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by dvh1990
1620 days ago
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Imagine if (apologies for the metaphor) each and every sperm cell knew the odds of fertilizing an egg and had a choice whether to pursue that goal or not. I think that in that case no egg would ever be fertilized, right? I think success is 99% dumb luck. I think everything in life is 99% dumb luck. The fact that each and every one of us exists is dumb luck. But if we resign to that belief, nobody will ever do anything interesting or grand. The remaining 1% (it's way less than 1% of course), is skill, determination, tenacity, ambition, etc. Without those, we wouldn't have any business successes. Should you draw lessons from successes like Elon, Bezos, Zuck, Jobs? To an extent. But you can't really emulate anybody else. Everyone needs to find their own path. But what we can do is get inspired by those people. Get inspired by the fact that some human being WAS able to achieve something interesting. |
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There's a sweet spot where opportunity, mentoring, and motivation are far more evenly distributed. The ideal growth culture provides a mix of challenges for everyone who can handle them and support - of all kinds - for everyone who shows some evidence of talent and motivation.
Culturally we're nowhere close to that. So instead we have fairytales about super-special people who are incredibly smart and hard working - where in fact they're not outstandingly smart or hard working, but they may be more motivated (not always for good reasons) and possibly more divergent than average. And mostly they're born with extra opportunities which aren't available to most people.
It's debatable if this is inspiring - or at least questionable if it's more inspiring than a much wider range of successes and success stories would be.