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The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything. This seems like a restateme
by vannevar 6y ago
The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.
This seems like a restatement of the explore and exploit cycle in evolution. You start off with very little, so you have nothing to lose by exploring every opportunity. Eventually, one or more of those opportunities pays off, and you become successful. Now the odds favor exploitation, since new opportunities are unlikely to be better than the profitable ones you've already discovered. You're better off leaning into those than you are to go off exploring again. Of course, this also means you could get stuck in a local maximum. But life is finite, and the chances of achieving a higher max are low.
- pwillia7 6y agoHow do you have the assumption chances of achieving a higher max are low? That seems arbitrary and like it'd be a coin flip as I don't know all the possible successes in the world and how they compare to mine.
- vannevar 6y agoIf you make the assumption that the frequency of opportunities is inversely proportional to their potential (ie, the bigger the opportunity, the less frequent they are), then in the short term you're going to be better off expending your energies exploiting an existing opportunity rather than chasing a new one. If the distribution of opportunities is fat-tailed enough, then given a long enough baseline I concede that continuing exploration might provide greater expected value. But in practice, most successful founders are in their mid-40s, and most businesses take years to grow to fruition. So I think Buffett's advice is good in the real world.