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“Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.”
Kenyan proverb
One of my favorite chess openings hides a bishop behind a knight.
When the knight jumps, the bishop fires across the open lane, so one move makes two threats. In the Arabian mate, a rook and a knight trap a king in the corner. In Alekhine’s Gun, two rooks and a queen line up in one column to hit the same square.
Habits, money and teams have powerful combinations too.
Habits
The coffee nap
In 1997, the sleep researchers Louise Reyner and Jim Horne put sleepy drivers in a car simulator for a two-hour afternoon drive.
Before the drive, each one got a placebo, caffeine or caffeine followed by a nap of under 15 minutes.
Since caffeine takes a while to kick in, the nap fits inside the wait. You doze off and wake as the caffeine lands.
Compared with the placebo, caffeine alone cut driving incidents by about two-thirds. Caffeine with the nap cut them by 91%.
Temptation bundling
The Wharton professor Katy Milkman recruited students and staff at a university gym who wanted to work out more.
Some of them got gripping audiobooks they could only listen to at the gym. To hear the next chapter, they had to show up.
In the first weeks, that group went to the gym 51% more often than the group with no audiobooks.
The story they wanted to finish dragged them to the workout they kept putting off.
Money
The barbell
Investors call one money setup the barbell. Put most of your money somewhere safe and a small slice into bets that could go to zero or multiply.
The safe pile alone barely grows. The wild slice alone can wipe you out.
Together you survive a crash and catch the upside.
Costco
Costco caps its markup at about 14% on brand-name goods. At that margin, the shelves earn a small share of the profit.
Most of the profit comes from the membership card. Shoppers pay a yearly fee to get in the door.
Nearly 90% of them renew.
The low prices sell the membership. The membership pays for the low prices.
Teams
Stockton and Malone
John Stockton and Karl Malone played 18 seasons together for the Utah Jazz.
Their favorite play took two players.
Malone set a screen on Stockton’s defender. If the defense stayed with Stockton, Malone rolled to the basket for the pass. If they chased Malone, Stockton had the shot.
Players call it the pick-and-roll.
Guard one and you leave the other open.
Stockton retired with the most assists in NBA history. Malone retired second only to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in points. Many of those assists became those points.
Words first, then music
For years, the composer Richard Rodgers wrote Broadway songs with the lyricist Lorenz Hart. Rodgers wrote the tune first. Hart fit words to it.
In 1943, Rodgers teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein and flipped the order. Hammerstein spent weeks on the lyrics. Rodgers set them to music fast.
Oklahoma! opened that year.
It ran for 2,212 performances, a Broadway record at the time.
Combine the right things in the right order and the benefits multiply.
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What two strengths could you combine to unlock a new one?
