xG for Life: Outcomes are Overrated
Sorry Kindle, There's Just Something Romantic About Accidental Underlines
Physical books are better than e-books. No, I’m not one of those uncles who nostalgically reminisces about the ‘good old days’. I almost always prefer e-books, especially if they are non-fiction. It is easier to take notes on them. It is easier to recall notes using new age apps like Readwise. It is easier to look up meanings and it is always a great travel companion. More importantly, e-books are cheaper. But still, I maintain that physical books are better. Let me explain with an incident.
In last week’s post, I had recommended two books. One of them was an interesting book titled ‘Thinking in bets’. After writing the post, I was casually flipping through the book. In a few minutes, I found myself rereading a chapter. This never happens with an e-book. There is no scope for serendipity with e-books. You'll never have a book catch your eye unexpectedly if all your books are e-books. Thank god for physical bookstores. We can roam around, hoping for a book to catch our eye, and then order it on Amazon (lol).
So as I was saying, I was flipping through the book and found something underlined: ‘cloud of incomplete information’.
The author was talking about how poker players operate with a cloud of incomplete information. And how they optimise their decisions (bets) based on what they think is a good decision with the information that they have.
If you think about it, all the decisions we make everyday are bets with (most times) incomplete information. Still, we make those bets and take those decisions believing that this is the best approach to beget the desired outcome. But outcomes are a function of both what you do and what many people call luck. I prefer the term randomness.
Take football for example. You must have seen the World cup recently. And you must’ve wondered how some obscure nation that you have not even heard of is able to draw against well established teams. Does it mean that the obscure nation played as well as the established team?
Regular watchers of the game know that this is not true. That is why analysts focus on something called xG, which is a more descriptive measure of performance than goals. It is ‘a measure to represent the probability of a scoring opportunity that may result in a goal’. It is calculated by analysing shot location, distance, type of pass, and defender presence to assign a probability of hitting the back of the net. This is a more robust way to measure a striker’s / team’s performance rather than just counting the number of goals they scored.
Let’s take the recent Liverpool vs Newcastle game for example. When the half time whistle was blown, the score line stood at 0-0. Anyone who has not watched the game might wager that both teams played equally good. However that was not the case. Liverpool dominated their opponents. They had an xG of 2.76 while Newcastle only had 0.07. The goals aka outcomes were not a good measure of how the game was going. The act of scoring a goal can be marred with randomness. Sometimes two players with similar xG can be far from each other in the goals ranking. This, however, does not mean the player with fewer goals played bad; it simply means they got less lucky.
The author shows an example of sales people:
Imagine calls to a customer by two sales people from the same company. In January, Joe pitches the company’s products and gets 1,000 USD in orders. In August, Jane calls on the same customer and gets 10,000 USD in orders. What gives? was it because the company updated its product line in February? Did a low cost competitor go out of business in April? Or is the difference in their success due to any of a variety of other unconsidered reasons? It’s hard to know why because we can’t go back in time and run the controlled experiments where Joe and Jane switch places. And the way the company sorts this outcome can affect decisions on training, pricing and product development.
Focusing solely on outcomes may not provide an accurate understanding of how things unfolded. Outcomes don’t tell us what the fault is or what isn’t. It does not tell us if Liverpool played better than Newcastle. It also does not tell us how a certain outcome came to be. ‘We can’t simply work backward from the quality of the outcome to determine the quality of our bets or decisions’ simply because real life is more like poker. We may not have all the information before hand (and sometimes after hand) and thereby not know what the correct thing to do to achieve the desired outcome. But we still make do with what we have been dealt with.
That is why it is better to focus on processes. The xG is football's ode to process over outcome. It focusses on how a team / player plays the sport rather than counting the number of times the ball crossed the goal line. Sure, it is anchored around the outcome (goal) but the focus is on consistently performing a certain kind of way.
It takes a lot of humility to accept that most of our ‘good’ decisions / outcomes in life is a function of randomness. And the only thing we can control is how we take our decisions with the incomplete information we have. Whether you're trying to write a post, cook the perfect biryani, or build a business, focusing on processes – research, outlining, practice, precise measurements in the kitchen, meticulous market research – gives you control over what you can control. Sure, the final product might not always be a masterpiece, but you'll be a better writer/cook/entrepreneur in the process.
This is why Krishna repeatedly emphasises that Arjuna's duty (Dharma) is to perform his actions with dedication and skill, without attachment to the results. (I can see myself becoming a self-help guru with this sentence. Living long enough to see myself a villain)
So, the next time you feel the urge to assess yourself based on outcomes, wait. Channel your inner xG analyst, break down the process, identify areas for improvement, and keep putting yourself in a position to win/succeed. Some guy who is supposed to be great at Poker said “In the short run, poker is a game of luck. In the long run, it's a game of skill”. The same is true of life.
Reccos:
The Chennai Book Fair has started. Go roam around the stalls. Look at the books. Something will catch your eye. Serendipity.
We don’t celebrate our 1991 reforms heroes much. Watch this episode:
That’s all folks.
the usual. Drink water. Sleep well
Until next time!