30 min
The Eight Most Impactful Concepts That Changed My Life (And 30 Other Important Ideas) Lucky Maverick: The Art and Science of Betting on Yourself
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- Entrepreneurship
About Lucky Maverick
About Jonathan Bales
At one point in my life, I thought that in Pizza Hut’s “Makin’ it great” ad campaign, they were actually saying “Brickin’ a brick.”
I mean I was a toddler, but still. Brickin’ a brick. I believed this for years, even when I was old enough to logically understand “brickin’ a brick” doesn’t make any f*****g sense.
I always thought it would be funny if a big company ran a huge ad campaign with a slogan that was totally meaningless just to see how it would perform. That’s what I’d do if I were in charge. “McDonald’s: Ready for the lightning?” Then we’d spend millions of dollars on it, maybe changing the classic ‘M’ logo to add in lightning bolts, and then I’d get fired.
It didn’t matter that I believed Pizza Hut’s slogan was “Brickin’ a brick.” I got by. Even if I believed it today, it probably wouldn’t change much for me. It’s okay to have beliefs that are wrong. Most thoughts—and even actions—don’t matter.
The majority of what you think you know is probably wrong, and most of what’s right doesn’t mean s**t anyway. Sometimes, though, you come across an idea that’s truly impactful to your life. It might still be wrong, but at least it’s useful for you, which is better than being wrong and useless I suppose.
I think the value of knowledge probably grows exponentially such that most of it is basically worthless but a small percentage is overwhelmingly valuable. This has been my experience, anyway, as a few basic ideas capable of shifting my worldview have been more valuable than everything else I know combined, so I’ve tried to prioritize finding this rare knowledge that actually makes a difference, blocking out almost everything in search of the truly scarce stuff.
With that said, I thought it might be cool to talk about the most impactful ideas that have changed my life thus far. The main criteria I used for selecting these is that each idea is something with which I at some point either disagreed or didn’t even really comprehend. It’s really important to get adequate sleep, but everyone knows that. These are all ideas that at some point I didn’t grasp, but ones that made profound impacts to my life once I did.
The Big Concepts
Convexity
Errors, randomness, and “the unexpected” should help you, not harm you.
If you’ve read my articles for more than 10 minutes, you probably know I’ve learned so much from Nassim Nicholas Taleb. From black swans to antifragility to being a giant dick to anyone who disagrees with you on Twitter, I’d say I owe more of my success to Taleb than anyone else I’ve read, even if he’s a total dick on Twitter.
The main idea that’s changed my worldview is convexity, and specifically the concept of acquiring more benefits than harm from chaotic events. Whereas most people focus on improving prediction accuracy—and sometimes in areas in which that’s nearly impossible—few properly focus on the payoffs, which are more easily controllable and offer a larger usable edge in terms of competition.
I applied this to DFS by focusing on ownership and lineup composition instead of projection accuracy. That is, maybe this player or team that everyone thinks will do well actually will, but maybe they won’t, and if they don’t, how can I benefit to the greatest degree?
One way to apply convexity to your life is to mimic evolution:
* Don’t suppress chaos.
Natural selection is what Taleb would term “antifragile”—the opposite of fragile—because not only is it not harmed by chaos, it benefits from it. A species can change for the better fairly quickly in evolutionary terms from a single random genetic mutation.
Even natural disasters are positives for most species as a whole, assuming they’re not entirely killed off, because they end up coming back stronger and more prepared than before. Humans, too, are hopefully more prepared for the next pandemic; COVID has been devas
About Lucky Maverick
About Jonathan Bales
At one point in my life, I thought that in Pizza Hut’s “Makin’ it great” ad campaign, they were actually saying “Brickin’ a brick.”
I mean I was a toddler, but still. Brickin’ a brick. I believed this for years, even when I was old enough to logically understand “brickin’ a brick” doesn’t make any f*****g sense.
I always thought it would be funny if a big company ran a huge ad campaign with a slogan that was totally meaningless just to see how it would perform. That’s what I’d do if I were in charge. “McDonald’s: Ready for the lightning?” Then we’d spend millions of dollars on it, maybe changing the classic ‘M’ logo to add in lightning bolts, and then I’d get fired.
It didn’t matter that I believed Pizza Hut’s slogan was “Brickin’ a brick.” I got by. Even if I believed it today, it probably wouldn’t change much for me. It’s okay to have beliefs that are wrong. Most thoughts—and even actions—don’t matter.
The majority of what you think you know is probably wrong, and most of what’s right doesn’t mean s**t anyway. Sometimes, though, you come across an idea that’s truly impactful to your life. It might still be wrong, but at least it’s useful for you, which is better than being wrong and useless I suppose.
I think the value of knowledge probably grows exponentially such that most of it is basically worthless but a small percentage is overwhelmingly valuable. This has been my experience, anyway, as a few basic ideas capable of shifting my worldview have been more valuable than everything else I know combined, so I’ve tried to prioritize finding this rare knowledge that actually makes a difference, blocking out almost everything in search of the truly scarce stuff.
With that said, I thought it might be cool to talk about the most impactful ideas that have changed my life thus far. The main criteria I used for selecting these is that each idea is something with which I at some point either disagreed or didn’t even really comprehend. It’s really important to get adequate sleep, but everyone knows that. These are all ideas that at some point I didn’t grasp, but ones that made profound impacts to my life once I did.
The Big Concepts
Convexity
Errors, randomness, and “the unexpected” should help you, not harm you.
If you’ve read my articles for more than 10 minutes, you probably know I’ve learned so much from Nassim Nicholas Taleb. From black swans to antifragility to being a giant dick to anyone who disagrees with you on Twitter, I’d say I owe more of my success to Taleb than anyone else I’ve read, even if he’s a total dick on Twitter.
The main idea that’s changed my worldview is convexity, and specifically the concept of acquiring more benefits than harm from chaotic events. Whereas most people focus on improving prediction accuracy—and sometimes in areas in which that’s nearly impossible—few properly focus on the payoffs, which are more easily controllable and offer a larger usable edge in terms of competition.
I applied this to DFS by focusing on ownership and lineup composition instead of projection accuracy. That is, maybe this player or team that everyone thinks will do well actually will, but maybe they won’t, and if they don’t, how can I benefit to the greatest degree?
One way to apply convexity to your life is to mimic evolution:
* Don’t suppress chaos.
Natural selection is what Taleb would term “antifragile”—the opposite of fragile—because not only is it not harmed by chaos, it benefits from it. A species can change for the better fairly quickly in evolutionary terms from a single random genetic mutation.
Even natural disasters are positives for most species as a whole, assuming they’re not entirely killed off, because they end up coming back stronger and more prepared than before. Humans, too, are hopefully more prepared for the next pandemic; COVID has been devas
30 min