Kobro's Cancer Crew #16: On Breaking Points

Tomorrow's my last day of chemo. We made it.

I'll likely write up a high-level reflection in the coming weeks, but today's KCC update is on resilience.

I've thought about my breaking point quite a bit these past 6 months. The question: "how much am I willing to endure before I give up?" comes up, especially during low points.

It's usually less of a depressing question and more of a curious one.

We'll start this update with answering the question "how much am I willing to endure before I give up" in the context of cancer treatment. Then, I'm going to see if we can generalize the approach.

Breaking point of cancer treatment

Thankfully, survival of stage 4 Hodgkin Lymphoma is somewhere in the 80-90% range. So, of course I was going to push through. I couldn't imagine me not pushing through. As someone who loves living, survival is an easy one to fight for.

Imagine these 3 variables:

1. Importance of survival
2. Chance of survival
3. Pain or struggle caused by chemo

Here's a simple graph where I rated each on a scale of 1-10.

Now let's plug these into my entirely made-up formula called the Is cancer treatment worth it? formula ™

Is cancer treatment worth it? formula ™ = ({Importance of life} * {Chance of survival}) / {Pain or struggle caused by chemo}

With this we get: (10 * 8.5) / 6 = 14.7

Is it worth it? Let's check the Is cancer treatment worth it? formula ™ scale:

The answer? Sorta depends.

Thank you, Is cancer treatment worth it? formula ™.

But what if that 80%-90% dropped to 1%… the scenario would change.

Is cancer treatment worth it? formula ™ = (10 * 0.1) / 6 = 0.16

My love of living might lead me to give up.

Would I want to spend my final days getting injections, surgeries, and being drugged up when there was a 1 in 100 chance that things work out? Probably not. I'd rather enjoy the time left.

In the context of cancer treatment, I'd guess my breaking point would be around the 1% - 3% chance of survival or 0.16 - 0.5 on the Is cancer treatment worth it? formula ™ scale.

I'm starting to realize now that the formula and scale aren't actually useful, but we're going to roll with it.

General approach

What about when there's a 10% - 20% chance of an outcome, and it's undoubtably not life or death, but my personal mission and values are on the line?

Let's make the Is it worth it? formula ™ (not to be confused with the Is cancer treatment worth it? formula ™)

With our innovative, new formula:

• Importance of survival becomes Importance of outcome
• Chance of survival becomes Chance of outcome
• Pain or struggle caused by chemo becomes Pain or struggle caused by getting to the outcome

You might remember me sharing in the first KCC update that I was in a tricky place last fall.

I was itching myself like a psycho (cancer symptom), getting misdiagnosed, was on 60-90mg of Vyvance during the day, tried ~6 different sleeping meds at night, still only got 2-5 hours of a sleep, stopped paying myself, and my co-founder and I parted ways.

Intros.ai — my company that I see as a vehicle to bring my value of human connection into the world — seemed to be on the verge of shutting down.

Around this time was when I first started asking myself the question: "how much am I willing to endure before I give up?"

While there were quite a few stressors at the time, the majority of it was tied to Intros AI.

Was it worth pushing forward on Intros AI despite the struggle?

Here's the rough numbers:

How about we plug this into the Is it worth it? formula ™

({Importance of outcome} * {Chance of outcome}) / {Pain or struggle caused by getting to the outcome} or (2 * 9) / 7 = 2.57

Pretty low score...

Let's check the Is it worth it? formula ™ scale.

The answer? Sorta depends.

Thank you, Is it worth it? formula ™

Unfortunately, the Is it worth it? formula ™ is over-simplified, and the scale is pretty useless, but it's an interesting exercise to capture (in some loose way) whether or not something is worth going through.

On a more serious note, yes, pushing forward on Intros AI was definitely worth going through for at least a few reasons:

1. I still had conviction in the company's potential.
2. I saw (and see) Intros AI as one of the vehicles to get my values out in the world.
3. I had given my word to those who believed in the company that I would do whatever I could to make sure Intros AI reached it's potential.

I think I would have hit my breaking point if any one of the above 3 points weren't true.

Some thoughts

My largest concern with the world is that not enough people have something worth pushing for. Their "outcomes" aren't well enough defined and when they are defined, the variable of "Importance of outcome" is too low, even for the things people care most about.

I think it's tied to a meaning crisis of sorts — there aren't enough values we stand for, beliefs we would sacrifice for, nor are there people that we feel a responsibility to serve.

There's a lot more to be said here, but it's already 11:00pm and I have to get up tomorrow morning for MY LAST CHEMO TREATMENT (hopefully ever, please knock on wood for me wherever you are in this beautiful world).

I may be following up with a part 2 at some point…

Few questions to leave you with (would love any thoughts on these):

1. How hype are you that chemo's nearly done?
2. What's something (outside of your own survival) that you have a high "importance of outcome" score around. In other words, what are you fighting for?
3. What other factors should be considered when deciding if something is worth it (aside from importance of outcome, chance of outcome, and pain or struggled caused)?
4. How would you determine if someone is resilient? Maybe it's roughly "the lowest Is it worth it? formula ™ number someone would persevere through for an extended period of time?

Love,
David