10 thoughts on incentives: 1. Don't ask your barber if you need a haircut. 2. "I can fix the $32 trillion US debt problem in 5 minutes. You pass a law that when there’s a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members congress are ineligible for re-election” - Warren Buffett 3. 33% of British criminals were dying en route to Australia in the 1700s. Britain switched from paying sea captains for every passenger who walked on the ship to paying them for every passenger who walked off. Immediately, the survival rate shot up to 99%. 4. “Never attribute to conspiracy what is more easily explained by incentives and incompetence.” - @naval 5. “If you reward profits alone, it’s the dumbest thing you could do. Employees will quit advertising and start shrinking the business” - Buffett 6. If video games teach us one thing: If you want to motivate humans, frequent rewards are more addicting than one-off rewards. 7. “I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it. And never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther." - Munger 8. If the person tells you why their city, relationship, or job is great - take it with a pinch of salt. If they tell you why it's terrible - take it like a handful of gold. If someone swims upstream against their identity or incentives, it probably holds some deep truth to it. 9. "Incentives are like magnets. An invisible but powerful pull." - @awilkinson 10. Skinner's Law: If procrastinating, 2 ways to solve it: Option 1 - Make the pain of inaction > Pain of action Option 2 - Make the pleasure of action > Pleasure of inaction The person with a gun to their head or crack cocaine at the finish line doesn't need motivation.