On balance, average actions produce average outcomes. Omitting luck from the equation, one can expect to receive a reward roughly proportional to their effort, relative to the effort of others. If one puts in an amount of effort equal to that of others, then one should not expect a reward that differs from theirs.
To expect otherwise would be to factor luck into your success. While luck should not be ignored, it cannot be relied on. Luck snatches opportunities just as easily as it grants them. If you want to achieve more than the person next to you, you must outwork them.
Consider the following.
- If you want to be in the top 10%, you must be the 1 winner in a room of 10 people.
- If you want to be in the top 1%, you must be the 1 winner in a lecture hall of 100 people.
- If you want to be in the top 0.1%, you must be the 1 winner in an auditorium of 1,000 people.
- If you want to be in the top 0.01%, you must be the 1 winner in an arena of 10,000 people.
- If you want to be in the top 0.001%, you must be the 1 winner in a stadium of 100,000 people.
- If you want to be in the top 0.0001%, you must be the 1 winner in a city of 1,000,000 people.
And so on, and so forth.
This is the simple math of your competition. This is no trivial task; a lot of people want to be number one. So, if you have ambition, then you cannot afford to habitually slack. The stakes are too high. The only person you cheat is yourself.
Perhaps you might be thinking: “But Paul, it’s important to rest.” Yes, it is. Note that I use the word “slack” above. To slack is to not give one’s all when they are working, or to not work when one intended to. To rest is to deliberately take appropriate time off of work to recuperate and avoid burnout. One must rest today, to avoid slacking tomorrow.
To “outwork” does not necessarily mean to work in excess today, or any individual day. The key is to outwork others over time. An idea popularized by James Clear in his book Atomic Habits is that if one gets 1% better every day, then they will be 37.78 times better at the end of a year. You cannot continue to get better if you do not rest.
Do not cheat yourself of compound returns. When you intend to work, do not slack. When you intend to rest, do not regret not working. Work enough to reap those compound returns. Rest enough to live today. Sleep enough to be able to work again tomorrow.
I had Instagram installed for seven years before I deleted it from my phone on October 23rd, 2024. On day 365 of that one-year compounding cycle, using Instagram instead of doing a productive task cost me 1.01^365 - 1.01^364 ≈ 0.374 "units" of gain, equivalent to the first 32 days of progress (1.01^32 ≈ 1.374).
I am over 22 years into my life, not just 365 days. Consider the magnitude of disruption to compound returns now, when we choose to slack.
In the end, the only person you cheat is yourself.