Barbell Strategy for Role Models
I came to know about Nassim Taleb’s Barbell Strategy in his famous book, The Black Swan. Taleb talks about that strategy from the financial investment perspective. The strategy is:
“Your strategy is to be as hyperconservative and hyperaggressive as you can be instead of being mildly aggressive or conservative.”Put your eggs in two baskets. One basket holds extremely safe investments, while the other holds nothing but leverage and speculation.
I want to apply this in all the areas in life. Like fitness (HIIT, Intermittent Fasting), learning (Anki, bootcamps).
But I want to use this barbell lens strategy lens to view something that is something personal. Role models. Human beings’ are bound to have lots of shades of grey, no one is great beyond criticism or no one is so bad beyond redemption.
Lets take a role model, Elon Musk. He is a swashbuckling, multi-tasking, bold and hugely inspiring entrepreneur pushing the limits of humanity. We can all have him as a standard to aspire for. But to believe everything that comes out of him mouth or cheering along with the fanboys will do no good for us. To really appreciate him, we need to know what a harsh critic about him has to say. The critic may also be not right. But we will get a sense that the truth is somewhere in between.
In Elon Musk’s case, one of the popular critics on his methods in Basecamp’s co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH). DHH is very vocal about Elon’s 80-hour work week or brandishing the existence of work-life balance. More than DHH, to intellectually validate or verify the claims of Elon’s moonshot efforts, we also need to listen an energy expert critic like Vaclav Smil. Smil talks very criticially of Elon’s efforts and dresses him down.
So whenever someone praises Elon effusively, its better to take it with a pinch of a salt, considering the views of DHH and Smil. At the same time, whenever someone is too harsh or ridiculously critical of Elon, again we need to take it with a pinch of salt. But we need to listen to both the extremes.