Creativity & Work

Part of attention stays with an unfinished task after switching, degrading the next one.

Sophie Leroy's 2009 experiments found that people switching tasks under time pressure carried measurable residue into the next task. It is the reason a calendar with six thirty-minute meetings yields less than three hours of work.

In practice

• A developer interrupted for a five-minute question loses the next twenty getting back to where they were.
• A parent who checks work email during a bedtime story is present for neither.

Attributed to

Sophie Leroy

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Stress, burnout and engagement transmit between people who work or live closely, so states are not individually contained.

Studies of couples and of work teams find partner and colleague strain predicting an individual's own strain after controlling for shared conditions. Proposed routes include empathy, direct transmission through interaction, and shared stressors that are hard to rule out. The practical implication is that burnout in a team is not a sum of individual cases.

In practice

• A team where one member is exhausted becomes an exhausted team within a quarter.
• A manager under pressure produces reports under pressure, without any of the pressure being transferred deliberately.

Attributed to

Arnold Bakker, Mina Westman and colleagues

Also called

Interpersonal transmission of strain

Standing

Distinct from spillover, which is transmission between domains within one person; crossover is between people.

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A known solution that works blocks the search for a better one.

Luchins's 1942 water-jar experiments: subjects taught a three-step solution kept using it on problems solvable in one step, and some declared the simple problems impossible.

In practice

• A team that solved a data problem with a nightly batch job builds four more batch jobs, and never considers streaming.
• A doctor who has diagnosed the same presentation correctly forty times misses the forty-first, which presents identically and is not.

Attributed to

Abraham Luchins

Also called

Mental set

Further reading

Wikipedia

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Familiarity with an object's usual purpose blocks seeing an unusual use for it.

Duncker's 1945 candle problem: given a candle, a box of tacks and matches, few think to empty the box and use it as a shelf. Presenting the tacks outside the box roughly doubles the solve rate.

In practice

• A team with a fault in a bolted assembly does not think to use the bracket as a spacer, because it is a bracket.
• A household with a broken lamp buys a new one rather than use the working bulb elsewhere, because the bulb belongs to the lamp.

Attributed to

Karl Duncker

Further reading

Wikipedia

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Elite performance is claimed to require roughly 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.

Gladwell's 2008 popularisation of Ericsson's research. Ericsson rejected the reading publicly: the number was an average, no threshold exists, and the quality of practice is what his data measured.

In practice

• Ericsson's own objection is the useful one: the number was an average across a small sample, and the quality of the practice was what his data measured.
• A pianist who has played for 12,000 hours without a teacher, a recording or a hard passage is not where the number implies.

Attributed to

Malcolm Gladwell, from Ericsson's research

Also called

The ten-year rule

Possible explanations

The explanation offered is that expertise requires an accumulated quantity of practice, with the figure standing as the threshold. Ericsson's own account made quality, feedback and difficulty the operative variables rather than the total.

In its favour

It drew wide attention to practice rather than talent, and the underlying research on structured practice is sound.

Against it

Ericsson rejected the fixed-hours reading publicly: the number was an average from one study of violinists, the range within that group was wide, and no threshold is supported.

Standing

Ericsson rejected the fixed-hours reading; no threshold is supported.

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Specific and difficult goals produce higher performance than vague encouragement, provided the person is committed and the task is reasonably understood.

Locke and Latham's programme found a consistent linear relationship between goal difficulty and performance up to the limit of ability, with specific goals beating do-your-best instructions. The boundary conditions matter as much as the effect: goals work on tasks already understood, and on complex or novel tasks a difficult goal can reduce performance.

In practice

• A target of a specific number by a specific date outperforms an instruction to improve, and delivers exactly that number and nothing else.
• A team given a stretch goal on unfamiliar work performs worse than one told to work out how it should be done.

Attributed to

Edwin Locke & Gary Latham

Also called

Specific and difficult goals

Possible explanations

The explanation is direction and effort: a specific, difficult goal tells a person what counts as progress and how hard to push, which vague encouragement cannot.

In its favour

It is among the better-supported findings in organisational psychology, with a consistent relationship between goal difficulty and performance up to the limit of ability, across hundreds of studies.

Against it

The documented downside is that goals narrow attention, crowd out unmeasured work and invite gaming, which is the same failure Goodhart's law describes, and the effect weakens for complex tasks where the route is unknown.

Standing

Among the better-supported findings in organisational psychology, and with a documented downside: goals narrow attention, crowd out unmeasured aspects of the job, and can license unethical shortcuts.

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Setting a problem aside improves later solution rates, especially for problems needing restructuring.

Poincaré described a solution arriving as he boarded a bus, after weeks of fruitless work. The effect is real but modest, and works mainly on problems that need restructuring rather than more effort.

In practice

• An engineer stuck on a fault solves it on the walk to the station having stopped thinking about it.
• A writer who cannot fix a chapter fixes it on Monday after leaving it Friday, without new information.

Attributed to

Creativity research; Henri Poincaré

Further reading

Wikipedia

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Death from cardiovascular collapse or suicide attributable to sustained overwork, recognised in law as compensable.

Named in Japanese occupational medicine in the late 1970s and later recognised for compensation purposes, with claims assessed against thresholds of overtime hours in the months before death. The category is unusual in making an association between working hours and mortality administratively actionable rather than merely studied.

In practice

• A firm that counts overtime only above a threshold does not see the hours that would have triggered the review.
• A bereaved family's compensation claim turns on timesheets the employer had every incentive not to keep.

Attributed to

Japanese occupational medicine and labour law

Also called

Death from overwork

Further reading

Wikipedia

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A less capable member of a group works harder when performance is conjunctive and the partner is moderately stronger, reversing the usual loss from working together.

Köhler found in 1926 that Berlin rowing club members lifting a weight in pairs persisted longer than their individual performance predicted, provided the discrepancy between partners was moderate. Too small and there is no reason to strive; too large and the weaker member gives up. It is the mirror image of social loafing and depends on the weaker member's effort being indispensable and visible.

In practice

• A pair programming session where one is somewhat stronger raises the weaker partner's output above their solo rate.
• A relay team's slowest runner produces a personal best, and the same runner in a time trial does not.

Attributed to

Otto Köhler; revived by Norbert Kerr & Guido Hertel

Also called

The weak-link effect

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The number of authors producing n papers falls off roughly as one over n squared in the datasets Lotka analysed.

Lotka's 1926 finding from chemistry and physics abstracts, in which a large share of authors published exactly one paper. Later bibliometric studies often find heavy concentration but not the exact inverse-square form.

In practice

• A large share of researchers publish exactly one paper, which is why productivity distributions look nothing like a bell curve.
• A company's patent portfolio is mostly the work of a handful of engineers, and the concentration recurs even where the exact distribution does not.

Attributed to

Alfred J. Lotka

Possible explanations

The explanation is cumulative advantage: publishing raises the chance of publishing again, through skill, reputation and access to resources, which produces a heavily skewed distribution.

In its favour

Extreme concentration of authorship is found in field after field, and the qualitative shape, most authors publishing once, is robust.

Against it

The exact inverse-square form is not general: later bibliometric work finds exponents that vary by field, period and how authorship is counted.

Standing

Later bibliometric work often finds heavy concentration without the exact inverse-square distribution.

Further reading

Wikipedia

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Discoveries are typically made independently by several people at once, because the prerequisites arrive before the person.

Ogburn and Thomas catalogued 148 cases in 1922. The telephone, the telegraph, oxygen, natural selection and the calculus were all discovered more than once within a few years.

In practice

• Two teams in the same firm build the same internal tool in the same quarter, neither knowing about the other.
• Four startups launch the same product within a year, because the enabling technology became cheap in the same month for all of them.

Attributed to

Ogburn & Thomas

Also called

Simultaneous invention

Further reading

Wikipedia

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Price proposed that roughly half the literature in a field is produced by about the square root of its authors.

Price's 1963 square-root proposal, offered as a bibliometric regularity. Later empirical testing found the rule does not hold generally, so it is best read as a historical hypothesis rather than a settled finding.

In practice

• Treat as unsupported as a general rule: the square-root relation does not survive testing outside its original setting.
• It is a stronger concentration claim than Pareto's, and the underlying observation that output is highly concentrated is much better supported than the specific square-root form.

Attributed to

Derek J. de Solla Price

Also called

Price's square root law

Possible explanations

The explanation is cumulative advantage: publishing raises the chance of publishing again through reputation, funding and collaborators, which concentrates output on a few names.

In its favour

Extreme concentration of output is real across fields, and the rule gives a memorable statement of it.

Against it

Later testing finds the square-root form does not hold generally, with the concentration varying by field, period and how authorship is counted.

Standing

A historical bibliometric hypothesis; later testing found the square-root rule does not hold generally.

Further reading

Wikipedia

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People fail to notice problems whose solution would be tedious, because the mind avoids the idea before evaluating it.

Graham's claim is that the avoidance happens before deliberation: a problem requiring years of unglamorous work does not get rejected, it does not get considered. The commercial consequence is that the least contested opportunities are the ones involving the most drudgery, since everyone else has been blind in the same way.

In practice

• A market ignored for a decade turns out to require paperwork nobody wanted to do rather than insight nobody had.
• A team brainstorming ideas produces only ideas that sound enjoyable, and does not notice the filter.

Attributed to

Paul Graham

Also called

Not seeing the tedious problem

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Strain and satisfaction carry across between work and home in both directions, so the two domains cannot be treated as separate systems.

The evidence supports transfer in both directions and for both strain and enrichment, with the negative direction usually measured as stronger. It undermines the assumption behind much workplace policy that the two spheres can be managed independently, and it means a change in one domain is an intervention in the other.

In practice

• A change to shift patterns is a change to childcare, and the organisation costs only the first.
• An employee's difficult year at home shows up as a performance issue, and is managed as one.

Attributed to

Work and family research

Also called

Domain spillover

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Innovation proceeds by recombining what already exists, so the reachable set expands one step at a time.

European mass printing depended on a local combination of paper supply, metal type, suitable inks, presses and markets. Gutenberg combined these in mid-fifteenth-century Europe; movable metal type had already been developed in Korea centuries earlier.

In practice

• A team cannot build the analytics dashboard until the event logging exists, and cannot justify the logging without the dashboard; the reachable next step is a single tracked event.
• A town cannot support a bakery until there is foot traffic, and gets foot traffic when the bakery opens.

Attributed to

Stuart Kauffman

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Creative work requires a relaxed mode that tolerates an unresolved question, while execution requires a purposeful mode that closes it, and the second drives out the first.

Cleese's argument is that the two modes are both necessary and mutually exclusive, and that organisations reward the closed one because it looks like work. The practical prescriptions were specific: a boundary of space and time, a defined period, and the discipline of tolerating discomfort rather than resolving the problem early to relieve it.

In practice

• A team that books two hours and an unresolved question produces more than one that books thirty minutes and a decision.
• A manager who ends the discomfort of an open problem by choosing early has closed the mode that would have solved it.

Attributed to

John Cleese

Also called

Open mode and closed mode

Possible explanations

The explanation offered is that generating options and choosing between them are different tasks: one needs an unresolved question held open, the other needs it closed, and holding both at once is not possible.

In its favour

It is consistent with research on incubation, where setting a problem aside improves later solutions, and on time pressure, which reliably narrows the range of options people consider.

Against it

It is a practitioner's model from a lecture rather than a tested one, the modes are defined by the behaviour they explain, and no measure distinguishes them.

Standing

A practitioner's model from a 1991 lecture rather than a research finding, though it is consistent with work on incubation and on time pressure reducing creative output.

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Absorbed engagement occurs when challenge matches skill and feedback is immediate.

Csikszentmihalyi's 1975 finding from surveying surgeons, climbers and chess players. The condition is specific: challenge slightly above current skill, with feedback fast enough to correct within the act.

In practice

• A junior developer given tickets slightly beyond their current level loses an afternoon without noticing; the same person on trivial tickets watches the clock.
• A climber on a route one grade above their comfort is completely absorbed; two grades above they are frightened and one below they are bored.

Attributed to

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Also called

Being in the zone

Further reading

Wikipedia

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Sustained passion and perseverance toward long-term goals is claimed to predict achievement beyond talent and intelligence.

Duckworth's construct became prominent quickly and the critique arrived with it. Credé's meta-analysis found the correlation with performance modest, the two-facet structure unsupported, and grit correlating with conscientiousness highly enough to raise a jangle problem: the question is whether it names anything that established personality measurement did not already capture.

In practice

• A selection process adding a grit measure to a conscientiousness measure gains very little it did not have.
• A programme teaching perseverance to pupils facing structural obstacles has addressed the pupils.

Attributed to

Angela Duckworth

Also called

Perseverance and passion for long-term goals

Possible explanations

One explanation is compounding: sustained effort on one goal accumulates skill that switching forfeits. Another is selection, since people who stay in demanding settings are those who were already suited to them.

In its favour

Grit predicts persistence in some demanding settings, such as military training, and the idea drew attention to effort in a field that had concentrated on ability.

Against it

Meta-analysis finds the correlation with performance modest, the two-facet structure unsupported, and the perseverance facet largely redundant with conscientiousness, which was already measured.

Standing

Meta-analysis finds grit predicts performance only modestly, and its perseverance facet is largely redundant with conscientiousness, which was already measured. The incremental contribution over existing constructs is small.

Further reading

Wikipedia

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Employees alter the tasks, relationships and meaning of their jobs without authorisation, so the job as done differs systematically from the job as designed.

Wrzesniewski and Dutton's 2001 study found hospital cleaners who had redefined their work to include comforting patients and orienting visitors, and who described the job in terms no job description contained. The crafting is usually invisible to management, which means both the effort and the resulting competence are unrecorded.

In practice

• A role description bears little relation to what the postholder actually does, and the gap is what makes the role work.
• A replacement hired against the written specification cannot do the job the leaver was doing.

Attributed to

Amy Wrzesniewski & Jane Dutton

Also called

Employee redesign of the role

Further reading

Wikipedia

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Job demands drive exhaustion and job resources drive engagement, through two distinct processes that can run at once.

The model's contribution is the separation: reducing demands and adding resources are not the same intervention and do not substitute for each other. A demanding job with strong resources produces engaged and tired people; a job light in both produces neither. Resources also buffer demands, which is why autonomy and support change the effect of workload rather than merely offsetting it.

In practice

• A team given more autonomy and the same workload reports higher engagement and the same exhaustion.
• Cutting hours without changing how little control people have removes the tiredness and not the disengagement.

Attributed to

Evangelia Demerouti, Arnold Bakker and colleagues

Also called

JD-R model

Further reading

Wikipedia

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Creative work needs long unbroken blocks, so a single meeting can cost a whole day rather than an hour.

Graham's 2009 essay. A manager's day is divided into slots and a meeting costs one slot; a maker's day is one block and a meeting placed in the middle costs both halves.

In practice

• An engineer with a meeting at 2pm loses the morning to shallow work and the afternoon to recovery.
• A researcher whose day contains one 11am call has one day divided into two unusable halves.

Attributed to

Paul Graham

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Repeated unpleasant associations with a task condition a flinch that stops the mind approaching it, so the task becomes unthinkable rather than merely unattractive.

The claim is about attention rather than motivation. A task that has produced anxiety several times acquires a field around it: the mind slides off before deliberation begins, so the person does not experience a decision to avoid it and cannot report one. The prediction is that the cost of the task is almost always smaller than the accumulated cost of the flinch.

In practice

• An unopened envelope from an insurer sits for four months, and opening it takes ninety seconds.
• A project nobody has raised in six standups is not forgotten; it is the one everyone's attention slides past.

Attributed to

Roko Mijic, on LessWrong

Also called

Aversion field; the conditioned flinch

Possible explanations

The proposed explanation is conditioning: a task associated with anxiety several times acquires a flinch, so attention slides off it before deliberation begins and the person never experiences a decision not to do it.

In its favour

The phenomenon is recognisable and fits research on avoidance learning, in which the relief from not approaching a feared thing reinforces the avoidance.

Against it

It is a coinage of the rationalist community, argued from examples rather than tested, and framed in terms of operant conditioning without direct evidence for that mechanism in this case.

Standing

A coinage of the rationalist community, argued from examples rather than tested. Framed in terms of operant conditioning without direct evidence for that mechanism. The observable pattern, that avoided tasks become progressively harder to consider, is not in dispute.

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Sustained distraction-free concentration is both increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.

Newport's 2016 argument. The scarcity claim is the interesting half: as distraction becomes universal, the ability to concentrate becomes a differentiator rather than a baseline.

In practice

• A researcher who protects two uninterrupted mornings a week produces more than a colleague available continuously.
• A team that answers every message within ten minutes has traded its capacity for hard problems for its reputation as responsive.

Attributed to

Cal Newport

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Mark each day the work is done and the growing unbroken run becomes the thing you are unwilling to lose.

The method substitutes a visible streak for the intention to work, so the daily decision becomes whether to destroy a record rather than whether to feel motivated. It works by loss aversion and by making the commitment external, and it shares its mechanism with implementation intentions and with the endowed progress effect.

In practice

• A writer on day forty of a run writes on a day they would otherwise have skipped, and the run is the reason.
• A tracker that resets to zero after one missed day discourages the person it was supposed to help.

Attributed to

Widely attributed to Jerry Seinfeld; attribution disputed

Also called

The chain method; the calendar X

Possible explanations

The explanation is that a visible streak converts the daily question from whether to work into whether to destroy a record, which recruits loss aversion in favour of the habit.

In its favour

Streak tracking is widely used and consistent with research on implementation intentions and self-monitoring, both of which improve follow-through.

Against it

It has not been tested as a method, the attribution to Seinfeld is folklore he has denied, and a long streak can push people to log low-quality work to protect the record, or to abandon the goal entirely after one miss.

Standing

Seinfeld has said the method is not his. The technique is real and widely used; the attribution is folklore, which makes it a clean example of a method acquiring a famous name it did not earn.

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The passages you are proudest of are the likeliest to be serving you rather than the work.

Quiller-Couch's 1916 lecture, in which he said murder your darlings. Frequently misattributed to Faulkner or Stephen King, and the test is whether the passage serves the reader or the author's pride.

In practice

• Quiller-Couch's 1916 lecture: whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it wholeheartedly, and delete it before sending your manuscript to press.
• A product team removes the feature the founder is proudest of and the retention figures improve.

Attributed to

Arthur Quiller-Couch

Also called

Murder your darlings

Possible explanations

The explanation is that a passage which pleases its author often does so for reasons private to the author, such as effort spent or cleverness displayed, which the reader does not share.

In its favour

Editors and writing teachers report the pattern consistently, and it names a specific test: whether the passage serves the work or the writer.

Against it

It is advice rather than a finding, it can be applied to strip a work of everything distinctive, and it is frequently misattributed to Faulkner or Stephen King rather than to Quiller-Couch.

Standing

Frequently misattributed to Faulkner or Stephen King.

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When choosing where to cut, weigh emotion first, then story, rhythm, eye-trace, the two-dimensional plane of the screen and three-dimensional continuity, and sacrifice from the bottom of the list.

In his book In the Blink of an Eye, the editor of The Conversation and Apocalypse Now gave the six criteria weights: emotion 51 per cent, story 23, rhythm 10, eye-trace 7, two-dimensional plane 5 and three-dimensional space 4. A cut that delivers the emotion is worth keeping even if it breaks spatial continuity, and if something must go it should come from the lower items.

In practice

• An editor keeps a take where a glass jumps between hands, because it is the take where the actor's face breaks.
• A trailer editor ignores screen direction entirely and cuts for rhythm and feeling, and nobody notices.

Attributed to

Walter Murch

Also called

Rule of six

Possible explanations

Murch's reasoning is that audiences remember how a film made them feel and forgive technical errors that do not disturb that feeling, so the lower criteria matter only in so far as they serve the higher ones. The percentages are a statement of priority rather than a measurement.

In its favour

It is widely taught to editors and quoted across film, television and video work, and it agrees with research showing that viewers miss many continuity errors when engaged with the story.

Against it

Murch himself presents the figures as illustrative, and critics note that emotion and story cannot always be separated, that the weights reflect narrative feature films rather than documentary or experimental work, and that the rule offers little help when the emotional choice is unclear.

Standing

The working editor's version of Edit Blindness. Murch also argued that cuts align with blinks, which mark the end of a thought.

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Capacity must be maintained deliberately, because the activity that consumes it will always seem more urgent than the maintenance.

Covey's image is the woodcutter too busy sawing to sharpen. The structural point is that maintenance is never urgent, so a system driven by urgency will never do it, which means it has to be scheduled rather than fitted in. The same logic governs technical debt, training budgets and preventive maintenance.

In practice

• A team with no slack cannot improve the process that is consuming it, and the shortage is self-sustaining.
• A machine serviced on a calendar outlasts one serviced when someone has time.

Attributed to

Stephen Covey

Also called

Sharpen the saw

Standing

Consistent with research on recovery and on the job demands-resources model, where resources buffer demands rather than merely offsetting them.

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Outcomes are claimed to be determined by the routines a person maintains rather than by the targets they set.

The maxim is a corrective to goal-setting culture rather than a refutation of it. Goals direct attention and effort, which is measured; systems determine whether the direction is acted on, which is also measured, under the name implementation intentions. The two are complements, and the aphorism is memorable partly because it opposes them.

In practice

• A team with a target and no weekly practice hits the target in the final fortnight or not at all.
• A person with a daily routine and no goal makes steady progress toward nothing in particular.

Attributed to

James Clear; earlier in Scott Adams

Also called

You do not rise to your goals, you fall to your systems

Possible explanations

The explanation offered is that routines determine what actually happens while targets only state what is wanted. The researched form is implementation intentions, which specify when and where an action will occur.

In its favour

Implementation intentions have consistent support, and the practical emphasis on designing a repeatable process rather than restating an outcome is sound.

Against it

Goal-setting research finds that specific, difficult goals do improve performance, which the strong form of the maxim denies, so the opposition it draws between systems and goals is false.

Standing

Goal-setting research finds that specific, difficult goals do improve performance, which the strong form of the maxim denies. A narrower version, that goals without a process to deliver them fail, which is what implementation intentions address.

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Excessive deliberation is claimed to become a cause of failure when it substitutes for action.

The maxim is right that deliberation has a cost and silent on when the cost exceeds the benefit. The researched treatments of the same problem, including satisficing and the exploration and exploitation trade-off, specify the conditions under which stopping early pays. Advice to act now does not, and is therefore right roughly half the time.

In practice

• A team that ships a rough version learns what six more weeks of discussion would not have told them.
• A surgeon who acts now rather than completing the diagnosis is following the same advice.

Attributed to

Og Mandino

Also called

Act now; deliberation as avoidance

Possible explanations

One explanation is that deliberation has a cost which rises while the value of information falls, so past a point more thought is pure loss. Another is motivational, since acting produces feedback that thinking alone cannot.

In its favour

It is directionally consistent with research on analysis paralysis and with satisficing, where a good-enough rule outperforms exhaustive search under time pressure.

Against it

The maxim says nothing about when the cost of deliberation exceeds its benefit, which is the whole question, and the evidence offered is testimonial and selected on people who acted and succeeded.

Standing

Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. Directionally consistent with analysis paralysis and with research on decision timing, and it supplies no criterion for distinguishing sufficient deliberation from excessive, which is the whole difficulty.

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Very small repeated improvements are claimed to compound into very large differences over time.

Clear's illustration is that improving one per cent daily yields roughly thirty-sevenfold in a year, which is a property of a geometric series rather than a measured result about people. Real improvement plateaus, regresses and interacts, and the compounding figure assumes none of that. What survives is the weaker and useful claim that consistency beats intensity for habit formation.

In practice

• A team improving a measurable process weekly does get substantially better over a year, and not thirty-sevenfold.
• A calculation that assumes no plateau and no regression is arithmetic rather than evidence.

Attributed to

James Clear

Also called

One per cent better every day; marginal gains

Possible explanations

The explanation is compounding: an improvement applied to an already improved base grows geometrically rather than by addition, provided each gain is retained.

In its favour

The arithmetic is correct, and the practical advice built on it, making habits small enough to be repeated, is supported by research on implementation intentions and habit formation.

Against it

The premise is doing the work, since it assumes improvements are small, reliable and multiplicative, and most skills show diminishing returns and plateaus rather than steady compounding.

Standing

The arithmetic of compounding is correct and the premise is doing the work: it assumes improvements are small, reliable and multiplicative, which real capability rarely is. Compare marginal gains, which makes the same claim in sport with the same difficulty.

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Wanting something intensely enough is claimed to be the origin of achieving it.

Hill placed desire first among his principles and illustrated it with people who burned their bridges. The examples are chosen after the fact from those who succeeded, so the intensity of the wanting is confounded with everything else about them. What the research supports is commitment as a moderator, which is a much weaker and better-evidenced claim.

In practice

• A founder who wanted it badly and failed is not in the book, and there are more of him.
• Two candidates equally determined get different outcomes, and the determination explains neither.

Attributed to

Napoleon Hill

Also called

Definiteness of desire

Possible explanations

The explanation offered is that intensity of wanting produces the persistence that achievement requires. The researched version is narrower: goal commitment moderates how well specific, difficult goals improve performance.

In its favour

Motivation research does support the narrower claim that commitment to a goal predicts effort and persistence.

Against it

The examples are chosen after the fact from people who succeeded, so the same intensity in those who failed is invisible, and burning one's bridges raises the cost of a correct change of course.

Standing

Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. Motivation research supports the narrower claim that goal commitment moderates the effect of goals, and does not support intensity of wanting as a cause of outcomes.

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Holding one clearly defined overriding goal is claimed to be the decisive factor in achievement.

Hill's Think and Grow Rich built the doctrine from interviews with successful men, which is a design that cannot distinguish a cause of success from a feature of people who succeeded. What survives with evidence is the goal-setting finding that specific difficult goals outperform vague intention, which is narrower and better supported than the claim made here.

In practice

• A person with one stated objective allocates time differently from one with nine, which is measurable and is not the claim.
• A biography that finds singular purpose in every successful subject has sampled only the successful.

Attributed to

Napoleon Hill

Also called

Definite chief aim

Possible explanations

The explanation offered is that a single overriding goal directs attention and effort, and filters opportunities. Goal-setting research supports a narrower version in which specific, difficult goals raise performance when the person is committed.

In its favour

Specific goals do outperform vague encouragement in controlled studies, so the directional advice matches a real finding.

Against it

The book's evidence is interviews with successful men, which cannot distinguish a cause of success from a feature of those who succeeded, and the author's account of his sources has been questioned.

Standing

From a self-help tradition whose evidence is testimonial and selected on success, and whose author's reporting of his sources has been questioned. Goal-setting research supports a much narrower version.

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Reliable presence is claimed to account for most of what separates those who succeed from those who do not.

The claim travels because it is actionable and flattering to the ordinary. What it names is real enough: a large share of opportunities go to whoever was present and available, and availability is far more controllable than talent. What it cannot support is the arithmetic, which was never measured and is the part everyone repeats.

In practice

• A freelancer who answers within the hour gets work that a better one who answers on Thursday does not.
• A committee's decisions are made by whoever attended, which is a fact about attendance and not about merit.

Attributed to

Woody Allen

Also called

Showing up is most of it

Possible explanations

The explanation is opportunity: a share of chances go to whoever is present and available when they arise, and presence compounds through familiarity and trust.

In its favour

Reliability is genuinely undervalued, and research on networks finds that repeated contact predicts access to opportunities independently of talent.

Against it

The figure is invented and varies between retellings, Allen has said the remark is misunderstood, and in competitive fields presence is the entry condition rather than most of the distance.

Standing

The figure is invented, the wording varies between eighty and ninety per cent in different retellings, and Allen has said the remark has been misquoted. The underlying point overlaps with research on conscientiousness and on persistence, neither of which supports a proportion.

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Continuing past the point where others stop is claimed to be what separates those who succeed from those who do not.

The principle cannot fail a test, because the test is applied only to outcomes. Persistence that produced success is persistence; persistence that produced ruin is stubbornness, and the label is applied afterwards. What is genuinely known is that the decision to continue should turn on new information rather than on prior investment, which is the opposite emphasis.

In practice

• A business that survived by continuing and one that failed by continuing made the same decision.
• A researcher who spent nine years on a dead end is described as persistent only if the tenth year worked.

Attributed to

Napoleon Hill

Also called

Persistence as the deciding factor

Possible explanations

The explanation offered is that most people stop before the point at which effort pays, so continuing past it is what separates outcomes. What research supports is narrower: persistence helps where the strategy is sound and feedback is slow.

In its favour

Persistence does predict completion in settings where the route is known and the main obstacle is effort, such as training programmes.

Against it

As stated it cannot be tested, since anyone who persisted and failed is reclassified as not having persisted enough, and it says nothing about when persistence becomes the sunk cost fallacy.

Standing

Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. As stated it cannot be tested, since anyone who persisted and failed is reclassified as not having persisted enough. Compare the sunk cost fallacy, which describes the same behaviour when it is wrong.

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A difficult task given to a lazy person is claimed to produce an easier method, because they will find one rather than endure the work.

The insight is that industriousness and improvement can be opposed. A diligent worker completes the tedious process; someone reluctant to complete it has a reason to examine whether it is necessary. The condition the saying omits is authority: the same reluctance without permission to change anything produces avoidance rather than method.

In practice

• A team that automates a report has usually been annoyed by it, not commissioned to improve it.
• A worker with every reason to shorten the task and no power to change it simply does it slowly.

Attributed to

Attributed variously; often to Bill Gates

Also called

Give a hard job to a lazy person

Possible explanations

The explanation is effort minimisation: someone reluctant to repeat a tedious process has a standing incentive to examine it, which a diligent worker who simply completes it does not.

In its favour

Process improvement does often come from those most exposed to the tedium, and the mechanism is consistent with research on how automation targets are chosen.

Against it

The attribution is unsettled and the claim untested, and laziness produces shortcuts that skip necessary steps as often as it produces better methods, which the maxim does not distinguish.

Standing

The attribution is unsettled and the claim untested. Effort-minimisation does plausibly drive process improvement, and the version that would survive testing is narrower: incentive to reduce effort produces method change only where the person also has the authority to change the method.

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A habit cannot be eliminated, only replaced by another, so change requires a substitute behaviour rather than abstention.

Mandino stated it as a law of nature. The researched version concerns cues: a habit is a cue-response association, the cue continues to occur, and something will follow it. Supplying a replacement response is therefore more reliable than intending to do nothing, because doing nothing is not an available response to a cue.

In practice

• A smoker who identifies the cue and substitutes an action does better than one who resolves to stop.
• A team that removes a bad meeting without replacing what it did finds the function reappearing informally.

Attributed to

Og Mandino

Also called

Replace rather than remove a habit

Possible explanations

The explanation is cue persistence: a habit is a cue-response association, the cue keeps occurring, and something follows it, so removing the response without supplying another leaves the slot open.

In its favour

Habit research supports the narrower claim that replacing a response is easier than suppressing one, and substitution is standard in behavioural treatments for smoking and for compulsive routines.

Against it

Stated as a law of nature it overreaches, since some habits do extinguish when the cue disappears, and the evidence offered for the general claim is testimonial and selected on success.

Standing

Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. Habit research supports the narrower and better-specified claim that cue-response links are more easily redirected than extinguished, which is not the same as the impossibility asserted here.

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A group working in deliberate harmony toward one aim is claimed to generate capability beyond the sum of its members.

Hill's proposal is a structured peer group meeting regularly with a shared purpose, and the practice has outlasted the theory. The mechanism he claimed is a third mind arising from the harmony of the group; the mechanisms with evidence are accountability, distributed knowledge and social pressure, none of which requires anything mystical.

In practice

• A peer group that meets monthly and reviews commitments works, and the reason is that somebody will ask.
• A team assembled for harmony rather than for complementary knowledge agrees quickly and adds nothing.

Attributed to

Napoleon Hill

Also called

The mastermind alliance

Possible explanations

The explanation offered is a third mind arising from harmony among members. The mechanisms with evidence are simpler: accountability to a group, access to others' information, and commitment made in public.

In its favour

The practice has outlasted the theory because peer groups do help, and research on accountability and on commitment in front of others supports the parts that work.

Against it

Group performance research finds process losses more often than gains, with groups underperforming their best member on many tasks, and the evidence offered is testimonial and selected on success.

Standing

Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. Group performance research finds process losses more often than gains, and the conditions under which groups beat individuals are narrow and specified.

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A person's achievement is claimed to converge on that of the people they spend time with.

The confound is the whole difficulty. People who associate are alike for reasons that precede the association, so observed similarity is mostly selection. Studies using randomly assigned roommates and squadrons do find genuine peer effects on effort and conduct, at magnitudes far below what the maxim implies.

In practice

• A team whose norms are high produces higher output from the same people, and the effect is smaller than the folklore.
• A person who changed circles and changed habits may have changed circles because they were changing habits.

Attributed to

Zig Ziglar

Also called

You are who you associate with

Possible explanations

The explanation offered is transmission of standards and habits. The competing explanation is selection: people who associate are alike for reasons that precede the association.

In its favour

Peer-effects research using random assignment, in roommates and military squadrons, does find real influence on behaviour and effort.

Against it

The measured effects are small and specific compared with the claim, the confound of selection accounts for most observed similarity, and the evidence offered is testimonial and selected on success.

Standing

Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. Peer-effects research does find influence on behaviour, with effects that are real, modest and heavily confounded by selection: people choose their associates.

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Preoccupation with past failure or future uncertainty is claimed to be the principal obstacle to effective action now.

The genuine finding nearby is that rumination, meaning repetitive unproductive focus on distress, predicts worse outcomes, while planning and anticipatory problem-solving predict better ones. Both look like thinking about other times. Advice to stay in the present treats them as one thing.

In practice

• A team that stops relitigating a past failure moves faster; one that stops examining it repeats it.
• A person told not to dwell on the future has been told not to plan.

Attributed to

Og Mandino

Also called

Live this day as if it were the last

Possible explanations

The explanation offered is that attention spent on past failure or future uncertainty is unavailable for present action. The researched distinction is between rumination, which is repetitive and unproductive, and planning, which is neither.

In its favour

Rumination does predict impairment and worse outcomes, so the advice is sound for that half.

Against it

Anticipatory problem-solving and reflection on past error are both productive, and the maxim does not distinguish them from rumination, so followed literally it removes useful thinking along with the harmful kind.

Standing

Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. Overlaps with research on rumination, which does predict impairment, and with anticipatory planning, which does not. The maxim does not distinguish them.

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Success removes the people able to say no to a creator, and the quality of the work often falls.

TV Tropes describes the pattern in publishing and film: a newcomer accepts editorial changes in order to be published, but after a hit becomes marketable on name alone, and editors stop pushing back. The same page defends editors, noting that the interference people remember is the kind that failed.

In practice

• A founder whose first product succeeded now overrules every reviewer, and the second product ships with the problems the reviewers flagged.
• A bestselling novelist's books grow longer each year because nobody at the publisher will ask for cuts.

Attributed to

TV Tropes

Also called

Too big to edit

Possible explanations

One explanation is power: people who gain power take less advice, as See and colleagues found in 2011. Another is that success removes the incentive to listen, since the creator's name sells the work regardless. A third is regression to the mean, which makes any follow-up to a peak look worse.

In its favour

Consistent with research showing that power reduces advice-taking, and with the organisational pattern in which successful leaders surround themselves with agreement.

Against it

Many successful creators keep improving, and editors also damage work, as the complaint about executive meddling records. Some of the apparent decline is regression to the mean rather than lost editing.

Standing

Compare the Icarus paradox and regression to the mean.

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General knowledge is claimed to be worthless for achievement, and organised specialised knowledge, including knowing where to obtain it, decisive.

Hill's useful move was to separate knowing something from knowing where to get it, and to count the second as knowledge. The dismissal of general education is the part that the evidence on transfer and on absorptive capacity does not support: recognising which specialised knowledge you need is a general capability.

In practice

• A manager who cannot do the analysis and knows exactly whom to ask is not less useful than one who can.
• A specialist with no general grounding cannot tell when the problem has left their speciality.

Attributed to

Napoleon Hill

Also called

Knowing where to find it

Possible explanations

The explanation offered is that organised specialised knowledge, including knowing where to obtain it, converts into achievement while general knowledge does not.

In its favour

The distinction between knowing something and knowing where to get it is a real and useful one, and it anticipates the idea of knowing how to search rather than store.

Against it

The dismissal of general education is the part that evidence on transfer and on absorptive capacity does not support, since recognising which specialised knowledge is needed is itself a general capacity, and the evidence offered is testimonial.

Standing

Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. The distinction survives better than the ranking; transfer-of-learning research finds general knowledge does considerable work that this principle denies.

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Vague aims are claimed to be unachievable, and specifying the goal precisely is claimed to be most of the work of reaching it.

Ziglar's version travelled far further than Locke and Latham's, which was published around the same time with evidence behind it. The maxim is right about specificity and silent about everything that determines whether specificity helps, including whether the person is committed and whether the task is understood well enough for a target to be meaningful.

In practice

• A target of a number by a date outperforms an instruction to improve, on work the team already knows how to do.
• A precise goal set on unfamiliar work locks in an approach before anyone knows which approach is right.

Attributed to

Zig Ziglar

Also called

You cannot hit a target you cannot see

Possible explanations

The explanation is direction and feedback: a specific goal tells a person what to do next and whether they are on course, which vague aims cannot.

In its favour

It is the popular restatement of goal-setting theory, one of the better-supported findings in organisational psychology, and specificity does outperform do-your-best instructions.

Against it

The maxim drops the boundary conditions that the research adds, including commitment, feedback and task complexity, and says nothing about goals that narrow attention or invite gaming.

Standing

The popular restatement of goal-setting theory, which supports specificity and adds the boundary conditions the maxim drops: commitment, feedback, task familiarity, and a documented downside on novel work.

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Ninety percent of everything is crud.

Sturgeon said it defending science fiction: ninety percent of everything is crud, so judging a genre by its worst is meaningless. It is a rule about sampling, not about quality.

In practice

• A commissioning editor reads two hundred submissions to fill twenty pages, and the twenty say nothing about the genre the two hundred came from.
• A manager who judges a recruitment channel by its worst applicant closes the one that produced two of the department's best.

Attributed to

Theodore Sturgeon

Also called

Sturgeon's revelation

Further reading

Wikipedia

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Effort is withdrawn to match perceived compensation, and the withdrawal is coordinated by common knowledge of it.

They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. The joke's force is that it is a statement of equilibrium rather than a complaint: both sides have priced the other's performance, both continue, and nobody involved is confused about what is happening.

In practice

• A team whose pay has been frozen for three years works its hours exactly, and no rule has been broken.
• A firm that cuts a benefit and expects unchanged discretionary effort has assumed the exchange was not an exchange.

Attributed to

Soviet-era saying, unattributed

Also called

We pretend to work; the reciprocity of effort

Possible explanations

The explanation is reciprocity in equilibrium: both sides have priced the other's performance and matched it, so the low-effort outcome is stable and neither side is deceived.

In its favour

The underlying reciprocity claim is well supported, since effort responds to perceived fairness of pay in field and laboratory studies, and the saying names the coordinated version of it.

Against it

It is an unattributed saying rather than a measured finding, and it describes an equilibrium without saying what sustains or breaks it, which is what a theory of low-effort workplaces would need.

Standing

Origin unattributed; recorded widely in the late Soviet period. The underlying reciprocity claim is supported elsewhere; the saying is not itself evidence.

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