Temporarily Idle
I think my favorite aspect of Financial Derivatives was the idea of breaking down various “financial instruments” (financial products like bonds, options, swaps, insurance, etc.) into sub-component instruments, then calculating a fair price for the entire package. This thinking, similar to how an engineering education tends to influence graduates’ thinking styles, permeates my logic on many less technical issues as well.
Anybody who hears me utter the words “implied option” should pretty much know they’re in for a circuitous foray into derivatives thinking. Most of the time, the conclusion that I draw is that a whole lot of retail and service-sector commerce that goes on is unwittingly laced with small purchases of various forms of insurance.
Anyway, don’t really know how that came to mind.
I reached a marked step in my professional development journey today, as I realized it’s always better to ask the question “Based on this logic, can you approve this course of action?” rather than “What should we do?” Much more likely to get a “Giddy Up”-type message back that leads to beating deadlines and making everyone happy.
In business school, this is called “satisficing,” and that, my friend, is a stupid word. It is a hybrid of satisfactory and suffice and ing, indicating you are finding a satisfactory solution without worrying about doing too much legwork to find the best one. This can also be called 80⁄20 thinking or its proper noun form, the Pareto Principle. I vote for “Pareto” as the best term, because it’s hard to argue with the idea, and you can basically manipulate the definition of the 80% and 20% quantities to make your point.
Essentially, 80% of the useful output comes from 20% of the inputs.
When Outlook doesn’t open e-mails in maximized view by default, my productivity crashes. Not because I’m that fast of a reader that I need to avoid scrolling, but that I so quickly go up to the upper-right corner of my screen to close the window that I close Outlook rather than the message.
The most important part of the 9⁄80 schedule is that it empties the office, but puts people in their chairs at least half the Fridays. This is not being pejorative or rude here, but it honestly gives people time to Google the Pareto principle, sort e-mails, and do some thinking and discussing without all the bustle of an ordinary day.