Are you more impressed by a climber who is a few yards from the summit or one who has just left the trailhead? Human psychology gives preference to the person closest to the summit. When I am cycling and see another rider in the final minute of a long ascent, there is shared comradery that is not as palpable for the cyclist tackling the initial slopes.

How do we equate the perspective that timing matters? If we climb sooner or later in the day, we encounter other participants in different stages of their journey. Our desire to assign value based on a real-time assessment benefits from a broader picture. Strava creates a virtual leaderboard for cyclists and runners (among others) that can be filtered by day, week, year, or all-time (among other options). We might achieve the best time within a small window, but land pages back in the search of all-time best times.

How might we understand that our current location might impact our value assessment?