Regret minimization cuts both ways.
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Regret minimization is often used to justify leaving a comfortable situation to grind towards an life-changing transition is uncertain and difficult in the short term.
This might seem like flipping a switch towards 100% grind, constantly pushing the boulder, but it’s important to keep in mind that regret minimization cuts both ways.
Yes, grind grind grind, but also don’t forget to take breaks to spend time with people you care about, especially around big events or when you’re not going to see them again for a while.
If you’re anything like me and have a nagging feeling that you should be making progress on “the thing” 100% of the time, what might help justify taking breaks is to think about relative speed increases: if you’re pushing on the needle X% of the time, what kind of speed multiplier are you leaving on the table?
- If you’re pushing 25% of the time, then there would be a 4x multiplier by pushing 100% of the time. 4x speedup is the difference between a decade of work vs a couple years.
- If you’re pushing 50% of the time, then the multiplier drops to 2x. For me, at least, that’s still leaving a lot on the table.
- If you’re pushing 80% of the time, then the multiplier drops to 1.25x. You’re getting fairly close to max capitalization.
- If you’re pushing 90% of the time, then the multiplier is down to 1.1x. It’s basically max capitalization with a slight rounding error.
Sure, if there is a make-or-break moment in your grind, then it might be worth temporarily turning the dial up to 100% to try to capitalize on it.
But in the long run, outside of those situations, that last turn of the dial from 90% to 100% is not going to change the overall outcome – all it will do is create regret in other areas of your life.
And that regret does not stay external. Even if you try to compartmentalize it, it will find a way to seep into your whole, detracting from your motivation & productivity, eventually conspiring to derail you early.
- 90% grinding at 100% productivity will have you moving 2x as fast as 100% grinding at 50% productivity.
- 90% grinding for a year will take you 10x as far as 100% grinding for a month. 90% grinding for a decade will take you 10x as far as 100% grinding for a year.
90% is my number. Anyone else’s number might be different. But I would guess that for most people, it’s in the range of 75%-95%.
But whatever your number, the message is the same: don’t undervalue turning up the dial, but don’t overvalue the last turn.
Follow-Up Questions
But isn’t the very last 10% the difference between being ordinary and extroardinary? I thought that’s where the magic happens.
It sounds like you’re talking about skill level percentile, which is a correlated but very different thing from percent of waking hours spent training.
As much as I push for pursuing one’s passions with all-out intensity, I would completely disagree that the difference between excellence and being ordinary comes down to a 10% gain in work time (as romantic as that sounds).
Does 80h/week move the needle more than 40h/week? Yes, by a wide margin. You’re moving 2x as fast.
Does 100h/week really move the needle that much more than 90h/week? Not really. You’re only moving 1.1x as fast, and it’s probably not sustainable in the long term given that if you require a typical 8h/night sleep, it is impossible to engage in any other aspects of life beyond basic maintenance if you are truly working 100h/week.
- 24h per day
- minus 8h sleep
- minus 1.5h misc life maintenance like shower, eating, exercise, groceries, doc/dentist appointments, car maintenance, etc.,
- minus 14.5h work
- equals 0h left over for talking to spouse, kids, friends, other family members, reading any sort of non-work related information…
I’m a big fan of pushing oneself from 40h/week to 80h/week when the fit is right, and I get that you might have to up it to 90h or 100h under exceptional circumstances for some weeks or months, but at 90-100h/week you are sacrificing so much that the tradeoff becomes unsustainable in the multi-year long term.
At least, that’s been my experience and that’s the way the numbers seem like they’d work out in general.
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