Airport tradeoffs

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Every ten minutes someone spends in security reduces spending by 30%. The WSJ video goes on to explain how airports are redesigning to include more commercial spaces.

But what I really enjoyed about this video is the emphasis on trade-offs.

Airports have to manage a whole bunch of things. Safety and security. Movement of giant entities and human beings. Navigation by experienced and inexperienced users. There’s a lot!

Which means there are choices to be made. Denver International Airport has three island concourses. This is great for planes. But not as great for passengers. How aesthetically pleasing can an airport be (which makes people feel better) relative to how efficient so that everything operates more quickly (which also makes people feel better). Don’t forget, it’s all about feelings.

Jobs Theory requires a laser-like look at the tradeoffs. Classically Bob Moesta asks: why do I want a hot dog and when do I want a steak dinner? Those answers are the first step along the path to what destination: the tradeoffs being made.

Smuggling or Selling Cigarettes

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It’s 1943 and Rae and Joseph meet in a Nazi concentration camp. Then, in 1945…

When the war came to an end, Rae and Joseph fled to Hungary, where they were quickly married. The day after the wedding, they trekked through the Austrian Alps and snuck across the border into an Italian displaced persons camp. They applied to come to America, using my grandmother’s last name, Kushner, since my grandfather had accrued a rap sheet from smuggling cigarettes into the camp to provide for his family.

They were accepted into America three years later.

The same day I read this, in Jared Kushner’s Breaking History, someone had been a real jerk. A Lowlife, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, bloodsucking, stiff-legged jerk.

But what’s the context? When is it smuggling cigarettes and when is it selling them? When is someone a jerk and when is someone having their own bad day? Maybe they had to deal with their own snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, bloodsucking, stiff-legged jerk?

JTBD requires an empathetic perspective. Figure out why someone acts the way they do. Not that many people roll out of bed with the express goal of being a stone in our shoe. Instead we can be curious, ask questions. We can conclude if someone was selling cigarettes or smuggling them.

Outgrind?

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The big idea from Outlive is that most health advice centers around avoidance (smoke in the lungs, sun on the skin, cells overloaded with sugar).

The next chunk of advice centers around basic things: move some, cultivate relationships, eat nutritious foods. It’s two 80/20 systems stacked on each other.

But we think about the last mile because we like to feel like we’re doing something. We like to feel that action is progress.

Pretty good is pretty good.

On his great blog, Justin Skycak writes about this in terms of “grind”.

Think of grinding on a project 50% of the time. If you double that to 100% that’s a 2x increase. What might take two years now takes one. That’s a sizeable change.

But “If you’re pushing 80% of the time, then the multiplier drops to 1.25x. You’re getting fairly close to max capitalization.”

Pretty good is pretty good.

This might be a more optimal situation too because of another idea: you have to be consistent before you can be heroic. I often said this to myself during a lot of Zone 2 training during 2024 (ultimately this worked out for me, I set a PR in the half marathon of 1:32:30).

There’s not a lot of return for grinding away at something all the time relative to most of the time. Like with Outlive’s advice, pretty good is pretty good. And, having the extra wiggle room allows for other things like serendipity and consistency.

Living…for time

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Metrics tag.

A huge goal of living well is living intentionally. Do the things I do do align with the things I want to do. Intentionality is why design is such large issue.

We can get lost in the abstraction. Such-and-such leads to end-result but we focus on such-and-such to the detriment of end-result. When my daughters were younger we tried to have family dinners as often as possible. I planned, prepped, and cooked the food. Sometimes they wanted something different, sometimes they wanted to help, sometimes life got in the way and dinner was canceled.

Sometimes this bugged the crap out of me. I put all this time, and effort, and blah blah blah. It was pure ego. And I’d lost sight of the end.

Kelly Starrett has a good podcast with Andrew Huberman talking about this (and many other things!). Kelly frames exercise as “earning credits”. The point isn’t the exercise, the point is to go and spend credits – being physically active with the people you love. Don’t do burpees to see how many burpees you can do in twenty minutes. Do them to have a more enjoyable hike with your kids.

From Huberman Lab: Dr. Kelly Starrett: How to Improve Your Mobility, Posture & Flexibility, Dec 9, 2024
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-kelly-starrett-how-to-improve-your-mobility-posture/id1545953110?i=1000679727148&r=8703

Love and Trust and USA Basketball

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One theme here is that information is not enough.

In his book, 10 to 25, about communicating with young people, David Yeager writes that the compliment sandwich doesn’t work because its supply side not demand side.

JTBD works so well because it shifts the focus from me to you, a business to the customers.

The supply side version of a compliment sandwich is what Yeager calls “wise feedback”. Before young people can hear criticism they have to feel safe. Feelings matter. Being in-the-group matters.

Shane Battier tells a story about Coach K’s early Olympic experience. Coach has just come from Duke where he sets a standard. People like us do things like this. But there was one guy on the team who was not very good in pick-and-roll defense.

So, coach lit into him. “You let him know in no uncertain terms that this is not going to fly,” said Battier. “And at that moment, like, you could see the look on this player’s face. He had never been talked to like this.”

Battier had. “I lived it, so I understood where it’s coming from. It was coming from a place of love.” This is Yeager’s wise feedback. It comes from a place of wanting the best. The listener feels safe because the listener and speaker are on the same side – they’re in the same group.

Coach K wises up right way. “It clicked and you realize, oh, this is not appropriate for him at this moment.” He didn’t have the right relationship for that kind of communication. It takes trust and love which take time and effort. We evolved as group members.

Note: Another version of this idea is here: https://moontower.substack.com/p/jokers-everywhere

What are you reinforcing?

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Chef John said something interesting while making Turkish scrambled eggs.

During the final phase, he added an extra bit of olive oil. “Since it looks good and it tastes good, and you can’t use enough olive oil in your ________.”

Now, what is the next word? How does he fill in the blank?

He says cooking, and I expected diet.

I’m reading a lot of Justin Skycak (long live blogs as rabbit holes) for a class I’m teaching and he emphasizes our long-term memory connections. Things we regularly recall become encoded more strongly.

One way or another, I’ve encoded olive oil is good for your health rather than, olive oil is good for your cooking. 

It’s good to bump into the edges of our reality. It’s good to be reminded of new things. And it looks good to eat Turkish scrambled eggs.

Books Read, 2024

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Fiction fun.

The Murderbot Diaries have been fun. The audiobooks are only three hours or so and I introduced them to the kids during summer road trips. Reluctant hero is one of my favorite tropes.

Another favorite trope is we need to get the gang back together and The Adventure of Amina al-Sirafi and Pirate Latitudes were both pirate books that fit that description. PL was the worst Crichton book I’ve read, and only finished it because his other books have been so good. Skip it unless you’re on a cruise ship. Amina was a suggestion from Emily Holdman.

Reacher; Personal, Make Me, The Hard Way, The Enemy.

Wool was a huge hit in 2012-2013, as author Hugh Howey went from self-publishing success to traditional success. (The Martian was around the same time). Wool was interesting, but I didn’t read the sequels or like it enough to watch the Apple TV series.

The Narrow Road Between Desires. If you’re waaaaaiiiiiiitttttting for Rothfuss to finish his trilogy you could read this. Not for new entries.

Finance and business.

Million Dollar Weekend was too familiar. It’s a good example of JTBD in action but didn’t hook me. But, I’m a sucker for internet 2.0 survivors like Noah.

No Worries: How to Live a Stress Free Life by Jared Dillan was a great approach to a cluttered genre. Some parts of life were damn stressful this year, and this book did a good job of focusing on the feelings around money. Hopefully it moves into the collection of “beginner finance books” like I Will Teach You to be Rich.

Full Fee Agent is Voss’s Never Split applied to real estate.

Becoming Trader Joes was not as well told as Shoe Dog, but it was just as interesting. One of the better business history books.

Not much from The Power of Moments was new, but the Heath brothers do a good job summarizing and presenting many different but connected ideas.

Co-Intelligence, a fine book about LLMs but find author Ethan Mollick’s newsletter instead. Things are changing.

Personal growth.

Be Useful. I liked the Schwarzenegger book. We need those reminders, nudges, and encouragement to be our best selves. This book provides that.

The Heart and the Fist. About SEALS training, “This was not really “physical training” at all; it was spiritual training by physical means.” A challenge to separate the message from the messenger.

Good Inside. Ryan Holiday recommended this book. Like Be Useful, it’s a good reminder that your kids are good inside.

The 5B Swim Method.

Psychology, sociology, etc.

I poo-pooed Clear Thinking in my review, but re-reading that post and my notes I think was too hard. Like Atomic Habits, it wasn’t new so much as a reminder, and that takes the shine off some.

Cultish was a book about cults, why we form them, how we form them, and the **language** behind it all. This book recommended The Power of Ritual, a book that questions our intentionality.

How Minds Change. My favorite of the year, and the biggest ideas here.

What are your patterns?

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My grandmother used to say call a spade a spade a lot. And she did. By the time I knew her, she was not afraid to speak her mind. She probably always was that way, only getting ornery as she got older.

One of our themes around here is to talk about the thing we want to talk about. Like Wharton professor Cade Massey interjects in his podcast, “let’s be precise“.

Another one of our themes is to think of things conditionally. Is something good or bad? It depends. Weaknesses are strengths and strengths are weaknesses (WAS A SAW).

Those ideas meet in Andrew Huberman’s podcast with Kelly Starrett, who (speaking about the human body) said:

“And I wouldn’t even say that weakness isn’t even the right idea. Just like here is a pattern that I’m not as effective at, as efficient at. So when we go into the gym sort of with this great curiosity, then it’s a really rich place and a really, frankly, the only safe place because there isn’t contact and sport and we’re not fighting and dancing and moving and we can really do this controlled formal movement where we can really see inputs and outputs.”

He’s talking about physical training but what a great idea!

  • It’s not that I lose my temper, but my impatience is a pattern that I’m not as effective at.
  • It’s not that I’m bad at math, but it’s a pattern that I’m not as effective at.
  • It’s not that my relationships at work are bad, but it’s a pattern that I’m not as effective at.

This framing also applies some ownership (another form of being precise). To take things back to Starrett’s conversation: our tight hamstrings are not a genetic pattern but something we can control.

For a science podcast, this episode (implicitly) covers a lot of spiritual ground as well as systems theory.

Don’t hire a noun for a verb’s job.

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Related: Don’t bring an educational solution to a design fight.

Years ago I wanted to learn to play the guitar (this actually happened twice). I thought the first step was to get a guitar. The actual first step was to develop a practice habit.

We mess this up because nouns are easy, one-time, magic wand solutions.

It’s simpler to buy a spin bike than to spin.

It’s faster to to book a vacation than to mend a relationship.

It’s quicker to quit a job than figure out what you really want.

So we employ nouns. And when the nouns don’t work, we fire them thinking we hired the wrong one without considering it was the wrong type. It’s not the Dave Ramsey finance book that I need, it’s the Morgan House one!

If it’s a verb’s job – hire a verb.

It will be harder. It will take longer. It will “feel” less.

But if it’s a verb’s job – hire a verb.

“and the bonanza ended”

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Money was scarce and no one scorned pennies. Seeing the perspiring WA workers in the streets (created by presidential order in 1935, “Works Progress Administration” was the largest of FDR’s New Deal programs to provide useful work for the unemployed), I borrowed a nickel and bought a packet of Kool-Aid, from which I made six glasses that I sold to them for a penny each. I continued to do this and found that it took a lot of work to earn a few cents. But the next winter, when my father gave me a nickel to shovel the snow from our sidewalk, I hit a bonanza. I offered the same deal to our neighbors and, after an exhausting day of snow removal, returned home soaked in sweat and bearing the huge sum of a couple of dollars, almost half of what my father was paid per day. Soon lots of the kids were out following my lead and the bonanza ended-an early lesson in how competition can drive down profits.

Edward O. Thorp

A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market