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Friction isn't velocity. | Irrational Exuberance

lethain.com · 695 words · saved by 1 readers

When you’re driving a car down a road, you might get a bit stuffy and decide to roll your windows down. The air will flow in, the wind will get louder, and the sensation of moving will intensify. Your engine will start working a bit harder–and louder–to maintain the same speed. Every sensation will tell you that you’re moving faster, but lowering the window has increased your car’s air resistance, and you’re actually going slower. Or at minimum you’re using more fuel to maintain the same speed. There’s nothing that you didn’t already know in the first paragraph, but it remains the most common category of reasoning error that I see stressed executives make. If you’re not sure how to make progress, then emotionally it feels a lot better to substitute motion for lack of progress, but in practice you’re worse off. Grounding this in a few examples: Many companies realize that their monolithic codebase is slowing them down. It’s easy to decide to migrate from your monolith to services to “so

When you're driving a car down a road, you might get a bit stuffy and decide to roll your windows down. The air will flow in, the wind will get louder, and the sensation of moving will intensify. Your engine will start working a bit harder-and louder-to maintain the same speed. Every sensation will tell you that you're moving faster, but lowering the window has increased your car's air resistance, and you're actually going slower. Or at minimum you're using more fuel to maintain the same speed. There's nothing that you didn't already know in the first paragraph, but it remains the most common

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