I love this post, because it helps cement a general idea floating around in my head: I’ve noticed most people spend an inordinate amount of time doing Level 2 optimizations of what to order at restaurants, rather than going to Level 1 and just ordering something tasty, or going to Level 3 and working out a good decision system for future orders.
Oddly specific, I suppose, but I’ve found it generalizes out well—smart people tend to get stuck doing Level 2 optimizations for minimal gains, and tend not to realize they’d be better off stepping up to a Level 3 optimization if they’re truly concerned about the gains.
Follow-up thought after reading the comments: I think a basic summary of the Level 1⁄2 concept is useful, as well as illustrating the failure modes, but you spent enough time on it that I’d assumed that was the main point.
Perhaps summarizing that a bit, and adding clear section headers to indicate a change in topic?
I almost missed the last four paragraphs because I was going “oooh, no, I totally already get this, because it’s similar to something I was thinking about.” Fortunately I’m compulsive about finishing articles, so I got the nice benefit of that last section as well :)
I love this post, because it helps cement a general idea floating around in my head: I’ve noticed most people spend an inordinate amount of time doing Level 2 optimizations of what to order at restaurants, rather than going to Level 1 and just ordering something tasty, or going to Level 3 and working out a good decision system for future orders.
Oddly specific, I suppose, but I’ve found it generalizes out well—smart people tend to get stuck doing Level 2 optimizations for minimal gains, and tend not to realize they’d be better off stepping up to a Level 3 optimization if they’re truly concerned about the gains.
Follow-up thought after reading the comments: I think a basic summary of the Level 1⁄2 concept is useful, as well as illustrating the failure modes, but you spent enough time on it that I’d assumed that was the main point.
Perhaps summarizing that a bit, and adding clear section headers to indicate a change in topic?
I almost missed the last four paragraphs because I was going “oooh, no, I totally already get this, because it’s similar to something I was thinking about.” Fortunately I’m compulsive about finishing articles, so I got the nice benefit of that last section as well :)