Visakan Veerasamy

One of the biggest tells that someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about: glossing over addressing resource constraints, or saying things that imply infinite resources. Effectively everything is resource-constrained, &amp; seasoned practitioners are especially sensitive to this 

The inverse is also remarkably true: telling stories about dealing with resource constraints often quickly reveals that a practitioner really knows what they’re talking about.

(See also: incentive structures, social norms, common mistakes &amp; misconceptions, prices...) 

Excited newbie: let’s do all the things!!

Grizzled veteran: we have limited time, energy, morale, goodwill. Keeping this in mind, let’s pick one demonstrably good thing we’re confident we can achieve, and get it done decisively so we unlock more resources to do more things 

In a single visual: https://x.com/visakanv/status/998406389440512000?s=21

In another: https://x.com/visakanv/status/536346231472013312?s=21

A concept that I really liked from my army days is “order of neglect”. Ie, if you don’t have enough resources to sustain your full operation, what’s the first thing you drop? Second? Third? All the way to the most critical thing. Really clarifies your priorities and purpose 

Another useful tool is the concept of bottlenecks. If you’re trying to do more of something, or do it better, the most important thing to do is often (always?) to figure out the tightest bottleneck, and loosen it https://x.com/visakanv/status/1013798990259744770?s=21

fantastic example of a thread by an industry veteran who clearly knows what he’s talking about. Look for constraints, look for creeping hidden costs, look for trade-offs https://x.com/tacertain/status/1166039929354240002?s=21

Great setup. Good teachers, like magicians, are storytellers, and they know how to work artfully with the audience’s expectations and assumptions https://x.com/patio11/status/1169796250335473666?s=21

ask other people about the constraints they’re operating under https://x.com/sehurlburt/status/1179874600454217728?s=21

effort shock https://x.com/vgr/status/1289589843874312192

how to tell a guy has never planted a tomato

how to tell a lady had never sold a cookie

14. constraints in growing construction biz 

notice right from the start they’re like “toss what’s not helpful”. then “don’t assume”, “you can’t X until Y” – lots of little markers of “experienced practitioner”

17. comms https://x.com/danluu/status/1487228574608211969

22. https://x.com/TibetanBasket/status/1809702396861571434

the big lesson of survivor bias is that you should optimize for being a survivor

this sounds like a smartass tweet but I'm totally serious

you can't win if you lose

so learn to not lose

most major failure conditions are avoidable with a little bit of foresight, planning, study, etc etc. just analyze failures and don't do/be that

most businesses fail because IME most (more than half of) businesses are started by people who don't do any due diligence, ie using your life savings to start a restaurant without ever having worked in one, or even read about the specifics of the struggles involved

most marriages similarly end in divorce because

https://x.com/visakanv/status/1264769715022385152

failures are inevitable, but the trick is that you can fail early or fail late. isolate your failures as early as possible. do 100 pitches. you likely won't even get that far

https://x.com/visakanv/status/1292791606064500736

try to fail (intelligently) as much as possible, as cheaply as possible, as early as possible. you learn what's right by eliminating everything that's wrong. generally can do that a lot faster and a lot cheaper than people seem to assume

https://x.com/visakanv/status/1113154447050334208

then when you win, after decades of putting in the work, and more importantly, avoiding the big open pits in the ground that everyone around you keeps falling into, they'll say– well, it's survivor bias. 😅

https://x.com/visakanv/status/1294913735614590976

https://x.com/visakanv/status/1272794864413839361

big part of all of this is solving for distribution 

http://visakanv.com/blog/solve-for-distribution/

buffett talking about once-in-a-century cautionary news stories he’d put up on the walls to remind himself to optimize for survival

“everything happens if you stay alive” - al pacino 