It's fun to be back, talking to my phone in an empty room. What a time we live in.
So right now I'm on a business trip. And before I say anything else, let me get something out of the way — this trip exists because of my corporate job, which I'm genuinely thankful for. Thankful to myself, and to the people around me who helped me get here. But if I'm honest, I was the most important piece of this puzzle. Because I was the one willing to take the help, take advantage of it, and put my own work on top of it.
I feel like I have to say that, otherwise it sounds bad. Although — to whom am I even explaining? Why should I care whether you understand it fully? That's a fair question. Anyway. Side quest over.
The reason I'm recording this is a thought I had this morning. Over the last four to six weeks I've been on the road maybe 80% of the time. And the company I work for — don't ask me the name, it's strictly forbidden to share it outside the organization. Honestly, it reminds me of certain organizations I've read about and seen in movies. I'll let you figure out what I mean.
One of the perks: I get to stay in high-end hotels. This is probably the highest level of luxury I'll ever touch in my lifetime, and I'm thankful for it — it's nice to experience something like that, to understand it from the inside.
And here's the thought. Life is a little bit like hotel stars.
Going from one star to two is a real difference. Two to three, still real. But four to five? You can barely tell what you're paying extra for.
The change at the top gets tricky. Hard to even notice. And once I clocked it, I started seeing it everywhere.
There's a famous rule for this — the 80-20. Eighty percent of the results come from twenty percent of the work. The most important move is just to clear the threshold. Do the bare minimum to get off the floor, and you've already captured most of the value.
And it makes sense that it works this way. Think about it. If you're building any concept of levels — levels of anything — you start at level zero, level one. The beginning is stiff. Rigid. But progression runs toward infinity. There can be an endless number of levels. Nobody ever sat down and decided the range in advance.
Who decided hotels stop at five stars? I don't actually know the maximum. Five is the most I've seen. Maybe there are six, seven, eight somewhere. But do you think anyone, at the very beginning, designed a clean range from one to eight? I don't think so. They just kept adding stars, gradually, one at a time.
And gradual addition comes with a cost. Diluted value.
By the time you're inventing the fifth star, all the meaningful stuff was already used up building the second and third. There's barely anything important left to add.
So you start bolting on smaller and smaller things, because the big, obvious improvements were claimed early and categorized long ago. That's just the nature of an open-ended scale. And I think this concept is almost everywhere — anywhere the progression is open, where there was no strict range from the start. I'd estimate it covers about 80% of the things I see in this world. And that 80% isn't a random number. It's my gut estimate, which is kind of a fun coincidence.
So here's the punchline. Right now I'm in a three-star hotel. A week ago I was in a five-star. And if you ask me? I like this one a little more.
I genuinely can't see the difference. Okay — if I said I couldn't see any difference, I'd be lying. The flip-flops here are slightly less comfortable. Less smushy, less fancy, less furry. But still comfortable.
And honestly? I don't give a fuck.