but actually diminishing returns means one more hour on the margin is much less valuable than the average implies
This importantly also goes in the other direction!
One dynamic I have noticed people often don’t understand is that in a competitive market (especially in winner-takes-all-like situations) the marginal returns to focusing more on a single thing can be sharply increasing, not only decreasing.
In early-stage startups, having two people work 60 hours is almost always much more valuable than having three people work 40 hours. The costs of growing a team are very large, the costs of coordination go up very quickly, and so if you are at the core of an organization, whether you work 40 hours or 60 hours is the difference between being net-positive vs. being net-negative.
This is importantly quite orthogonal whether you should rest or have fun or whatever. While there might be at an aggregate level increasing marginal returns to more focus, it is also the case that in such leadership positions, the most important hours are much much more productive than the median hour, and so figuring out ways to get more of the most important hours (which often rely on peak cognitive performance and a non-conflicted motivational system) is even more leveraged than adding the marginal hour (but I think it’s important to recognize both effects).
agree it goes in both directions. time when you hold critical context is worth more than time when you don’t. it’s probably at least sometimes a good strategy to alternate between working much more than sustainable and then recovering.
my main point is this is a very different style of reasoning than what people usually do when they talk about how much their time is worth.
It seems that your point applies significantly more to “zero-sum markets”.
So it may be good to notice it may not apply for altruistic people when non-instrumentally working on AI safety.
This importantly also goes in the other direction!
One dynamic I have noticed people often don’t understand is that in a competitive market (especially in winner-takes-all-like situations) the marginal returns to focusing more on a single thing can be sharply increasing, not only decreasing.
In early-stage startups, having two people work 60 hours is almost always much more valuable than having three people work 40 hours. The costs of growing a team are very large, the costs of coordination go up very quickly, and so if you are at the core of an organization, whether you work 40 hours or 60 hours is the difference between being net-positive vs. being net-negative.
This is importantly quite orthogonal whether you should rest or have fun or whatever. While there might be at an aggregate level increasing marginal returns to more focus, it is also the case that in such leadership positions, the most important hours are much much more productive than the median hour, and so figuring out ways to get more of the most important hours (which often rely on peak cognitive performance and a non-conflicted motivational system) is even more leveraged than adding the marginal hour (but I think it’s important to recognize both effects).
agree it goes in both directions. time when you hold critical context is worth more than time when you don’t. it’s probably at least sometimes a good strategy to alternate between working much more than sustainable and then recovering.
my main point is this is a very different style of reasoning than what people usually do when they talk about how much their time is worth.
It seems that your point applies significantly more to “zero-sum markets”. So it may be good to notice it may not apply for altruistic people when non-instrumentally working on AI safety.