← Will Bradley

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Latency

There’s a constant tension between strategy and execution.

Without the former, you walk off a cliff. Without the latter, you never walk at all.

But over time, I’ve noticed a constant trend:

The lower your delay between decision and action, the better.

And the payoff is nonlinear. The lower the latency, the faster you act, the faster you get feedback, and the faster you iterate. The knowledge compounds.

For best results, do things with the aim of learning fundamental, transferable ideas.

Then every incremental learning can be applied to every foreseeable situation. If this sounds disgustingly effective, it’s because it is.

Which begs the question: why doesn’t everyone do it?

Most likely, it’s because execution is uncomfortable.

You’ll make mistakes, and take wrong turns, and have your flaws shown to you in painful detail by the market.

But as far as I can see, the alternative is worse.