Justin's brain

There's a strange relationship between the effort you put into something and the outcome you get out of it.

You could invest thousands of hours in a project, only to get a tepid response to what you've made.

Read the blog post: "The effort-outcome asymmetry" 

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Justin Jackson
Co-founder of Transistor.fm

What is Justin's brain?

Hi, I'm Justin Jackson. Here, I'm sharing brief thoughts on building a better life, bootstrapping, improving society, growing older in tech, being a dad...

Justin Jackson:

I think everyone who's made something on the Internet has noticed this discrepancy between the amount of effort you put into making something and the outcome you get out of it. For example, you could put hours and hours into researching a blog post or a podcast episode or a YouTube video, spend tons of time making it, editing it, publishing it, only to find that you get this tepid response to this thing you've invested a lot of time in. But some days you just create something really quickly. You know, in five minutes you write an essay, click publish, and it just goes crazy. There's a huge response to it.

Justin Jackson:

There's this weird asymmetry between the amount of effort we put into making something and the outcomes we get from that thing. Here's a few examples I can think of off the top of my head. The podcast industry is experiencing this asymmetry right now. You know, following the release of the Crime Podcast Serial in 2014, podcast production companies started investing all sorts of money and time and people in producing these well researched, high fidelity narrative shows. But now ten years later, executives at these media companies have realized that they can invest in cheaper celebrity driven interview shows like Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend or Joe Rogan and earn significantly more ad revenue.

Justin Jackson:

So less effort upfront and bigger outcome in this case in terms of revenue. So it's not surprising that increasingly they're investing in these chat podcasts. It also works this way for college degrees and salaries. A business degree and a counseling degree both take about four years. But the starting salaries you get with both of those degrees are pretty different.

Justin Jackson:

$65,000 with the business degree, $38,000 with the counseling degree. Same input, four years, but asymmetric output. And if you're an entrepreneur, I think you're kind of betting on these asymmetric outcomes. You kind of always want your outcomes to be bigger than whatever effort you invested in the beginning. If you invest a dollar and only make a dollar back, you haven't made a profit.

Justin Jackson:

And the goal is to invest a dollar and get back five or 10 or 50. That's the whole nature of business. Anyone who's ever tried to start a company knows that regardless of the outcome, it's going to take a ton of time and money to get it off the ground. In fact, the same time and money invested in one idea could produce wildly better results if you just invested it in something else. Our job as builders is to be aware of this effort outcome disparity and act when our effort isn't producing the right results.

Justin Jackson:

So here's how I'm kind of thinking about it. When considering new ideas, I try to treat new ideas as bets. And I ask myself, how much is this bet going to cost me in terms of time and money and resources, mental load? What is a foreseeable outcome from this bet? And then how likely is that to happen?

Justin Jackson:

What would have to be true for this to happen? And these questions help me process whether it's worth investing the time. Once I grapple with, okay, how much work is this going to take? And what is the best case scenario in terms of an outcome and really is it worth the investment? That helps me make a decision.

Justin Jackson:

For example, a certain industry or market or category just might not be worth investing in right now. Might be too competitive. Might not be profitable enough. Margins might be really low. And when I'm evaluating my existing business, I try to reflect and regularly evaluate on these questions, which are: Where are we currently investing time and resources?

Justin Jackson:

Are those inputs producing proportional outputs? And if not, what other bets should we be considering? Opportunity costs, right? Like we can invest in this idea or this feature or this product, but by saying yes to that, we're saying no to something else. And that same unit of investment could produce way better results if we just invested it somewhere else.

Justin Jackson:

As someone who primarily builds software, I'm increasingly taking time to reflect on what we've invested in and what outcomes those investments have achieved. And sometimes you work really hard on a feature that doesn't get used or loses money. Other times you release stuff that helps you hold your ground against competitors but doesn't meaningfully change your trajectory. And what you're aiming for is that some of your efforts will produce asymmetrically better outcomes, that you'll invest in something and it will help you grow your business. I think the key here is we need to consider our bets carefully.

Justin Jackson:

Some will convert your inputs into high multiple outcomes. But we got to be wary of continually investing resources into paths that are unlikely to succeed. Your goal is to work on projects that compound your effort.