[ryanmarsh]

Your comment really saddens me. There’s so much more you could have. There’s no reason why what I make has to be an outlier. I’m so so so not special. Many people have come on HN to say exactly what I’ve said and have achieved outsized results. Jesus, is patio11 really that incredible of a guy? I mean, he’s really nice and pretty smart but dude he made his start with a bingo card creator.

Our mindset is our greatest limitation.

[virgilp]

You are right in lots of stuff but you are probably underselling your skill combo. You are probably good (even if not great/amazing) at more than one thing - not just managing projects, but also sales, and maybe marketing too. You are probably right to say that there are other people better than you at any one of those things, but for the full combo, the story changes. It's easy to say "learn sales", and indeed it does not necessarily require very high IQ... but it may require that you change who you are. And that's extremely hard, if possible at all.

[ryandrake]

> Our mindset is our greatest limitation.

That, and the nature of distributions. Salaries are not exactly normal, but there’s still a long tail on the right, with only enough room for a few. Some people find it fun to read/dream about being over on that tail, just like some people aspirationally watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

If outsized results were achievable by merely applying hard work, adopting certain principles or following articulable steps, more of us would be able to show outsized results. Even for athletes, more training and better mindset means better performance but not necessarily outsized performance. There are only so many Olympians and pro ball players to go around and the farther right you go on the tail, the more of a factor random chance is.