☕ saturday mornings #27
☕ saturday mornings #27
satisfaction, avoiding endowment & adding redundancy
Happy Saturday all,
I hope you’re having a great start to your weekend.
Below is your edition of “saturday mornings”, a weekly recap of what I’ve been testing, learning and exploring over the past few days.
Thanks for hanging out.
✍️Quote I’ve been thinking about:
“He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing. Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
― Epicurus (Greek philosopher)
📖Book passage I loved:
Tom Stafford describes a simple antidote to the endowment effect. Instead of asking, “How much do I value this item?” we should ask, “If I did not own this item, how much would I pay to obtain it?”
We can do the same for opportunities and commitment. Don’t ask, “How will I feel if I miss out on this opportunity?” but rather, “If I did not have this opportunity, how much would I be willing to sacrifice in order to obtain it?”
Similarly we can ask, “If I wasn’t already involved in this project, how hard would I work to get on it?”
— Essentialism, Greg McKeown
❓Question for reflection:
Where can I build more redundancy into my life?
Redundancy, as a concept, often gets a bad rap as people seek to streamline and simplify everything. While there is a time and place for simplification, having redundancy in select parts of your life can save you from a lot of “worst-case” scenarios.
First, what is redundancy?
We’re using a different definition than you’d find in a dictionary (“state of being not or no longer needed or useful”) which I don’t think captures the full use of the word.
In our case, redundancy is defined as having a backup plan to mitigate risk. This is very oversimplified but you get the point.
The core idea is that the world is highly unpredictable, and as such unpredictable things happen. Redundancy, therefore, is the act of considering low-probability negative events (which are easy to brush off as impossible) and planning ahead of time.
I initially began thinking about this idea when I read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book “Antifragile” a few years ago. He believes that redundancy is ambiguous because it seems like a waste if nothing unusual happens. Except that something unusual happens — usually.
The idea of building in redundancy shows up in a ton of places.
A common saying in the military is, “two is one and one is none”. This effectively means that if you have two of something, you’re going to lose one of them so you really only have one. Similarly, if you only have one of something, you’re in trouble.
Engineers are taught to love redundancy. They expect the worst case scenario to happen and design systems with back-ups (and sometimes back-ups to those back-ups). In this exercise, engineers have to consider and plan for completely unpredictable or unforeseen events. Designing buildings and bridges with this level of forethought often pays off in extreme weather events.
Taleb highlights that nature likes to over-insure itself. “Layers of redundancy are the central risk management property of natural systems. We humans have two kidneys, extra spare parts, and extra capacity in many, many things (say, lungs, neural system, arterial apparatus).”
In a less literal sense, the entire idea of insurance is built around the concept of redundancy. People pay a fee every month to have a back-up plan in case something terrible occurs, and peace of mind they’re covered on the downside. Yet, insurance seems to be one of the only places most people actively seek redundancy.
How can you add in redundancy?
I’m aware that many of you may not be in the military or engineers or insurance brokers. Fear not.
I can’t provide a comprehensive list, but simple examples of redundancy could range from having an extra set of keys to buying a back-up external hard drive for your computer.
Under the same logic, people will have a back-up generator and 5-6 days of water for their family in their home, in case of a power outage or weather event.
I’ve been experimenting with having more “time redundancy”. I’ll leave 10-15 minutes early, so that I have the comfort of knowing I’ll be on time and so that I’m not always rushing from place to place.
Often these things seem excessive in the moment, when things are going well, but that’s just it. Things sometimes won’t go well. That being said, I think you want to be on the healthy side of paranoid, as redundancy can be taken to extremes.
The military, engineers, nature and insurance companies can teach us that it can be a good idea to expect the unexpected and plan in advance.
That’s all for this week’s edition of “saturday mornings”.
And, as always, please give me feedback by replying to this email. Which topic above is your favourite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know.
Have a lovely weekend.
Much love to you and yours,
Thomas