Barbell Strategy

In his book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb explores something he calls the Barbell Strategy. In essence, you take a combination of two extremes, one safe and one speculative.

With many things in life, I like to take two extreme perspectives, much like the Barbell Strategy. However, my implementation of the Barbell Strategy is looser. When I try new things, I like to try both the best and the worst. That way, I have distinct standards against which I can measure everything.

For example, if I want to learn to distinguish between good wine and bad wine, I would try a sampling of wines that are considered “bad,” and a sampling of wines that are considered “good.” Only then will I know how to label wine as either good, bad, or somewhere in between.

You can apply the Barbell Strategy to just about anything, including books, coffee, restaurants, exercise, music, etc. I’d like to write more on the subject, and show detailed examples of how it can be used to help people in many different contexts.