Rowing vs steering

Alex Lawsen used a great metaphor on the 80k After Hours podcast:^[1]

[1:38:14] …you’re rowing a boat on your own, and you’re trying to get somewhere, and you’ve got some map that you need to look at to see where you’re going, I imagine like a map and compass. […] When you’re rowing, you’re facing back; you can’t see where you’re going. You’ve just got to sit there and pull both of the oars, and do that a bunch of times, and then the boat goes forwards. […] You steer [… by pulling] harder with one side, something like that.

I can imagine […] you sitting forwards in the boat, and trying to hold the map with your left hand while it’s gripping one oar, and trying to hold the compass with your right hand while it’s gripping the other; pushing them rather than pulling them while looking at where you’re going; so you’re always precisely on track, but my guess is you’re just going to go super slowly, because that’s not how to row a boat.

Whereas you can imagine someone else, maybe someone that’s racing you, who is going to point the boat in pretty much the right direction — they’re not exactly sure it’s the right direction, and they might go a bit off course. And then they go, “Cool. I’m going to row hard for a minute, and then I’m going to stop and check I’m pointing in the right direction, and then I’m going to row hard for another minute.”

[1:37:56] The metaphor is trying to point at … the strategy, [which] is pretty clear: gather some information, make a decision with that information, stick to that decision for some period of time that you’ve planned in advance, and then reevaluate, gather some more information, and then make a new decision.

[1:35:58] … you [should] stick to some policy, which is like: “I’m going to look at a bunch of things, I’m going to actually seriously consider my options. And then, with all of the information I have, I’m going to make a decision. And I’m going to make the decision to do the thing that seems best for some fixed period of time. At the end of that fixed period of time, then I will consider other options.”

[1:47:43] … if you think expected value is a reasonable framework to use, … then I do actually want to say: I think having this kind of policy is actually the thing that seems best in expectation.

[1:41:21] … I think some people … they start doing a thing, and then they’re so worried about whether it’s the best, that they’re just miserable, and they never find out if it is the best thing for them because they’re not putting all of their effort in, because they’ve got one foot out of the door because they think something else could be better.

When you’re in a rowboat, you don’t want to be constantly rowing (and never steering), nor constantly steering (and never rowing). But there’s also an in-between state that’s still a failure mode, where you’re trying to half-row and half-steer all at the same time. You’d be way better off by purely rowing for a bit, then purely steering for a bit, then back and forth again, but it causes anxiety to purely row without steering (“what if I’m rowing in the wrong direction!”), and it causes less forward progress to purely steer with no rowing (“I’m not even moving!”). So Alex’s solution is to set a policy that looks something like: “For the next minute, I’m going to row hard. After sixty seconds, I’ll turn around and steer. But for the next sixty seconds, I’m not even going to consider that I’m rowing in the wrong direction, because I’m in rowing mode, not steering mode.”

And importantly, having the knowledge that you’ll be correcting your course sixty seconds from now makes it so much less anxiety-inducing to purely row for sixty seconds straight.

I’ve used this in situations where it’s costly to be thinking about how best to do something while you’re in the process of doing it. A career is a great example of a rowboat: it’s draining to be constantly searching for opportunities while you have a job. It takes up cycles in the back of your brain, and it prevents you from committing hard in a way that has important and nonlinear effects.

Some more examples:

Jobs & careers. “Okay, I’ll take this position, and for the next four months, I’m going to work hard. After four months, I’ll take a step back and steer my career. But for the next four months, I’m not even going to consider that I’m careering in the wrong direction, because I’m in job-rowing mode, not job-steering mode.”
University majors. “Okay, I’ll say I’m a math major, and for this semester, I’m going to study hard. At the end of this semester, I’ll take a step back and steer my major. But until the end of the semester, I’m not even going to consider that I’m majoring in the wrong subject, because I’m in major-rowing mode, not major-steering mode.”
Workout routines. “Okay, I’m going to hit legs today, arms and shoulders tomorrow, chest and core the next day, then take a rest day. For the next month, I’m going to exercise hard using that routine. After a month, I’ll take a step back and steer. But for the next month, I’m not going to even consider that I’m doing splits non-optimally, because I’m in weightlift-rowing mode, not weightlift-steering mode.”
etc.

There’s a nearby cluster of advice that goes something like, “try stuff; do cheap tests; get your hands dirty; just start the damn thing.” I think that advice often has merit. But it’s different from the strategy I’m pointing at — the rowing vs steering model includes a sort of “try things”/“get started” attitude, but that’s not the beauty of it. That’s not the place where it shines.

See, it’s costly to be constantly questioning whether you should switch your job, or which major you should pick, or whether you should change your workout routine. Doing the consideration takes an insidiously large amount of energy that trades off against doing well on the actual thing — be it a job/class/workout/etc. This is a classic case of exploration vs exploitation, but one where doing both at once hurts your ability to do either very effectively.^[2]

The beauty of the strategy I’m talking about is that having a consistent policy to steer at some predefined point prevents you from getting anxious. Because you can row harder when you’re not questioning whether you’re rowing in the wrong direction — and you can stop questioning whether you’re rowing in the wrong direction by reminding yourself that you’re in rowing-mode, not steering-mode. That you’ve already thought about this, the last time you were steering, and that you can wait until the next time you’re in steering mode to steer. And that until then, you can rest easy and row hard.

There’s also the question of how long you should spend rowing and how long you should spend steering; and of how much time you should spend on that decision; and that one, too; and so on. The answers to these questions often change over time, change from situation to situation, and change unpredictably, nonlinearly, and with interacting emergent properties.

That sounds pretty complicated. Fortunately, it’s often easier done than said.

(I do think there’s a prerequisite of having a strong trust in your ability to honor commitments your past self has made to your current or future self. That’s not a topic of this essay, but if you’re not quite there yet, this is a concretely helpful post, and this was a good post on some more theoretical stuff about taking into account preferences of past selves.)

Some suggestions for how to put the rowing/steering model into practice:

Set specific, concrete conditions for switching modes. Switch after some predefined duration of time has passed, or after you’ve rowed for some predefined number of strokes. Row in your job for four months before steering, not until you’ve been “doing it for while.” Row in your math major for a semester, or for a week, or until you’ve taken three math classes, but don’t row in your major until you’ve “spent a lot of time on math.” Row in your workout until you’ve gone through ten cycles, or for three weeks, not until you “feel like you’ve gotten into the groove.” Define the conditions ahead of time that will trigger you to switch from one mode to another, and try to make those conditions as airtight as possible to avoid future ambiguity.
Make sure you’ll know when those conditions have been met. Set a reminder on your phone, put an event in your calendar, set a meeting with a friend, etc. When you hear yourself saying “it’s fine, I’ll remember” — it’s probably not fine, you probably won’t remember, and it’s generally useful to rely less on your memory or willpower for these sorts of things. Build and rely on systems that work even when you have bad memory and low willpower, because that’ll be true for a good chunk of your life.
Keep track. This ranges from “vaguely think about how things are going” to “meticulously track your progress in a spreadsheet,” depending on the subject and how much effort you want to put in. When you’re in rowing-mode, you’ll probably want to be gathering data to help you in your next steering mode, so figure out in advance what data you’ll need and how you’ll be gathering it.
Stay sane. Things sometimes work out way differently than you expected — this world has a habit of throwing you vicissitudes. So if you get hit by a car or win the lottery, you should probably still change course, even if you’re not in steering-mode.
Most importantly, actually use it. The rowing vs steering model doesn’t work super well if, when you actually get into a rowboat, your old habits kick in and you scramble to hold the map and steer while trying to row at the same time. Reading this essay won’t be enough, thinking about the mental model won’t be enough, hoping it works won’t be enough. The next time you find yourself in a rowboat, make sure to actually use the rowing/steering model.

“Deliberate Once” — Nate Soares
“On Reflection” and “Option Paralysis” — Neel Nanda
“My weekly review habit” — Ben Kuhn

Thanks to Chris Sims and Blake Dee for helpful conversations & feedback.

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A few notes on the quotes: (1) The quotes are slightly out of order — I’ve rearranged them to make a bit more sense, but I’m pretty confident that this still represents Alex’s views faithfully. You can listen to everything by starting at 1:35:58 and listening until about 1:50:00. (2) Alex Lawsen does not necessarily endorse anything in this essay. [EDIT: Alex Lawsen does, in fact, endorse this essay!]
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In other words, when the Pareto frontier is concave, picking the center options is suboptimal compared to jumping from extreme to extreme.