Execution pays your salary; innovation pays your pension.
— Steve Blank
Reflection
Yeah, I don’t know how much I have to add to this one. Though there’s a related Jim Rohn quote that I like:
“Work hard at your job and you can make a living. Work hard on yourself and you can make a fortune”
The overall gist of both of these is an insight that I wish I’d internalized sooner. “Just” doing your job, “just” execution is good. It’s necessary but it’s not sufficient – at least not for those who want a “rich” life (for whatever “rich” means for you)
Perhaps the other nuance taken from the Blank quote (and not the Rohn one) is an acknowledgement that we live in a dynamic world. Today’s execution is insufficient for tomorrow. One of the related key concepts that I know but don’t grok (gotta reclaim that word from Elon!) is that for most of human history (and therefore we have evolved for), our world(s) were local and change was linear. Today, our world is global and change is exponential.
This can be illustrated in how we think about money. An annual salary for any of us, well, that’s a good chunk of change. A million dollars, well, that’s a lot of money, and a billion, or a trillion dollars, well, they’re both a whole lot of money. But their expression as time helps drive home how really different they are! If you earned $1/second (24/7) then to earn this amount, it would take you…
$1 million --- About a fortnight (~11.5 days) (There are ~24 million millionaires in the US)
$1 billion --- About a "generation" or a "career span" (~31.7 years) (There are over 900 billionaires in the US)
$1 trillion --- Longer than the entire recorded history of humanity (31,700 years) (Musk and Zuckerberg aren't there yet, but are candidates to get there in the next 5-10 years)
The power of the exponent really shows up in compounding. I heard a ~30 minute speech from Charlie Munger that reinforced some of the insights from “The Psychology of Money” (which I also highly recommend) but that was really just “Don’t interrupt compounding”. Our brains are wired to “linear” but compounding is “exponential” – one of the positive exponentials available to us. It’s part of why I’ve harped on investing with my daughter. She has the advantage of time for that compounding to occur that I just won’t. (Assuming we don’t all die of global thermonuclear war, or other lesser disasters between now and then!)
Habits are another “compound” area. James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” talks about the difference between getting 1% better every day vs 1% worse. 1% worse, you wind up asymptotically approaching zero (of course). 1% better and by the end of 1 year, you’re 37x your starting point!