Cora, my 55 pound German Shepherd is a fit, loyal, athletic dog of extreme intelligence and honorable character. She also shits a lot. Two or three times a day. We don’t have a yard so I’m removing each one by hand. Well over 1,000 shits have been handled by these fingers; ample experience to know a freshly filled bag serves as a decent winter hand warmer and that, more often than not, it doesn’t lay in one perfect pile. Typically a main pile constitutes roughly 85 percent of the load while a much smaller secondary pile sits inches away.
When your dog’s bathroom is neighbors’ property or community spaces you want a reputation for neatness. For years I attacked the secondary pile followed by the main pile. The common sense method, I thought, was using my free hand to wholly extract the smaller pile while maintaining enough dexterity to wrap my fingers around the bigger pile. I assumed that if my hand was already full from the main pile I wouldn’t have the acute control I needed to pick up the secondary.
Then one day Cora and I hit one of our four main routes and she sniffed out an issue. An unsatisfactory clean up on my behalf from the day prior. Sure, no sign of the secondary pile but the main pile was a grassy billboard of shit; an embarrassingly messy four fingered imprint smeared into our neighbor’s yard. Like clockwork, Cora furnished a reason to perfect my craft. This time I reversed tact. Main shit then secondary shit. The unconventional method worked surprisingly well. It was the finest job I’d ever done getting my hand around a main pile, but the real revelation was when the secondary adhered to the main lifting off the grass as if magnetized. The principle in poop extraction was simple: Pick Up the Big Shit First.
For the sake of feeling productive it’s natural to start with the Little Shits. They’re easy, simple, and straightforward. Vacuum the living room. Book an appointment. Respond to emails. Re-organize the desktop. Knocking out several simple tasks might feel like stacking wins, like it’s been a productive day worthy of reserving time for online shopping or video games; but then the evening rolls around and the really important thing that was ignored because it felt so daunting still hasn’t been addressed. A double whammy – simultaneously too tired to work on the important thing and feeling guilty for wasting another day not doing it. Even if we rally the courage to exercise, work on a business, make art, give focused energy to the recurring subject of our daydreams, it is not a sustainable way to live. We wouldn’t expect ourselves to run a half-marathon during the day and crush a pilates workout at night. It works the same way with our brains. Decision-making, conversing, and analyzing are all flexing muscles that fatigue over time. If amazing pilates workouts are what you really care about, your Big Shit, do that before you a run a half-marathon. You’ll never regret it.
The Big Shit principle is proven in dating and close friendships as well. When sharing a home or apartment with someone it’s inevitable to notice how they walk, the state of their toothbrush, their laugh, and what they wear to sleep. Details in bonding matter deeply, but Little Shit, like a sloppy gait, is addressable. It’s much more important to align on Big Shit - the traits and characteristics someone cannot change without building intense resentment. Do they like children? How’s their relationship with money? Are they lazy? Do they laugh at unfunny memes? When two people fundamentally love and hate the same things spending time together is a source of energy as opposed to a second or third job. Details, like which memes to share, where to go to dinner, and when to get new toothbrush heads naturally fall into place.
Amazon is a great example of Big Shit in business. Jeff Bezos famously focused the company’s efforts around customer experience. In his first 23 letters to shareholders he used the word ‘customer’ 443 times and ‘Amazon’ only 340 times. His directive to Amazon employees was to always start with customer needs and work backwards. In an interview with Lex Fridman he said that in his time as CEO he almost never analyzed traditional financial statements like Balance Sheets or Profit and Loss Statements. Instead, he was obsessed with developing customer centric innovations like the following examples:
1-Click Checkout - before 1-Click, the accepted e-commerce strategy was to extend customer shopping time. Recommend similar products, register them for promotions, suggest a blog, anything to keep them from leaving the site. Instead, Amazon removed hassle and clutter from the online shopping experience like ATM’s removed the hassle of getting a couple hundred dollars cash.
Easy Returns - Not long ago returns were a cumbersome process of printing shipping labels, proving damage, and accepting store credit. Why would a company want to make returning a fully refunded product as easy as shopping for it? Easier returns meant more returns meant less money in Amazon’s pocket. Unless of course customers were so happy with the return experience it resulted in more overall shopping.
48 Hour Delivery - In 2013, there were three delivery services: UPS, FedEx, USPS. Their network of distribution centers, fleet of vehicles (FedEx had more than 100,000 trucks) and delivery process had been developed over decades. It was a massive gamble to compete in the delivery space, but Amazon could only guarantee 48-hour delivery, and eventually 24, if they controlled the logistics themselves. Amazon now leads the industry, shipping more domestic packages than UPS or FedEx.
Reviews - Before 2000 no company would willingly provide a platform for negative sentiment about their products to manifest. Quote from Bezos: “When we pioneered customer reviews, it was incredibly controversial. I got letters from publishers saying, ‘You make money when you sell things. Take down those negative customer reviews.’” Reviews build an enormous amount of trust with customers and hold Amazon sellers accountable to making quality products. The value customers receive from reading positive and negative reviews far outweighs any missed sales. Well informed customers are happy customers.
Had Amazon prioritized short term profits none of the above inventions would’ve left brainstorming sessions. Bezos understood money, publicity, and great employees would be attracted to a company that values customers above all else. Let us hypothetically assess two equally talented WNBA players. Player 1 wants to be as rich as possible. Player 2 wants to be the league’s best 3-point shooter. Gun to my head I predict Player 2 makes significantly more money than Player 1. Player 1 will naturally give more energy to endorsements, surrounding herself with money motivated people, and gathering information about the dollar. Player 2 will give more energy perfecting her stroke, surrounding herself with elite shooters, and consuming basketball content. Player 2’s likelier on-court success will produce bigger contracts, more attention, and lucrative endorsement opportunities. Like Amazon showed, Little Shit (money) attaches itself to Big Shit (skills).
My wife and I went to a birthday party recently where a guy suggested ending the night at a casino. Two more guys immediately dittoed, excited. “Dev? Casino later?” they asked with mischievous smiles.
“Oh boy,” I said taking a deep breath. “That could be a hell of a night.”
“Some blackjack? A little roulette?” the boys asked.
“Wow, sounds like fun,” I said. My wife looked at me, flashing Morse Code with her eyes Devin, you hate casinos. Why are you getting yourself into this pickle? I signaled back with a shrug of my shoulders What could I say? They’ll forget all about it before the night’s over. Of course, as the party was winding down, they did not forget. In fact, the casino troop had ballooned to 6 gentlemen calling Ubers, transferring funds, and making bold prophecies. As much as I love mischievous time with the lads I had zero interest in joining. Casinos just aren’t my idea of fun. So when the time came to leave and everyone was expecting me to go I had to individually disappoint my friends during peak excitement – a horrible way to end the night.
My values were imbalanced. Above being honest I valued fitting in. Had I said, “I don’t like putting money on games of chance but I’ll happily wager it on pool or table tennis, or in the daylight, golf,” I would’ve resolved the predicament; avoiding end of the night disappointment and signaling the kind of mischievous fun that suits me. As much as I wanted to fit in with the lads, that’s Little Shit compared to honest communication. Trying to scoop Big Shit with a handful of Little Shit can often make a mess.
Thank you to everyone who reached out about my previous essay, Gorilla Glue, with comments and feedback. I made some minor edits based on those conversations.
If you enjoyed reading Big Things Poppin’, consider sharing it with one person close to you. Thanks!
-Dev
This piece was 🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻. Also comforting to know that someone else out there has intentionally developed a shit-pick-up method and has counted a rough number of shits picked up (I’m roughly at 4000 with our German).