Fresh Start Monday #026: A predictable vs random world

As I've started two companies, the gnawing thought I haven't been able to shake is, "What the hell am I doing?"

Effort hasn’t correlated with reward.

A few months ago, I took a course called Small Bets by Daniel Vasallo.

He introduces two worlds:

The predictable world - success is almost guaranteed if you put in the effort.

It’s familiar, but not necessarily easy. You know the path and reward. Think school where you knew what to study, what was on the test, and if you passed, you went on to the next grade. Or in the corporate world, you land a job, and you climb the corporate ladder promotion after promotion.

The stochastic (random) world - Success is mostly randomly determined.

An unfamiliar world to most with wildly different degrees of success. Most fail. Chance plays a huge role. It's hard to predict how much a business or book author will make or what success will look like.

You can make guesses as to why something succeeded or failed, but it's hard to know for sure.

For example, I signed up for both Upwork as a coach and on Rover as a pet sitter/walker in November. I spent dozens of more hours on Upwork scrutinizing my profile and submitting proposals to jobs.

Three months later…

Upwork

Reviews: 3

Money earned: $300

Rover

Reviews: 56

Money earned: $8k +

Why? I have no idea! Maybe it was the timing? I started on Rover right before the holidays, the busiest time of the year. Maybe because I got my first clients quickly?

You can also say there's much more competition on Upwork. That's true. But anyone else on Rover with this many reviews has been on the platform for years.

Since these are platforms, I don't consider them fully in the stochastic world as the upside is limited, but it's a good example of randomness that I can't explain.

I'm starting to understand the realities of this new phase of my life, but I can't shake this underlying level of frustration.

With the help of my coach, we talked about whether this is familiar to anything else I've done. When I left to travel for three years, I didn't know what I was stepping into. But I didn't necessarily worry about the end result.

I sought out new experiences, but I accepted each new situation for what it was, good or bad. A phrase I loved and was reminded of frequently: It's not an adventure until something goes wrong.

My mindset couldn't be any more different today. Every failed sales call or every action with no successful result puts me down.

With travel, there may have always been another place to go, but I didn't put pressure on myself to achieve anything. The juiciness came from the day to day.

I've decided to treat this time in my life as that same adventure. To keep an open mind to what comes up, to let the people I meet open up new possibilities, and to trust the path in front of me as it differs week by week.

Applying it to your life

When you look back at different periods of your life, what mindset can you apply to your current world?

Maybe it's a mindset from a hobby, or school, but we can often draw on a past period of success as we apply it to a new domain.