I’ve uncovered a hole in my thinking lately that’s impacted my approach to Simula. In short, I’ve been conflating incrementalism with exponentialism. I think this error has led to some pain for Simula. But first some definitions:
- Incrementalism. Things that characterize incremental thinking:
- Having mediocre long-term goals (i.e., “be 10% better than the competition”).
- Doing little things each day to get towards those goals.
- Linear time management: “Each month we will complete 1/10th of the MVP; on the 10th month we will finish.”
- Moonshot Thinking. Things that characterize moonshot thinking:
- Having enormous long-term goals.
- Being willing to stomach a high frequency of losses, since one outsized win can make up for all of the losses and then some.
- “Suddenly it will happen” time management: “We will work and work and work, and suddenly the MVP will be done”. Here we treat finished work product as if it were a black swan.
- Exponentialism. Things that characterize exponential thinking:
- Also having enormous long-term goals (sometimes unconsciously).
- Doing little things each period to get towards those goals, but getting better with each period at some constant rate (and being able to sustain this rate of improvement for many cycles).
- Non-linear time management: “This month we will complete 10% of the MVP, next month we will complete another 11% of the MVP, …, and by the 7th month we will be finished with the MVP, so long as we can maintain a 10% rate of improvement”.
I’ve been historically obsessed with (2), but the problem with (2) is that it is often beaten by (and more often complimented by) (3). The following example demonstrates this.
Daily productivity is better served by exponential thinking. Every day I give myself a score from 0 to 1 (measured in “μ”) on how much I got done such that (i) a “1” represents a great day’s worth of work and (ii) I’m allowed to go over 1. Occasionally, I’ve scored as high as a 10. I’ve also scored as low as a 0.
Historically, my daily attitude towards productivity has been very biased towards moonshot thinking. Every day I tell myself I should try to find some way to score a 10 (where somehow I manage to do 10 days worth of work within 1 day of time). This has occasionally generated some genuine cleverness (where for example I’ve been able to crowdsource solutions to problems that would have taken me days to solve on my own, used technology to automate certain computations, or figured out ways to circumvent problems alltogether). Nevertheless, this is generally a bad approach to daily productivity, as the following table demonstrates:
| Category | Strategy | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moonshot thinking. | Score 10μ for 15 out of 30 days; score a 1μ for each of the remaining days. | (15 days)⋅(10μ) + (15 days)⋅(1μ) | 165μ |
| Exponential thinking. | Score a 1μ on the first day and grow it by 10% each day. | ∑ 1μ⋅(1+10%)^(n days) | 181μ |
Here we see that successfully scoring 10’s every other day accross an entire month (which itself is unrealistic) is outperformed by scoring a 1 on the first day and growing it by 10% each day.
Things that incrementalists say to moonshotters (that are true).
- Rome wasn’t built in a day.
- It is psychologically damaging to repeatedly fail.
Things that moonshotters say to incrementalists (that are true).
- It is better to risk boldness than triviality.
- The few wins justify the many losses.
- Moonshot thinking encourages creative solutions and the escaping of local maxima.
- Bold goals are more motivating and fulfilling to work on.
Here exponentialism allows us to merge the benefits of both views into one. First, it allows us to admit that Rome clearly was not built in a day (nor was SpaceX, Intel, or Google built in a day). It also allows us to set ambitious long-term goals with initially low (but rising, over time) probability of success, while at the same time setting less ambitious short-term goals. This combines the motivational benefits of working on ambitious goals, while minimizing the chance of facing repetitive failure.
The conditions for exponential growth. The conditions for exponential growth are both (i) time and (ii) the ability to grow without bounds. Finding opportunities that allow unbounded growth are difficult. This is why 99.9% of startups have no hope for greatness: they set incremental targets (“be 10% better than the competition”), and so only have a limited number of cycles to incrementally improve their crafts before they reach their self-imposed limit. This is where moonshot thinking really shines. It allows for effective (i) ideation, (ii) long-term planning, and (iii) the escaping of local maxima. It should be used with high regularity (perhaps at the start of every development cycle). But once moonshot thinking is used to establish a goal, exponential thinking can help us get to that goal without going insane.
- How moonshot thinking has helped Simula: The idea of Simula (whose mission is to facilitate the replacement of PCs and laptops with standalone AR/VR HMDs) is the result of moonshot thinking.
- How moonshot thinking has hurt Simula. “Moonshot time management” (the treatment of finished work product as a black swan event) has led to unrealistic deadlines and needless psychological toil (i.e., the feeling of repetitive, daily failure).
- Simula has the potential to improve without bounds. Right now Simula’s prototype is about 10% as good as working on a normal PC. Once we finish our MVP (by end-of-summer), we might be able to get that percentage up to 50%. Our immediate problems will be poor UX, bulky headsets, and blurry text resolution. But embracing exponential thinking thinking gives us an honest path to a 1,000% product:
50%, 55%, 60.5%, 66.55%, 73.2%, … 1,000% = 10x