The extreme informs the mean and not the reverse

Over a week ago, I ran into a podcast episode from the Huberman lab podcast where Andrew interviewed Tim Ferris for about four hours. It surprised me that there could be such a long conversation on the web for people to listen to; at least I know that I did listen to those four hours.

During the first hour of the podcast, I heard a sentence similar to the title of this post. It led me to think in a few directions.

Soon it will be two years since I started working for a startup. During this time, the most well-received and desired feedback on our products came from one specific customer who always had inquiries about what changes needed to happen to finalize a project on their end. This insight, which is that we paid attention to one unique group of people from the customer base, has been on my mind for several months, but I did not consider connecting it to this post's title.

A few days ago, I ran into a customer whom I was asking how our solution fit his needs, and we concluded that all of his needs were met and no further development on the SW of the product was required. With what I just wrote, I am not arguing the researcher's work is not of value, but that the control needs are satisfied, and most likely, the novelty is in the exploration with the same tools.

Ok, I just described two customers: the extreme and the mean. I think the title is a valid statement from the anecdata I have lived in the past two years. The person who found all the bugs before everybody else and made all the feature requests before everybody else led the majority of customers' satisfaction with our product.

With this insight, I can now think of what input from my work needs to be paid special attention to identify the extremes in the distribution.

I also heard from Seth that it is more important to look around the edges. Initially, I focused on examining the boundaries of my professional work to enhance my skills. However, I now realize the significance of considering the entirety of my life to identify areas for improvement.