Here’s a collection of interesting things I learned in 2020:
The determining factor in labor compensation is substitutability. An example would be a neurosurgeon.
I realized that some of the biggest innovations in human history were made by trying to mimic human processes.
Those two words are often interchanged in the context of output. Here’s a proper definition:
Efficiency produces the same output with less input.
Productivity produces more output with the same input.
To make a process more efficient, you figure out how to get some X output while using as little input as possible.
To make a process more productive, you figure out how given some Y input, you can maximize your output.
Business is 4 equal parts; product, makreting, collecting money and timing/luck. They are all critical and very often, not in your ocntrol.
The apparently random collection of things you learn when you’re young makes you into a sort of key. Then you have to find the lock it matches. But that’s not as hard as it sounds, because the matching lock is usually nearby.
From Devon Zuegel: Writing falls into three buckets: (1) trivial things that everybody knows, (2) things that everybody knows, but nobody around you knows, and you have a unique perspective on, and (3) stuff that nobody knows so you have to do tons of research.
Most geniuses - especially those who lead others - prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities, but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities - Andy Benoit
Optimizing your solution ensures someone else can’t come into your industry, get the same suppliers and contract terms, and beat you.