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I think this is very true, I've found the same thing in e.g: - Simracing: getting faster doesn't make you win races. Getting more consistent does. - Squash: g

I think this is very true, I've found the same thing in e.g: - Simracing: getting faster doesn't make you win races. Getting more consistent does. - Squash: getting stronger and faster doesn't make you win games, getting less exhausted does, because you make less mistakes. These are surely not true when you're at a high level, but for most people it's the right focus. The corresponding insight for building software is this: "Brilliant" ideas for your engineering are probably not the right place to invest energy. Instead you are likely to create more success by ensuring you have excellent testing, qualification, user feedback, monitoring, rollouts, stuff like that. This also just comes back to investment+return again. If _you_ think you gave great ideas then that's fine. But if you can keep your race/game/project/startup alive and stable then you start to unlock extra "passive income" from your teammates having good ideas (and the latitude to execute them) and your competitors fumbling their opportunities. So take your ego out of the equation and do the humble stuff first. Don't reward your "rockstar programmers", reward the person who set up the dashboards and the e2e tests and threw up together that spreadsheet of 'most common user complaints'.

chillfox 3y ago
"These are surely not true when you're at a high level" I don't know what you mean by high level, but I suspect that avoiding mistakes continues to be very important regardless of level in most things. I play Marvel Snap in the top 1000 and at that level most of the games comes down to whoever makes a mistake first loses.
- voiper1 3y ago
  >This observation applies only to amateur tennis. In professional tennis it’s just the opposite: 80% of the rallies are won rather than lost, as unforced errors are infrequent. This is true in chess as well, as high-level players don’t blunder, and thus it really is that litany of other skills that results in high standings. I think this means at a high level, you're already not blundering. So you need to actually do something MORE in order to win. You need to force your oponent to lose, and not just play "OK" and wait for them to make a mistake.
  - AdamN 3y ago
    Although pros do still make clear errors and even misses that may not be classed as an error (but are at the professional level) might outweigh the brilliant shots when it comes to the win. I suspect this is why some games are 'best of'. The real aficionados sense a low error rate and then it's more purely about the big, brilliant plays - and that's not a common event.
- harry8 3y ago
  French Open tennis. Seems like the winners, (eg Rafa Nadal who has one of the greatest sporting records in any sport, anywhere there), consistently hit ground strokes from the baseline, back over the net and deep enough in play. From that point the opponent self-destructs. Ok differs from wimbeldon where guys play Hamlet while playing in the final (Kyrios, Becker, McEnroe, etc. etc.) and can win doing it with outrageous aggression and magic winners, but the French Open is certainly "High Level" Rafa at the French? How many matches was his longest winning streak? 36 matches, 5 titles in 6 years? Unfathomable sustained excellence.
  - seabass-labrax 3y ago
    I don't follow tennis closely enough to understand the difference. What makes the eventual winners at Wimbledon play more aggressively than at the French Open? Is it due to the environment (clay or grass perhaps) or some sort of cultural thing?
    - I_ 3y ago
      Grass is faster, meaning for any given shot over the net you have less time to respond. This encourages attacking behaviour. Clay is slower, meaning even off fast, angled, difficult-to-reach shots the ball bounces higher and slower, meaning you have time to get to it, thus prolonging rallies and points. But beyond that, it's not just that players choose to play more aggressive on grass - a given shot is more aggressive on grass. This is why the serve is more powerful on grass - you open the point with a powerful shot, and on grass that's harder to return. See rally length differences here: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1246341537753006082 https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1246341537753006082
      - seabass-labrax 3y ago
        Fascinating! Thanks for the explanation.
        harry8 3y ago
        Note Rafa has also won wimbeldon on grass, against Federer at his unbelievable peak (in the midst of winning it 8 times), in 5 sets, in the final, finishing in the dark. And won again 2 years later to put those trophies with his 14 French Open titles.
- weinzierl 3y ago
  I'd go even farther than that and suspect that in many areas avoiding blunders gets more important climbing to higher levels. Just the other day I explained this to my daughter: In our school system a 1 is the best grade a 6 the worst. Maintaining a 2.0 average is kind of easy. When you blunder and get a 3, all you have to so is getting a 1 eventually to compensate. Maintaining a 1.0 average is much, much harder, because you have to write 1s consistently without any exception and no way to fix a blunder(*). In many systems there is a hard ceiling of what you can achieve. When your performance is measured as an average, this makes the system more unforgiving for blunders the closer you are to the ceiling. (*) Technically, in our school system this is not entirely correct, because I think you could theoretically get 0.7s. The overall point still stands, because there is a hard and positive limit.
- djtango 3y ago
  Watch any top tennis game and unforced errors and %age first serves often tells the story of the match
roenxi 3y ago
> These are surely not true when you're at a high level, but for most people it's the right focus. It is trivially true at all levels - anything that leads you to lose a game can be construed as a mistake, so if you make no mistakes and you lose then the game has been solved (which Chess has not been) or was unwinnable. The mistakes just get smaller and fewer and fewer people can recognise them.
SenHeng 3y ago
A good example would be Elizabeth Swaney[0] who somehow found her way into the 2018 Winter Olympics simply by showing up at qualifying. In order to qualify for the Olympics, athletes needed to place in the top 30 at either a FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup event or FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships, and score a minimum of 50.00 FIS points.[9] Swaney achieved this by attending competitions with fewer than thirty participants,[6] with one event in China having fifteen (in which she placed thirteenth). Thirteen of her top 30 finishes were a result of her showing up, not falling, and recording a score https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Swaney https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Swaney
- sitkack 3y ago
  This has been my analysis of high level competition as a whole. It isn't about who is the best, as in peak performance. It is about consistently making the least amount of mistakes. You can break records, or you can out de-mistake the competition.
  - petsfed 3y ago
    I disagree categorically with this. In baseball, the team that commits the most unforced errors tends to lose the game, but the team that scores the most runs always wins. Usain Bolt doesn't have 8 gold medals and 3 world records because he has perfect form (I just learned that he has scoliosis, leading to "imperfect" form, whether that made him faster or slower than he would otherwise be is apparently a subject of some debate), but because he's fast. It is frequently the case that the best at something defines "perfect" form. And anyway, Bolt doesn't run marathons, because he cannot sustain that kind of performance for 2 hours. I hear what you're saying, I can't count the number of times I've seen truly bonkers tricks in freestyle skiing and snowboard competitions, from people who screwed up their 2nd or 3rd run, or couldn't stitch together a coherent run around that one trick, and so came in near the middle of the rankings. But the winners were not significantly less impressive, just blunder-free. A lot of time, the winners were the peak performers moment-to-moment but sustained that performance for much longer.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
sotix 3y ago
> Simracing: getting faster doesn't make you win races. Getting more consistent does. I think this is absolutely true at the lower levels, but once you hit a baseline of consistency, the faster drivers do win races by simply being faster. It can be maddening them trying to recreate their line but still being an entire second per lap slower. But when racing closer to the beginner level, simply being able to complete every lap at a consistent pace does indeed put you at a massive advantage over others.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  In the context of startups, everyone's at beginner level. For auto racing (whether sim or real), the #1 rule has always been "To finish first, first you must finish", which, as I see it, is a direct "make no blunders before worrying about a podium finish".
  - lgas 3y ago
    > In the context of startups, everyone's at beginner level. Why would this be true? There are plenty of startup veterans that have been doing it for years.
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      You're quite correct, it was an oversight on my part. It's too late to edit my post now, but at least this thread will be a record of me disagreeing with my original point :-)
- adql 3y ago
  Yeah but getting consistent is the bar you need to get to first before you can even be considered decent. Being 1s faster than everyone best lap but having ~2s lap-to-lap inconsistency will make you lose every time.
- dgunay 3y ago
  A similar dynamic bears out in a lot of games. For example, in most RTS games, you win at lower levels by simply out-macroing your opponent. Only when you are on equal footing later do tactics and strategy become important, despite those ostensibly being the core focus of the genre.
blastro 3y ago
In golf, reducing bogies helps more than increasing birdies, so same idea there

chillfox 3y ago

"These are surely not true when you're at a high level" I don't know what you mean by high level, but I suspect that avoiding mistakes continues to be very important regardless of level in most things. I play Marvel Snap in the top 1000 and at that level most of the games comes down to whoever makes a mistake first loses.

voiper1 3y ago
>This observation applies only to amateur tennis. In professional tennis it’s just the opposite: 80% of the rallies are won rather than lost, as unforced errors are infrequent. This is true in chess as well, as high-level players don’t blunder, and thus it really is that litany of other skills that results in high standings. I think this means at a high level, you're already not blundering. So you need to actually do something MORE in order to win. You need to force your oponent to lose, and not just play "OK" and wait for them to make a mistake.
- AdamN 3y ago
  Although pros do still make clear errors and even misses that may not be classed as an error (but are at the professional level) might outweigh the brilliant shots when it comes to the win. I suspect this is why some games are 'best of'. The real aficionados sense a low error rate and then it's more purely about the big, brilliant plays - and that's not a common event.
harry8 3y ago
French Open tennis. Seems like the winners, (eg Rafa Nadal who has one of the greatest sporting records in any sport, anywhere there), consistently hit ground strokes from the baseline, back over the net and deep enough in play. From that point the opponent self-destructs. Ok differs from wimbeldon where guys play Hamlet while playing in the final (Kyrios, Becker, McEnroe, etc. etc.) and can win doing it with outrageous aggression and magic winners, but the French Open is certainly "High Level" Rafa at the French? How many matches was his longest winning streak? 36 matches, 5 titles in 6 years? Unfathomable sustained excellence.
- seabass-labrax 3y ago
  I don't follow tennis closely enough to understand the difference. What makes the eventual winners at Wimbledon play more aggressively than at the French Open? Is it due to the environment (clay or grass perhaps) or some sort of cultural thing?
  - I_ 3y ago
    Grass is faster, meaning for any given shot over the net you have less time to respond. This encourages attacking behaviour. Clay is slower, meaning even off fast, angled, difficult-to-reach shots the ball bounces higher and slower, meaning you have time to get to it, thus prolonging rallies and points. But beyond that, it's not just that players choose to play more aggressive on grass - a given shot is more aggressive on grass. This is why the serve is more powerful on grass - you open the point with a powerful shot, and on grass that's harder to return. See rally length differences here: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1246341537753006082 https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1246341537753006082
    - seabass-labrax 3y ago
      Fascinating! Thanks for the explanation.
      - harry8 3y ago
        Note Rafa has also won wimbeldon on grass, against Federer at his unbelievable peak (in the midst of winning it 8 times), in 5 sets, in the final, finishing in the dark. And won again 2 years later to put those trophies with his 14 French Open titles.
weinzierl 3y ago
I'd go even farther than that and suspect that in many areas avoiding blunders gets more important climbing to higher levels. Just the other day I explained this to my daughter: In our school system a 1 is the best grade a 6 the worst. Maintaining a 2.0 average is kind of easy. When you blunder and get a 3, all you have to so is getting a 1 eventually to compensate. Maintaining a 1.0 average is much, much harder, because you have to write 1s consistently without any exception and no way to fix a blunder(*). In many systems there is a hard ceiling of what you can achieve. When your performance is measured as an average, this makes the system more unforgiving for blunders the closer you are to the ceiling. (*) Technically, in our school system this is not entirely correct, because I think you could theoretically get 0.7s. The overall point still stands, because there is a hard and positive limit.
djtango 3y ago
Watch any top tennis game and unforced errors and %age first serves often tells the story of the match

roenxi 3y ago

> These are surely not true when you're at a high level, but for most people it's the right focus. It is trivially true at all levels - anything that leads you to lose a game can be construed as a mistake, so if you make no mistakes and you lose then the game has been solved (which Chess has not been) or was unwinnable. The mistakes just get smaller and fewer and fewer people can recognise them.

SenHeng 3y ago

A good example would be Elizabeth Swaney[0] who somehow found her way into the 2018 Winter Olympics simply by showing up at qualifying. In order to qualify for the Olympics, athletes needed to place in the top 30 at either a FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup event or FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships, and score a minimum of 50.00 FIS points.[9] Swaney achieved this by attending competitions with fewer than thirty participants,[6] with one event in China having fifteen (in which she placed thirteenth). Thirteen of her top 30 finishes were a result of her showing up, not falling, and recording a score https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Swaney https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Swaney

sitkack 3y ago
This has been my analysis of high level competition as a whole. It isn't about who is the best, as in peak performance. It is about consistently making the least amount of mistakes. You can break records, or you can out de-mistake the competition.
- petsfed 3y ago
  I disagree categorically with this. In baseball, the team that commits the most unforced errors tends to lose the game, but the team that scores the most runs always wins. Usain Bolt doesn't have 8 gold medals and 3 world records because he has perfect form (I just learned that he has scoliosis, leading to "imperfect" form, whether that made him faster or slower than he would otherwise be is apparently a subject of some debate), but because he's fast. It is frequently the case that the best at something defines "perfect" form. And anyway, Bolt doesn't run marathons, because he cannot sustain that kind of performance for 2 hours. I hear what you're saying, I can't count the number of times I've seen truly bonkers tricks in freestyle skiing and snowboard competitions, from people who screwed up their 2nd or 3rd run, or couldn't stitch together a coherent run around that one trick, and so came in near the middle of the rankings. But the winners were not significantly less impressive, just blunder-free. A lot of time, the winners were the peak performers moment-to-moment but sustained that performance for much longer.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

sotix 3y ago

> Simracing: getting faster doesn't make you win races. Getting more consistent does. I think this is absolutely true at the lower levels, but once you hit a baseline of consistency, the faster drivers do win races by simply being faster. It can be maddening them trying to recreate their line but still being an entire second per lap slower. But when racing closer to the beginner level, simply being able to complete every lap at a consistent pace does indeed put you at a massive advantage over others.

lelanthran 3y ago
In the context of startups, everyone's at beginner level. For auto racing (whether sim or real), the #1 rule has always been "To finish first, first you must finish", which, as I see it, is a direct "make no blunders before worrying about a podium finish".
- lgas 3y ago
  > In the context of startups, everyone's at beginner level. Why would this be true? There are plenty of startup veterans that have been doing it for years.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    You're quite correct, it was an oversight on my part. It's too late to edit my post now, but at least this thread will be a record of me disagreeing with my original point :-)
adql 3y ago
Yeah but getting consistent is the bar you need to get to first before you can even be considered decent. Being 1s faster than everyone best lap but having ~2s lap-to-lap inconsistency will make you lose every time.
dgunay 3y ago
A similar dynamic bears out in a lot of games. For example, in most RTS games, you win at lower levels by simply out-macroing your opponent. Only when you are on equal footing later do tactics and strategy become important, despite those ostensibly being the core focus of the genre.

blastro 3y ago

In golf, reducing bogies helps more than increasing birdies, so same idea there