I often ask myself the question “does this matter?”
I ask this question when considering different factors while finding a city or apartment to move to, whether or not a feature is important for a new product, and how different athletes affect the outcomes of a professional sports team. Really, you can ask this question when considering the characteristics you assess in any decision or action. More often than not, almost everything matters, and the easy way of figuring this out is to think about the extreme ends of the spectrum for whatever facet, component, or quality you are assessing. The hard part is figuring out how much something matters (and would require more than a lifetime to properly asses for every situation).
As the first of a few examples we can look at the running back position in football. In modern football, you sometimes hear that the “running back position doesn’t matter” in that if you have a strong quarter back and offensive line, then it doesn’t matter who the running back is– they will be great. I would suggest that it does matter, and thinking about me (6’0, 165 lbs of mostly bones) vs. Barry Sanders (5’8″, 200+ lbs of muscle) playing in the backfield, it becomes pretty clear that in some form, who your running back is effects the outcomes of plays and games.
Or, we can think about how commute time would affect willingness to live in different areas around a city. In general, you might think that as long as a commute is under 15 minutes, you’re OK with living any distance from your office. But thinking again to opposite ends of the travel spectrum, your personal happiness would definitely be different if your commute was a 2-minute walk or a 15 minute subway ride with two transfers through big stations during rush hour.
Finally, looking at product design, you might find yourself considering, in general, how much time to invest in the aesthetics or form of a product. (as a side note, this isn’t something you can tack on at the end of a product design cycle) Especially in industrial settings where products get abused by the environment and the users, I think there is sometimes an inclination to discount the importance of how a product looks. Thinking again in terms of extremes, I would guess that there might be a difference in sales for the same front loader coated in a bright pink paint that chips really easily vs. a Caterpillar yellow that fades elegantly over time and blends in with blemishes well.
Thinking in extremes is an incredibly helpful tool for informing every-day decisions, but as the title implies thinking in extremes is the easy part. The more difficult part is figuring out what the curve between both ends of the spectrum actually looks like. In some cases, the ability to do this might increase your personal happiness by an indiscernible amount, and in other cases the ability to actually draw that curve would flip billion-dollar industries on their heads. Without diving into the aforementioned lifetime of analysis, I think there are a few types of curves between the extremes worth considering for any given situation:
Within each of these curves (linear, log, power, step function) are different orders of magnitude and longitudinal scales that need understanding to see the full picture (or maybe multiple steps in the step function!). And you will notice that there are certain scenarios where different points along the spectrum are nearly indiscernible in their effect. However, in each instance it is still easy to see that the characteristic does matter at the extremes of the spectrum, so it might matter throughout the middle as well. But for the sake of brevity, I will leave that type of analysis up to the readers.*
*And for the sake of avoiding analysis paralysis for the next decade investigating the economic impact of something as seemingly simple as the color of a front loader
Recess 015