at probabilities. Since I grew up playing poker, I rarely see certainty but am comfortable making positive-expected value bets. These games teach different skills. For him, it’s the detailed, factual, calculation-heavy process of walking a specific position to its end. (It’s no coincidence he’s now in law). For me, it’s staying afloat until I see a spot with an edge; then pouncing on it. 

Having spent many years ghostwriting for top Silicon Valley founders, executives, and investors. I’ve enjoyed living in brilliant minds. One thing I’ve noticed: 

Experts can usually describe their content in detail, but most can’t articulate their method. A surgeon could tell you every action in her procedure. But she might not know that she’s left-handed and therefore angles every screw slightly off from where a right-handed surgeon would. That left-leaning screw is just something she does, and she might even recognize it as hers. But ultimately she knows more than she can say. 

Most people hire for content. What do you know? What’s on your resume?
Some hire for good method, assuming you’ll acquire content fast.

The worst are the ones who confuse content for method. They’ve memorized the right answers for the common cases. But they can’t handle a new scenario. 

Yesterday’s post in fewer words: 

  • Pattern-matchers have content without method.
  • Scientists have method that generates content. 
  • When I’m hiring a doctor, I want a scientist. 

The cabinet rep impressed me with his content. But we also shouldn’t ignore some of the other points of his method. “You sure you don’t want a panel on the side of the fridge? You’re gonna want to look at the wires and the side of fridge every time you enter your kitchen for the rest of your life?” 

The honest answer? Yeah, I’m game.

The Surgeon Who Quoted Standard Practice

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You win the game by assembling the right team. In medicine, the right team thinks. 

Before my sleep apnea surgery, I interviewed surgeons the way you interview contractors. Notebook in my pocket, questions prepared, specific concerns about specific structures, specific tradeoffs, and speculation about areas outside of the medical literature. 

After ten years of complaining about sleep to at least a half-dozen doctors, I finally met a surgeon who lit up when I pulled out the notebook. We were in a teaching hospital; his students were in the room. He went question-by-question with me. He enjoyed the questions the way an expert juggler enjoys a bowling ball being thrown at his head. I pushed him hard. He juggled the chainsaws. We became friends.

The second surgeon, at a different and widely respected teaching hospital, wore a very nice lab coat and said things like “the standard practice in this scenario is…” She said it several times. When I pressed on specifics, she returned to standard practice. She was pleasant. She was credentialed. She was a pattern-matcher. She wanted me to use a CPAP for the rest of my life. 

Doctors are often pattern-matchers. You go in with symptoms, they recognize the pattern, they prescribe the standard response. Most of the time this works, because most symptoms are common. The pattern holds.

The problem is that pattern-matching is indistinguishable from competence until you’re the edge case. And then it’s catastrophically different.

A real scientist notices when the pattern doesn’t fit. A pattern-matcher doesn’t notice, because noticing would require understanding the mechanics rather than seeing the pattern. The failure is perceptual, not moral. The pattern-matcher isn’t lying and usually isn’t careless — they don’t understand the mechanics of the machine, so they follow the owner’s manual. 

This is why “they didn’t intend to be malicious” is such a weak defense of anyone in a professional role. Nobody intends malice. Bullies don’t intend malice — they perceive attacks where there aren’t any. Cruel people don’t intend cruelty — they mis-observe what cruelty is (often by thinking they’re acting righteously). The failure of perception is the failure. 

Optimism is a specific, dangerous version of this. The optimist sees only what’s going right. If their own work is the problem, they can’t see it — and they can’t hear it when other people raise it, because the pattern in their head is: my work is fine. 

I don’t want a doctor. I want a scientist who practices medicine. Even better: a philosopher who uses science to practice medicine.

A test: can you break your surgeon in conversation? If they can be broken – if your uneducated mind can throw questions that cause them to buckle – are you really going to trust them cutting into your unconscious body? If a surgeon can’t handle intensity well, do you really trust them with your surgery? 

After my first six doctors mis-diagnosed or mis-treated my sleep issue, I now attack the ideas of every doctor who consults on my case. If they can’t hack it, I want a different doctor. I didn’t even go to medical school, and you can’t handle me? 

I may irk some competent doctors who are unwilling to tolerate my approach. I accept this rate of false negatives, since I am happy to travel the country to find a doctor. If I had limited options, I would behave differently. 

It’s lonely to keep searching for a new doctor over and over again. For one recent medical topic, I’m on six consults and counting. 

When it’s not a big deal, I don’t fight this hard. But when it is, I’ll keep attacking your ideas, methodology, and approach until I dismiss you or I trust you. 

Most people fall into the first category. The second category is how I befriended my surgeon. 

Game on.

The Sleeper Agent at Chipotle

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The goal of the game is to notice when you’re being played.

In December of 2008, I unwrapped a burrito-based scheme.

My local Chipotle had a promo: buy a $20 gift card, get a coupon for a free burrito. I asked the cashier what the gift card could be used for. “It’s as good as cash.”

I paid $20. They handed me a $20 gift card and a coupon. I asked for another. I handed them the $20 gift card; they handed me a functionally-identical card and a second coupon. I did this four times. The cashier said she might need to check with her manager. I smiled and said I was done, leaving with my four burritos, $20 gift card, and twenty fewer dollars in my pocket.

Chipotle ran this same promotion every December and May through 2011. I always had a $20 gift card on me, ready to use it to buy another. I ate essentially free burritos for three years. Even as a high schooler, I couldn’t eat them fast enough.

I was very proud of myself.

I hadn’t been to Chipotle in years. Today, they had a two-for-one deal – officially for the start of the Stanley Cup Finals (and coincidentally on the biggest stoner holiday of the year). 

I ordered. And, like a just-activated sleeper agent, the skills came back.

Bowl, not burrito – they fill the bowl more.

Say “extra [item],” then pause. Wait until they finish scooping. Once you give them the next task, they will stop the previous one. Wait until they finish and you’re sure to have extracted the maximum.  Ask for half-and-half meat. They always overshoot; you end up with closer to two-thirds and two-thirds. (Combine this trick with the pause for even more.) 

Sour cream on the side. Guac on the side. The containers hold more than the spoon puts on the bowl.

I watched myself do it. Pause after “extra cheese”. Sour cream on the side. My bowl came out about 30% fuller than Partner’s order of the same item. The skills were still there, fifteen years later, like riding a bike.

Here’s the thing I didn’t see in 2008.

Chipotle ran those gift card promotions for three years. If exploiting them had dented the company, they would have stopped after year one. Instead, the promotion kept running. The fraction of people who figured out the loophole was, presumably, priced in. (Or maybe only my Chipotle failed to stop this loophole. As Partner’s mom says, “It’s better to be lucky than smart.” Unfortunately, I’m usually smart.)

I thought I was beating the system. The system was too big to care. 

Today is even funnier. Chipotle is doing two-for-one on 4/20. Their margins on a 30%-overfilled bowl are fine – the whole promotion exists because they must make more than 50% margins on food sales. The tactics I was proud of – pause-after-extra, half-and-half, sidesies – if everyone did them, Chipotle would be ecstatic. My “exploits” meant I ate at Chipotle when I otherwise wouldn’t have. And as long as I do that, they win. 

It’s like the credit card companies with their 5%-cashback offers. They’ve run the math. They’re making profit. Go ahead and max out the offers: That just means you’re playing the game. 

Being Wise to the game sometimes means: 

  1. Noticing that winning the game means you’re playing; and sometimes playing itself is losing.  
  2. Making games that entice others to play, and where any play is a win for you. In casino parlance, this is being The House. In Chipotle, it means having such high margins that a 50%-off deal plus customers bowlmaxxing still leads to a profit. 

And, fine: sometimes a teenager actually does beat the house. I did. Sorry, Chipotle.

Still, that nostalgia brought me back to Chipotle today, over ten years later.  

On long enough timelines, with large enough groups, The House always wins.

Game on. Or maybe: Got played.

Money is Not Victory Points

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You win the game by maximizing eudaemonia.

Money is a unit. It measures a specific thing — perceived value, mostly — but it’s often treated as the score for the whole game. Stop confusing it for eudaemonia (a vibes-based measurement of how much one is living a satisfying life, derived from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics). Money is only one input, and it’s less weighty than friendship, work, impact, hobbies, and legacy. (Individual weights vary.)

Here are units that I or loved ones have applied to life in the last week.

Joy per calorie. A method of choosing what food to consume. One slice of candied orange brings me more joy than an entire non-dried orange. One slice of sun-dried orange may bring even more.

Attention-efforts. Measuring time not in minutes but in effort required to keep your attention on the task. This is like golf: low score is good. The lower the attention-effort, the more you’ll naturally do it (and, generally, the more you’ll enjoy it). I create the grocery list because it’s low attention-effort for me. Partner buys the groceries because it’s low for her. Both of us hate the other’s activity. Dividing the task into more precise chunks enables better isolating and optimizing. 

Keystrokes. How many discrete small movements it takes to achieve a task. (I presume it comes from a CS context where the number of operations mattered to a program.) My father uses this one — he texts “Y” for yes and “Ack” for “acknowledged.” With practice, by both minimizing and bunching together keystrokes into “chunks”, you’ll need fewer attention-efforts to execute the same program.

BTUs (British Thermal Units). The manner through which to keep Partner happy despite last week’s sweltering early summer here in New York City. A happy partner-hour is worth more BTUs than I’d otherwise run. (I installed an AC last week.)

Team alignment. A Partner addition. A vector with directionality (“for the team vs for the individual”) and magnitude. Use cases: “Are the other person and I aligned?” and “Is this person doing a selfish thing?” Also applicable in situations where your thoughts diverge from your feelings. When the Euclidean distance is too high, investigate. 

Money. Perceived value. Not to be confused with actual value.

A unit I used at 17 and now realize was terrible: Facebook friends. The game rewarded me for playing it. Turns out it wasn’t “social media” — it was an ad platform.

A unit I still use and probably shouldn’t: hourly rate. Old habit from the ghostwriting years, when optimizing it was most of the game. A better version: (joy-per-hour + dollars-per-hour) / attention-efforts-per-hour. More-precise denominator, richer numerator, honest about what I’m actually trying to maximize. 

As you age, you develop more precise units. You improve your own vision and you learn from friends. 

Thanks, Partner.

Care / Try / Worry / Do: A Psychological Framework

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  • Care = believing something to be important.
  • Try = psychological effort, eg imaginative rehearsal or planning.
  • Worry = physiological/emotional arousal.
  • Do = action on the world.

These four functions are separable: each can be on or off individually. There are 22 different combinations. Some of them have names. E.g. Try + Worry + Do (without Caring) is called ‘Being triggered’”, Care + Do (without Worry or Try) is called “Being in Flow”, and “Maturity” or “Expertise” is Care + Try (with decreased Worry and Do).

I have a hunch that we exist in many or all of the 22 mental states at different times, and that one could use these mappings to intentionally move between states. (E.g. When “Practicing”, aim to be in Worry, Care, Try, and Do, but when “Playing”, exclusively Care and Do.)

I’m considering making a flowchart of the 22 different possible states, with arrows + tactical blurbs indicating when one should be in them and how to move between them. Thanks for reading this blurb – I have three quick questions for you:

  1. Is this framework interesting?
  2. Would you find such a flowchart interesting?
  3. Do any of the terms (Worry/Try/Care/Do) seem misfitting? If so, what terms would be more appropriate? (Eg I’ve considered “Act” instead of “Do”.)