The Most Dangerous Danger
Our managing editor Sarah pinged me recently because she realized I had to update my bio on our website. I was no longer CFO, she pointed out, and she asked if anything else had changed.
Reading it again, that brief bio from when I started way back in 2018 said that I enjoyed “running, gardening, biking, paddling, and soccer-ing.” So I wrote her back and said that she could delete biking and paddling because I really don’t do those any longer.
“What happened?” she asked.
“As I age, I streamline my activity set,” I responded.
And it’s true. When it comes to physical activity, I know I’m one wrong foot away from a debilitating injury at this point so I only try to do things that I’m willing to risk being crippled by. Just as in finance, there is no medium risk, so try to traffic only in activities that give you upside.
The analog to this is that it’s the unintended bets that will get you, because they’re the bets you don’t know you’re making. For example, if you recently picked up pickleball because it seemed fun and you didn’t think it could cripple you, well, you’re wrong. Pickleball is expected to cause $400M worth of injuries this year. And that’s surprising because pickleball, on its face, doesn’t seem as violent as something like football or hockey.
But that’s what makes it so dangerous!
The Wall Street Journal reported recently on this study, which found that on the job accidents “are most likely to occur under moderately hazardous work conditions.” In other words, as measured by likelihood of injury, safe jobs are safe and really dangerous jobs are safe, but kinda dangerous jobs are really dangerous. And that makes perfect sense when you put these ideas together and realize that if you take any risk, you are taking catastrophic risk, and if you don’t realize the risk you’re taking, you make it more likely that that risk will materialize.
That’s the most dangerous danger, so stretch before you play pickleball and have a great weekend.
– By Tim Hanson