The Delta of Me

Me to Me not Me to You

About six months ago, I walked into a CrossFit gym. I had watched the CrossFit Games and then spent months pondering if I should make the leap and join a gym. Ever since high school, I had wanted to dabble with CrossFit. Get the feet wet and see where it may take me. My days of being a competitive athlete were beyond me, but I had a competitive thirst I needed to quench. After months of research and prodding, I finally decided to make the leap and leave the cozy confines of a commercial gym and join a CrossFit gym.

I walked in thinking the transition from my current workout habits to CrossFit would be seamless. I was working out 6-7 days a week, often, high-intensity training, dripping in sweat. I would be a perfect fit for the sport and quickly excel. However, I was wrong, very wrong. I quickly was served a piece of humble pie. Trying to master movements I had never previously done in my life and use machines that I thought how hard can they really be?

CrossFit is a grueling workout. The heart rate can peak at 180 BPM and will sit around 160 for most of the conditioning workouts. Once you think you are fit, it is there to chew you up and spit you out and let you know there is still much work to do.

Within 1.5 months of joining, I decided to dip my toes in the competition pool by competing in a competition of teams of 2, some may say a rather bold undertaking and a rather quick turnaround. My teammate and I, mostly carried by her, placed in the middle of the field, dragged down by a single workout. Ultimately, I walked away from the competition disappointed.

I lied in at least the top 10% of how quickly I picked up the movements and lifts. I did just spend 1.5 months learning a foreign language and then decided to go compete, something I should have really been proud of. However, that wasn’t the case.

When I arrived, I came in with a baseline that was high, too high. The sport seemed like a small step up from my current training but the delta between my current training and CrossFit was quite large. That is not to knock my current training but rather, it is a testament to the difficulty of CrossFit. The aerobic capacity, strength, and muscular endurance of the professionals are quite impressive. Lives and livelihoods are dedicated to the sport with sometimes nothing offered in return.

Myself vs. A Great

Noah Ohlsen is considered one of the best athletes to ever grace the sport of CrossFit. Talk about accomplishments. I came in thinking the difference between Noah Ohlsen and me was much smaller than it actually was. I had no thoughts of ever going professional but I knew my running times and standard lifts were comparable but I was not accounting for the other 99% of the sport, quite a big miss on my behalf.

I found myself frustrated with how long it took me to learn things. How long it took me to improve. What I failed to realize is I was doing myself a disservice. I was measuring myself against the best in the world. Grossly unrealistic at best, I was setting myself up for disappointment.

More realistically, I should have been measuring myself relative to the change I had experienced since starting, the improvement I made over time.  I should have really compared myself to where I would expect to be in the “average state of the world”. If I had done this experiment 10,000 times, how many times would I really be better off than I was now? The answer is very few, I did just complete a competition within a month of learning the sport. I shouldn’t have thought relative to one of the best to ever do it, I should have thought relative to me.

Your Personal Delta

Nick Maggiulli wrote on this idea and coined the term. You should compare yourself to where you would expect to be in the average state of the world. It is called your personal delta. Is your delta positive or negative? If it is positive, you are better off than the average result of those 10,000 simulations.

Much of life is relative and we live it that way but in so many ways that notion can be ignored. Take success, what makes someone successful? We view Bezos, Buffett, and Musk as successful. However, we, relative to them, are not successful and that is often how we view it. 

Or if someone asked you if you were a good basketball player, some may say yes, some may say they’re decent, and some may say they are serviceable. However, no one says “Well, in comparison to LeBron James, I am terrible.” If you asked someone at your local pickup game that question and that is their answer, you might consider them to be crazy. Why would you ever compare yourself to one of the greatest to ever do it?

On the surface, it is a ridiculous statement. LeBron is not only uber-talented and genetically gifted but he dedicates every waking hour to his craft. He has access to the best-in-class facilities, world-renowned trainers, and access to the best basketball minds in the game. He is also said to spend $1.5 million on his body annually to maintain peak physical performance. We are not afforded the same opportunities as him and thus, it would be wrong for us to compare ourselves to him. Now, if we were in the NBA, this may be a different story but unfortunately, for me, and most of us, my competitive basketball career tapped out in the eighth grade.

If we forever defined our basketball skills to be relative to LeBron, we would be stuck in a vortex of disappointment. So why do we judge our success, namely our net worth, against some of the best entrepreneurs in the world?

Would you really trade it?

People spend their whole lives chasing down the dream of being the next Buffet or the next Munger but fail to realize there is no end to that chase. It’s like running a race with no finish line. A race that is a continuous loop of disappointment with no end in sight.

Warren Buffett often suggests the following thought experiment: assume every human being currently alive, all eight billion breathing species on Earth, is a marble placed in an enormous jar. If afforded the opportunity, would you put your marble in with others, mix up the jar, take another marble at random, and live that life instead? If the answer is no, then know you have a blessed life. If you were to run a simulation of your life 10,000 times, there’s a good chance that if you are saying no to that thought experiment you are pleased with where you are at, where you currently sit. You have a positive delta. In the average state of the world, you are doing quite well for yourself and are better off than the average.

Life is lived in a relative manner just like options trading. In options trading, Delta is considered the rate of change of an option price given a $1.00, plus or minus, change in the price of the underlying security. To put it simply, for every change in the stock price of this amount, the option price is expected to move by this amount. The option price changes relative to the security or stock it is attached to. It is not in relation to the rest of the market. Nor, is it in relation to another stock. The option price of Apple would not be priced according to Amazon. In no world would that make any sense.

Rather, it makes fundamental sense that the option should be priced to the stock it is attached to because that is how change is really valued. Change is best valued in terms of the underlying it is associated with. So why do we value ourselves in relation to others? Mathematically, the idea of pricing, valuing, or comparing ourselves in relation to others makes zero sense.

Just like Apple and Amazon are two radically different companies, the person we are comparing ourselves to and us are two radically different people. That is the beauty of the world we live in, every person is different. Every person’s definition of success and failure is different. Where every person would expect to be in the average state of the world is different. Everyone’s personal delta is different because it is in relation to their life.

The Wise Words of Giannis

Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks were the number-one seed in the East Conference Playoffs. They fell to the hands of the Miami Heat losing 4-1. A big upset in the eyes of some. Giannis was asked if he viewed this season as a failure. He pauses, puts his face in his hands, and takes a deep breath. 

He then responds, “You asked me the same question last year, Eric. Do you get a promotion every year? On your job? No, right? So every year you work is a failure? Yes or no? No. Every year you work, you work towards something, a goal. Right? Which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, I don’t know, provide a house for them, take care of your parents, you work towards a goal. It is not a failure. It’s steps to success . . . Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six championships, the other nine years were a failure? That’s what you’re telling me . . . There’s no failure in sports. There’s good days, bad days, some days you are able to be successful, some days you’re not. Some days it’s your turn, some days it’s not your turn.”

If Giannis always valued the success of his season with a championship, he would mostly walk away unhappy or dejected. It is incredibly hard to win a championship in professional sports. Michael Jordan played 15 years and he won 6 championships, good for a 40% clip. Lebron James has played 20 years and won 4 championships, good for a 20% clip. We would never value our lives or our career based on if we got a promotion each year just like Giannis shouldn’t value every NBA season on if he won a championship. It is unrealistic and foolish at best. 

Giannis will value the season based upon all the things that happened and take a look back and see if we were to run this season 10,000 times, how many times would he be better off? His team did receive the number one overall seed in the East and the best record in the NBA all while he battled injuries, sometimes it is just not your year. Some stars sit at home and didn’t even sniff the playoffs, like Damian Lillard and Luka Doncic. While some stars will go on to win it all, hopefully, Jayson Tatum. For Giannis to evaluate himself to them would be foolish. Rather, he knows in the “average state of the world”, could he really have ended up much better? Maybe the answer is yes and he does have a negative personal delta attached to that season.

Parting Words

Just like Giannis, we would always like to say we have a positive personal delta. No, we couldn’t have done better and yes we did everything we could have. We are living our best lives and couldn’t be better in the average state of the world. However, life, unfortunately, doesn’t work that way just ask Giannis.

We can’t always be successful and we can’t always win or everyone would do it. Life is a zero-sum game. What we can do is evaluate our delta. Evaluate if we ran the simulation of life 10,000 times, how many times would we be better off? Evaluate if in the average state of our world, our life, would we be better off? Success can be hard to come by but it can be much easier to see when evaluate our life to our own and not to others.