Over the last few months, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about probabilistic thinking, mental models, and cognitive biases.

If you’re interested in those subjects, I highly recommend Rolf Dobelli’s The Art of Thinking Clearly, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths’ Algorithms to Live By, and Eric Jorgenson’s The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.

In his infamous 2018 tweet-storm, the aforementioned AngelList founder Naval Ravikant advises readers to play iterated games to receive compound interest on actions.

I add to that, “Play worthwhile iterated games that you know you can win over time.”

An iteration is a repetition of an event. The goal is to do repeated actions and learn from each result to improve the next iteration.

As Naval said, improved iterations lead to exponential growth.

In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, he gives the example where if you improve at a skill 1% everyday for a year, you’ll be 37x better than your original skill level.

This is what authors try to do with novels, baseball players try to do with hitting, and what programmers do when writing code.

We could be iterating on any games, so it is important to choose your games wisely.

I think it is best to have a mix of financial, health, and fun. Here are some iterated games I’m playing…

Iterated games I’m playing:

Coding

Learn by watching others code.

Write code. Code fails. Edit code.

Write code. Code fails with different error. Edit code.

Write code. Code succeeds.

Learn more. Search Stack Overflow1 like a madman. Repeat.

Chess

Play move. Lose piece. Learn to avoid error.

Play whole game. Learn to avoid more errors.

Study books. Ask for advice. Play more games. Repeat.

Facebook Ads

The Power of A/B Testing

Run Facebook A/B test for 2 weeks. Evaluate to see lowest cost-per-lead.

Create new A/B test with winner from first session + new ad. Evaluate to see lowest cost-per-lead.

Repeat indefinitely.

Side note: I could and probably will write an entire article on the power of A/B testing in realms outside of tech and Facebook ads.

Meditation

Meditate for 5 min. Mind is scattered. Anxious.

Meditate for 7 min the next day. Mind is slightly calmer, but still anxious.

Meditate for 12 min the next day. Slightly calmer.

Feel grateful that porcupine quills are not poisonous.

Meditate for 20 min the next day. Feel calm and relaxed.

Repeat in longer sessions until dead.

Professional Writing

Tweets -> Threads -> Articles -> Newsletters -> Books

Write tweets. Evaluate feedback in terms of favorites, retweets, and replies.

Tweets turn into threads. Evaluate feedback in terms above.

Threads turn into articles. Evaluate feedback in terms of comments and average time spent on page (not views).

Articles turn into newsletters. Evaluate feedback in terms of favorites, comments, and email replies. Send more.

Newsletters turn into books. Evaluate feedback in terms of sales, reviews, etc.

Relationships

First partner. Shit show. Learn. Breakup. Date around.

New partner. Less of shit show. Breakup. Date around.

New partner. Decent relationship. Breakup. Date around.

New partner. Marry partner.

Yoga

Do 5 min yoga routine. Muscles hurt. Joints achy.

Do 7 min the next day. Muscles and joints hurt less.

Do 12 min the next day. Everything feels nice.

Repeat in longer sessions until dead.

Takeaway:

The commonality between each of these games is marginal improvement adding up to exponential growth. That is the power of iterated games.

What iterated games are you playing?

Jason