Performance mantras
Most advice on performance will only help you to get better incrementally. Here are some mantras I think are undervalued for true breakthroughs 🧘.
Linear
performance
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There are three ways to go faster linearly: doing less in the same time, doing the same in less time, or splitting the work across people. Therefore, the obvious ways to increase performance are:
- doing fewer things
- doing each thing faster
- splitting the thing across workers
Think of a cashier. They can scan faster, or, seeing the same item six times, scan it once and key in a quantity of six. Cashier scans faster = increased performance through doing the thing faster. Cashier scans one item and enters quantity six = doing less work.
Now think of a classic team setting. If you are collaborating, do the blocking part first and send it out. They can work on their part while you work on something else. You split the work.
Mantras:
- do less
- do it faster
- do it in parallel
Phase transition
performance
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The best way I can describe phase transition is “you become so good you gain a new capability”. Doing the thing so well that it opens up completely new levels of performance. This is my favorite zone, if you are super skilled you can get away with so MUCH.
As a personal example, I trust myself to come up with interesting talking and teaching points in real time, so I can prepare little for lectures I give, cutting my preparation time non-linearly. But my favorite example comes from sports: when an offensive player in football is devilishly fast, they gain the capability of outrunning the defense. Once that threshold is passed and that capability is gained, the player scores much more.
There’s also a slightly more system-y example. As alluded to in my bureaucracy post, there’s a narrow time window where you can act upon unbureaucratized, so if you are fast, you don’t have to go through bullshit process.
In network science you would call this passing of the threshold a phase transition, hence the name.
Mantras:
- do it so well it feels unfair
- do it at the exact right time
Exponential
performance
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| ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣀⣀⣀
| ⠀⠀⠀⠰⡿⠿⠛⠛⠻⠿⣷
| ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⣀⣄⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣀⣀⣤⣄⣀⡀
| ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⢸⣿⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠛⠛⣿⣿⣿⡛⠿⠷
| ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠘⠿⠿⠋⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⠇
| ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠉⠁
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| ⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⣷⣄⠀⢶⣶⣷⣶⣶⣤⣀
| ⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠙⠻⠗
| ⠀⠀ ⠀⣰⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣀⣠⣤⣴⣶⡄
| ⠀⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣥⣶⣶⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠿⠛⠃
| ⢰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄
| ⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡁
| ⠈⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠁
| ⠀ ⠀⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠟
| ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠉⠉⠉
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Here the diagrams break down, because you stop asking how to solve the problem faster. It’s trivial to graph exponential curves, but they’d miss the point. You get exponential gains by changing the thing instead of trying to speed up things. Question the problem at hand, why this thing is in this shape, and why this work needs to happen at all, and if it shouldn’t all be scratched and rethought.
Hard to talk about it, but psychologically you can achieve this by raising your ambition, using different time and task management systems, and being willing to throw away old things/thoughts of yours. Be meta-rational: work on different problems, delegate the rest, and get comfortable not doing things.
My exponential gain was quitting video games and that is the boring half of the story. The real move was the leftover energy: I pointed the same restless, nervous, slightly deranged ADHD engine at talking to AIs (plural) all day instead (with the explicit goal of producing an artifact at the end of the day, every day). Same horsepower, new direction.
Mantra:
- do something else