Reading06: I, Robot

Ahh, the classic "how do I speedrun retirement" conversation we had a few weeks ago. Startups do seem like a "get rich quick" scheme...if you do it right. Find a gap, start to fill it, and (hopefully) get bought. While there aren't any rules on what one is or is not allowed to pursue, the wealth that comes with developing technology has most definitely polluted the waters with more "robots," leaving fewer True Hackers.

"When people care enough about something to do it well, those who do it best tend to be far better than everyone else."

I read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell for a class in high school and ever since, the 10,000 hour rule has always stuck with me: all of the pros have put at least 10,000 hours into perfecting their craft. The Beatles played 10000 hours worth of practices/gigs together before they solidified themselves as greats. Bill Gates spent 10,000 hours tinkering with computers to fully understand them. While I don't believe that this number needs to be hit, I agree with the underlying principle--someone doesn't just accidentally become the best. Putting in the work is required.

If you don't care about your work, this path becomes infinitely more difficult. I know my fair share of "grinders" who put in hours and hours of studying just to end up with a grade that's two points better than the rest of the class. When your focus is about being the best and not attempting to learn and grow through the process, you will never be satisfied. Startups seem like the perfect mechanism for these rank-chasers: "I'll just create a startup that can be sold in 5 years, invest that money into another company, and follow the VC route until I find my name on a list in Forbes magazine." While this may seem attractive to some, I see it as a distraction from the prime years of your life. By the time you reach the end of the "dream," you'll probably have more regrets than accomplishments. That doesn't seem like success to me.

"If a fairly good hacker is worth $80,000 a year at a big company, then a smart hacker working very hard without any corporate bullshit to slow him down should be able to do work worth about $3 million a year."

Another high school accomplishment was writing a senior thesis analyzing data bias and suggesting potential solutions to minimizing/eliminating its impact in real-world scenarios. One of the conclusions I came to was that we (especially as Americans) try so hard to optimize. Humans are subjective creatures, and we crunch them down to numbers that allow for enough differentiation that statistics can make up exactly who a person is. Because of this, we lose focus on why we want to accomplish a goal and shift to how quickly we can get there.

If you really believe in something, you should pursue it. It may be hard to initially convince others of your belief at first, but your motivation alone may spark someone else's, and eventually you'll gain a following. As Graham discusses in 'Mind the Gap,' it seems that there is a huge gap between the "best" and everyone else. The unfamiliar territory in-between can serve as a deterrent to many who want to pave their own, original path.  Rather than turning away or trying to follow every step of the outlier's success story, it's important that the individual embraces this space as their own and finds their own way to navigate it. Stop looking up and try to understand where you are in this moment, as that's all you can control. Figure out what your next logical move needs to be in your path, not someone else's. Doing is the only way you'll learn, and learning is the only way you'll succeed.