My Biggest Bet.

We all use heuristics in our professional lives as they help us offset the energy costs associated with decision-making and better navigate our complex world. According to Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier (2011), such heuristics are not irrational shortcuts but efficient cognitive tools that often perform as well as, or better than, complex analysis. While some heuristics might be productive, others prove to be a trap (for instance, mind a long list of human cognitive errors).

I recently started contemplating one heuristic that always seemed a no-brainer for me: follow the people. It was my biggest bet so far.

For my whole professional life, I have always followed the people. I embraced this heuristic at 18 when I moved out of my parent’s place and started making independent career decisions.

Since then, I have been navigating myself in a way that does not allow me to be the smartest person in the room.

So, I chose to join the College of Interfaculty Studies in Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Warsaw University to surround myself with people who are as bright as it gets.

Within the college, I was maneuvering between three faculties, putting a lot of effort into building and maintaining relationships with the most intelligent people I could find.

Why Did I Choose an Academic Career Path?

I then joined the academic career path — for the same reason: to surround myself with beautiful minds where I’m constantly challenged and can grow my intellectual abilities.

Moreover, I chose a career in neuroscience: the real Tower of Babel, where specialists from all areas of science meet and fuse their strengths to broaden the realm of human knowledge… of humans. From biologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and psychologists to engineers — they work hand in hand to back-engineer the muscle called the brain.

According to Granovetter (1973), these kinds of loosely connected, diverse ties across disciplines often carry more novel information and opportunity than the tight ties within one’s own narrow field.

Meanwhile, I also got auspicious results in a shortened MBA program at Warsaw School of Economics… and ignored it. I chose to join intelligent people pursuing challenging academic projects instead of doing simple arithmetic and calling it “financial analysis.”

Then, after my PhD and the following pandemic had finally ended, I went to a place with the highest concentration of smart people: Silicon Valley — the ultimate fusion of science, art, and tech.

I was choosing people all the way.

For these twenty years, I was also single handedly maintaining dozens of friendships and hundreds of more casual relationships — making all the compromises necessary. I was the one to call at Christmas time.

I used to take a tram from one corner of a city to another to fit someone else’s agenda. Or cut from my sleeping time just to meet and talk about life because the occasion presents itself.

The Dire Consequences.

And so, what did this heuristic and all the time invested bring me?

In terms of the quality of the conversations I enjoy in daily life, I maxed out. Pretty much every conversation I have is interesting, and I have to admit that.

But what else?

In the pandemic, when I was the most isolated, none of my “friends” called me for two years. Most of them didn’t even pick up my calls.

So, did this strategy result in a support network? No.

Given how many interesting people I met (well, thousands, right?), do I have a family I wish to have? No.

Instead, for the past 20 years, I have always landed in highly competitive environments, with too many people competing for resources, which were often toxic. Not the conditions that could easily convert to intimacy.

Next, do I have the financial results in my company I would have had if I had invested the same time into marketing and sales? Did all these people lead me to more leads and success? No.

Actually, in sales, being a compromising person and dedicating time can work against you, related to the scarcity effect. Namely, when people find you available, they don’t see enough value to pay you for your work.

So, did the quantity of people and all the effort to invest time and compromise convert into quality in my life? No.

Follow The Money.

To be brutally honest with oneself, if a strategy doesn’t work for 20+ years, the problem lies in the strategy, not in the execution.

And if a strategy doesn’t work for 20+ years and your basic needs on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are not fulfilled, you need to change it asap instead of trying to force through a wall with your head.

Do you agree?

Recently, my thoughts revolved around the golden rule of gold diggers: “Follow the money.”

The way I understand this rule is: “Always choose actions to maximize what you can build and how you can monetize it. Building, shipping, and selling first, networking next.”

And that can happen at the cost of a decreased number of interpersonal contacts.

When you choose to build maximum value, you can go under the radar for a long time. It’s a long road but it will eventually bring you to the right people anyway.

There won’t be even close to as many people on the way as what “following the people” brings. It’s only going to be these few people who are also good at producing value.

Choosing the lonely road of value building, one will get where a few people can get — perhaps not those who were born with the highest IQ per se, but the best navigators. And there are only a few of those, and they usually meet each other on top after climbing their mountain of challenges all by themselves.

Why Follow The Money?

In Western (and predominantly European) culture, monetary transactions between people are often frowned upon as “less noble,” “mercenary,” or even “corruptive.”

In fact, money has an incredible, benevolent power; it almost bends the rules of physics.

Let’s assume we have two people in the room, Anna and Ben. Anna gives Ben a class in interior design, priced at $500. Anna is laser-focused on the quest to teach Ben as Ben is her client, and Ben is receptive, as he invested $500 in the class and wants to get the maximum out of it.

The other day, Ben gives Anna a class in building hardware with Arduino, priced at $500. Again, both are maximally focused, for all the good reasons. The transfer of value is at a maximum both ways.

When you look at this situation from a distance, the net transfer of money is zero: both parties made $500 and spent $500. BUT at the same time, they both learned at a maximum speed.

What Happens Without Money on the Table

Let’s now assume Ben and Anna meet so that Ben can teach Anna, and Anna can teach Ben, with no strings attached. When money is not on the table, all the focus and determination to learn disappear.

Anna comes late to the meeting as it’s “just a friendly help.” Ben lurks into TikTok on his phone every two minutes just to entertain himself.

What’s the conclusion? The operation ($500 – $500) DOES NOT equal ($0 – $0).

It does, mathematically, but it doesn’t when it comes to human commitment; money can bend people together and make them lazor-focused and willing to make an effort. It acts like an optical fiber spanning from one brain to another.

According to Heyman and Ariely (2004), effort in a social exchange and effort in a monetary exchange follow entirely different rules, and mixing the two — introducing even a small payment into a social relationship — tends to collapse it into the less generous monetary logic.

On the Definition of Success: Attention is Not All You Need.

I’ve finally realized that despite being in business for many years now, my imagination of what success means is still academic. You know, it’s how to change the mentality you grew up with for your childhood, youth, and the first decade of your professional life.

So, how does success in academia look? Well, in academia, the free market exists — at least to some extent. When a new professor comes to work for a university, they have the right to negotiate their contract.

If acquired enough stardom and academic achievement, they can snatch a better salary than originally proposed. Therefore, there are differences in earnings between professors (and also between Postdoctoral researchers).

According to Merton (1968), this is a version of what he called the Matthew effect in science — already-eminent scientists get disproportionate credit and reward, so relatively small early differences in stardom snowball into large differences in pay and recognition.

However, in most countries, there is a (rather narrow) window in which your salary should fit — most differences in salary between contracts are a matter of prestige rather than formidable differences in compensation. It’s true especially in the Netherlands where I completed my PhD.

What the Game Is Really About

In other words, what the game is really about, is attention or esteem. What matters is the significance of the scientific discovery and the following tokens of appreciation from the academic community: awards, invitations to conferences and scientific forums, interviews, podcasts, TED talks, press coverage, book deals, a spot in the textbooks in the discipline, your own Wikipedia page, you name it.

These are the tokens of success in academia. Attention is money.

After moving to business, I subconsciously adopted the same thinking. You have to prove that you have knowledge in a particular discipline, find a solution to a specific problem, come to the stage to share it, and then you are successful, right?

Well, not necessarily — and especially not in the Silicon Valley. As a matter of fact, in the Silicon Valley, money is money.