A 90% Solution for Success

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“Ninety percent of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time without convincing yourself that you’re smarter than you are.” -Shane Parish

I found this nugget of wisdom on TikTok – never know where you’ll come across insightful thoughts. To me there were two key ideas worth emphasizing:

1) Increasing the time horizon: People like shaking their fist at those who crave “instant gratification” – those dopamine micro doses we get from our smartphones and the internet are awful, right?! Scrolling on your phone won’t kill you. But in a world of overstimulation and shortened attention spans, we lose the ability to do the mundane thing repeatedly.

New ventures (e.g. new job, new business, new year) often start with a burst of initial enthusiasm, but when adversity strikes, someone seeking easy wins strays away from longer-term pursuits.

2) Remaining humble: Extending your horizon to infinity won’t reap rewards if you’re repeating mistakes or aren’t learning from experience. Keeping a degree of humility allows you to bring in fresh perspectives, pivot off fruitless ideas, etc. There’s no problem with having confidence in your ideas, but if you knew the best way to do everything, you likely would’ve already accomplished your goals. Just food for thought.

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