Why some people mow a lawn better than others
In a large-scale experiment, 30,954 people mowed the same virtual lawn, and 16% found the perfect path. Surprisingly, performance stayed near 90% optimal even as lawns grew, because people used heuristics like decomposition and compression. The key to success wasn't thinking longer, but thinking at the right moments—planning ahead at critical forks and saving dead-end sections for last.
I saw the dead end at the end and I was like, okay, that’s where I need to end as well, so don’t go that way first.