Also known as unbounded success with limited downside.
Something that takes an hour, but impacts you for life. Unbounded upside, capped downside.
E.g. Typing. It takes around 4 hours to double your typing speed, for free. 4 hours for dividends for the rest of your career. (More productivity for 90,000 hours.)
The classic comeback to this: “Voice to text exists”, or “Typing isn’t really that big of a game changer.”
You’re trading 4 hours for optionality. The typing skills may never come in handy, but your downside has a maximum cap of 4 hours. (Unlimited upside.)
What other time trades do you have a limited downside on, but potentially massive return? A good book takes years to write, but can be consumed in a matter of hours. Someone already collected all of the experts, condensed their views, and presented them to you in a short format.
I'm trying to see this in more areas, so here are some examples:
- Buying $100 in Put options on SPY. Will likely expire worthless, but have a 1000x potential return. This is a hedge against my main portfolio.
Update in 2022 - This is highlighted in Taleb’s
Drafts:
Creation time ≠Consumption time.
What if I hunt for content that takes the maximum amount of time to create, but minimum amount of time to consume? Probably results in watching rich/well producted Tik-Toks.