Marc Andressen has a fascinating post titled Age and the entrepreneur, part 1: Some data based on the research of a professor of psychology at University of California Davis named Dean Simonton. Among Marc’s many observations is the startling statement that:
Quality of output does not vary by age… which means, of course, that attempting to improve your batting average of hits versus misses is a waste of time as you progress through a creative career. Instead you should just focus on more at-bats — more output. Think about that one.
If this sounds insane to you, Dr. Simonton points out that the periods of Beethoven’s career that had the most hits also had the most misses — works that you never hear. As I am always fond of asking in such circumstances, if Beethoven couldn’t increase his batting average over time, what makes you think you can?
The odds of a hit versus a miss do not increase over time. The periods of one’s career with the most hits will also have the most misses. So maximizing quantity — taking more swings at the bat — is much higher payoff than trying to improve one’s batting average.
This is type Calvinistic determinism is unfortunate for several reasons. First, creative people have much less control over their number of swings at bat than they do over their actions while at bat. If you work for internet startups, it usually takes at least a few years to find out whether you’ve struck out. Three years is more typical. You might choose to only work on small projects to increase your at-bats, but that is not a good strategy because some of the best things take time to create.
Secondly, the study focuses on “outstanding achievement” (see his paper) - people like Beethoven. These people have less room to improve their average because it is already quite high. In pro baseball the top batters average between 30% and 50%. If your average is 48%, there isn’t much room to improve.
Thirdly, the ratio as defined by Dr. Simonton is overly simplistic. I’ve written on this topic before (engineering goodness); the relationship of success to failure is not a single ratio. It is a bell curve:
The bell curve provides at least two possibilities for improvement: narrow the curve (decrease the standard deviation) and change the average.
I believe most creative people have a better chance at improving their average than increasing their swings at bat. The bell curve shows the way.
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