Richard Feynman's story of safe-cracking illustrates effort performance: he learned that many executives never changed their safes from the factory default combination (1-2-3-4), so he could crack them in 45 seconds, but he would pretend to work for several minutes to maintain the appearance of effort and not disappoint the people who made bets on his ability—showing that sometimes you have to perform effort even when the actual work is done.

factualpending

Speaker

Justin Carboni

Evidence Quote

he'd have to sit there and like pretend for a few minutes once he figured it out so that he wouldn't disapp disappoint the people making the bets on it show some sweat sometimes you got to perform a little

Source

Practical Lessons from Ben CarlsonExcess Returns
Created: 8/11/2026, 6:21:49 AM

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