Thread by @nickcammarata

The gym at 3pm is a different world than 7pm. People aren’t just healthier and stronger, their behavior is qualitatively completely different

Like this wonderful paper showing how swimmers between competition brackets are very qualitatively different

academics.hamilton.edu/documents/them…

In a lot of sports / research / etc people think getting better is a matter of quantitatively improving on a long continuous scale, but I actually think it’s often better to think of it as discrete bins of qualitative behavior and techniques. Are you a 3pm or 7pm gymgoer?

It’s more obvious in certain fields. For instance, no amount of running a typical small business well will turn it into a hypergrowth startup. Startups are qualitatively different, with different techniques (eg cap tables, raising big money) and personality types that thrive

I’ve also seen this with meditation. There’s casual meditators who do it 15 minutes a day and the ones who are aiming for 60 day vipassana retreat. They both start as beginners but they take very different approaches, which is right because they’re qualitatively different tracks

For instance, the extremely fit guy five feet to my left is doing a bicep curl so hard he looks like he’s about to fall over and die. No one pushes that hard at 7pm, no matter their fitness level

There’s only one overweight guy here, who’s probably 35lbs over ideal and not very strong, but his behavior is qualitatively the same as all the other dudes

I’d bet a lot of money if I come back here in a year he’ll be very fit

Should I find a way to communicate how I think he’s doing an outlier good job to him if the timing is ever convenient? Is that overall kind?

You should actually checkout the paper though it’s really good!

(I think I found it via @michael_nielsen several years ago)

https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1402721447345373187

https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1402724620101373955