Point of this is to underline the lesson that money doesn’t solve a guts problem. You and I don’t have billions to throw at our crappy little blog-scale extended universes, or the talent of a Kevin Feige, or the blessing-in-disguise of being barred from using our top IP. But...
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We still face the exact same yield-rate/next-peak challenge, stall problems, and the courage challenge of counter-intuitively lowering bar and diving to get out of a stall.
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There’s also a “beginner mind” and sunk-cost-fallacy side to this analysis that I’ll let you work out for yourself.
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There’s also something to be said for occassionaly cashing out earned skill by doing a quality-controlled, focused, somewhat formulaic things. That’s what Nolan Batman trilogy was. Came 7 years after he “arrived”. But then he did take risks again with Inception, Interstellar, etc
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The trick is to treat the quality-controlled stuff as finite game periods that are breaks from the quality-selected infinite game backdrops. Formulas as good servants but bad masters. Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood are examples of not going back after going formula.
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As you might guess, I’m trying to talk myself into a dive out of a stall. 🤣
hard part is becoming aware of subconsciously internalized quality bar so I can violate it.
I’m also overdue for a spot of quality-controlled cash-out action. Last one was breaking smart S1.
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Both diving to get out of a stall and going on rock-steady cruise control at an efficient altitude to “cash out” usually require cash reserves or steady funding. Need money to reorient vs need money to go deep. Two ways to use $. Kinda like seed funding vs growth/scaling funding.
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$ and creation interact differently in quality control (QC) vs quality selection (QS) modes.
In QC mode, you need $ during tooling period. Building infrastructure needed for low-variance steady output.
In QS mode, you need $ while retraining quality filter after a dive+reorient
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In QC mode, you have a long period of no output to patch over because you’re building tooling. Capex. In writing, that’s reading, building and testing frameworks (=scaffolding/rigging) to hold production flows later, instrumentation (=edit pass filters) to check quality etc.
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In QS mode, you have a long period with no “hits” as your quality filter is getting retrained for a new direction. The sign is a hit drought: ATHs languish in the “crap” band because you can’t recognize and double down on the good bits (which are there).
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Sometimes you have to do both QS and QC at the same time, like when learning a new medium and achieving the “cost of doing business” minimum level of QC.
Or when you’re genuinely pushing hard limits. Apollo required BOTH insane levels of QC and the QS iteration. Takes lots of $$
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Hmm, 2x2. Low to high QC, low to high QS.
Low QC/low QS: failing at play
Low QC/high QS: playing well
High QC/low QS: skilled craft work
High QC/High QS: pioneering
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Semiconductors are a good example of top-right. Moore’s law = always trying to ride the edge of both high-QC design process and high-yield fab process. You want bug-free chips at high fab yield rates.
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