Our world is shaped by contagious and competitive games.
Along the way, we invent scoreboards that change the culture, and badges that we award to various players.
An example: How did we end up with weddings that cost $200,000?
It’s a great example of a runway cultural dynamic, a system within a system, a game that rewards the players who keep it going.
Weddings, like most things humans participate in, are about status and affiliation. A demonstration of the hierarchy, a chance to fit in and be part of something.
Being married is a badge, but the way we get married is processed on a scoreboard.
Weddings are group events, you can’t have one by yourself. As a result, the ornamentation and structure are broadcast, often to horizontal peer groups. Friends and relatives, some of whom are likely to get married soon. “People like us do things like this” is the definition of culture, and weddings have the ‘people like us’ part built in.
The industry benefits from a more expensive event. Since a florist or caterer can only do one wedding at a time, making each wedding more profitable (see below for more on profitable) is the best way for them to meet their goals. They have an incentive to turn the scoreboard and keep the game going.
Spending more turns the ratchet, and the ratchet almost always turns in one direction.
Of course, the most prevalent contagious and competitive game system is capitalism. A simple metric–profit–that’s universal, easy to measure and rewarded–creates an interoperable game that almost everyone is part of.
If you want to change people (your industry, your community, the world), the most direct method is to build a contagious and competitive game that works within the uber-capitalism game, until it gets enough momentum that it spirals in its own direction.
It’s not simply money. We can use any easily sought and compared metric. How you look at the gym, or your time running a mile are both metrics on the scoreboard.
A badge/label (like ‘organic’ or ‘B. Corp’) is a start, but without a chance to exceed, it can stall because it doesn’t encourage people to seek status by doing more of it (hence the endless litany of post-organic certifications that some food purveyors seek out). “How can I be more more compliant to the rules?” is not an endless game. “Compared to them” might be.
Badges are finite. Check the box, get the badge. As a result, they level off.
Scoreboards that spread have ‘more’ built in. Birders have lists of lifetime finds, DuoLingo users have streaks and the Olympics, in addition to medals, have world records. Youth sports go off the rails because we act as though there’s a trophy shortage, and the cost of college increases because of the feature race of more. The same is true for diagnostic medical equipment. Compared to what?
The dynamics involved don’t automatically make each of these games bad, though. The hard work is seeing the effective dynamics and then putting them to work to build a sticky, contagious game that moves us toward better.
I’ve built a simple website that facilitates the conversations that can help us get unstuck.
In The Knot, I describe how we get entangled, hoping for two things to co-exist that cannot. We hide behind the entanglements, refusing to see them, and so our problems can feel permanent.
Working with thousands of people over the last few months, I’ve found that a few simple questions can unlock a deep conversation about what’s holding us back. But these conversations are easier with someone else. In person is great, Zoom works too.
This week, I’ll be posting some of the KnotChats I’ve hosted.
If you’d like to be part of one, you can organize one in just a few minutes. I hope you’ll check out the free site I built. It’s at TheKnot.chat.
Optimized for the phone, the key is that you’ll want to do it with someone who needs you. It’s 1:1, private and powerful. Who can you help?
I’m posting a simple video with instructions below:
All this week, to celebrate the launch of The Knot, I’ll be posting conversations I’ve had about problem-solving.
Some are more focused on the structured approach built into the free tool I built (find it at theknot.chat ) while, others, like these two, are a bit looser.
The first one I recorded was with the legendary Simone Giertz. I was a bit nervous, but we had a lot of fun.
And a second, with my old friend, co-author and impresario Chip Conley. His Modern Elder Academy is changing lives.
But you can. Especially if your community is there to help. All help is self-help, multiplied by the expectations, support and compassion of the people around you.
Willpower and self-control are a mystery–we’re influenced far more by our situation, by the culture around us and by everything that’s come before. A mechanistic view of a physical entity shows that we’re turtles all the way down–atoms and electricity, each on a path. Golf balls don’t have self control, they simply follow a trajectory. And yet… each of us apparently has the ability to exercise agency and to work to solve the problems we confront. We talk to others and to ourselves, and shifting those conversations can shift the actions we take.
The best books in the genre help us get to where we hope to go. They turn on a light or help us understand a way of thinking that gets us unstuck.
Tomorrow, The Knot goes to people around the world. It’s aimed directly at the stuck we often find ourselves in. I’m confident that the book itself won’t do much of anything, but combined with conversations and the shifts we can each make, I’m hopeful it will help people get to where they need to go.
That’s a lot to ask from a short book, but it’s already had an impact on thousands of people. Thank you for showing up to make things better. Knowing that better is possible is a great first step.
The sensitivity analysis for a decision is easy to overlook, because we tend to focus on the expected outcome.
Perhaps it makes sense to begin with the edges instead.
Upside: If this works, really works, what are the implications?
Downside: If this fails, totally, what are the costs?
After we understand the edges, then it makes sense to be more nuanced about the chances of either happening and start discussing the likely outcome.
Want to try a brand new place for dinner? The worst that can happen is that you’ll waste a dinner. On the other hand, if it’s dinner with your new big account and the boss is coming, the worst that can happen is very different.
Should you buy a lottery ticket? Well, the big outcome is millions of dollars. The small outcome is a total waste. Now that we understand the extremes, perhaps it pays to realize that the odds of winning are essentially zero, so we ought to pass.
Don’t be dissuaded by the small or transfixed by the big. That’s only the first half of the calculation.
Of course, this is obvious. And yet we are rarely patient enough to do all the steps. (Driving to the airport is dramatically more dangerous than getting on a plane…)
If you sit down to watch a documentary and realize, about ten minutes in, that it’s actually a feature film, everything about it feels off until you shift into a different mode.
Walk into a new doctor’s office, and it might take a few minutes to realize they’re not the kind of doctor you’re used to. Perhaps they focus on selling procedures or pills or treatments–the sort of remedies you might have been comfortable buying in a different setting, but right here, right now, it doesn’t feel right.
A hotel without a lobby might have rooms that are sufficiently quiet, clean and convenient, but because they skipped a signalling device, it takes a second to switch gears… In fact, we might never get settled in this new place.
When we create a product or service, we have the chance to invest in our genre signals. The interactions, sounds and tropes that let our customers know what to expect. Many of them are dated or seem to have low utility, but we ignore their value at our own risk. Confusing your customers can be expensive.
Genre can be a generous signalling device. When you invest in telling us what to expect, you get a chance to keep a promise.
And, unrelated to that, sometimes bad luck happens.
The real problem kicks in after that.
One bad decision after another. Choices that compound the problem instead of solving it. Digging a deeper hole, amplifying the damage and spreading the effects through space and time.
We often try to justify previous errors by making them again.
We defend sunk costs.
We choose the path of the victim.
We misunderstand the bad luck that came before or decide to teach the universe a lesson.
It might be that we overreact and run away from good options merely because we stumbled last time. Or we could fail to see the pattern and choose to repeat it.
Every decision is a new event. We have new information, new options and most of all, we’re smarter than we were last time.
We all need to feed our family, find shelter and contribute to the community.
Finding useful work is a key part of the human condition.
But that doesn’t mean the thing you’re being asked to do right now is required. In fact, it’s optional. It might come with this particular gig, but it’s still a choice. In the short run, most of it is not up to us, in the long run, it all is.
Once we voluntarily engage with our choice of project, things get easier.
September 16, 2026
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy
