Do You Use Wittgenstein's Ruler?

Very interesting post by Jacopo Romei on Linkedin.

Do You Know Wittgenstein’s Ruler?

I quote it here as a note to self.

Do You Know Wittgenstein’s Ruler?

Wittgenstein, the philosopher, posed an intriguing question: If you buy a ruler but have no tool to measure its accuracy, how can you be sure the ruler is precise?

You’d have to use the ruler itself, or another similar ruler, thus falling into a trap of endless—and flawed—self-verifications.

You MUST find a different tool to check the accuracy of your ruler.

Most people have only one ‘ruler’ at their disposal when negotiating a contract or a collaboration: time.

Time is the only measure by which people decide whether they have been paid well, poorly, too much, or too little.

Unfortunately, this leads people to make terrible decisions: ‘Well, it took me three hours, I can’t possibly ask for $800!’ or ‘You finished quicker than expected, how about I pay you less?’ And people accept this because they lack other tools to evaluate their work and the value they produce.

Not knowing how to measure what they want, they end up wanting what they can measure.

Wittgenstein would have been upset.

But if you are interested, there are many other ways to negotiate collaborations, using a different ruler, not that of time, but that of value, to generate more satisfaction for yourself, the customer, and anyone else involved in the negotiation.

I talk about it in Extreme Contracts.

Here is the International Edition of Extreme Contracts.