A speaker (Joe Polish) describes a reusable decision-making framework he calls "bumpers": simple, ground-up principles applied across industries to keep tenacious, well-funded people "out of the gutter" so they can succeed. He recounts an insight moment (early-morning writing session) and frames bumpers as a way to avoid bad outcomes rather than prescribe specific tactics.
Chapters
How do you do so many different things in so many different industries and do it so well? The thing is, like, I don't do a bunch of different things. It's the same thing over and over, right? Just these fundamental principles. And you go in, you reason from the ground up and you have to learn a new language when you go into a new industry or new domain. But it's the same thing. So I woke, it was like a Saturday morning. I probably Woke up at 3am and I was like, I think I got it. And this was five years ago, so a little outdated. I think I got it and I went to the office and I wrote for four hours, like, this is what I do over and over and over. And that's actually what bumpers is. It's just a framework for avoiding bad things. And when you have hard charging people that are well funded or tenacious, if you can just keep them. So it's called bumpers because stay out of the gutter. You just keep them out of the gutter and they'll do amazing things.