Winner's Curse

There are ideas that shout. Winner's Curse is not one of them. It waits quietly until the day you need it.

The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.

Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.

Consider the railway porter who has carried ten thousand suitcases. He knows what nobody packs: a plan for what happens after arrival.

In the end, life asks only whether we were awake while it happened. Do not memorise it. Notice it. Noticing is the senior discipline.