Tag: hidden metrics

Do the work

MIKELeave a comment

As a high school teacher I use LLMs a lot. My peers do too. It’s just too easy not to have a model type out all the text in whatever format for (all the different) software programs we use.

One quirk of the LLMs is they always make the correct multiple choice answer the longest multiple choice answers. When in double thirty years ago we just chose “C” – now, students choose the longest answer.

But there’s something lost. TNSTAFL. Maybe not in the busy work of typing out questions, but maybe so. It could be a feature, not a bug that audiobooks (and books), are so long. It’s more time to sit with an idea.

In that spirit, here are two ideas and inspirations about doing the work:

Ezra Klein: “Having AI summarize a book or paper for me is a disaster. 

It has no idea what I really wanted to know and wouldn’t have made the connections I would’ve made. I’m interested in the thing I will see that other people wouldn’t have seen, and I think AI typically sees what everybody else would see.

I’m not saying that AI can’t be useful, but I’m pretty against shortcuts.

And obviously, you have to limit the amount of work you’re doing. You can’t read literally everything. But in some ways, I think it’s more dangerous to think you’ve read something that you haven’t than to not read it at all.

I think the time you spend with things is pretty important.”

Daryl Morey: “They (Bill James) said, ‘Hey intern, you go work on this project, see if you can look at point differential and how it affects the NBA.’

So that was my very first analytics project, which is in the ’93 basketball book. Yeah, I remember coming up—like, literally worked on it 24/7 because I was like, ‘This is my moment to try and prove something to Bill James,’ who, by the way, didn’t care at all when I did it.

He, you know, he probably thought it was derivative because it sort of was. But it took a while to come up with the idea of modifying the exponent. That was obviously the first time Bill’s ideas were adapted to basketball.”

Two Problems with Net Worth

MIKELeave a comment

In the early days of blogging, the Rational Walk was an easy entry to investing. Focusing on Buffett and Berkshire, they made an intimidating topic accessible.

One of their suggestions was to track net worth (this was early in my education in finance and investing). Rather than income or savings, net worth was how much a person was actually worth. It was the proper way. The intelligent way. And who doesn’t want that?

So I tracked it.

It’s been great! To see a number rise thanks to mortgage payments, investing gains, and raises feels wonderful. It doesn’t go up every time, but the number goes up over time.

However, like a lot of numbers, it provides a false sense of authority. It’s just a number, and it has two problems.

First, it’s not cash. Our net worth includes a house, 401k, and brokerage accounts. To convert all to spendable money is a task. Selling a house is an ordeal, a 401k included penalties up to a certain age, and brokerage accounts need liquidity. Someone has to buy what a person is selling. Plus, you know, crypto.

Second, it’s not the solution. Money may lead to a solution, but it’s not the goal. This is the heart of one of my favorite books, that there are many creative ways to live well and we stink at coming up with them! We can pay for services – or do them ourselves. The latter just takes some time and the right YouTube instructions.

It’s nice to be reminded of these things. Life is dynamic and asks for balance. Have things boiled down to a number? It might not help, but it’s probably not the answer.

Framing Resolutions

MIKELeave a comment

Reframing metrics is catnip. In book form this is Moneyball, but there are many posts about framing and metrics.

How might we frame a meaningful life? And what metrics?

“Ultimately, the number of things you did can’t be definition of a. meaningful life. It’s got to be what you did and whether you did it in the spirit of showing up for it.”

That’s Oliver Burkeman’s advice to Rich Roll (November 2025). Burkeman’s book, 4000 Weeks, was one of my favorites last year. Happy New Year.

Mental Accounting: Joy

MIKE2 Comments

When message board posters wondered about how much money Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak might have if he hadn’t sold his stock he told them.

But in his accounting:

“I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.”

https://m.slashdot.org/story/445414

Living…for time

MIKELeave a comment

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

Don’t hire a noun for a verb’s job.

MIKE3 Comments

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.

Food Metrics

MIKELeave a comment

Is this right? It is important.

A helpful question to regularly ask is: What do these numbers really mean? I used to love looking through the Sunday Best Buy ad and comparing computer hardware. RAM, hard drive, monitor size – all catnip to a teenage boy in the 90s.

But what did those numbers actually mean?

Jobs theory is about finding the meaning behind something. See “90 calories” and, click-whirr, must be healthy. That’s the meaning we associate. But is that the right connection?

Or is Eddie correct? Is number of ingredients a better signal?

Metrics, numbers, figures — whatever our attention catches is not accidental. Someone chose that, they framed the context around that scene. It’s up to us to ask, is this right?

Alice and Bob own soccer teams…

MIKELeave a comment

Alice runs her team conservatively and finishes with 17 wins, 17 draws, and 4 losses. 

Bob runs his team with more variance and finishes with 19 wins, 11, draws, and 8 losses. 

Which is better? 

Let’s reframe, like the ball bet. Is it better to exchange 2 wins for 6 draws and 4 fewer losses? 

Haralabos ‘Bob’ Voulgaris bought a soccer team because he knows these answers because he’s seen these questions. 

After Moneyball but before Morey-ball, Haralabos discovered and gambled on basketball inefficiencies. The best known now is the three-point shot. Voulgaris thinks that soccer is similar. Teams earn three points for a win, one for a draw, and zero for a loss. Rather than three or two points in basketball, it’s three or one points in soccer standings.

Soccer’s business model is like the music business model. Artists lose money recording an album, break even touring, and profit from the merchandise. This had to be Pixar’s business too. Division three soccer teams lose money, division two teams break even, and La Liga or Premier League teams “print money”. 

Soccer teams can move up (promotion) or move down (relegation). Bob’s team, CD Castellón is in the third division and they need about sixty-eight points for a chance at promotion. 

Both Alice (17/17/4) and Bob (19/11/8) earned sixty-eight points – but they don’t seem equal. This is Bob’s point – it’s worth risking more for wins than less for draws.

The big question is: What are the right metrics for this system? 

  • Hurricane wind speeds are probably the wrong metric. Though easy to measure they don’t convey the potential storm damage which comes from the rain, surge, and flooding. Moneyball and Morey-ball are both descriptions of systems where the important metrics shifted.
  • ‘Draws’ is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It seems fine – splitting the difference between a win and a loss – but the unique point system shifts the weight. 
  • Risking more – Bob’s approach – focuses on what matters. It’s the points stupid.

Humans are loss averse but the soccer standing scoring rewards bucking this trend. Alice and Bob own soccer teams, let’s see what happens.

Travel budgets

MIKE4 Comments

Actions are the children of mindset and environment.

When running his document storage company, AJ Wasserstein created a travel budget. Budgets are good. Budgets are a design tool, and we are all designers.

Wasserstein’s budget wasn’t denominated in dollars, it was in days away from home

“One thing I did while working at Archives One was give myself a travel budget. I gave myself permission to travel a certain number of days a month. It wasn’t a financial budget, rather a nights-away-from-home budget. If I started to exceed that consistently, my role at the company needed to be cleaved and I had to hire someone to do part of what I was doing.” – AJ Wasserstein, Circle of Competence, June 2021

Wasserstein asked a different question. Rather than ask what was financially costly he asked what was socially costly and optimized for that. A lot of times we assume that the important is easily measured. Dollars? Yes. But other things too.

‘Good’ numbers

MIKE

This summer my kids were not going to watch too much YouTube. But, things changed. My eleven-year-old got into Moriah Elizabeth, a YouTuber into decorating and painting. Her channel is good. It’s interesting and entertaining. It, for me, avoids the overreactions and clickbait present on YouTube. She’s super positive and if not teaching kids how to be creative at least she shows them that it’s okay to mess up, laugh it off, and try again.

She wrote a book, Create this Book where each page is a prompt to draw only with polka dots, or draw a structure, or draw something without lifting your pencil from the page. We bought it. It’s fun. We do a page a day and laugh at or admire our drawings after.

This is to say that not all screen time is equal. But it’s easy to count and present equally. Apple offers a Sunday notification that your screen time was higher/lower than last week. That’s not really helpful. It would be like if a refrigerator displayed the calories consumed but not what exactly someone ate.

It also happens, says Betsey Stevenson, at the macro level during each jobs report. There’s the unemployment number and the initial response is that more workers are better. However it kinda depends on the timescale.

“When we see the ‘quits’ numbers really high that seems bad. In the short run we’re going to see fewer jobs. But it’s actually an optimistic time.” – @BetseyStevenson The Ezra Klein Show

People tend to quit their jobs when times are good and the next job is immediate. As people move about in the economy it follows that wherever they land will probably be a better fit, a win-win for everyone. But that’s hard to quantify.

One way to flip this problem is to restructure the counts. Basketball coach Todd Golden will redraw the lines on a basketball court. If a player shoots from inside the arc it’s worth one point. Shots outside the arch are worth four. That’s clever counting. Restructuring the way a player perceives the points is a way to find the ‘good’ numbers.