When starting a new role or tackling a new problem, first answer the question: “what does normal look like?”

Then, you’ll have an easier time identifying and tackling the variances of life.

Inspired by Robin Hanson’s conversation with Tyler Cowen:

Hanson: “The first thing to understand about anything is the middle of the distribution. If you’ve got that wrong, you’re just way off. You need to get that roughly right before you can start looking at the variance in the distribution and along which dimensions, higher or lower variance.”

Application for leaders: teach the middle of the distribution when onboarding new team members.