Making a Difference at the Margin
“…When a field is highly competitive, it is only through this painstaking effort around the margin that you can make any money.” – Nate Silver, The Signal and The Noise
Economists love the margin. Marginal revenue, marginal costs, marginal profit, marginal utility... There is also a fascination with its calculus.
But let’s do some simple math. Say you work a 12 hour day instead of an 8 hour day. Then you are able to accomplish 50% more, right? What about if we say 4 hours of your typical day might be spent on maintenance items, such as responding to email requests, catching up on past projects, recurring meetings, refilling your coffee, etc. Then the difference between working a 12 hour day and working an 8 hour day is a difference between 8 hours available for new items vs. 4 hours for new items, or 200% more time. Essentially, you can accomplish twice as much by working only 50% more time.
It’s like when you suddenly have an unexpected hour at home alone without the kids around. It is incredible how much you can get done in an hour.
It’s equally incredible how long things can continue to sit unfulfilled on your home to-do list. But really, is it any wonder those items sit so long? Cleaning, dishes, laundry, yard work. Groceries, cooking, eating. Shopping for clothes, getting cleaned, dressed and ready. Exercise, caring for pets, reading the news, entertainment. Family time, checking on kids’ homework, bedtime routines. After all of those items there is a lot less time available.
Now this is not without controversy. What is the opportunity cost of those additional hours worked? Were they actually productive and efficient? How did that affect other things around you and in your life? Your sleep, mood and health? How did that impact others? My point here is not in pushing the limit, or taking it to the extreme. Elon Musk recently raised some eyebrows when he described sleeping on the factory floor and putting in 120 hour work weeks, and certainly established some critics by tweeting “nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week.”
But what about the small, incremental changes around the margin? How can we also use those opportunities to make a positive difference?
Not in the way I routinely hear from my kids which is “Dad, can I just have one more?” Or the line from their old Frog and Toad children’s books where Toad said to Frog, “Let us eat one VERY last cookie, and then we will stop.” But changing that conversation from receiving or consuming to giving. Changing the question to “how can I give one more?”
We know that small things can have large impacts. Malcolm Gladwell described in The Tipping Point long ago how “little changes had big effects…changes that happened at the margin…incremental changes…yet the effect was dramatic.”
We had a leader at our company, now retired, that when asked for his best work advice said to do “one extra thing per day.” Something others do not do, perhaps something for clients that they do not expect. Do one extra thing each day that goes above and beyond what is routine.
Now that is some great advice, and perhaps just the secret to making a difference at the margin.