A Little Bit of Slope Makes Up For a Lot of Y-Intercept

The strawberries taste like strawberries. The snozberries taste like snozberries. This is the Music Makers podcast where I read things out loud to you and then offer my unqualified opinions on them. A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of Y intercept. From a lecture by Professor John Ousterhout.

Here's today's thought for the weekend. A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y intercept. So at a mathematical level, this is an obvious truism. You know if you have 2 lines, the red line and the blue line, and the red line has a lower y intercept but a greater slope, then, eventually, the red line will cross the blue line. And if the y axis is something good, depending on your definition of something good, then I think most people would pick the red trajectory over the blue trajectory, unless you think you're going to die before you get to the crossing point.

So in a mathematical sense, it's kind of obvious, but I don't really mean in a mathematical sense. I I think this is a pretty good guideline for life also. What I mean is that how fast you learn is a lot more important than how much you know to begin with. So in general, I say that people emphasize too much how much they know and not how fast they're learning. That's good news for all of you people because you're in Stanford, and that means you learn really, really fast.

This is a great advantage for you. Now let me give you some examples. The first example is you shouldn't be afraid to try new things even if you are completely clueless about the area you're going into. No need to be afraid about that. As long as you learn fast, you'll catch up, and you'll be fine.

For example, I often hear conversations the 1st week of class where somebody will be bemoaning, oh, so and so knows blah blah blah. How am I ever gonna catch up with them? Well, if you're one of those people who knows blah blah blah, it's bad news for you because, honestly, everyone is going to catch up really quickly. Before you know it, that advantage is going to be gone. And if you aren't learning too, you're going to be behind.

Another example is that a lot of people get stuck in ruts in their lives. They realize they're in the wrong job for them, and they're afraid to go off and try something new. People will be afraid to try something new because they'll be worried they'll look bad or will make a lot of rookie mistakes. But I say, just go do it and focus on learning. Another example is hiring.

Before I came back to academia a couple of years ago, I was out doing start ups. What I noticed is that when people hire, they almost always hire based on experience. They're looking at somebody's resume trying to find the person who has already done the job they want them to do 3 times over. They're basically hiring on the y intercept. Personally, I don't think that's a very good way to hire.

The people who are going to do the same thing over and over again often get burnt out, and, typically, the reason they're doing the same thing over and over again is they've maxed out. They can't do anything more than that. And in fact, typically, what happens when you level off is you level off slightly above your level of competence. So in fact, you're not actually doing the current job all that well. So what I would always hire based on was aptitude, not on experience.

You know, is this person ready to do the job? They may have never done it before and have no experience in this area, but are they a smart person who can figure things out? Are they a quick learner? And I found that's a much better way to get really effective people. So I think this is a really interesting concept you can apply in a lot of different ways.

And the key thing here is that I think slow and steady is great. You don't have to do anything heroic. You know the difference in slopes doesn't have to be that great if you can just every day think about learning a little bit more and getting a little bit better. Lots of small steps. It is amazing how quickly you can catch up and become a real expert in the field.

I often ask myself, have I learned one new thing today? Now you guys are younger and, you know, your slope is a little bit higher than mine, and so you can learn 2 or 3 or 4 new things a day. But if you just think about your slope and don't worry about where you start out, you'll end up someplace nice. I love it when you can take a concept from one discipline and apply it to a completely unrelated discipline, like this Stanford professor does with the slope and the y intercept. He takes this well known mathematical concept that over time, a line with a greater slope but a lower y intercept will overtake the line with the greater y intercept but a smaller slope.

That's pretty well known. I think we all learned that back in algebra. But he takes this concept out of a boring math textbook and brings it and applies it directly to your life, saying there may be somebody who knows more things than you. There may be somebody who is better at certain things than you. But if you can learn faster, then, eventually, you'll win.

Eventually, you will know the most. He says, you can start out with a y intercept of 0. You can start out in a brand new field, not knowing anything. Just as long as you're consistently learning, because then you have a great enough slope that over some fixed amount of time, you'll catch up. In the build up to the Beijing Olympics, there was a guy called Dave Brailsford, and he was the performance director of the British cycling team.

And he had this idea. He had this principle called the aggregate of marginal gains. And his whole thing was, if we can aggregate very small gains, then it will add up to be a huge advantage. And by very small gains, I mean 1% gains. This guy looked for 1% gains in every area of cycling.

The weight of the tires, the ergonomics of the seat, the nutrition. They even did crazy stuff like figure out what pillow was most optimal for sleeping. The cyclists now travel with their own pillows and their own mattresses because that was a 1% gain. They found if they can sleep a little bit better, they perform a little bit better. And in the 2012 Olympic Games, they won 70% of the gold medals available.

The reason I like this philosophy of the aggregate of marginal gains or a little bit of slope versus a lot of y intercept is because it's not sexy. It requires working a little bit every day, getting a little bit better every day. It's not some heroic moment in time, feet of strength kind of thing. It's showing up every day, dedicated to getting a little bit better. And over time, you aggregate all those small little gains and you realize, man, I've got something big on my hands here.

It also releases you from that pressure that you put on yourself of, oh, I have to be really, really good at this thing. No. You don't. You don't have to have a huge y intercept. You don't have to be super good at whatever it is you're trying to do.

Your slope just has to be upward, and that's so much easier to control. It's really hard to control being the best. It's really easy to control the rate at which you learn. Pick up an extra book. Read an extra article.

Practice a little bit more. That stuff is so much easier to control than just having to be the best. How do you even do that? Well, the good news is you don't have to worry about it. You just gotta get 1% better.

Focus on getting 1% better. And then once you're 1% better, focus on getting 1% better. That doesn't sound too intimidating. Right? How can you get 1% better today?

And once you do that, how can you get 1% better? The Musicmakers podcast is released twice weekly on Mondays Thursdays at 10 AM CST. Here's a sneak peek from the next episode. The finite, irreplaceable hours of your life. The same metric can and should be applied to all activities.

Is the experience worth the irreplaceable hours of your life? You can subscribe in iTunes by searching for The Music Makers, or visit us online by going to musicmakers.fm. And as always, you can reach me at aaron@musicmakers.fm.