The Law of Zero Sum Learning

When we are young, if we put our heart and soul into becoming excellent at something, that comes with a cost of not learning something else. At age 15, 20, or 25, if we become a star athlete, we simply do not have the hours available in our day, week, month, or year to also become a star musician. If we master the guitar, violin, and six other instruments, we probably are not simultaneously attending med school. If we become a surgeon by age 30, we probably didn't also write the world's next great novel or win gold in the Olympics.

Learning the Five Leverages

As a young man, I decided that if I were to make a difference in the world, and I don't mean a small difference, but put a real dent in the world in some positive way, then I'd need leverage. The world is too big and its momentum too strong for one person to create much lasting change without leverage.

I also realized that five kinds of leverage have much more power than any other in today's world: communication, technology, entrepreneurship, capital, and politics.

Opportunity Funnel for the Soul

Hope is a virtue... to have it, we must work at it.
- Mary Berry quoting her father, Wendell Berry

Entrepreneurship is hard. It sometimes destroys lives and livelihoods. This is precisely its greatest value, the best argument for doing it.

I'm not saying that failure builds character or any such trite nonsense, though it probably does do plenty of that. What I mean is a little more nuanced.