It’s hard and it will get harder

If it was easy, you’d have it already. Each day when I write this, I make sure to put what I’m grateful for each day at the top of the page before I start writing. It’s a small reminder to myself that good things happen too. And they happen everyday, even when the prevailing thought is one of challenge.

Innovation is hard.

Consistency is hard.

But both are key ingredients that are required for extraordinary. And everyone hopes to be extraordinary.

Many of the most effective products and services play to the vision of ourselves that is extraordinary. “Of course I’ll be able to wake up at 5am and work out everyday before making a nutritious breakfast, saving the animals, and making a sale, all before the rest of the world wakes up.”

It’s well documented that a majority of people believe they are above average in most things. But we can’t all be “above average” no matter how much we all believe it. It’s hard to be above average, it takes work, it takes consistency and it takes good judgement in tackling the hard things that we want to avoid but know are required.

A lot of these notes have the same undertones and a lot of the content that is put out there around growth, focus, and business are all talking about the same principles.

It’s hard to do a hard thing. Duh.

Most people reading about someone who did the hard thing, will actually not go on to do the hard thing they’re truly trying to do. That’s why it’s hard. That’s also why it’s easy to let things fall to the wayside and move on. 👀

A thought mentioned on the All-in podcast 139 released today was how the demand for the few “cool” jobs becomes overwhelming as more people learn and talk about them. In the context of the show, many people now want to become venture capitalists. I even said so myself a few years back. A defining trait of humanity is to see, mimic, and remix. When we see how the “heroes” of the world are technology investors, people follow on.

Back in the day the coolest thing to do when you grew up was to become an astronaut. In more recent times it is to become a YouTuber. I saw another clip visualizing all the Play buttons given out for Youtube subscriber milestones. Something like

300,000 100k play buttons have been given out.

29,000 1M play buttons,

985 10M play buttons,

40 50M play buttons,

and like 7 100M play buttons have been awarded.

I didn’t fact check this, but it gives an idea for magnitude.

The power law effect is true for actors, musicians, and performers of all kinds. The very visible front person receives the applause and envy. They garner fame, are considered successful, and apple of many’s eyes. But behind the scenes are the tens of thousands of hours, and the tens of thousands of others who may have been 95% as good, and put in 95% as much time and effort, but didn’t make the cut.

A thought that I know has passed through many people’s heads when seeing something mediocre get recognition is “I could do that better than them.” And you may very well be able to. You might even go on to do it!

But the worst movie or piece of music that gets notoriety isn’t the right comparison. A better comparison is the best thing that didn’t receive notoriety.

As the development of AI continues to challenge our ideas of self and our place in the world it becomes more obvious that humanity and the modern day standard of living was created at the hands of a relatively small number of individuals.

Yuval said something I didn’t know on his recent interview that resonated, I’ll paraphrase: Chimpanzees had larger brains than Homosapiens. They were larger in size as well. They were stronger, and better at climbing trees. But humans had one characteristic that other species didn’t. It was the ability to cooperate in very large numbers. To engage in trade across continents and to have trust with other people in far off lands. I think about all the ideas that we developed to help us progress like money, the corporation, a nation, our belief system. These ideas were able to unite and spark massive cooperation, to share knowledge and trade resources unlike any other species. This unique ability to coordinate at scale allowed our most innovative and brave people to iterate and work with one another to progress and develop at alarming speeds. The internet accelerated all of that. And here we are today, at or very close to the inflection point in creating something far more intelligent than any of us. We are setting sail for the seas that are hardest to navigate.

All in episode 139: https://youtu.be/gpDzcCHERX4

Yuval Noah Harari interview with Lex Fridman: https://youtu.be/Mde2q7GFCrw

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