Distortion Debt
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One idea from Ben Horowitz's 'The Hard Thing About Hard Things' I keep frequently coming back to is technical debt, and its adjacent: management debt.
The idea of technical debt is pretty simple: "While you may be able to borrow time by writing quick and dirty code, you will eventually have to pay it back - with interest."
Management debt, similarly "is incurred when you make an expedient, short-term management decision with an expensive, long-term consequence."
This got me thinking - to what other domains can you apply the idea of debt?
How about reality distortion?
You see, it's okay to distort reality — as long as you deliver on it afterwards. Or, "overpromise and overdeliver", as Eric Weinstein likes to put it.
By hyping something up, you sell people on a reality that does not (yet) exist. In doing so, you begin to rack up distortion debt. It’s then up to you to pay it back by delivering on the hype. If done right, it can be extremely generative, as it lights a fire under you and encourages you to follow through on your promises.
Just like money can be thought of as fuel, so can social trust. And just like you can borrow money, you can borrow social trust in the form of hype. Just make sure you pay it back in the end.
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