Success: a pursuit
For purpose of this writing success is narrowly defined as the pursuit of wealth and influence over capital, labour, technology or ideology - the drivers of modern day capitalism.
In this narrow scope of success, I have found few fundamentals to hold true and few things which enable the pursuit of aforementioned success.
Success can be illusive and uncertain outcome, but there are definitely some clues for where it often shows up and where it will rarely show up.
Fundamentals about success:
Early success has an outsized advantage in life if you can handle it. Early failures don’t have an outsized downside. Therefore, chasing early success provides an asymmetric risk. Take bold risks early on.
Success is a game of half chances. No matter how hard-working or talented you are, its a game of chance. Those who endure long term success, don’t let short term outcomes (both good and bad) affect their emotional state too much.
Success doesn’t matter. What you do with your acquired wealth or influence does. Use it for others.
Principles that enable success:
The people you chose and your ability to compound relationships has the most outsized effect on success
Size of the problem (drawn on X axis) and amount of time/effort (drawn on Y axis) follows an asymptotic curve. One can only work a max. number of hours per week, but what they chose to focus their time on determines the magnitude of the success. Solve big problems. Dream big.
Time/effort is capped. Size of problem and impact is infinite.
Success is most likely to happen where there is change happening. Chase change. Its like surfing, you go to the waves. Also, all fun adventures happen in these outliers.
