Back to Basics: v = d / t

My physicist brain wants to turn everything into a simple model that may or may not map well to reality. For manufactured spend it usually does though, and analogues with the physical world help too.

To illustrate, let’s set your way back machine to your high school physics class (assuming you were cursed with one) and recall the basic, simplest formula for calculating the velocity when you’ve moved some distance in some other amount of time:

speed = distance / time

Now, translate that into a formula that we should live by:

profitability = earnings / time

The profitability of a play isn’t a simple milage count or a sum of cash, unless we’ve got unlimited time. Because we don’t, doing something that earns 1% but takes 30 seconds should beat something that earns 5% but takes 20 minutes assuming infinite scalability. Of course not everything is infinitely scalable, so perhaps you can do both with the time you’ve got. But, if you’re making a trade-off, do consider that a 1% play can beat a 5% play.

Happy Monday!

No, I never had this shirt. Yes, I always wanted to make one.

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