Good reads: Farnam Street Brain Food #328

Brain Food, Charlie Munger, Farnam Street, Goal gradient, Productivity, Shane Parrish

Farnam Street

Every Sunday, Farnam Street sends its subscribers the week’s best reads from all over the web. It is called Brain Food. It is undoubtedly the best part of my week. So I decided to share my opinion with you all on this week’s newsletter — hopefully adding some valuable insight in a “world full of noise.”

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FS

Moving the Finish Line: The Goal Gradient Hypothesis: Parrish tells us about a very intrinsic human concept — how we tend to speed up and increase our motivation as our goals appear closer.

Imagine the last lap of a 800m race.

Next, he goes on about how we can use this to work in the real world. The first one is its use in incentive structures. Rewarding a customer sooner is always better than later. In fact, the effect may be strong enough that you can get away with fewer total rewards by increasing their velocity. Consider this, given a chance to earn $1000 at the end of this month, and each after that, or $12000 at the end of the year, which would you be more likely to work hard for?

Exactly.

In the same way, you can get away with rewarding your customer (for an action, like a purchase) $2 every month, instead of paying him/her $30 at the end of the year. Very intuitive indeed.

Worthwhile Reading from Around the Internet

How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It: A beautiful article about Lee Smolin and his revolutionary ideas about the universe.

Speed matters- “The general rule seems to be: systems which eat items quickly are fed more items. Slow systems starve”

The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking: A transcript of a Peter Kaufman talk on leadership. I cannot stress how valuable this article is. Actually, I am surprised that this is free. Kauffman’s ideas on decision-making using his “three buckets” and the importance of being a “multidisciplinary thinker” are incredible — so much so that I have added Poor Charlie’s Almanack at the top of my reading list.