I think this also has implications for the allocation of resources at a community level because impact often is not only the product of decisions that are under a single person’s control but also of environmental factors – e.g., the number of potential supporters (employees, funders, …), the risk of a mental health crisis, and the number of valuable ideas one encounters in conversation all range over several orders of magnitude depending on one’s circumstances and their value interacts with the other factors (if you charity implements an ineffective intervention, it doesn’t matter if you meet lots of people who give you productivity advice or who are willing to work for you, etc.).
So the upshot is not just that as individuals we need to make the right call on lots of decisions if we want to maximize impact, it’s also that we need to structure the community in such a way that we ‘match’ different ‘factors of production’ in an optimal way with each other – the right people need to find each other, the right ideas, funding, advice, an environment allowing for peak and sustainable motivation, etc. – because we’ll only get the impact ‘super hits’ in cases where all input factors are set to near-maximal levels.
Great post! My impression is that this is broadly right, and sometimes underappreciated. (Though I’m not sure about your quantitative bottom line for the reasons Darius mentions.)
I think this also has implications for the allocation of resources at a community level because impact often is not only the product of decisions that are under a single person’s control but also of environmental factors – e.g., the number of potential supporters (employees, funders, …), the risk of a mental health crisis, and the number of valuable ideas one encounters in conversation all range over several orders of magnitude depending on one’s circumstances and their value interacts with the other factors (if you charity implements an ineffective intervention, it doesn’t matter if you meet lots of people who give you productivity advice or who are willing to work for you, etc.).
So the upshot is not just that as individuals we need to make the right call on lots of decisions if we want to maximize impact, it’s also that we need to structure the community in such a way that we ‘match’ different ‘factors of production’ in an optimal way with each other – the right people need to find each other, the right ideas, funding, advice, an environment allowing for peak and sustainable motivation, etc. – because we’ll only get the impact ‘super hits’ in cases where all input factors are set to near-maximal levels.
(I made similar points here.)