Streams

I've spent 1-2 thousand hours playing and practicing ping pong. As a result, I'm better than the average person (though not overpowering). One of the things I've noticed about poor players is they take the point total for what it is at this exact moment. It's not unusual for an average ping pong player to be up by 3 or 4 points midway through a match and - I swear - without fail you see them get excited. Breathing speeds up. Muscles tighten. Shots are a little harder. They're winning.

These people are experiencing a spike.

On the other hand, my game doesn't change just because the score is 7-11 and I'm down. Serves are the same and shots hold their pace and breathing stays regular. Why? Because my game is a stream. I know I have more ping pong experience and better fundamentals, so I trust my game more than I trust the score. Spikes happen all the time in both directions. But streams win games.

But I wasn't always good. When I was a child, my father and I would grab paddles and head to the garage. Every game I played for two years was a loss. 21-14, 21-18, 21-8, 21-9, 21-16...for years. He would never ever ever let me win. Never. I know, because I never did.

Until one day.

Like usual, we were playing a tight match and suddenly the game turned my way. 23-21, I won in overtime. I'll never forget walking across the garage to shake his hand, look him in the eye and hear: "congratulations, good game."

Well, I kept practicing (college was fun) and now I rarely lose.

The truth about streams lies at the heart of most important things in life. I call it direction. and you know what? When things are good, I think smart people know about direction. The real problems are when you are practicing anything and keep losing. For me, right now, that's customer development. I'm scared to death to call a potential customer. Even though I know it's ok when they say no. Those calls are practice and with enough training and practice I can "win". But the idea still makes me shiver.

Direction matters more than the score.

I think of spikes as ways to sustain streams. They're also the quick route to making bad decisions. It's encouraging to see your investments jump in value every now and then, but if you sell a stock that's doing badly when you could have waited until it bounced back, you're making a bad decision. Another instance: you're steadily learning machine learning, and the motivation starts to drop; you post your little project on HN, and it makes the front page for a day; you suddenly feel better about learning it. In this case, the spike is a sneak peek into the future: you'll have a decent following if you really push yourself to learn.

Steam — What it takes to get a project done

Team — The people who help drive the project

Tea — Brain fuel!