How often do you finish the projects you start? How often do you get started, and then see a new opportunity and switch to that? When you start on a project there's usually a reward at the end, a reason you are doing the project, but how often do you get the reward? How do you properly value the reward at the end of the project versus a new opportunity? The answer lies at The End Of The Road which is Why You Should Finish.
Hunter Powers: Welcome to The One. I'm your host, Hunter Powers broadcasting live from our nation's capital DC proper, Washington DC. Today's One idea is the end of the road, why you should finish. Do you finish what you start? When you start a project, do you tend to see it through to the end? Or do you have a lot of different things that are going on at different stages and most never actually come to an end? Or do you start a project, get a little the way in, and then kind of figure out something better. Maybe start that project and get a little way in, and then you figure out, well, I don't know, possibly it could do this instead. Or maybe this is a better idea overall. And you get a little way in, a little bit way in, and then maybe in the end you do come to a completion of something, but there were a lot of false starts along the way.
Hunter Powers: Maybe there's value in those starts. You learned something. You would've never done the thing that you did in the end if you hadn't learned a little bit along the way. But in general when you start something, do you finish it? Are you ever afraid to start something because you might not finish it or you would feel you would have to finish it if you started? If I start this, I have to finish it, and I'm afraid of having to finish it, the effort that might be required. Do you ever not start something because it's not worth it? It's got to happen, right? There's something that you want and then you find out what's required to get it and you say, "Yeah, that's not worth it. It's not worth," which I'm sure that one has happened.
Hunter Powers: I have this idea that I call the ever dividing road. Here's how it works. There is a road in front of you. It is one day long, meaning in one day you get to the end of it and at the end of the road is a one dollar bill. Now, you don't have anything to do today. It's kind of a picturesque road, and so you say, "Sure, I'll go down the road and at the end I'll get the dollar." And so you start down and it's going well. It's a flat road and you get about halfway down this road. There's a fork, a fork in the road, and there's a new road and a sign on this road. It says this road is also one day long and at the end of this road is $10, and so you are struck with the decision.
Hunter Powers: You can continue down the road that you were on, you've got half a day left and claim your one dollar, or you can take this new road and it's only one day long, but that's half a day more than you had left on the existing road and you'd get $10, 10 times. 10 times is the reward. 10 times the reward for it seems like only like an half day of effort, because right? I had half a day to finish the road that I'm on and I'll get a dollar, that's half a day. Or I can spend one full day to go down this new road and I'll get $10.
Hunter Powers: And so you say to yourself, "Well, that seems worth it." And maybe you're even familiar with the economic principle of sunk cost, which says that you really shouldn't even consider what you've done before this moment, you should simply look at the opportunities in front of you and value them independently. If he did that, you would say, "Well, I have two options, walk half a day for $1 or walk a full day for $10." So you choose the new road, 10 times the award, only one more day, and you start walking down this road.
Hunter Powers: Now, this road isn't quite as smooth as the last road. There's a few turns, a few little hills, but you're making good progress. You still think, "Yeah, I'm going to be there by the end of the day. It's working out." You get about halfway down this road and there's a fork in the road. You take a look at the sign for this new road and it says one day, this road is one day long, and there is $100 at the end of this road. And so you are struck with a decision, what should you do? You could continue on this existing road. You only have half a day left and get $10 or you could take the fork in the road and spend a full day and get 10 times the reward, $100. You had this decision before, you've already kind of worked through the logic. It makes sense to take the new road. $100 in one day, that's 10 times their reward. That's a hundred times the reward that you had when you were starting.
Hunter Powers: And so you go down the new road, not quite as smooth as the previous road, but you are determined. You're power walking this road. Maybe your feet are getting a little tired, but you are power walking this road. And you know sure enough, you get halfway down this road and there's another fork in the road. You look at the sign and this new road is another one day long road, and at the end of this road is $1,000, 10 times what is on the road that you're on, right? Because the road you were on was the a hundred dollar road. You've got half a day left. But this new road is $1,000, and it's only one day long. And so of course, you, you take the new road. I'm going on the thousand dollar road. And by now I'm sure you see the pattern and you continue this pattern, right?
Hunter Powers: $1000 road, $10,000 road, $100,000 road, a million dollar road. At some point along the journey, you become very tired. You realize that you have been walking, now for days, weeks, months, years. I don't know. It depends on how strong you are, but you've been walking a very long time. You check your pockets. They're empty. But you say, "Well, I think at this point I'm so tired that I'm just going to go ahead and finish the road that I'm on. You know, I've got half a day left." The thing is, in your current state, you can't really get down this road in half a day. It's going to take a little bit longer than that. You know, you've got a lot of resolve and you start down. This is the first time that you didn't take the fork. I'm just going to finish this road that I'm on.
Hunter Powers: As you turn the corner, because by now these roads are really, really crazy. As you turn the corner, you look up and there is a giant mountain in front of you and the road is more or less vertically straight up this mountain and at the top you can just see this giant ball of money. And so, you start up this giant road trying to figure out how can you get a footing? You're sliding down, you're falling apart. It's a giant mass. You don't have the tools to climb this road. You're completely out of your element, you have no resources left, and eventually you give up. Finishing this road is impossible. That is the ever dividing road. This is a pattern that I have seen played out many, many times before, often with a project that pumps to start, and then there's a slight of elution before it ever finishes, and a slight evolution before it ever finishes, and a slight evolution, but it never actually comes to fruition.
Hunter Powers: It never finishes. Just at some point exhaustion sets in and you can't do anymore and that is called done. But you never finished, and you had many opportunities to finish, but you always chose that next road because the value seemed so much more.
Hunter Powers: It's interesting to think about this problem from a game theory standpoint. How would we optimize a solution for the ever dividing road? In game theory, your strategy often depends on what is called the horizon. You can think of horizon as how much time do you have. There are two types of horizons. There is what's called a finite horizon and what's called an infinite horizon. A finite horizon is a specific amount of time, one minute, one hour, one day, one week, one month, a specific amount of time. An infinite horizon, as you might guess, is an infinite amount of time.
Hunter Powers: So if we think of our road, if you had two days, that's all the time that you have to spend walking down random roads and you wanted to maximize the amount of money that you achieved doing this. Well, you have to start down the first road that's going to get you half-day in. Then you're going to take the fork for the $10 road. That's the second one. Once you get halfway down that road, you are exactly one day in. You now have one day left, because your total horizon is two days. And so, the last fork for $100 you would take that fork and you would finish it. That would take the full two days and you would end up with $100.
Hunter Powers: If the problem changed to being a infinite horizon game, you would start down the first road, go all the way to the end, get the dollar, then come back to the fork in the road, go down the next road all the way to the end, get the $10. Come back, go all the way down the next road and get the $100. So that when you arrived at the same point, the hundred dollar reward, it would take you four days to get there. If you went down all of the previous roads and then backtracked. Four days in total and you would have $111, whereas the person with the finite horizon after two days has $100.
Hunter Powers: These would be the correct strategies if you were operating under a finite horizon or you were operating under an infinite horizon. The problem with the strategy that most people employee is that they don't define the horizon, because the economics are correct given only the information I've told you so far, that when presented with the fork in the road, you should always choose the fork. Do not consider what you've done so far. That's your sunk cost. You have two opportunities in front of you, and that fork with that 10x reward, it always makes the correct economic choice. Unless you're operating under an infinite horizon, in in which case it's not the correct economic choice because you can have both under an infinite horizon. But the problem is that you don't know your horizon. You don't know what is the limit that you are maximizing for. That's the first insight. You have to know where the limit is.
Hunter Powers: Now, the second part is the tremendous value in actually coming to the end of the road, because what I have not told you and what you would only know if you ever finished one of these roads is that the road is actually a bit of an illusion. While it looks like you are halfway down the road, you're not, you're not even close. You've probably heard the statement before that the devil is in the details. It's often said that 80% of the effort actually comes from completing the final 20% of any project. In that first half of the road, you've got all the tent pole ideas or features or structures established. Everything's kind of roughed in towards where you're going, but bringing it all together and making it all congruous is terribly challenging.
Hunter Powers: So if 80% of the effort is in the last 20% of the work, then also 80% of the value is captured in that last 20% of the work, unless you can find someone that will overpay for that first 80%. But by completing this final bit of the road, this hardest part of the road, it's only here that you actually understand the totality of the project, that you actually get the value from the project, that you actually have something that you can then leverage for the future, in addition to this monetary rewards. So not only let's take our first road, you only got a dollar at the end of it, but you've also learned how do I why cross the finish line, how do I make everything come together at the end? Plus, you have an extra dollar that you can then spend to help you get down the next road, and the next road, and the next road, and the next road.
Hunter Powers: It all starts building up so that when you get to that $1000, the $100,000, the million dollar road, and you see that giant mountain up into the sky, you've got all your tools there ready. You're prepared for this. You've crossed the finish line. You've climbed all the mountains before this road, so now that you're facing this giant straight up vertical climb, it's not no sweat, but you feel completely confident that you can complete it. Why? Because you finish your projects. You finish what you start. You operate with a finite horizon. That is what is at the end of the road and that is why you should finish, why you should start something that you're not sure is even worth it, because the value will come from finishing.
Hunter Powers: It is far beyond just the the one dollar. It's that it then sets you up to be able to take on the $10 road, the $1000 road, the $100,000 road, and you've got to avoid those forks. Yes, they are real, but they are also traps, and you are most likely not yet prepared for them. Finish the road, grab the value, grab the resources, and then take on the next one.
Hunter Powers: As we come to the end of this episode, I'm reminded of the tortoise and the hare, right? This is not a new idea what we just talked about. We think about the tortoise and the hare and map it onto this, the hare or the rabbit is the one that constantly takes that fork in the road, constantly trying to find the shortcut to get there faster, but in the end never wins. Whereas the turtle sticks on its path and always gets there.
Hunter Powers: Even one more interesting note or interesting thing to think about is if the fork wasn't in the road, the tortoise could probably never win. The turtle only wins because there are forks in the road, and these suck all the hares to the side and allow the tortoise to find the end. If they're no forks, the hair is the faster animal, it's going to get there. You can use this to your advantage. This can be part of your secret sauce.
Hunter Powers: That is your one idea for today, the end of the road, and why you should finish. I am Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, as we say in the city, DC proper, and until next time.