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Ergodicity: How irreversible outcomes affect long-term performance in work, investing, relationships, sport, and beyond

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"This is one of the most important books I’ve read, period. It’s short, articulate, and expansive on a singular subject matter — ergodicity, which is really the key ingredient to success in life, marriage, business, family, happiness, health, etc." – Blake Janover, Janover Inc. CEO

"To not spend time and money on books that you should not waste resources on, please first read this book. This is a great book for those who quickly want to familiarize themselves with the concept of ergodicity. The author goes to great lengths to explain the concept in easily understandable terms. He also offers several practical implications for navigating non-ergodic environments. Highly recommended!" – Auke Hunneman

The book has been featured on the EconTalk podcast

What is ergodicity, and why does it matter?

"The Most Important Property to Understand in Probability, in Life, in Anything." – Nassim Nicholas Taleb on ergodicity.

"I think the most underrated idea is ergodicity." – David Perell, author.

Is ergodicity the most important concept in decision-making and behavioral sciences? (Yes.)
Is it relevant for you in your daily life? (Yes.)
Is it possible to explain it so simply that a grandma or a high-schooler can understand it? (Yes.)
Even if they know nothing about maths? (Yes.)

That's because ergodicity is an essential idea with so many practical applications. Sadly, most books describe it in a very technical way, making it inaccessible to most people.
In this short book, 6-times author Luca Dellanna describes ergodicity as simply as possible. You will read stories about how not knowing about it destroyed his cousin’s career as a skier, or how misunderstanding it caused additional deaths during the pandemic. You will learn how to spot situations where ergodicity matters and the three strategies to react appropriately.

The book is approximately 169 pages long, of which 143 are pure content and the rest are tables of content, etc.

Who is this book for?

This book is for readers interested in growing themselves, their career, or their businesses and who want to learn about ergodicity and its practical applications without having to understand its mathematical foundation. No mathematical knowledge is required, only a high-school-level understanding of English.

Readers who want to master the theory and mathematical foundation of ergodicity are better off reading a more formal manuscript. This book is not a substitute for it but a complement.

About the author

Luca Dellanna is the author of 9 books. He is a researcher in complexity science and emergent behaviors, and an operational excellence consultant. He spoke at Nudgestock, appeared on EconTalk, and regularly teaches risk management at Genoa University.

169 pages, ebook

Published November 1, 2020

39 people are currently reading
620 people want to read

About the author

Luca Dellanna

26 books111 followers
Luca Dellanna is a management advisor and the author of 9 books. He has been featured on Nudgestock, the largest behavioral sciences conference, and Econtalk, among others. More than 25,000 people around the world read Luca regularly.

Luca is known for being probably the only consultant at the intersection of risk management under uncertainty, operational know-how, and behavioral psychology. He also strongly believes in the importance of teaching not just what the right thing to do is but also how to do it right.

After a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, Luca spent the first part of his career working for DuPont’s consulting unit in Frankfurt, Germany. There, he focused on managerial excellence projects in various industries, all across Europe.

In 2015, Luca moved back to his hometown of Turin, Italy, and opened a private consulting practice serving clients worldwide (with a focus on Italy, France, United States, India, and Singapore).

He has also published books about management, human behavior, and economics that earned him appearances at the most important conferences and podcasts in his field, Nudgestock and EconTalk, respectively.

In 2023, Luca operates a consulting practice in Italy and Singapore, and lives in Turin with his wife Wenlin and his dog Didi.

Luca writes regularly on Twitter (@DellAnnaLuca).
His personal website is www.luca-dellanna.com

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
Profile Image for Blake Janover.
12 reviews1 follower
January 2, 2021
This is one of the most important books I’ve read, period. It’s short, articulate and expansive on a singular subject matter — ergodicity which is really the key ingredient to success in life, marriage, business, family, happiness, health, etc.. It’s mathematical in origin but ubiquitous in application. High performance only matters if you survive.

Shout out to Matt for the referral!
Profile Image for Matt Cannon.
308 reviews9 followers
December 20, 2020
I was drawn to read this book as it was the first rBook I heard of (a book available natively in RoamResearch).

I heard of ergodicity before from Nassim Taleb and had a surface level understanding of it. When I saw how many smart people recommended it as one of the
most important concepts to understand related to decision making I was interested to learn more.

I also heard great praises of Luca’s ability to communicate complex ideas in a digestible way.

After finishing the book, I think this may be one of the most important books for everyone to read. Ergodicity should be taught in school and it should be a common metric in businesses that leaders pay attention to and are deliberate about. If you understand ergodicity, you’re likelihood of success and quality of life will go up significantly and stress should be reduced too.

The big idea is to reduce irreversible, game over events in your life and increase the odds of smart bets that have high upside and low downside. He references James P. Carse’s great book Finite and Infinite Games and reframed it as irreversible and reversible games. He breaks down concepts such as the population outcome vs the lifetime outcome and uses the Russian roulette metaphor to demonstrate the difference in a very vivid way.

Here are some of the quotes and takeaways.

When people say that childhood was the best time of their lives, they usually miss reversibility.

It pays to redistribute, so that for each step forward, you only make a partial step back.

Avoiding the risks of ruin is how you get ahead in the long-term.

Maximizing the expected returns of your choices is a good strategy if and only if mistakes and misfortunes are reversible.

Behavioral change is non-ergodic. The distribution of efforts matters.

What is optimal in the presence of reversibility is stupid otherwise, and the other way around.

Sustainability is often a larger obstacle to performance than talent.

The easiest way to increase performance is to narrow the time frame over which it is measured. Sadly, it is also the easiest way to produce unsustainable performance.

It is not the best ones who succeed. It is the best ones of those who survive.

The easiest way to hide problems is to increase the scope of measurement.

Performance is subordinate to survival.

Problems grow the size they need for them to be acknowledged.

Over the short term, consequences that apply beyond the short-term do not matter. Over the long term, they do.

Irreversibility absorbs future gains.

Distinguish between calculated risks whose consequences you can recover from and recklessness whose consequences might permanently debilitate you. There is a sweet spot where you expose yourself to the former but not the latter – that’s a good place to aim.

For real people, the limitation on the number of times they can play can transform their lifetime outcome of a gamble to negative.

It is pointless to envy someone with whom you wouldn’t trade places in all parallel universes.

A system can work well on average and still fail locally.

As an individual, you do not care whether the system works on average. You care if it works for you.

The best strategy depends on whether you are the gamble or the gambler.

For most people, what matters is how much their lifetime outcome diverges from the population outcome in the medium term.

Systems that can instantaneously share load are more ergodic.

Game-overs are common. They include bankruptcies, injuries, severe depressions, burnouts, and break-ups of all kinds (between romantic partners, business partners, or friends).










Profile Image for Kirill Sofronov.
8 reviews
December 29, 2020
Thoroughly enjoyed the book and its straight to the point explanations and practical examples. In fact I wish we all saved ourselves some time and read books in this format. I read the book in Roam and it was a great format to jump there and back with bi-directional links. One thing I wish was a bit better is a better structure as I found definitions in some places being short and in other slightly too lengthy. Overall, it's a brilliant book and I learned tonnes with just reminiscing my choices and life scenarios where I would have benefited from this concept. Kudos!
Profile Image for oldb1rd.
393 reviews16 followers
March 22, 2025
I don’t want to be rude but I believe ChatGPT or any of its analogues would provide me a more whole, better written, detailed and way shorter explanation of the ideas the author promotes.

It’s not a book rather a slightly structurized collection of rushed rambling notes on ergodicity, which is as a definition gets mentioned in the text way more times then the cases it practically helps with.

Also the vibe from the book gives me flashbacks of that typical independent consultant your CEO impulsively hires during his phase of the company’s “productivity improvement”.

You know, that guy who breaks in the existing workflow throwing out meetings and new “optimized” processes from both hands, talks a lot about synergy and direct workflow, creates a couple dozen of very important pages in Confluence… and shortly you never see him again.
Profile Image for Auke Hunneman.
8 reviews5 followers
November 3, 2020
To not spent time and money on books that you should not waste resources on, please first read this book. This is a great book for those who quickly want to familiarize themselves with the concept of ergodicity. The author goes to great lengths explaining the concept in easily understandable terms. He also offers several practical implications for navigating non-ergodic environments. Highly recommended!
24 reviews1 follower
September 30, 2022
Should have the sub-title of: "How potential irreversible outcomes affects long-term performance in work, investing, relationships, sport and beyond" (liked by the author on Twitter).
A very important concept explained for any activity which aims for long-term results (ie a relationship, career, investing, sports)
Profile Image for Cedric Chin.
Author 3 books162 followers
November 15, 2024
A fantastic, simply written, easy to understand introduction to ergodicity.
83 reviews
November 10, 2020
Explains a very central but obscure concept in pretty simple terms, with various examples of why it actually matters.
Quick read, it is not longer than it needs to be, which is very appreciated!
Profile Image for Rakesh.
13 reviews
June 14, 2025
Mind blowing. Fascinating. Ergodic.
Profile Image for Joma Silva.
8 reviews
May 14, 2025
A Pragmatic Dive into Ergodicity: Concepts for Real-World Application
Luca Dellanna's "Ergodicity" offers a remarkably pragmatic exploration of a complex concept, making it accessible to a broad audience by notably omitting mathematical formulas. This approach allows readers to grasp the core ideas and their profound implications without getting bogged down in technical jargon.
The book excels in translating the principle of ergodicity—essentially, the difference between group probabilities and individual experiences over time—into actionable insights. It compellingly argues that understanding this distinction is crucial for navigating decisions in countless real-world scenarios.
While those with a strong mathematical inclination might occasionally find themselves wishing for a deeper dive into the underlying equations, the book's strength lies precisely in its ability to convey the essence of ergodicity and its power without them. It does an excellent job of illustrating how easily one can be misled by statistical averages that don't apply to individual, non-repeatable paths.
The true value of "Ergodicity" lies in the universality of its concepts. The principles discussed are not confined to a niche academic field but have tangible applications across various domains. Whether it's making smarter investment choices by focusing on avoiding ruin, improving coaching strategies in sports by understanding individual player trajectories, or simply making better life decisions by recognizing when ensemble averages don't apply to personal circumstances, the book provides a valuable mental model. It's a read that encourages a shift in perspective, prompting a more nuanced understanding of risk, reward, and long-term success in any field where sequences of events and potential irreversible outcomes are a factor.
Profile Image for Alexej Gerstmaier.
184 reviews19 followers
December 31, 2022
"If you have a job, do not attempt to work as hard as possible. Instead, work as hard as you can without risking your health, marriage, or mental sanity. These three are damn hard to recover once lost.[12] More in general, in any endeavor in which success depends on you accumulating some kind of resource (money, skill, connections, trust[13], etc.), do not maximize growth regardless of survival. Instead, maximize growth that conserves survival."

"Whenever an activity cannot be assumed repeatable at infinity, we should be wary of expecting to achieve its average outcome."

"- We call “population outcome” the outcome of many people performing an action once, and “lifetime outcome” the outcome of one person performing an action many times. If they differ, the system that produces them is non-ergodic. - You can only rely on expected outcomes if you are guaranteed a large number of repetitions. Otherwise, they are misleading. (The law of large numbers requires a large number of repetitions). - Risk aversion is rational in the presence of non-ergodicity"

"A common critique is, “decisions taken at lower levels are inefficient for they lack economies of scale.” However, they more than make it up with the benefits of tailoring. They provide more of what would be good for the province and less of what would be bad. Isn’t this efficiency?"

"You are not your habits nor your beliefs. You are their container. Their survival is not yours. What’s best for them might or might not be what’s best for you."

"- Use protections (of all kinds – Personal Protective Equipment, insurances, capped-downside options, and so on). "


"The Precautionary Principle holds that we should not take risks that endanger the whole,[72] no matter how unlikely. If we keep taking them, we are guaranteed to blow up (remember the Russian Roulette player?)."

"It is not the best ones who succeed. It is the best ones of those who survive."

"Problems grow the size they need for them to be acknowledged."
Profile Image for Enrique.
258 reviews8 followers
November 6, 2022
Tengo sentimientos encontrados con este libro.

Por un lado, la explicación de Luca Dellanna sobre qué es la ergodicidad, junto a los ejemplos utilizados, quizás sea la explicación más clara sobre el concepto que me haya encontrado. Mucho más clara incluso que las del propio autor del concepto (Ole Peters). En este sentido, hay que felicitar al autor, porque ha hecho un buen trabajo.

Por otro lado, una vez definido el concepto, el libro me ha resultado bastante repetitivo; en mi caso, además, habiendo leído antes los libros de Nassim Taleb, he encontrado mucho solapamiento entre ambos. Para ser justos, Dellanna reconoce desde el principio su deuda intelectual con Taleb, pero eso no reduce mi sensación de estar leyendo una antología abreviada de textos de Taleb.

Aun así, el concepto de ergodicidad me parece un concepto importantísimo, y en ese sentido no hay que desmerecer esta gran contribución de Luca Dellanna al tema. 3,5/5.
Profile Image for Silvi Simberg.
Author 1 book5 followers
September 11, 2021
Without understanding and regarding ergodicity there won't be any useful advances in "sciences" like economics, psychology, social sciences and the like... Ergodicity is also a large component to grasping RISK in any domain - especially in business; Anyone interested in any domains mentioned above (and in risk - anyone should, it's an essential building block to many things in life) - can only benefit from meditating on ergodicity for a bit - and this short book is the ideal guide for it.
Profile Image for Muwaffaq Salti.
212 reviews
September 4, 2024
The writing is clear. The book is relatively short. There appears to be some wisdom in here in the vein of Nassim Taleb but it really feels like it could be a blog article. I like what he says but at the end of the book I feel like I have been scrolling a twitter feed. Lots of seemingly interesting stuff to read but at the end nothing material or good. It's almost like reading junk food. I have read three of his books now and will be leaving the same review for the others.
Profile Image for Hynek.
25 reviews22 followers
January 9, 2021
Every now and then, a book arrives that helps me to understand a gut feeling that I’ve had for a long time but couldn’t put the finger on it.

This is one of those rare books. If you – like me – don’t even know the word “ergodocity”, this book is for you. It’s readable and practically applicable for everyone.
Profile Image for Saud Amin Khan.
50 reviews32 followers
July 10, 2025
I picked up Ergodicity again last night, two years after my first read, and it's left an even stronger impact this time around. Luca does a fantastic job explaining non-ergodic systems and, in the process, shares some really practical advice on risk management. If you're serious about understanding risk and reward over the long term, this book is a must-read.
Profile Image for Kief Morris.
Author 7 books30 followers
August 16, 2024
A great antidote to the popular trope that human instincts about probability and risk are irrational, a trope based on research that asks people about purely theoretical scenarios. Our instincts are based on the real-world context that comes with most decisions about risk and probability.

Ergodicity is a mathematically based framework that considers the fact that in many real-world scenarios, a negative result ends the game, which changes the picture of more simplistic models of probability.

The author breaks down ergodicity very simply (some would say simplistically), explicitly choosing clarity for a non-expert reader over technical accuracy. He uses a popular example of human rationality when given the chance to bet on a coin-toss, where the chances of winning are greater than losing, and spells out that if you start out with a limited budget, the probability of hitting a "game over" where you lose all of your money changes the maths and can make it much more rational to make the supposedly "dumb" choice not to take the bet. He also uses Russian Roulette for even harsher examples of "game over" scenarios.

He also gives an interesting, mathematically-backed explanation of why it often actually rational to agree to distribute your winnings with losers, even when they are not as good as you, i.e. debunking the idea that contributing to society is necessarily against the self-interest of wealthy people.
Profile Image for John Crippen.
532 reviews2 followers
March 19, 2022
I had never heard of ergodicity, but it turns out to be an interesting state of a system. "A system is ergodic if, for all its components,the lifetime outcome corresponds to the population outcome." This matters because we end up acting as if systems are ergodic when they are not. In other words, we make decisions based on population outcomes, assuming that they are applicable to our actual lifetime outcome. In a non-ergodic system, they are not.
10 reviews2 followers
October 5, 2022
Great book to read alongside with Taleb’s Anti-fragile.
Key take aways: the importance of buffers and be careful of optimization (optimizing ST != optimization LT), averages can be misleading (can hide problems of sub-populations) & skin in the game
14 reviews
August 29, 2023
While the concept itself is of great importance in life, it wasn’t revealing anything new for me.
Basically, in short the book tels you to not do things that can cause permanent loss, even when the chances of that loss occurring is small.
Profile Image for Francisco Merino.
15 reviews
June 9, 2024
Buen libro para entender determinados modelos mentales que deben aplicarse para salvaguardar las cosas importantes.
Profile Image for Francesco.
7 reviews
May 24, 2025
Average book. I consider it a basic preview/ simplification of Taleb's books. Easy to be read and explains well the topics. I did not like the short length of the many chapters
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews

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