It’s All or Nothing

I want to talk about some of life’s uncomfortable truths, the ones that exist whether we like it or not.

I remind my team and myself of this every single day.

In life, it’s winner takes all and the ultimate rewards go to a very select few.

There are no asterisks — only scoreboards composed of binary wins and loses. There are no almost wins or acceptable excuses. There are no “we did well given the circumstances” or an effort scale. It’s all 1’s and 0’s.

Most people are aware of the 80/20 rule — 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes, or that 80% of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of 20%, or 80% of xyz is given to 20% of tyz.

But it goes deeper than that — in the 20%, the 80/20 rule applies as well until it goes down to 99/1, meaning that 99% of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of 1% — which is winner takes all.

Why does that happen?

When there are less somethings than people who want something, we get a little thing called competition. It doesn’t matter if your something is money, a job, an internship, or a partner because there are always others who want your something.

When you first start competing with others, the playground is relatively even or better said, the difference between #1, #2 and #3 isn’t that big. The difference between getting that prestigious job, or winning the championship can literally be a matter of centimeters.

However, the rewards for those incremental centimeter differences are not proportional. At all.

In sports a shot that’s half a second too late can make the difference between winning a championship or being forgotten.

In entrepreneurship, it’s missing out on that deal because you didn’t talk to one more person.

In your career, it’s that job that would have transformed your career but you made a minor spelling mistake on your email.

What happens next is that these small differences compound overtime and as the wins keep on piling up the difference becomes huge.

That person who took your job because of a minor spelling mistake was given the opportunity to work on exciting projects that could have been yours. Even though you were only just next to him, in 10 years time that person could be worth millions and sought after while you’re making $75k a year.

Or you never win a championship because you released that shot half a second too late and will never be remembered, while your opponent becomes a household name earning millions in endorsements.

Who’s that guy guarding Michael Jordan?

Wins beget success — and I used sports as an example because winners and losers are literally judged based on a scoreboard.

But it applies to life as well — being 80–90% good enough just doesn’t cut it. Yeah I guess it does if you just want to be average, but in that case 50% good has the same rewards as 90% good.

This happens in nature as well — suppose there are two plants that are almost identical in size in the jungle. One grows slightly faster than the other thus getting a bit more sunlight. Over time that little bit more sunlight helps it grow faster than the other plant. At this point it takes over everything because of the compounding effect, leaving the other plant small and fighting for survival.

Nature is brutal and so is the power of cumulative advantages.

So what do you do?

If I knew the answer to this I wouldn’t be such a pleb sitting at home writing about it but I do have general guesses.

Since the difference between #1 and #2 is all about the inches it makes sense that you need to be amazingly consistent towards whatever vocation you wish to pursue. To me that means you have skills you need to work on every single day — tracked and measured.

The other thing you can’t afford to do is make mistakes. My biggest pet peeve is people who think it’s acceptable to make mistakes because that’s how you learn.

Really?

Tell that to my boy Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, who will have you killed if you make a mistake.

Listen — I’m not naive. You’re going to make mistakes no matter what you do, it’s unavoidable but the attitude that you’re allowed to make mistakes is doing you no favors.

I try to do everything I can to make sure I don’t make any mistakes, including taking time to reflect everyday, reading about the mistakes of others, minimizing risky decisions, and learning how to think critically.

Remember — you aim small, you miss small.

And that can make all the difference.