Tag: jtbd

JTBD: Triathlons

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The end of the high school track season was bittersweet this year. A few senior boys, who I got to know well, didn’t quite run well enough to advance in the post season.

But being high school senior boys, they soon had another idea: a sprint triathlon.

There’s a great place in Clermont Florida (Choice of Champions) that runs an accessible sprint series each summer in May, June, July, and August. “When are you signing up,” I asked, “I’ll sign up too.”

It’s great to gloat over them with a rare win and they give all the trash talk back (and more) when they beat me.

“July,” Nick said.

“No!” his mom protested, “it’s going to be too hot.”

That’s the point. It’s not really about doing a triathlon, it’s about having an experience. Yes, times kind of matter, but only in the scope of the experience. For a crew of high school swimmers and runners, it might be a better experience and greater stories if it’s the race in July.

Maybe it will be, maybe not. But it’s the right direction. This was an early lesson in Bob Iger’s experiences. He thought sports was about the game, but really it’s about the story. Talking about the wins or losses are meaningless without comparison because context gives us a narrative.

This summer then, take the trip, do the thing, make mistakes. It’s not actually about the outcome – it’s about the experience.

JTBD: Falafel

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Google’s Liz Reid, VP of Search:

“One of the interesting things about the evolution of AI is that people stop talking just in keyword ease as much, and they start expressing more of what they want, and then that becomes much easier for us to give an answer. If you say, tell me about someone versus what’s new with someone, that’s actually much easier for us to figure out how to give better results than if all we just say is someone. We used to talk about an example query in a different way is falafel.

What do you want to know with falafel? Some people don’t know what falafel is, they want a definition. Some people want recipes.

Some people want to find where to eat. Some people want nutritional information. They all just use the word falafel, and that’s just harder to figure out how across all of them do that.”

From Odd Lots: Google’s Liz Reid on Who Will Own Search in a World of AI, Apr 23, 2026

That’s jobs to be done! Take something that someone said, and figure out the why and progress they want to make in their life. This whole section of the podcast is good because it’s about the idea of translation.

In the case of Google, it’s about a computer translating what progress a person wants to make. But that’s the whole idea of JTBD.

May the fourth be with you.

Proximity to Money

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Reading The Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel inspired this thought. And it felt like this was the heart of, not the book, but my interpretation. It was like, this is the idea to organize your actions around.

The closer something is to money, the less value it contains.

Like a Venn diagram, the more a thing overlaps with money, the less ultimate value it has.

Money as the first example. Money is money. Complete overlap. Money is good but because of the things it allows, not itself. You can’t eat money. You can’t stick your toes in money, well you can but it doesn’t feel like sand at the beach.

Nouns can be a second example. Money buys food, which leads to sharing meals. Money buys pickleball paddles, which leads to time exercising, laughing, and seeing friends. Money buys cars, which travel to beaches where there is sand.

Verbs. Money pays people to landscape, which leads to time with family. Money pays for tax services, especially this time of year. Money pays for haircuts, which help us feel better.

This frame of money is so heavily tilted by JTBD theory and Early Retirement Extreme I can’t get away from it.

Both JTBD and ERE point past the initial assumption and ask what’s really the goal?

And both rely on creativity to find a solution which leads to that goal.

Now, thanks to Morgan Housel, there’s a question to ask when making choices: What is this proximity to money? If it’s close, it’s probably not what I want.

JTBD at Whoop

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Will Ahmed is the founder of Whoop, the fitness tracker. In July 2025, he told Rich Roll:

“So maybe there’s a focus group on a band and the focus group sort of leans one way versus another on which direction the band should go. And I feel an incredibly strong pull towards the other direction.

I might just do the other direction. That, though, is a very sort of trivial example, I think. What’s been more interesting for me in my life is these moments where I’ve felt a deep sense of knowing something, and a lot of people have disagreed with it.”

Ahmed was obsessed with the progress (this is Moesta’s JTBD language) a subgroup (elite athlete) wanted to make. It’s such a clear example of Jobs Theory – though Ahmed never explicitly says that.

Focus groups don’t work for many reasons: people don’t actually know what they want, people are obsessed with status, people only think in the existing solution space. JTBD (jobs to be done) theory gets around that by focusing on the progress individuals want.

Ahmed discover that HRV matters a lot for rest and recovery. That led him to discover HRV needs constant monitoring. That led to this breakthrough:

“You needed to be able to measure it (HRV) continuously. And that was another breakthrough in hindsight of the whole idea for WOOP, was this idea of continuous data. Continuous data is the reason that this doesn’t have a screen.

It’s the reason we invented a modular battery pack. It’s the reason that the bands have all sorts of different looks and feels and colors. It’s the reason we’re not a watch, because we don’t want to compete with other watches.”

Framing “Life Energy”

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From Your Money or Your Life

“Money is something you trade your life energy for. You sell your time for money. It doesn’t matter that Ned over there sells his time for a hundred dollars and you sell yours for twenty dollars an hour. Ned’s money is irrelevant to you. The only real asset you have is your time.”

Money is important and how someone thinks about money should be how you communicate about money.

  1. Money is something you trade your life energy for.
  2. Money makes progress in JTBD. How to talk with your rich friends about money.
  3. I live in the tribe, the tribe keeps me safe. Our tribe has a leader.
  4. Money is part of the system. ERE and Wheaton Scales.
  5. Money is about doing good things with good people and not too much friction. Should you buy a ski chalet?
  6. Money has external roles (saving, investing, spending, etc.) and internal roles (goals, FOMO, Jones’s, Always Buy Two New Cars). The Psychology of Money.

It’s wild the resources spent on money.

Did the internet need another post about money? Yet here we are.

But maybe what we’re really talking about is spirit. It’s philosophy. It’s spiritual. What am I supposed to do? What is a life well lived? Posing the easier question shifts the topic to money.

“Why?” to be Happy.

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This book, opens Bob Moesta and Michal Horn, does not tackle getting into schools or how to rank different schools based on their features.

“Instead, if you are considering getting more education, this book will help you answer a more foundational question first. That question is why?”

Asking “Why” is a good way to be happier.

In the post from last week, we highlighted Kris’s comments about framing housing. In that same post he writes, “Neither of us wants to find ourselves servicing interest payments to some mimetic trends.”

Why do we want this house? The answer better not be The Joneses.

Moesta’s and Horn’s book Choosing College gives a framework for answering that question. “Why?” is a tough question. It’s hard to answer with a blank slate. But the authors suggest there are five Jobs to be done by going to college, and figuring out the progress shifts from the blank canvas to a paint by numbers masterpiece.

“Why?” to be happy. And when needed a book like this to help with the “How?”.

Wheaton Scales

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In 2010, Paul Wheaton created the Wheaton Eco Scale. He begins by noting our perceptions of other people. Those one or two steps ahead in a similar FESPE (financial, ecologic, spiritual, personal, etc.) journey look “pretty cool”. Those four or five steps “downright crazy”. While, “one level back are ignorant and two levels back are assholes”.

We’re all on our own journeys, coming across shamans, oracles, and gurus at different times. Part of this is why there are no bad books.

The importance of Wheaton Scales hit home during two successive days. First, reading the philosophy/finance forum of Early Retirement Extreme. Commenters noted how communicating about FIRE is such a challenge. Part (maybe most!) of the burden comes down to talking to someone in their language. It’s not about all the things I know so much as it’s about all the things they’ll understand.

Second, sitting in church and listening to the pastor talk about debates, agreements, and conversations among theologians. I know who he’s not talking to – me! He’s talking to the two guys who fact check, give feedback, and have studied the Bible for years.

Wheaton Scales snuggle up nicely in our mental models, like a pet on a cold afternoon, because they match JTBD. The aim of Jobs is moving from supplier language (how I see the world) to demand language (how other people see it). Wheaton gives a model for thinking through that.

And scales like this are nice. And helpful. It’s better to be mostly right than precisely wrong.

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.

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

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.