Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance

Written by Ivan Zamesin, CEO & Founder at The Product Gene

Written by In his 1975 essay, The Loser’s Game, Charles Ellis (investment consultant, Greenwich Associates founder, author of Winning the Loser’s Game) calls professional tennis a “Winner’s Game” and amateur tennis a “Loser’s Game”. Professionals fight for each score, while amateurs make a huge amount of mistakes. Double faults are nearly as common as faults.

In professional tennis, 80% of points are being won, in amateur tennis — 80% of points are being lost. In professional sports the result of the match depends on the winner, while in amateur — on the loser. The way to start winning at amateur tennis is to focus on minimizing mistakes.

The point is that most of us are amateurs but we refuse to believe it. This is a problem because we’re often playing the game of the professionals. What we should do in this case, when we’re the amateur, is to invert the problem. Rather than trying to win, we should avoid losing.

This was a point Charlie Munger, the billionaire business partner of Warren Buffett, made a long time ago: “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent. There must be some wisdom in the folk saying, It’s the strong swimmers who drown”.

Here’s a list of games in which I try to avoid stupid mistakes:

• Stock investment
• Any major purchases, such as property or transport
• Entrepreneurship and product management

The best example of the way to avoid constant stupidity in product management is to conduct regular UX and corridor testing. These show an insane amount of mistakes each time.

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