A friend of mine once told me “if you’re making a decision that depends on a number, and you haven’t multiplied two numbers together, you’re messing up.” I think this is basically right, and I’ve taken it to heart.
Some triggers for me:
Verbiage
When I use any of the following words, in writing or in speech, I either look up an actual number, or quickly do a fermi estimate in a spreadsheet, to check if my intutitive idea is actually right.
“Order of magnitude”
“A lot”
“Enormous” / “enormously”
Question Templates
When I’m asking a question, that effectively reduces to one of the following forms:
Is it worth it to [take some action]? (Including an internal conflict about whether something is worth doing.)
Is [a specific idea] feasible? Does it pencil?
Is [an event] probable?
One thing that’s been critical for me is having a hotkey that opens a new spreadsheet. I want “open a spreadsheet” to be in muscle memory and take litterally less than a second.
A friend of mine once told me “if you’re making a decision that depends on a number, and you haven’t multiplied two numbers together, you’re messing up.” I think this is basically right, and I’ve taken it to heart.
Some triggers for me:
Verbiage
When I use any of the following words, in writing or in speech, I either look up an actual number, or quickly do a fermi estimate in a spreadsheet, to check if my intutitive idea is actually right.
“Order of magnitude”
“A lot”
“Enormous” / “enormously”
Question Templates
When I’m asking a question, that effectively reduces to one of the following forms:
Is it worth it to [take some action]? (Including an internal conflict about whether something is worth doing.)
Is [a specific idea] feasible? Does it pencil?
Is [an event] probable?
One thing that’s been critical for me is having a hotkey that opens a new spreadsheet. I want “open a spreadsheet” to be in muscle memory and take litterally less than a second.