Tag: Partnership

Pets, Colleagues, Livestock

JulianLeave a comment

The creature is the same, the category is the frame, the frame is the game.

Is your cat a pet or a colleague?

Our categories, often arbitrary, shape our relationships.

Snickers

My parents’ cat died yesterday. She was a comfort animal, treated like a member of the family — albeit one who would literally bite the hand that feeds her. Upon receiving scritches, Snickers would drool, then grow overwhelmed by the pleasure and bite you. Her teeth were quite sharp, prompting the end of the scritching and Snickers’ confusion.

Dubbed The Belle of Amherst, Snickers hermited upstairs, leaving her room only once or twice per year. A working cat? She hadn’t caught a mouse in her life. Snickers would meow so my mother would lift her up to the food bowl on the windowsill. My mother laughed about Snickers forgetting the location of her food. I laughed because Snickers had learned to take the elevator instead of the stairs.

Snickers was a family member. We will miss her.

Smidgen

After ending a relationship in 2018, a best-friend-sized hole throbbed in my heart. Since dog is man’s best friend, I considered adopting.

Unsure for how long I would want a dog, I reasoned: I would delightfully care for a dog for the next few years. After that period, I wasn’t so sure.

Most people in this circumstance wouldn’t adopt a dog, at least in cultures where dog is family-member. I understand that dogs feel emotional attachments. It does seem cruel to adopt and abandon.

However: 

  1. “Abandoning” is meaningfully different from what I planned to do (I wouldn’t simply leave it on the street)
  2. In that world, one more dog sits at a shelter and I wallow without a dog.

Many shelters are over-crowded, especially with chihuahuas, and often kill the animals they can’t care for. Even if somebody took a dog for a year, then returned it and the dog was immediately put to death, didn’t that dog get an extra year of life? By caring for a dog, even temporarily, don’t you improve the dog-shelter ecosystem? It’s hard to say that some amount of dog separation pain overrides the value of a happy year of a dog’s life.

I concluded the “dog-as-commitment” perspective didn’t fit my values, so I adopted a dog with the plan to rehome her if my preference changed. When I called the shelter to put Smidgen on hold, the receptionist laughed, saying she had been at the shelter for months: no one would swoop in to steal her from me.

Smidgen and I traveled together for around three years. More than anything in the world, she loved lap-sitting. She’d sit on my lap while I drove across the country. She’d sit on my lap while I read a book. Sometimes we’d go to dog parks so she could sit on my lap and watch the other dogs.

Six months into our relationship, I mentioned the uncertainty I had about keeping her. Consistently, people responded with comments like, “Well, you’ve made a commitment.”

Where does this social pressure — that a dog is a family member — come from? It might be the social shaming of abandoning or abusing dogs (which is categorically different from re-homing them). It might be the strong vocality of people who grow incredibly attached to their dogs.

In my uncertainty, I only found one write-up about a family that adopted a dog, had it for six months, and decided it wasn’t for them. The write-up lamented the absence of shared experiences like this.

Partner

Partner grew up surrounded by animals: cows, chickens, sheep, ducks, geese, guinea pigs, parakeets, a rabbit, and dogs.

Two weeks ago, our general contractor brought over some eggs and mentioned he has a sick chicken. His wife has spent about $2,000 trying to revive this chicken. Partner noted afterwards that she had newly realized she didn’t grow up with pets: she grew up with farm animals. One cow was named T-Bone after its future. When raccoons raided their coop, the family shrugged and replaced the chickens. (As Partner puts it, “Chickens are like 3 for $10.”)

I don’t think there’s clear superiority to the pet perspective over the farm animal relationship. The relationship seems more driven by one’s background and emotional experiences than logic.

I’m reminded of the Supreme Court case National Pork Producers Council v. Ross. In oral arguments, the Humane Society argued for the ethics of pigs in kinder conditions. Pork producers rebutted with the ethics of affordable pork. A plurality of the Supreme Court ruled the ethics “incommensurable” – impossible for courts to compare.

Mother

My mother grew up with a large extended family, all in their forties or older when she was born. By the nature of aging, they began to pass away when my mother was quite young.

My mother sees each pet as a family member.

I grew up without an extended family. My four-person nuclear family has always been healthy. I don’t have that particular pain that causes me to strongly desire more family. (But I did adopt Smidgen from a best-friend-sized hole.)

When my time with Smidgen had neared its end, I asked my mother: “If I rehomed her, would you want her?” My mother said yes.

She relates to what she sees as a family member. I relate to what I see as a dog.

What’s it like to be a pet? 

Smidgen and Snickers shared the same bed for about four years. Snickers hissed whenever Smidgen got too close. I wonder whether they considered each other family.

Will Smidgen be sad that Snickers is gone?

Reply to tell me: what’s your relationship with the animals in your life? And if you’ve ever rehomed a dog: did anyone in your circle understand?

Score is the Thief of Commerce

JulianLeave a comment

“To win, score the most. To score the most, stop keeping score.”

Last week, after three days in my metaphorical writing cave, I hollered to Partner, “I know I haven’t been doing dishes. I owe you.” I caught it immediately: “Actually, I think keeping score is bad practice. I take it back.” She laughed and continued on with her day.

I like scores. Keeping score is a clear and straightforward way to understand and compare performance. But sometimes, keeping score can be actively harmful.

Macro scoring enables comparison between multiple options. Micro-scoring corrodes as it leads you to optimize the wrong things. As my family motto goes (it’s intentionally too long for comedic effect), “Before you hyper-optimize a process, be sure you’re optimizing for what you actually want and not a correlate.”

The Bad (Reflexive Scoring)

Should I owe Partner dishes? I was heads-down on work because I spent the previous three weeks coordinating medical appointments for Partner and renovation work for our apartment.

As Middle East history teaches: if you dig back far enough, you can find huge grievances on all sides. Without touching on rightness or wrongness (as I do not have a sufficiently long stick with which to touch), this process does not seem to form stability. And stability is something I would like in my partnership.

Simply: if Partner feels I’m not doing dishes enough, she will say so. If I feel I’m not washing dishes enough, I should wash more dishes.

Score-keeping as a way of digging yourself out of a hole will often lead to resentment of the scorekeeping mechanism (or participants, which is even worse).

The Good (Reflective Scoring)

I once heard a successful startup founder describe his romantic check-ins. He and his wife divide his work into four categories: money earner, father, lover, friend. Rating each on a 1–10 scale, so long as his overall score achieves more than 25 points, he passes. For this partnership, this calculation may solve a real problem: it recognizes a person’s contributions despite changes over time.

This scoring process is a feedback instrument, driven by deliberate weighing of details — not a reflex prompted by momentary discomfort.

The Bridge (Incentive Alignment)

Hourly work misaligns incentives. This structure causes less efficiency and innovation: working faster costs the worker money!

I realized this structure with my $16/hr marketing internship after my sophomore year of college. I automated all my work, and all the other interns’ work. My superior said, “Sit tight and read.” I arrived to work early and left late because they paid me hourly. I was always there to do work if they wanted to give me work. (Now, I would take a slightly different tack: raising this lack-of-work to my boss’s boss. But at the time, I thought arriving early and staying late to maximize my dollars was the standard way to play the game.)

Even if your boss is your best friend, the hourly contract puts you in opposition. The score isn’t a personality conflict; it’s a contract feature. No amount of scorekeeping can account for misalignment.

The Ugly (Anti-Commerce)

Some work should be 90%–10%. In my partnership, Partner captains cooking 90% of the time; I captain travel logistics and social plans 90% of the time. I’m sufficiently capable to create edible food. Partner is sufficiently capable to book flights and schedule with friends. We simply enjoy it less (and are less skilled).

Micro tit-for-tat prevents specializing and trading, which is the fundamental lesson of commerce. So long as we both share the common knowledge that we’re both helping the team, the score is anti-helpful.

When partners are aligned on what they’re moving toward, the allocation can skew without it mattering. Some weeks she does more; some weeks I do. The “oxygen mask before helping others” frame applies: feeding yourself, whether literal food or via nurturing work, isn’t a withdrawal from the partnership — it’s a contribution to it, because your effectiveness is shared.

The reflex inside an aligned partnership imports structural-scoring logic into a relationship that thrives on more flexibility than scoring provides.

The score is the thief of commerce.

The Reckoning (Trust)

Would you rather employ someone values-aligned and unskilled, or skilled but misaligned? For piecework, I think skilled but misaligned. For a teammate, values-aligned. (That said, I am historically incompetent at working with unskilled people.) But I guess that’s still better than someone who will sabotage, even if they do it unknowingly.

Alignment produces trust. A scorecard substitutes for trust, poorly.

Last night, Partner asked me to do the dishes.

Four Umpires

JulianLeave a comment

Games require fairness. Fairness requires… Umpires?

Bottom of the ninth, tie game, runners on first and third, the coach signals for a new pitcher.

The Away team choruses from the first-base dugout: “You got this, Julian!” “Go get ’em, Julian!” (No relation.)

The new pitcher takes the mound. He has the wispy, windswept hair of an early-2000s teenage heartthrob, and just enough muscle to suggest he started working out when puberty hit a couple years ago. 

Julian throws his first warmup pitch.

A player walks from the third-base dugout to behind home plate. Maybe 15 years old. He accuses a woman old enough to be his mother: “Are you taking videos?” 

“No,” she replies. “You guys were [doing something she found objectionable].”

Julian throws his second warmup pitch. The boy continues the accusation: “Were you taking videos?” 

“No, just pictures.” She continues her explanation. 

“I don’t care.” The boy stomps back to third base. 

A third warmup pitch. The umpire calls the game back in play.

Julian straddles the mound. His neck swivels, unable to see the opposing players on first and third at the same time. The previous cheers have gone silent. Julian twitches his knee. Something catches his eye near first. He looks over at it.

“Bawk!” yells someone from the third base dugout. 

“Bawk!” the umpire agrees like a chorus of chickens. “He lifted his knee and put it back. That’s a bawk.”

“What’s a bawk?” Partner asks me. I start laughing. 

“What’s a bawk?” she repeats. 

“It’s…” I begin.

Suddenly, everything is happening at once. The umpire clears the path between third base and home, like he’s making way for prince Ali. The player touches home. His friends cheer. A tall man says “Excuse me” to someone beside us; he removes a sun-shaded phone from the fence, where it was probably recording or livestreaming the game. The umpire walks over to the Away team to explain the rule violation. A younger looking boy has both palms against his cheeks and mouth agape like a real life Scream. Someone says, “At least we gave them a hard fight.”

I turn to Partner and explain. “Basically, the pitcher isn’t allowed to trick the base runners. So there are a lot of very precise rules about what he can and can’t do. I think I’ve heard my father say ‘breaking the plane of the knee’ at some point, meaning you have to pitch immediately when you do that. If you break the rule, as punishment for your shenanigans, the players are awarded a free base.”

“And that’s called a bawk?”

“Yep. Spelled B-A-L-K.”

“Ballk.”

“Yeah, but pronounced like what a chicken says. Rhymes with ‘walk’.”

“Bawk.”

Fifteen minutes earlier, Partner and I arrived to the baseball fields. Four fields, spread out in this grassy oasis one third of the way from the top of Central Park.

Over the next hour, we will watch four ball games. The most notable play in every game will be by the umpire.

More Like Guidelines

The first players are either middleschool or highschool kids. Brown jerseys for the pitching team. No one on base. 

The pitcher throws a warm-up pitch. The ball bounces three feet before home plate; the catcher tosses it back.

The batter approaches the plate. The pitcher throws. This ball bounces too. “Ball,” says the umpire.

Partner and I watch eleven subsequent pitches. Some fly high, into the chainlink fence behind the catcher. Most bounce, like the first two. None cross home plate between the batter’s knees and shoulders. 

Dutifully, on each pitch, the umpire says “Ball” and the corresponding number.

One at a time, players populate the bases. After all twelve pitches are thrown, the bases are full.

The pitcher begins his windup. The batter steps out of the box. The pitcher stops. 

“That’s a balk!” the umpire shouts at the pitcher. “You can’t [I stop paying attention].”

“Let’s go to that game,” I say, gesturing across the field.

“Walk around or through?” Partner asks.

The umpire is walking back his previous position, calling it a “No pitch.” 

“We can walk through. He’s not going to throw anything hittable.”

Partner and I walk behind the third-base fence, then skirt into the outfield in foul territory. As we pass the left fielder, I notice the players on each base slowly advancing one base.

When a child has thrown twelve balls in a row, are you really going to call him out for a balk? Sometimes the spirit of the game calls for bending the rules. If a child pitcher can’t throw a single strike, that sounds like a rule problem. I’m reminded of the problems I experienced playing pony baseball: Stealing is legalized before any catcher has the arm to throw out the runners. A runner on first is effectively a runner on third. 

We walked to the baseball field where Julian would soon bawk, then continued toward the softball games.

The Competent Umpire of Slow-Pitch Softball

The softball game on our left looks competitive. The game on our right, less so. We go left.

The cocky third baseman nabs a line-drive one-handed. “Out.”

Partner and I walk behind home plate, where the umpire is chatting with an off-duty ump.

This umpire wears no mask nor padding. No padding for the catcher. Nor helmet for the batter. I learn something new about slow-pitch softball.

The next batter hits a ground ball toward third base. The third baseman fields the ball mid-stride and throws off-balance, clearly showing off.

The umpire calls “out,” then turns three-quarters of the way toward the fence behind him.

“I coulda played at Arizona,” the umpire continues. “A-S-U. Got a full ride. Said no. What did I know? I didn’t want to go to Arizona.”

He turns back to the game: “Ball.” 

He turns back to his friend: “I played everywhere. Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic…” Returning to the game: “Strike.” Returning to his friend: “Hawaii.”

I’m impressed by how he can both continue the conversation and accurately referee the game.

A batter waits just outside the batting box.

“Can we go?” asks the pitcher.

“I’m waiting for you,” the ump responds.

“I’m waiting for you,” says the batter.

“No you ain’t,” the ump responds.

As an unbiased observer at this game, I can confidently say: they were not, in fact, waiting for the umpire.

That Ain’t the Rules

Partner and I approach our final softball game of the day.

Ten kids in ragtag outfits and red pinnies, aged between 22 and 25, versus ten older guys, between 30 and 40, in matching jerseys.

The pinnies are having a blast — yelling and hollering, cheering among themselves.

The pitcher throws. Ball. Strike. The inning ends.

The pinnies take the field. I count ten players and seven gloves. 

“Don’t you have gloves?” the umpire says.

Someone shouts back, “No.”

Someone else says, “But it’s okay. We don’t need ’em.”

“You need gloves,” says the umpire.

I turn to Partner. “You definitely don’t need gloves. Gloves were only an early 1900s thing. I’m pretty sure they’re not required.”

Partner: “Might be a beer league thing.” (According to Partner, beer league is a type of casual softball where players drink beer in their dugouts between fielding.)

The older team lends three gloves to the pinnies.

Partner and I watch an inning or two. It’s riotous, raucous fun — all hijinks, everybody trying their best, but no pressure on winning.

One pitcher throws a ball that arcs around 13 feet high. The ump calls “strike three.” The batter taps the top of his head.

“That’s too high,” I say to Partner. “If it’s above 12 feet, it’s a ball.”

The ump says, “It bounced before the line. That’s a strike.”

The batter is out.

The game rapidly evolves into “Who can throw the highest pitch that still lands short of the line?” Some are clearly over 15 feet, landing at the front of the plate, and still being called as strikes.

I pull out my phone. In under ten seconds, I read aloud to Partner: “Four-to-ten-foot arc. Any pitch too high or too flat is a ball, unless the batter swings.”

The players are now chopping at pitches coming down above their heads. The game looks less like softball and more like swatting flies.

Yet, somehow, no one seems to mind.

Partner is getting cold. We’ll watch this final inning.

The pinnies are batting. Runners on every base.

The umpire yells something to one of the baserunners. Another pitch. “Ball.” Then the umpire yells, “He’s out! Three outs!”

I walk over to the third-base dugout. I ask one of the kids in pinnies: “How did that inning end?”

He tells me: “The ump said no leading off.” He gestures toward second base. “He wasn’t on the base, so he called him out.”

“And what about the pitches. Don’t they have to be under ten feet?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I don’t know the rules,” he tells me.

“How did you guys get to be here?”

“We went to college together. Seemed like a fun thing to do.”

I wonder what it would be like to play a game without knowing such fundamental information as What counts as a strike? and I should bring a glove.

Walking home, I give Partner my shirt to stay warm, and I’m struck by how much more fun the pinnie team was having than any other team we watched that day.

They don’t know that the ump ruined their game. So maybe… he didn’t.

Working to Win the Lottery

JulianLeave a comment

Sometimes, the safe play is the lottery.

“I’d rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery.”

—Bright Eyes, “First Day of My Life,” I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning

There’s a difference between waiting to win the lottery and working to win the lottery.

Waiting doesn’t make sense: the lottery is a losing proposition. But working to win the lottery? If you can skew the odds in your favor, you can win.

Upon graduating from college, I reasoned: “I could get a job at a Big Tech Company that pays $60k/year, this year, or next year, or in ten years.” So I started my own business doing what I wanted to be doing.

I know of two strategies: working for a paycheck, and working to win the lottery. (By “lottery” I mean asymmetric upside, where one hit pays for many misses.) Most people, Partner included, are wired for the paycheck. I’m wired for the lottery. Both can win.

Most people think of the lottery as riskier. I disagree.

Here’s the move that separates my thinking from everyone else’s: the safer path is concentrated. You work for a company; that company goes under, you’re screwed. You find a similar company. But what happens when the whole industry goes under? The skills you’ve built might be useless worldwide.

The skills I’ve built? Not so much — because I’ve had the ability to choose what skills I build. The employee path is actually a concentrated bet on the need for similar skillsets. My portfolio is which skills to build. That, for me, is diversification.

The risk actually shows up at the intersection between the operator and the game. For me, this isn’t risky. I have savings discipline, deal flow, and a fitting temperament. For someone without those, it would be. We think of risk as the variance in an activity. On the meta-level, it’s more about being fit for the game and playing enough times to outlast the variance.

Two Paycheck Jobs

In my life, I have worked two standard, 9-5, knowledge-work paycheck jobs.

The first: I interned at a marketing agency in NYC the summer after my sophomore year of college. I automated all of my work, then all of the other interns’ work, then my direct superior’s work. When I asked my superior for more work, he said, “Sit tight and read.” So I played games on my computer, peaking at 120th in the world at a card game I liked.

The second was at a fintech. $175k cash per year. Predictable.

My first month working there, my monthly burn was 3x what it was the month before. I had been earning $100–150k with my own business.

It wasn’t the money. It was the perceived predictability.

The three most addictive things in the world are:

  1. Methamphetamine
  2. Nicotine
  3. A steady paycheck

What can I say: I wanted to try the drug. I just got my fix and got out.

The Math

I keep my costs low. I don’t get much more value from the $50 Chinese restaurant over the $5 basement dumplings. Most of life’s joy comes from experiences and removing friction. I therefore spend money on travel and life infrastructure.

I lived in a van while building my first business.

The math: ten months of San Francisco rent = one van. After ten months of rent, you have nothing. After ten months of van, you have a van. (Also nice that I bought it for $12,500 and sold it 3 years later for $19,500. Taught me a lot about macroeconomic waves, too: the van market went crazy during COVID.)

While living in the van, I squirreled money into early-stage tech companies.

Natural aptitude matters. If none of my bets had paid off, I would have switched plans. But four $25k bets is only $100k. Which, if you’re making $150k per year and spending $30k, is only 1 year of work to find out whether you have a skill (in my case, the skill is betting on people).

Bet on People Who Will Win

I once asked Ann Miura-Ko (a Midas List member and board member of Lyft) whether there was more to investing than finding competent and trustworthy CEOs. I had a hunch that was the whole game. She agreed: yes. But she added that doing it well is not trivial.

Fun for her to confirm my approach.

So that’s been my approach. I haven’t bet on technology or the future. I’ve bet on individual people.

My company was a ghostwriting business. I spent a lot of time living in experts’ heads. Bylines included:

  • Justin Kan (founder of Twitch)
  • Sam Altman (then of Y-Combinator)
  • Ellen Pao (CEO of Reddit)

During this investing, I also dabbled with crypto. I took the advice of friends, but those friends didn’t have control over the asset. They were speculators. With a private company, I’m betting on actual leadership. Leadership controls the outcome. They’re responsible for everything.

The lesson: bet on people who control the outcome. Or bet on no-one (the index). Don’t bet on people without control.

In a gambling sense: I’ve placed four bets on startups, where variance is high and likelihood is low:

  • 1 failed
  • 1 is planned to IPO this year
  • 1 is going gangbusters
  • 1 (the one that prompted this musing) just received a term sheet at 2.5x what I bought in

When Partner learned that my ~$15k investment was now worth ~$37.5k, she told me: “You’re like an odd sort of couch.” Apparently, most people find coins in the couch cushions, not tech company stock that they haven’t thought about in months.

It’s the same way I play poker: I find a spot where I have an edge, and I hammer it over and over and over again. Eventually, if I bet the same amount into ten different companies, and a successful company will more than 10x my money, I need to be right more than 1/10 times. (And, of course, not run out of money.)

Most people either don’t have the resolve or aren’t right more than 1/10 times.

Different Risk Profiles

Graduating university, Partner was saving 75% of her paycheck. She didn’t know many people didn’t save at all, and most financial experts only recommend around 15%. She thought what she was doing seemed logical.

We are FIRE sort of people, just with different risk profiles. Partner enjoys working for a paycheck. I work to win the lottery.

These mutually-balanced approaches are part of what makes us a good team. When we need to invent something out of nothing, I’m usually team captain. When a problem needs debugging, she’s in command.

After reading a draft of this article, Partner had this to say: 

“I think this last part might warrant slightly more space. You’re hedged in a way most people don’t get to be. 

It’s one thing to take big bets when you’re young and have no responsibilities. It’s that people tend to get addicted to the paycheck when they set their lives up in ways where they feel the need to have stability. They may miss out on being able to use those skills in big-bet ways as they don’t want to risk a loss. It’s also hard to have the mental space and discipline to self-hedge.

I’m your hedge so you can chase the upside.” 

One day, my ship will come in. And if not, we’re still happy.

A Game You Can’t Decline

JulianLeave a comment

The goal of the game is to play well. You play well by knowing you’re playing.

Last night, friends came over. They’d baked cookies. They brought the cookies in a Tupperware container. As they were leaving, Partner went to retrieve the Tupperware and hand it back at the door.

I winced internally. I should have said something. 

Here’s the game I saw and Partner didn’t: you don’t return the Tupperware at the door. You keep the Tupperware. Eventually, you need to return it – which means you’ll see them again, which means there’s an open thread between you. The Tupperware is a mild promissory note. Yes, we’ll have you over, or you’ll invite us, or we’ll see you at the thing – because also, here’s your Tupperware.

Returning the container at the door closes the loop transactionally. Everyone walks away even. But the loop is what builds the relationship. Even is not what you want when starting a relationship if the other person would find you returning the tupperware weird.

When I mentioned it to Partner afterward, she got it instantly. She’d just never thought of it that way. We also agreed that it isn’t logical. Of course they want their Tupperware back. The whole thing is illogical. Most social dynamics games are.

I’m reminded of a buddy of mine this past summer. A woman had stayed over at his apartment. Now, she wanted her ring back. He told her to retrieve it from his roommate. No, buddy! She left it so you have to see her again! 

I once had a 9 AM appointment with a doctor. Due to a series of errors made by his office and lab, my appointment ran until 2:30 PM. Around noon, I mentioned wanting to grab a sandwich. He gave me cash and offered to pay for mine as well.

Something felt wrong. I bought both sandwiches and gave him the cash back.

I suspect he didn’t even register the move. But Partner had the same instinct I did when I told her: pay for his sandwich, refuse the cash. The discomfort was real and shared, even if neither of us could immediately articulate why.

Here’s why: the cash created an obligation flow that didn’t match the relationship. He had spent five and a half hours of my day on his office’s mistakes. The appropriate flow was him owing me. His offer to buy me lunch was a way to pay down his debt of guilt. But not an appropriately-sized one.

Buying the sandwich, refusing the cash, was the right move. It accepted the kindness implicit in offering food while refusing the implicit power-move. Imperfect, but instinct steered correctly. 

And as we left his office, he apologized at least 8 times for the delay. By the end, he said, “I’m done apologizing. If I apologize again, hit me.” That’s the appropriate obligation for someone who’s wasted 5 hours of your day. 

Recently, I made a friend who pocket-vetos any activities that are emotionally intense for him. He only plays the games he wants to play, in the ways he wants to play them.

It’s no surprise this correlates with power and resources. As friends have gotten more powerful, more of them have developed this stance. No explanation, no apology, no negotiation. Generally no answer, not even a “No”. 

If you’re young and broke and unattractive and awkward, you can’t pull this off. People stop inviting you. Every social interaction has to be navigated, every gift has to be reciprocated, every obligation has to be honored. The poverty of optionality forces you to play every game offered. 

As you accumulate power and resources, you can decline games without consequence. People still invite you. People still want you around. They accept this trait because you’re still worth it. Like the celebrity who’s notorious for being prickly in interviews, the rudeness becomes a feature: a filter mechanism.

Three observations: 

1. Refusing to play is itself a move. 

  • A recurring claim of this blog. It holds here.

2. Not-playing a game requires winning sufficiently in other games, or people will stop playing games with you entirely. 

  • The friend’s pocket-vetos work because the rest of his social game is in order. He’s not refusing because he doesn’t understand the games; he’s refusing because losing this game doesn’t matter for him anymore. If Warren Buffett never set a schedule, only meeting with people willing to show up at his offices in Omaha, people would still gladly sit in his office for hours, waiting for the possibility to talk with him. 

3. Winning generally comes from choosing which game is being played and at what level. 

  • Most of us learn how to act in specific spots in specific games. That’s a fine level one, but it misses out on level two (shifting the odds in your favor) and level three (dictating the battlefield). 

One more thing: the move I should have made about the Tupperware was overruling Partner in real time. I saw the game. I knew the right move. I let her make the suboptimal one because I didn’t want to interrupt.

That’s a habit of mine – letting people make moves I see as wrong, then discussing afterward if it matters. The discussion-afterward version doesn’t recover the move. It just generates retrospective alignment for next time.

Sometimes the right move is to interrupt. Saying wait, I’m gonna eat all those in the moment would have been weird. It also would have been the right move. Weirdness is sometimes the price of playing well.

[It’s late. I’ve read this one too many times to like it. The daily-publishing game is hard tonight. I hope I like this post in the morning. Sigh.]

The Frame Is the Game

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You win the game by playing to win. You play to win by reframing the game.

I used to play competitive pickleball. I once won the silver medal at the Hoboken Open. While playing, I hated my opponents. Hated them. They were some of the most deplorable people I had ever met. Then, afterwards, we shook hands and they returned to the dentist and lawyer they had always been. 

Today, Partner and I are in Florida. We don’t want to be here; we’re here for the sort of getting-your-teeth-cleaned-style obligation that you do because it’s important but not desirable nor fun. But while we’re here we might as well make the most of it. So we lie to ourselves. We call it a vacation. We walk along the beach. We eat oysters and shrimp. 

The actions are identica. The flights, the hotel, the ubers, the appointment: none of it changes. What changes is whether we’re playing to win or playing not to lose. 

Big difference. 

Partner does a small version of this every day: I pack water because I know it’ll be nice when I drink it, as opposed to packing water because I’m afraid I won’t have it when I need it. Same bottle, same backpack, different relationship to carrying it. The first is light. The second is a lump of fear dragging you down every step. 

The NYC subway ads have the same problem. Subway surfing kills. Theoretically, nothing is worse than death, so this should be the most motivating message ever written. It isn’t. Teenagers ignore it, so they ride outside the train cars and die. Apparently coolness and thrill are more exciting to move toward than death is to move away from – even though the thing to move away from is LITERAL DEATH. 

This isn’t unique to messaging. It comes up everywhere. Are you eating healthy because you love yourself or because you hate yourself? Are you running a marathon to feel proud crossing the finish line or because you’re scared of being out of shape? 

Reframing is self-deception. Every sinking ship could be a swimming opportunity; every torture chamber could be an abusement park. There are people in genuinely bad situations who are surviving them by calling them vacations, and they’re going to wake up at some point and notice the ship is underwater. I’m not naive about this. (It’s the plot of one of my favorite movies.) It has its own dangers: overwork, misdirected effort, self-hoodwinking. 

But the alternative is paralysis. People who are motivated only by avoiding bad outcomes mostly end up doing less. They don’t send the email because it might be imperfect. They don’t take their pills because they don’t like being reminded they’re sick. They don’t go to Florida because going to Florida means admitting why we’re going to Florida. So they stay home, and they stay safe, and they stay smaller than they have to be.

Some days, you can’t choose what happens.

Some days, the frame is the only thing you can choose. 

Wouldn’t you rather choose a nice, kind, attractive, fun frame?
Every event; every observation; every activity is a fantasy.
Wouldn’t you rather choose yours?

Top-Secret Games: Trader Joe’s

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The goal of the game is to win the games. The hard part is noticing they exist.

I was in the Trader Joe’s in Santa Cruz, California, standing between two checkout lines. Both stations had a cashier. Neither line had people waiting. I was deliberately ambiguous about which line I was in.

A shopper arrived behind me. She asked which line I’d chosen. I answered slowly: whichever one finishes first.

She found this unacceptable. She appealed to the Trader Joe’s gods — that is, the cashier. The cashier ruled against me. You have to pick a line. I hemmed and hawed to buy myself time and picked. 

About two years later, I was shopping with a friend at that same Trader Joe’s. My friend performed the exact same hedge. A person asked which line we were in. My friend answered the same as I had. Once again The Gods smote us. So I stood in one line and she in the other. Whichever line finished first: our group re-combined there. 

It’s like the old saying: “Everyone is playing a game that you know nothing about.” 

Here are my Trader Joe’s games: 

The dual-line straddle. If you stand at the right angle between two lines, you can commit to whichever one moves faster. This is optimal play — it’s an option you should always exercise when the structure permits it. It’s also widely considered rude, for reasons that truly make no sense to me. I’m there first; I deserve to be served first. This is a queueing theory problem: one line is more fair, BUT people also feel more annoyed that they’re in a longer line. (And here’s the thing: the person directly behind me isn’t actually the one harmed by my slowness. The person farther back is — the one whose checkout would have opened up if I’d committed earlier. We’re all glaring at the wrong people.)

The tag-team shop. Often, I stand in line while Partner grabs more items. The line moves; I advance; she rejoins. We’ve doubled our throughput. In the US, this is fine. In France, it’s a violation — my sister once spoke to me in a bakery line outside Paris and the woman behind us made it clear: this is a faux pas. Different country, different rules. (And yes, it’s perfectly reasonable to permit joining, or to restrict joining, or to permit joining but without an item, or to permit a direct substitution of equal numbers of people for equal numbers of people / equal items for equal items. If you can think of it, I can justify it.) 

The end-of-line dash. Partner’s specialty. As we approach the register, Partner likes to make a mad dash for one final item. Discussing this game, she was the most beamingly radiant I’ve seen her in a while. It has all the traits of a good game: clearly-defined, time-pressured, skill-based, some luck to keep you on your toes, low-stakes if you lose. Sometimes she meets me after the checkout emptyhanded. Sometimes she brings the stracciatella we don’t actually need but ends up being delicious with a little honey and salt. That’s not the point. The point was the game.

Here’s the secret: Trader Joe’s is also playing a game.

Their queueing system isn’t optimized for throughput. There isn’t always a central queue, no take-a-number system, no signal from the register that they’re almost ready for the next customer (so the next customer can start walking). When I asked where the bathroom was, the employee walked me halfway across the store rather than pointing. They’ve decided their game is warm experience, not minutes per customer.

Which means the friction I keep running into at Trader Joe’s isn’t accidental. It’s the residue of a different optimization. They’re playing for one thing; I’m playing for another; the shopper behind me is playing for a third (presumably their personal, egotistical perception of fairness powered by a deontological backing of the inefficient rules of Trader Joe’s (because it sure as hell ain’t actual fairness; actual fairness means the first arrival gets to checkout first)). All three of us are right, given our games. We’re just not playing the same one.

Most disagreements about etiquette aren’t moral disagreements. They’re disagreements about which game everyone thinks they’re playing. 

In serious situations, I’ve heard people say, “I’m not here to play games.” 

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that they always say that angrily. 

The Sum

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The goal of the game is to keep the sum. You keep the sum by noticing who’s low. 

Partner and I play a game: we try to keep our sum competence level the same.

On a normal day, she’s the one who tells strangers their dog isn’t actually a schnauzer — it’s just cut like one. She’s the one who’d google the laws on dog-deterrents in the tree box, to get the annoying ones removed.

Today we met with a doctor, and afterwards she wanted to curl up in a ball. So she went to our cave of a bedroom, where she either napped or fiddled on her phone. And today I was the one who googled the dog-deterrent laws. I didn’t spot the schnauzer — I didn’t know to look. But the gym got visited, and we got fed. The sum held.

It goes the other direction too. Yesterday I noped out of what I usually handle — navigating, picking the food place — and she took us to Whole Foods where we bought my favorite oranges.

I don’t think this is an accident (at least on my side). When she’s doing well, we’d both rather I spend my attention elsewhere. When she’s doing worse, it’s worth the effort. 

One question this raises: if one of us is very competent, is it worthwhile for the other to be negative? 

I assume no, but let’s investigate. 

What’s the benefit to un-competence? Not merely the lack, but the negative. 

One piece is fun. Competence is goal-oriented. Un-competence is expansive, innovative, novel. Competence lifts the weight and puts it back down, thereby strengthening the muscle. Un-competence learns there is such a thing as standing on one’s head. 

Sometimes standing on one’s head raises new understanding of human biology. Sometimes un-competence creates a new joke. 

I wonder if other people play a similar game in their relationships. Or if it’s just me — if I’d do this with anyone.

It doesn’t strike me as a bad approach. If anything, it’s quite elegant. 

Game on.

Childishness (Mar 14 2026)

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In which <blows raspberry!!!> 

Partner sometimes implies I’m childish. 

She does this through cryptic statements like, “You’re very childish.”
I parry these attacks with elegant ripostes, like, “I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I??” 

Today, we took the train from 96th Street to visit a friend.
Partner asked me, “What’s our destination?”
I said, “191st Street”.
Partner said, “THAT NUMBER IS TOO HIGH.” 

I shrugged. 

She therefore began singing, in the appropriate tune: “One hundred ninety-one stops to go; one hundred ninety-one stops! Take one down, pass it around; one hundred ninety stops to go!” 

And then she continued.
And continued. 

When the train arrived at 145th Street, the song arrived at 146. She gleefully accelerated through 146 so she could intersect the station with the song. She was very pleased with herself.

When we disembarked at 191st Street, she had already arrived to 66 in the song.
En route back, she started at 191 and attempted to time the song with the train speed.
For our next trip up to see this friend, she has set the goal of singing all the way from 191 down to zero. 

WHO’S CHILDISH NOW???!