• If you want to be happy right now, don’t try really hard to be happy right now. Instead, do something that’s both meaningful and pleasurable.

• If you want to find someone to fall in love with, don’t go on dates with the goal of determining if you could fall in love with each person. Instead, meet lots of people from a source that is unusually likely to have people you would fall in love with, and during each meeting, be present and have the intention of getting to know that person.

• If you want to meditate effectively, don’t go into each session trying really hard to meditate effectively. Instead, meditate with a gentle intention to focus on your breath and notice when you lose your focus on your breath (or whatever intention is appropriate for the type of meditation you’re doing).

But why is it more effective to pursue some things indirectly, rather than directly? Sometimes it’s because it’s unclear how to engage in direct pursuit (e.g., most people don’t know how to will themselves into suddenly being happy). Sometimes it’s because the direct approach puts you into a state of mind that impairs your performance at the activity (e.g., the attitude of trying to meditate effectively undermines effective meditation). So even if the only reason you’re doing a certain activity is to achieve some end, you may have to have a different intention while doing that activity for it to work effectively.

This piece was first written on July 19, 2025, and first appeared on my website on October 14, 2025.

People like to think of things as “good” or “bad,” such as:

• Trans fats are bad for you, and broccoli is good for you.
• Lethargy is bad, but exercise is good.
• Being cowardly is bad, and having courage is good.

A problem with putting something in the “good” bucket of your mind, though, is that this can lead to the belief that the more of it there is, the better.

But most goods don’t work that way. It’s far more common for goods to diminish in value as you get more of them, or to be good up to a certain point and then stop being good at all, or even to harm you when you have too much!

By understanding the different ways that value can change with quantity, you can make more rational decisions. By grasping these concepts, you can optimize the way you allocate resources and efforts, avoid wastefulness, and strike a balance that promotes both personal well-being and efficiency – regardless of what decisions you have to make.

The next time you think about something being good, you can remember this article to add some nuance, go one step further, and think about what type of good it is.

Understanding Different Types of Goods

To help you make more rational choices, in this section, we’re going to give you a rundown of 4 types of goods that it can be helpful to know. They can be represented graphically like this:

You might find it useful to keep looking back at this chart as you read about the concepts below.

1️⃣Satiating Goods

Once you have a reasonable amount of these goods, there is no additional benefit to having more, but it also won’t hurt to have more (in realistic quantities). Although it is well-known that many goods have a point at which you will get no value from any more of them, there doesn’t appear to be a widely-used term for such goods. We like the phrase ‘satiating goods’ because your desire or need for them can be satiated.

For example, consider broccoli. Sure, it is probably healthy to swap 3% of what you eat for broccoli if you’re low in some of the nutrients it provides, but you will actually get no additional net benefit if you go from 20% of your diet being broccoli up to 30%. (Unless, of course, that final ten percent was substituted in place of something unhealthy, like trans fats or mercury-laden food.)

Satiating goods come up quite a bit. They are anything that you only need a certain amount of, and any excess won’t be used, such as:

• Healthy foods: Once you get a certain amount of any healthy food, eating more has no benefit. Yet, people tend to treat healthy foods as though they are unequivocally good.
• Seating in a venue: In a theater or conference venue, having enough seating for the expected audience is essential. But once there are enough seats for everyone, adding more seats doesn’t enhance the experience for attendees, though it doesn’t detract from it either (as long as the extra seating doesn’t spread people out too much).
• Life jackets on a boat: A boat requires enough life jackets for all passengers and crew. Once this number is met, additional life jackets do not enhance safety, as they are unlikely to be used.

2️⃣Diminishing Goods

It’s always good to have more of these goods, but the amount of value each additional unit gives you diminishes as you get more and more, but never reaches zero (for realistic quantities). 

One example is money: evidence suggests that the amount of life satisfaction you would get from doubling your income is fixed, regardless of what your income was before the doubling. This means that the extra life satisfaction you’d experience when going from $30,000 to $60,000 is equal to the extra life satisfaction you’d experience when going from $500,000 to $1,000,000. But the first one of those increases in life satisfaction is much cheaper than the second ($30k vs. $500k). So, the value of $30k to someone whose income is $30k is much higher than the value of that same amount of money to someone whose income is $500k. 

Of course, there’s a sense in which the value of money doesn’t diminish: each $1 you own is worth $1, no matter how many other dollars you have. But we’re talking about a more subjective value here; we’re talking about the value goods bring you in terms of your happiness or how important they are to you. When it comes to money, that kind of value diminishes as you get more of it. 

Diminishing goods are probably the most common. Other examples include: 

• Recreational travel: The initial trips and experiences can be highly rewarding, but over time, the novelty and excitement may diminish, even though they still offer enjoyment.
• Loving relationships: If you’re at 0 loving relationships and then you get to 1, you’ll be getting a much greater amount of value than if you’re at 100 and then you get to 101. However, your 101st loving relationship isn’t of no value at all.
• Hours of practice: If you’re starting a new hobby, you’ll find that your first hours of practice give you a large amount of value (in the form of improvement), but that value drops off over time as you have less to learn and make smaller and smaller improvements.

3️⃣Overdosable Goods

Like satiating goods, these are beneficial up to some amount, but, unlike satiating goods, further amounts of overdosable goods actually become harmful. Examples of this include:

• Medicines: Medicines are helpful in appropriate doses but typically harm you at higher dosages.
• Stretching: Some stretching, especially of body parts with low mobility, may be beneficial, but if you stretch an excessive amount, you might actually significantly increase the chance of injury.
• Courage: It’s good to have courage so that you can get yourself to do difficult things that are valuable – but past a certain point, courage yields no additional benefits and could lead to foolhardiness or getting into danger unnecessarily.

4️⃣Linear Goods

Finally, there are linear goods, so-called because the benefit you get from them increases at a constant (linear) rate as you get more of them. Every additional unit provides the same amount of extra happiness or utility; the marginal benefit does not change as more is acquired or consumed.

These are actually quite rare, and there is often disagreement over whether something counts as such a good. For example, they might include:

• Justice: If you value justice intrinsically, then you might think that more justice is always good, and the value of justice never diminishes or changes as more is acquired. 
• Happy lives: There is a debate over the moral value of bringing happy people into the world. Some people think it is morally good to do so (for example, see here). Other people think it’s morally neutral, while still others think it’s morally bad. Those who think it’s morally good to bring more happy people into existence typically also think that each new person is as valuable as all the others, and their value does not diminish or change as additional happy people come into existence.

The thing we want to point out here is that linear goods are quite uncommon, and their status is often controversial, despite the fact that people tend to think of ‘goodness’ as being linear all the time. But now you know better! Goodness more often gets satiated, diminishes, or even overdoses.

Of course, these are not the only types of goods out there! There are some more complicated goods with more complicated utility functions, but the ones discussed in this article are a great place to start, and reflecting on them will help you make more rational choices.

What should you do with this knowledge? 

Now that you know about different ways that goodness behaves, you can think more rationally about your goals and sources of happiness and avoid the trap of thinking that more of a good thing is always better. 

We suggest that you take some time to consider how these insights might affect your goals. Studies show that goals are more effective if they are approach goals (aiming for something you want) rather than avoidance goals (which focus on the negative), but if your goal is to acquire more of something (e.g., money) or do more of something (e.g., exercise), then you should ask yourself: “What kind of good is it that I’m after?”

• If you’re aiming for an overdosable good: It’s crucial to recognize the limit and avoid crossing it. This means being aware of and respecting recommended dosages, limits, or guidelines, whether it’s for physical activities, medical intake, or emotional states like courage.

• If you’re aiming for a satiating good: It’s not as crucial to know when to stop, but you can save yourself a lot of wasted effort by paying attention to when this good will stop being of value to you. Avoid wasting effort and missing opportunities for other value in your life.

• If you’re aiming for a diminishing good: These goods don’t have points at which they stop providing value, so it’s worth thinking even more carefully about when to call it quits. You should focus on noticing when the additional time, effort, or cost begins to outweigh the enjoyment or benefit you receive.

• If you’re aiming for a linear good: Remember that while they may seem straightforward in providing consistent benefits, they are rare and often subject to debate. It’s important to critically assess whether your pursuit really is a linear good for you and to be aware of the potential complexities. If you’re confident that the good really is a linear one and it has a high value for you, then you might just have found something worth dedicating your life to!

If you want to know more about what makes you happy so that you can better figure out which goods you might want to aim for, you could try our Clearer Thinking tool, Your Greatest Sources of Pleasure.

The next time you notice yourself thinking of something as being good, it may be worth considering what kind of good it is and asking, “When would I have enough?”

This piece was first published on the Clearer Thinking blog on December 20, 2023, and was published on my website on December 27, 2023.

That peak reflects the total sum of your achievements according to your intrinsic values. This may include, for instance, your happiness, the happiness of your loved ones, your positive impact on the world, living virtuously, achieving your deeply meaningful goals, and so on.

Unfortunately, the mountains you face are foggy as hell. Plus, they have dense forests, huge boulders, and brambles covering them. Your mountains are untamed, uncharted.

• The fog means that you can only see clearly for a short distance, and the further you look, the harder it is to tell what’s out there.
• The dense forests mean that to go a considerable distance in most directions, you’ll have to whack your way through with substantial effort.
• The huge boulders will sometimes make a path impassible that had looked promising from around the bend.
• The brambles mean that certain paths will cause considerable pain if you take them. Even more inconveniently, beautiful grasses and flowers sometimes conceal the brambles.

These are your personal mountains, unique in all the world. Your mountains are determined by a combination of:

(1) Your intrinsic values. It is your values that determine the height of each landing and peak, including the height of wherever you’re standing right now.
(2) The structure of the real world, which makes some paths easier to traverse than others. The locations of the forests, boulders, and brambles are metaphors for this structure.
(3) Your current life situation. This is represented by your current latitude and longitude on the mountain range, as well as your physical and mental health, resources, and skills.

Looking out from a distance, you can see the dim outlines of many high-up peaks far away that look promising, but they are in different directions from each other. That means you’ll have to make tough choices about what direction to go, even at the beginning of your journey.

This journey will take your entire life. If you’re like most people, it will be long and hard but also too short. It will be wondrous, terrifying, joyful, and sad.

Rather than trying to travel a great distance in order to climb to great heights, it is easier to find the first comfortable spot, set up a hammock and tent, and make camp there forever. Who can blame you for making that choice (except, perhaps, yourself)?

If you decide to take the journey, you’ll need to use your tool belt, which (if you’re lucky) comes equipped with five (metaphorical) tools.

To have the greatest chance of reaching the highest peaks, you’ll want to train yourself to be a master of each tool.

Here are the tools to master.

Tool 1: The walking stick, which is what you use to move forward along the path you’ve chosen.

By far, the most common tool you’ll use is the walking stick. For every choice of path, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time walking.

Maybe you’ll give up and turn back at the first encounter with a snake, tiger, or tornado. Or maybe you’ll use the walking stick to keep going.

You’re using the walking stick when you create a to-do list and tick items off of it. You’re using it when you push through fear to do something valuable.

Mostly, climbing a mountain involves using your walking stick, but if you only use that, you’re doomed.

Tool 2: The telescope, which allows you to peer at the shape of the mountain, collecting data and facts about the world that you can use to select your path.

The questions that guide your use of the telescope are ones like:

• What questions could I ask that would help me choose my path?
• What do I need to know about the mountains that I don’t yet know?
• What important question am I confused about?
• Where is my lack of knowledge showing?

The scope, like each of your tools, takes many forms. In a start-up, it may look like talking to customers, running surveys, examining other products, or scrutinizing the structure of your own product, keeping a keen eye out for flaws. In your career, it may look like researching career paths, talking to others who have tried different routes, quickly trying things out, and soliciting feedback on your work from your colleagues.

What you’re looking for with the telescope are indications of which nearby paths lead quickest up the mountain, as well as hints for other (potentially faraway) parts of the mountain range that may have yet higher peaks (even if you have to go a ways back down the mountain to get there).

Being good at using the scope means being observant, impartial, curious, methodical, open to criticism, and empirical. And it means being able and willing to cope with reality.

Tool 3: The notepad, which you use to formulate your theories about how the world works, as well as to devise plans.

This tool will most dramatically increase how effectively you use the telescope because there are far too many potential things to point the scope at. Your theories on the notepad, therefore, guide your use of the scope. At the same time, the scope provides data to go into your theories in the notebook.

Some of your theories will be explicit, penned in detail with full awareness, but most will be implicit, born out of the things you’ve seen, etched in your subconscious with a shadowy ink.

In your personal life, your notebook contains your understanding of yourself, your partner, your parents, your friends, and human nature. It contains your understanding of your mountains (as well as other people’s mountains) and your beliefs about where the brambles, boulders, and high peaks lie.

To use the notebook is to sit and reflect, to make predictions, to spell out your thoughts, to reduce ambiguity through precision, to derive new knowledge from other things you already know, to come to new conclusions.

Being good at using the notebook means being thoughtful, philosophical, reflective, logical, cautious, precise, and rational.

Tool 4: The jump rope, which you use to practice and improve your skills.

Sometimes, this will take the form of physical training – maybe you don’t yet have the bushwhacking skills to knock away the brambles. Oftentimes, the training and practice will be mental rather than physical. Maybe you don’t know enough about how to use the scope, or your facility with the notepad is not where it needs to be.

Early on in your journey, you’ll need to use the metaphorical jump rope a lot so that you can build the skills you’ll need for the journey. Over time, you’ll need it less often, but there will always be new skills that are useful to train as you climb higher.

The jump rope is informed by the scope and the notebook. Sometimes the scope will tell you about the sort of paths you’ll soon need to face, and the jump rope will help you prepare for them. Other times, you’ll turn the lens of the scope on yourself to see your weaknesses. You can then use the jump rope to work on these, to reshape yourself.

You’re using the jump rope when you’re reading to learn, taking a course to understand something important, practicing how to do something, asking someone to teach you, breaking a difficult skill into smaller pieces, or asking a question when you’re confused.

If your walking speed is slow, or you find another weakness that is slowing you down, use the jump rope to get that skill up to par. But just as importantly, use the jump rope to hone what you’re already good at, to sharpen it into an exceptional skill.

Tool 5: The whistle, which is how you get the help you need from others.

Most things that are worth doing can’t be done alone, and those that travel without a whistle put themselves in great peril. Sometimes you’ll need the help of others to clear a path, to show you how to use the other tools effectively, or to help you understand why you’re stuck. No matter where you’re headed on the mountains, there are those that have gone that way before who have advice to share.

Using the whistle may mean requesting assistance or a favor, but it can also mean asking advice, asking a simple question, or getting support when you’re mentally exhausted.

Being good at using the whistle means investing time in your relationships, developing deep connections, being a good friend when others use their whistles, meeting new people when you perceive gaps, and being bold enough to call for support when you could use it.

Never travel without a whistle when you don’t have to.

So how, then, do you get to the top of your mountains? Well, you will never get to the very top – the mountains stretch forever. But you can climb high. To maximize your chances, use:

(1) The walking stick (to keep moving forward without giving up).
(2) The telescope (to investigate the mountains carefully and with minimal bias so that you can understand where the brambles and boulders are).
(3) The notepad (to reflect carefully on your beliefs and formulate your plans).
(4) The jump rope (to improve your weaknesses and enhance your strengths).
(5) The whistle (to get help and support).

Good luck – may your climb be a joyous one!

This piece was first written on May 19, 2023, and first appeared on this site on September 22, 2023.

Principles act as shortcuts to help you make choices that you’ll be satisfied with, and they serve as beacons to guide you toward a better version of yourself. They also serve as an encapsulation of important lessons you’ve learned throughout your life.

We recently released an interactive module to help you determine your principles. It also makes it easy to save or print off a beautiful depiction of your principles to help you keep them top of mind. You can use the module yourself here.

A big shout-out goes to Adam Binks who created this module!

Here are the principles I attempt to live by as of Jan 3, 2023:

1. Seek the truth on important topics, even when it’s difficult. Listen carefully to all plausible sides. Aim to avoid all self-deception.

2. Aim to have opinions on most topics that are important to you, but view your beliefs probabilistically. Be quick to update your view as you get new evidence.

3. Always strive to become a better version of yourself. Take constructive feedback with grace and use it to improve.

4. Try to understand your intrinsic values and avoid confusing them with instrumental values. Aim to be highly effective at generating what you intrinsically value.

5. While capable, devote a substantial percent of your time and effort to improving the world.

6. Try to always be kind.

7. Try never to tell lies. White lies are okay only when they’re what the recipient would prefer.

8. Don’t let anyone of low moral character be a recurring or substantial part of your life.

9. Try to be grateful for all that you have. Take pleasure in simple things.

10. Take care of your physical and mental health.

11. Always have a self-experiment running to find new ways to better yourself and your life.

12. Aim not to avoid anything valuable just because it makes you feel awkward, anxious, or afraid.

13. Remember that you will usually fail many times at any difficult thing before you succeed. Try, fail, learn from your mistakes, and try again.

This post was first written on December 31, 2022, was edited slightly on January 3, 2023, and first appeared on this site on July 26, 2023.

Note: here, I use the term “success” merely in terms of achievement, career success, or high levels of expertise, NOT in terms of happiness, living a good life, morality, having strong social bonds, etc. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to be successful in the way this post focuses on. But if you DO want “success” in the sense in which it is used in this post (or you are interested in being able to predict it in others), you may find some of the models here useful.

I’m also interested to know: which model (below) do you find most useful for thinking about success, and which one of these factors (used in the models) do you think is currently most limiting your success?

1. Noise theory:

success = luck

2. Genetic determinism:

success = (innate) aptitude + luck

Note: whenever I use “luck,” I mean random factors not already accounted for in the other factors in the model. So in the case above, “luck” means luck other than the random chance of what your aptitude is.

3. Traditional right:

success = aptitude + surrounding culture + hard work

4. Social justice left:

success = privilege + luck

5. Economic left:

success = social/economic class you’re born into + luck

6. Cynical theory:

success = some combination of self-promotion, bullshitting, social skills, good-lookingness, starting resources, and luck

7. Gladwell: 

success = whoever practiced for 10,000 hours + luck

8. Dweck: 

success = aptitude + growth mindset + luck

9. Duckworth: 

success = aptitude + growth mindset + grit + luck

10. Seligman: 

success = skill * effort * self-promotion * luck

11. Psychometrics: 

success = IQ + conscientiousness + low neuroticism + luck

12. Ericsson: 

success = luck + hours spent doing “deliberate practice” (i.e., with specific goals and tight performance feedback loops, while analyzing mistakes and dividing skills into micro-skills that can be practiced independently, ideally all done under the supervision of expert coaches)

13. My mega model:

success at a fixed goal = luck^a

* (resources+opportunities)^b

* (community/collaborator quality and supportiveness)^c

* (innate aptitude at relevant skills)^d

* intelligence^e

* rationality^f

* (creativity and resourcefulness)^g

* (social skills)^h

* (hours of deliberate practice)^i

* (unitary or obsessive focus on the goal)^j

* (conscientiousness and self-control)^k

* (physical or mental health)^l

* confidence^m

* (ambition and agency/self-directedness)^n

* (self-promotion skill and effort)^o

* courage^p

* (goal/task-specific factors)^q

* (efficiency and prioritization)^r

Each exponent a, b, c, …, r is a different number from 0 to 1. Note that each of these traits is selected because I believe, on average, having more of them improves the chance of success – that’s why I exclude negative exponents. Furthermore, I’m claiming that these factors, on average, each have diminishing marginal returns. That’s why the exponents are each less than 1 (making a concave function).

The values of the exponents vary depending on the field and type of skill. For instance, in some areas, courage is a minor factor (in which case the courage exponent, n, would be close to 0, and in other fields, courage is essential, in which case n would be close to 1). So, in other words: success is a PRODUCT of roughly 18 factors, and how much each factor matters depends on what you’re trying to do.

Note that this is designed so that if you have literally 0 of any factor, then the level of success is automatically 0 (since 0 times any number is 0). For instance, if you have literally no physical health, you are, presumably, dead, and if you have literally no ambition, presumably you just sit around all day or do the minimum you need to eat.

It’s worth noting that the factors above are not completely statistically or causally independent in reality (becoming higher in one may make you higher in another, on average). But I think the enormous extra complexity of trying to account for these dependencies probably is not worth it in practice.

How do you improve your odds of success?

A lot of times, when people are extremely successful, I think it’s because they avoid being TOO low in any of the factors, and they have one or two factors where they are exceptionally high. Many factors are “bounded” ones: for instance, you can’t work more than 24 hours per day. So it’s impossible to work more than 3x the amount the average person does. But there are some “unbounded” factors where you can potentially be WAY higher than the average person (e.g., “creativity”), which can drive the success score very high (as long as no other factor is close enough to zero to drag it back down). Hence, this model leads to an approach for thinking about how to be more successful (if that’s something you care about).

Put simply, success often flows from not being TOO weak on really important factors and having one or two really strong (and relevant) strengths.

Getting into more detail, here is a process you might use to consider how to increase your odds of great success:

1. For the goal/task you’re trying to succeed at, figure out which of the above factors matter substantially (which maps onto trying to – very roughly – figure out the exponents for each factor).

2. If your strong/weak factors are not a good fit for the goal, consider changing the goal to better play to your strengths, or consider teaming up with someone (e.g., a co-founder) to compensate for your weaknesses.

3. Once you have settled on a goal, identify any especially low factors (relevant to that goal) that are driving your potential for success down, and think about how you can improve at those. Due to multiplicative effects, very low factors can really drag down your potential for success. For instance, if you have severe mental health challenges that interfere with your day-to-day tasks, working on that first can be a great idea (even if you’re just optimizing for success).

4. Identify your strongest factors (that are relevant to that goal) and think about how you might improve at them or hone them to get them VERY high. You can also figure out how to make even more use of these great strengths of yours to achieve good outcomes. Often, one of the most effective things we can focus on is leaning into our greatest strengths (for instance, by designing a path towards our goals that leverages them or working to enhance them even more). This is especially the case once we’ve gotten barriers to success out of the way (i.e., we’ve worked on improving our especially low factors).

A question for you: right now, which of the factors listed above is the one that is most significantly limiting your success?

This piece was first written on September 12, 2021 and first appeared on this site on March 25, 2022.

We are surrounded by more superstimuli than most of us realize.

Examples of superstimuli:

• food: Cheetos / skittles / McDonalds

• goal achievement: video games

• visual arousal: porn

• pair bonding: romance novels

• affection: dogs

• cuteness: puppies & kittens

• stories: TV

• beauty: photoshopped models

• gossip: celebrity magazines

• social approval: Facebook

There is nothing wrong with superstimuli in moderation, but they tend to be addictive, and they can make it harder to enjoy the natural (non-super) versions of those things, which can harm our quality of life. Often times the superstimuli give just *part* of the experience we really crave (like eating junk food that is really tasty and calorie-dense, without really providing satiety or nutritional value).

So be wary if you spend more time on social media than talking to loved ones (or if you own more than 20 dogs).

This piece was first written on July 1, 2020, and first appeared on this site on July 22, 2022.

• created billion-dollar companies with huge influence (e.g., Elon Musk)
• made multiple revolutionary scientific advances (e.g., Einstein)
• achieved absurdly high levels of skill at sports (e.g., Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who set the long-standing world record in the seven-event Olympic sport “Heptathlon”)
• reached extraordinary heights in politics (e.g., Margaret Thatcher)
• realized incredible artistic achievement (e.g., Mozart)

Here is my proposed list:

Predictors of Extreme Success

PRACTICE
(1) Head start – starts training in relevant skills at a very young age
(2) Deliberate practice – many thousands of hours of deliberate practice (i.e., performing relevant activities at a level that is challenging while receiving rapid feedback on performance and mistakes)

MENTORSHIP
(3) Encouragement – has a person who recognized their talent or believes strongly in them, ideally from an early age
(4) Coach – works closely with a very talented coach or mentor

BELIEFS
(4) Growth mindset – believes they are capable of improving their most important personal characteristics through effort (rather than viewing them as fixed)
(5) Changeable world – belief that the world is changeable along the dimensions where they want to make change
(6) Confidence – a conviction in their own abilities and belief that they will ultimately succeed at their goals

GOALS
(7) Focus – maintains their major high-level goals for a very long time, rather than switching what they are aiming at
(8) Ambition – has extremely lofty goals

MOTIVATION
(9) Persistence – does not give up when very large obstacles stand in the way of their goals, even when failure looks imminent
(10) Effort – puts an enormous amount of time and emotional energy into achieving their goal
(11) Hunger – willing to sacrifice many things for success, such as comfort, fun, rest, being likable, etc.
(12) Passion – extreme passion or obsession in the domain related to their goals

ENVIRONMENT
(13) Opportunities – there exist high levels of opportunity both in the physical place where they are born or move early on (i.e., their region) and in the domain that they work in (i.e., their field)
(14) Privilege – is born with characteristics that are not heavily discriminated against in that time and place, or that are viewed in a positive light by the surrounding society

RESOURCES
(15) Resources – starts out with useful resources (e.g., connections, money, equipment, prestige)
(16) Luck – happen to be in the right place at the right time to seize certain opportunities (through no effort on their own part)

SKILLS
(17) Intelligence – high level of intelligence (e.g., as measured by IQ tests)
(18) Creativity – has unusually high skill at coming up with new, valuable ideas
(19) Decision-making – when very important decisions must be made, makes them in a carefully considered, thoughtful, rationally oriented, less biased manner that weighs many factors
(20): Resourcefulness – readily generates effective strategies for overcoming challenges that others may not have thought of or considered
(21): Prioritization – continually refocuses their efforts on the activities that yield the greatest output per unit input towards achieving their goals, and cuts out low leverage or distracting activities
(22): Self-control – not generally succumbing to short term gains at the expense of long term ones, and having conscious control over the choices they make rather than tending to be controlled by passing urges
(23): Aptitude – some people have an innate ability that makes them better at certain activities relevant for success in specific domains, for instance, a sprinter who is born with “fast-twitch” muscles, or an intellectual who was born with a mind that is much better than most at seeing connections between disparate things.

PERSONALITY
(24) Charisma – others are drawn to this person upon meeting them, or are easily influenced by what they say, for instance, believing this person’s claims, wanting to help this person, wanting to bet on this person’s success, wanting to be led by this person, etc.
(25) Conscientiousness – stays organized, pays attention to important details, is careful in their work, not sloppy
(26) Rule bending – circumvents rules, conventions, or social norms that stand in their way towards success, without breaking them egregiously in a way that will cause them to end up ostracized or in jail
(27) Courage – lacks fear in the face of difficult goal-related challenges that would make most people afraid, OR carries out important behaviors anyway as though lacking fear (even if experiencing extremely intense fear)
(28) Risk-taking – is willing to take large risks when the predicted average reward / expected value is large enough but doesn’t take excessive risks when the potential for reward is not great enough
(29) Demanding – requires those that help them or work with them to produce at a very high standard of excellence
(30) Perfectionistic – continually hones their work, not stopping until it achieves an extremely high standard of excellence

BEHAVIORS
(31) Promotion – actively markets the work that they do to make others aware of it and excited by it
(32) Responsiveness – seeks external feedback, criticism or reliable data about what they are doing, pays close attention to what is and isn’t working well, and readily adapts approaches based on this information when evidence shows things aren’t working
(33) Community – purposely surrounds themselves with people who have relevant skills, advice, encouragement, knowledge, influence, etc. and who is a positive influence in the direction of them achieving their goals
(34) Single-mindedness – disregard for other, non-goal related activities (which could include neglect of personal life or of non-goal-related responsibilities)

It’s an interesting exercise to consider: which of the many factors above do you think are MOST predictive of success?

I explored this question by running two little studies across two different populations: mechanical turk (“mturk,” n=49, all U.S.) vs. my Facebook friends (“FB,” n=111, who tend to be in the U.S.) with different approaches, me hand categorizing written responses vs. participants selecting the category that best matches what they wrote using 24 categories in random order developed from the first study, including an “other” option.

Across the two studies, 71% of free form written responses to the question of “what you want more than anything else in the entire world” fell into just these nine categories:

1. a romantic partner (17% FB vs. 6% mturk)

2. the wellbeing of my family (5% FB vs. 17% mturk)

3. happiness (7% FB vs. 15% mturk)

4. money (8% FB vs. 14% mturk)

5. a markedly positive effect on the world (18% FB vs. 0% mturk)

6. good health (8% FB vs. 6% mturk)

7. a family or children (5% FB vs. 2% mturk)

8. a job with meaning (5% FB vs. 2% mturk)

9. freedom (5% FB vs. 2% mturk)

In the Facebook version, I also asked people to come up with something they could do in the next few days to increase the chance that they eventually get this thing they most want. Surprisingly, 95% of people were able to come up with something that they thought would increase their odds! When asked when they would do this thing, they came up with that would increase their odds of getting what they most want, 75% of people said they would do this thing within the next week, and 62% said they would do it within two days!

Tentative lessons from this data:

(1) The things that people most want in the U.S. tend to fall into just a small number of basic categories: a romantic partner, wellbeing of family, happiness, money, positive impact, health, family/children, meaningful work, freedom. In the mturk study, these nine categories covered 64% of responses, and in the FB study, 78% of responses.

(2) The median time for the entire FB study was 3 minutes, so if you take 3 minutes to think, you can decide how to take action toward the things you most want.

(3) There’s a good chance you can start really soon on this strategy to increase your odds of getting what you most want (e.g., within the next couple of days or at least within a week).

(4) If you have the nine things in the list below (or almost all of them), consider yourself very lucky! You have what people want! Extract every sliver of joy and meaning from what you have while you can!

If you’d like to try this procedure yourself in an easy, step by step fashion, here’s the link to the FB version of the study: http://bit.ly/2DtQQoK

Imagine throwing away a crumpled piece of paper in a waste bin. Now imagine doing it again, but assume this time that you set the goal of throwing it in from 6 feet away. As your tossed paper ball sails through the air, you may feel an edge of nervousness. When it falls into the bin, you may feel a small jolt of excitement. And if it lands short, some disappointment. In the end, it’s just a paper ball, but your goal imbued it with meaning for you.

The bright side of this psychological quirk is that we can hack it to make mundane things fun just by setting challenging goals all the time. Going for a bike ride to somewhere you bike often? Set the goal of noticing five interesting things along the way that you’ve never noticed before. Going to check out some coffee shops with friends? Set the goal of finding which one really truly has the best coffee. Doing some boring data entry? Set the goal of completing the most entries you can in 10 minutes, or finishing before a certain song ends.

Warning: there is a substantial dark side to goal setting.

Many of the video games people get addicted to are like the crack cocaine of goal achievement. In the real world, you don’t get to succeed at a seemingly-important goal every 5 to 30 minutes, but in video games you do, and we humans love it. Even worse, once you’re used to achieving goals so frequently, real-life can feel like garbage by comparison. Be very wary if the goals from your games (when you’re not currently playing) start seeming as important as the goals of real life.

While video games are an example of very rapid goal achievement, some goals can be extremely sticky, motivating us for years or decades to take action after action after action (e.g., people who set the goal of becoming a doctor when they are 15, and who may not end up finishing all their training until 14 years later).

What’s scary about this is that sometimes we are so focused on the goal that we forget why we set the goal in the first place. But, just as we don’t need a good reason to choose to throw a piece of paper in the trash from 6 feet away, and it’s still satisfying if we achieve it, our goals from years ago may not have been set for good reasons. Or maybe the reasons were good ones at the time, but not ones we currently endorse. Yet the goal doesn’t instantly disappear. Goals are independent entities, divorced from the causes that brought them into existence. And working toward a long-standing goal can easily become a default mode. Unless you force yourself to reevaluate the reasons behind it, a goal you’ve had for a long time will probably keep persisting even if it’s reasons no longer make sense to you.

Perhaps even worse, we buy into goals that others set for us, and then let these goals dictate our behavior. Sometimes these goals are broadcast to us by the culture we’re in (e.g. “popular=good”). In other cases, adults are still stuck chasing the goals that their parents gave them as children, even though these goals don’t align with their adult values.
Not having goals can also be a painful existential state. Goals are part of what makes life feel meaningful. So the solution is not to avoid them but to consciously create them.

Goals are powerful, useful, and dangerous. We should set small goals to give life more fun and meaning. In weightier areas, though, we have to set our goals very carefully, and not let others do it for us. We need to reevaluate the causes and value of our goals regularly. Otherwise, we may spend decades chasing goals long after we’ve forgotten their meaning.

The high level components necessary for accomplishment in tennis are the same as they are in nearly every field. Accomplishment relies on the following factors:

1. Ambition. While it is possible to accomplish things that you don’t set out to achieve, when that occurs it is usually just due to luck. Setting something as your goal is the first step towards accomplishing it. If we have low ambitions, we are unlikely to achieve great things.
2. Talent. Most accomplishments require a certain starting level of skills relevant to the accomplishment. To be become a great singer, it helps to have good pitch. To be a great investor, it helps to have a personality that allows you to act calmly when others are afraid. While abilities can be honed with training, your current level of talent represents your starting point in the accomplishment race. If you start too far behind, even really good training may not get you to where you need to be.
3. Reasoning. The path towards almost every major accomplishment involves making difficult decisions. Which job should you take? Which helpful books should you read? Who should you make an effort to get to know? Which skills should you work to hone? Which training methods should you apply? The superpower of being able to reliably answer these kinds of questions will make your accomplishment much more likely. One very bad decision early on may lead you to failure.
4. Time. Most big accomplishments require a very large investment of time. You are not going to be able to invent a better type of microchip without first learning a lot about computers, electrical engineering, and materials science. This will take years.
5. Resources. These can be both physical (e.g. money) or social (e.g. knowing the right people to help you achieve your goal). If you have an incredible business idea, but don’t have the money to fund it, and can’t get in contact with someone who will fund it for you, you’re out of luck. A strong social network can make achievement much easier. It often takes the well-coordinated effort of many people to achieve great things. There may even be a person out there whose advice or help is exactly what you need for success. And sometimes involving others in our projects can make up for our own lack of talent, lack of money, or lack of time.

Any of these five factors can prevent you from accomplishing great things. If your goals are unambitious, your achievement will probably be low. If you are lacking in relevant talent, you’re unlikely to ever achieve great heights of ability. If your reasoning is poor, you’ll be likely to make bad decisions related to how to achieve your goals. If you don’t put enough time into achievement, you’ll probably not accomplish very much. And many goals require some money, or the help of others, and without either of these, your ambitions may not get off the ground.

Flipping this analysis around, we see that we need to make sure that we have these five factors in place if we are going to have the best chance of accomplishing what we hope to. Sure, we might get lucky, and not need them all. Maybe we’ll win the lotto and so won’t need to worry about physical resources anymore, or maybe our bad reasoning will happen to not harm our project. But if we want to maximize our chance of success, we should have sufficient ambition, talent, reasoning skills, time investment, and physical/social resources. Whichever of these is our weakest point is likely what we should focus on improving. We can consider how we can try to affect each of these factors:

1. Ambition may be hard to change. You simply may not care about accomplishing much. But reflecting on what you would like to complete before your die may make you realize that you do in fact care about achieving certain goals.
2. Your current level of talent is fixed, but you can make up for a lack of it by involving other people whose talents complement your own, and by reasoning about how to improve your skills and then investing sufficient time into doing so.
3. Reasoning can be honed with practice.
4. Time simply needs to be invested. But reasoning can help you make your time more productive and efficient, and involving others in your goals lets you pool your time with theirs. If at your current rate of time investment, your goals may take decades to achieve, you may need to start taking time away from something else.
5. If you don’t have the money or social network required to complete your goals, that may be solvable with further time investment. You may need to take a job to make the required money, and devote time to building new social contacts that are relevant to what you’d like to achieve. For instance, you can start introducing yourself to more people at places where those who are likely to be helpful are likely to be.

If you want to maximize your chance of accomplishing your goals, figure out which of these five factors is your weakest point, and fix it. Then, if necessary, repeat.