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Exploring local optimums, the difficult path, and doing the minimum
Logan
January 16, 2025
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Exploring local optimums, the difficult path, and doing the minimum
Happy Thursday! Thanks for reading Intentional Dollar — where we look at old money ideas through a new perspective.
What’s inside?
One tool to experiment with
Two quotes from others
Three questions to dig deeper
Four lines of poetry for the point
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. These weekly posts represent my simple thoughts, a few quotes, and some questions — for educational purposes only.
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One tool to experiment with:
Local Optimums:
What if you’re focusing on optimizing the wrong thing?
Money is one big optimization problem with a thousand little variables to tweak. We seek solutions to invest, pay less tax, pass money to heirs, pay down debt, improve cash flow — all to optimize our dollars.
Each variable presents a choice: do I spend energy and time and resources to fix this piece, or is there another higher value variable that I should set my eyes on?
Our resources are finite. The question of optimization is to determine which hill is the best to climb.
This is tricky because when we look around and see relatively tall peaks, we establish camp and get to work. But these peaks might be local and not global optimums, meaning they aren’t the best problems to optimize at any given time. Global optimums are the real hills to conquer.
If we continue to mistake the local for the global, we’ll end up in a suboptimal state.
Tuning the money spreadsheet to the nth degree is probably the wrong optimum; sucking resources from productive, global maximums.
Sure, it feels good, and maybe the formulas and conditional formatting and functionality are better, but this is the wrong hill to climb.
We have to fight against the impulse to stop after identifying any optimum that seems more productive than its near peers.
It’s not enough that it’s productive; our pursuit has to be toward the global optimum, which is the highest value task we can do at any given time.
What local optimums are you getting tangled up in?
see the full picture and find the global
Two quotes on the difficult path:
It’s supposed to be difficult. Since most people choose the easy path, there’s a tremendous amount of competitive advantage created from consistently choosing the difficult path. Plus, you’ll find a steady supply of satisfaction in the challenge.
“A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual.”
“Use difficulty as a guide not just in selecting the overall aim of your company, but also at decision points along the way. At Via web one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, fat, bully. You open a door and find yourself in a staircase. Do you go up or down? I say up. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as you can. Going upstairs his bulk will be more of a disadvantage. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him. What this meant in practice was that we deliberately sought hard problems. If there were two features we could add to our software, both equally valuable in proportion to their difficulty, we’d always take the harder one. Not just because it was more valuable, but because it was harder. We delighted in forcing bigger, slower competitors to follow us over difficult ground. Like guerillas, startups prefer the difficult terrain of the mountains, where the troops of the central government can’t follow. I can remember times when we were just exhausted after wrestling all day with some horrible technical problem. And I’d be delighted, because something that was hard for us would be impossible for our competitors.”
Three questions on doing the minimum:
Where am I just doing the minimum, checking the box, and not doing my best?
Is this level of effort enough to carry me where I want to go?
What’s the next marginal increase in effort here?
Which question stuck with you? Questions like these are spotlights for the mind. Reply to this email and let me know which one shined light on a previously dark cave.
Four lines of poetry for the point:
That hill is big, but is it the best to climb?
To scale up the side is to invest some good time.
The highest peak might not exactly be near,
But search for the best and the global will appear.
Contact Me:
Content ideas, questions? Reply to this email or reach out to me at [email protected]
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. These weekly posts represent my simple thoughts, a few quotes, and some questions — for educational purposes only.
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