I make music videos and my decision I often make poorly is:
“What content should I put on my Instagram profile?”
How would you dimensionalize this decision?
Off the top of my head some of the low-leverage dimensions would be the standard metrics like views, like, even reshares. Others might be “timeliness” of the actual content (i.e. what current trends it is very mindful and demure of), and “ethos” which might also be called how “on brand” it is—which I breaks into it’s own series of dimensions. However in my case the real leverage is: “does this solicit me more music video commissions?”
I’ve tried in the past to break this down into broad categories of dimensions like:
-How Glam Rock is it? i.e. animal print and sparkles. -Production Values (as in will it install faith in a potentail client in my technical abilities) - i.e. is it shot on a prime lens rather than a mobile phone, is it bright enough, are there interesting camera angles etc. -Displayed Expertise
But like… none seem to have any leverage. What in my approach am I doing wrong?
First, it matters what you choose to dimensionalize: “Dimensionalize Posting Instagram Content” will give you different results from “Dimensionalize Soliciting More Commissions”. And “Dimensionalize Posting Instagram Content with respect to its impact on Soliciting More Commissions” will give you still different results. The key is that dimensionalization tries to give you levers to affect a specific decision or outcome.
Second, I strongly recommend using LLMs to help you dimensionalize. Without domain expertise in these areas, I am not going to provide much edge vs an LLM. You can take your comment, paste it into an LLM, link to this post, and ask for dimensionalization of whatever you want using this framework. Part of the goal of the post is to make it easy for me (and others) to do this :)
Here’s an example, straight from o3:
axis
0 ←—— dial ——→ 5
why it matters
authority signal
personal art dump → visibly paid, tagged celebs, bts w/ shotlist overlay
commissions need trust; ig ranks “creator credibility” too
genre fit
random aesthetic soup → laser‑targeted to niches you want
clients self‑identify; boosts save+share rate, a heavy reel weight
commissionability clarity
no hint you’re for hire → explicit cta (“dm ‘video’”) + pricing highlight
Thank you for the extensive reply, however it still leaves me in the dark of how to spot a dimension that actually provide leverage. In your post you gave several examples of leverage, that’s a start, but what I was hoping for was a narration of the thinking process that lead to those examples that can be applied to many different situations.
One example you give of what is not a lever is:
Dials that don’t matter (e.g. “gym playlist bpm”).
This seems rather intuitive since it seems like window dressing in the same way that the color of your shorts is a dial that doesn’t matter. However it still doesn’t illuminate which dials do matter and how to find them. I would love to have you deep dive into that across three different domains and then show what commonalities exist between them so that as an exercise for the reader they can apply it to others.
There’s no end to dials that don’t matter and I find LLMs are particularly guilty of providing platitude-laden, non important dials, vague, or irrelevant (celeb tags? Who am I? Hailey Beiber?)
Thanks. Here’s what I would suggest if you want to do Dimensionalization by hand starting with Leverage:
Start with actions you can take, and filter for those that would result in things that matter to your outcome. Or,
Work backwards from things that would matter to your outcome, and filter for those that have triggers that are at least partially in your control.
Then, once you’ve made a list of atomic actions with high Leverage, you can group them in various ways to reduce Complexity and align to your model of ‘how the outcome works’ to increase Fidelity.
FWIW, it feels obvious to me that having celebrities participate in your videos lends credibility (strong social proof) that could lead to additional commissions. Fine if your target commission audience would be put off by this; in that case, you should find audience-relevant signals of credibility. But credibility is probably going to be important regardless of how you achieve it.
, and filter for those that would result in things that matter to your outcome.
Can you give three examples of what that filtering process looks like? Even for things unrelated to my question—having a guide, an example, the thought processes, the heuristics would be invaluable.
Work backwards from things that would matter to your outcome, and filter for those that have triggers that are at least partially in your control.
And what if I don’t know what matters, hence my ineptitude at finding levers?
FWIW, it feels obvious to me that having celebrities participate in your videos lends credibility (strong social proof) that could lead to additional commissions
The point was it is not a lever in that I do not have access to celebrity participants and don’t know what dials I have to change that. The question wasn’t one of credibility, the question was one of again—how does this manifest as a lever? Again narrative examples of the thought process—how to get there rather than the conclusion reached - would help.
Let’s do one example. Suppose you are trying to get access to celebrity participants for your music videos, since we’ve identified that as high leverage. Let’s start by listing some things that could meaningfully lead to celebrities agreeing to participate:
One of the celebrity’s friends recommends that they work with you
The celebrity sees your video and wants their work treated similarly
Your agent connects with the celebrity’s agent and arranges a quid pro quo
You use archive footage of a celebrity in your video and get their permission after the fact
...
Now we can filter for what is in your control:
You can try to befriend a celebrity’s friends
You can try cold-sending your work to celebrities
You can hire an agent and ask that they help you work with celebrities
You can try to find footage of celebrities who might be amenable to this kind of fair use
...
Of these, hiring an agent strikes me as the most certain way to achieve the outcome.
If we had like 50 options (we can get that by using an LLM), then it would make sense to group them and optimize for Fidelity and Complexity. But for now we are focused solely on a few high-leverage actions and I’m not using an LLM, so I won’t go through the whole dimensionalization process.
If you again find yourself thinking “but I can’t befriend a celebrity’s friends” or something like that, you can just do the exact same exercise to dimensionalize that outcome.
I make music videos and my decision I often make poorly is:
How would you dimensionalize this decision?
Off the top of my head some of the low-leverage dimensions would be the standard metrics like views, like, even reshares. Others might be “timeliness” of the actual content (i.e. what current trends it is very mindful and demure of), and “ethos” which might also be called how “on brand” it is—which I breaks into it’s own series of dimensions.
However in my case the real leverage is: “does this solicit me more music video commissions?”
I’ve tried in the past to break this down into broad categories of dimensions like:
But like… none seem to have any leverage. What in my approach am I doing wrong?
Hi—I love the question.
First, it matters what you choose to dimensionalize: “Dimensionalize Posting Instagram Content” will give you different results from “Dimensionalize Soliciting More Commissions”. And “Dimensionalize Posting Instagram Content with respect to its impact on Soliciting More Commissions” will give you still different results. The key is that dimensionalization tries to give you levers to affect a specific decision or outcome.
Second, I strongly recommend using LLMs to help you dimensionalize. Without domain expertise in these areas, I am not going to provide much edge vs an LLM. You can take your comment, paste it into an LLM, link to this post, and ask for dimensionalization of whatever you want using this framework. Part of the goal of the post is to make it easy for me (and others) to do this :)
Here’s an example, straight from o3:
You can then ask for candidate videos (or provide your own) and have the LLM rank by dimension:
If you don’t like the dimensions or the examples, you can ask for new ones, or pick a different choice to dimensionalize.
Hope this is helpful!
Thank you for the extensive reply, however it still leaves me in the dark of how to spot a dimension that actually provide leverage. In your post you gave several examples of leverage, that’s a start, but what I was hoping for was a narration of the thinking process that lead to those examples that can be applied to many different situations.
One example you give of what is not a lever is:
This seems rather intuitive since it seems like window dressing in the same way that the color of your shorts is a dial that doesn’t matter. However it still doesn’t illuminate which dials do matter and how to find them. I would love to have you deep dive into that across three different domains and then show what commonalities exist between them so that as an exercise for the reader they can apply it to others.
There’s no end to dials that don’t matter and I find LLMs are particularly guilty of providing platitude-laden, non important dials, vague, or irrelevant (celeb tags? Who am I? Hailey Beiber?)
Thanks. Here’s what I would suggest if you want to do Dimensionalization by hand starting with Leverage:
Start with actions you can take, and filter for those that would result in things that matter to your outcome. Or,
Work backwards from things that would matter to your outcome, and filter for those that have triggers that are at least partially in your control.
Then, once you’ve made a list of atomic actions with high Leverage, you can group them in various ways to reduce Complexity and align to your model of ‘how the outcome works’ to increase Fidelity.
FWIW, it feels obvious to me that having celebrities participate in your videos lends credibility (strong social proof) that could lead to additional commissions. Fine if your target commission audience would be put off by this; in that case, you should find audience-relevant signals of credibility. But credibility is probably going to be important regardless of how you achieve it.
Can you give three examples of what that filtering process looks like? Even for things unrelated to my question—having a guide, an example, the thought processes, the heuristics would be invaluable.
And what if I don’t know what matters, hence my ineptitude at finding levers?
The point was it is not a lever in that I do not have access to celebrity participants and don’t know what dials I have to change that. The question wasn’t one of credibility, the question was one of again—how does this manifest as a lever? Again narrative examples of the thought process—how to get there rather than the conclusion reached - would help.
Let’s do one example. Suppose you are trying to get access to celebrity participants for your music videos, since we’ve identified that as high leverage. Let’s start by listing some things that could meaningfully lead to celebrities agreeing to participate:
One of the celebrity’s friends recommends that they work with you
The celebrity sees your video and wants their work treated similarly
Your agent connects with the celebrity’s agent and arranges a quid pro quo
You use archive footage of a celebrity in your video and get their permission after the fact
...
Now we can filter for what is in your control:
You can try to befriend a celebrity’s friends
You can try cold-sending your work to celebrities
You can hire an agent and ask that they help you work with celebrities
You can try to find footage of celebrities who might be amenable to this kind of fair use
...
Of these, hiring an agent strikes me as the most certain way to achieve the outcome.
If we had like 50 options (we can get that by using an LLM), then it would make sense to group them and optimize for Fidelity and Complexity. But for now we are focused solely on a few high-leverage actions and I’m not using an LLM, so I won’t go through the whole dimensionalization process.
If you again find yourself thinking “but I can’t befriend a celebrity’s friends” or something like that, you can just do the exact same exercise to dimensionalize that outcome.