95% of What I Worked on Failed. Here’s What I Learned

The speaker reflects on their journey of starting 20 projects, with only one succeeding, emphasizing the importance of focusing on core skills rather than chasing trends. They advocate for building a unique skill set by mastering two to five core skills, which can lead to personal and career success. The speaker stresses the importance of taking action, learning through doing, and maintaining a strong work ethic. They also highlight the significance of having fun in the process, as it helps sustain motivation and fulfillment. Ultimately, the speaker encourages embracing challenges and opportunities with courage and persistence.

• The speaker has initiated 20 projects, with only one deemed successful, illustrating a 5% success rate.
• The purpose of the discussion is to analyze why most projects failed and to extract lessons from the successful one.

"I've started 20 projects 19 have failed but one has done well enough to call it a success that's a 5% hit rate."

• The quote highlights the speaker's experience with a high failure rate, setting the stage for a discussion on learning from failure and success.

• Emphasizes the significance of choosing endeavors aligned with personal skills and interests rather than following trends.
• Highlights the mistake of pursuing trendy projects without considering skill development.

"For me, I chased the trendy thing at the time I gave no thought to the skills I wanted to build and I got burned."

• The quote reflects on the consequence of focusing on trends over personal skill growth, leading to project failures.

• Identifies that achieving goals typically revolves around mastering two to five core skills.
• Describes skills as part of a tree-like structure, where smaller skills contribute to mastering core skills.
• Skills are essentially habits that, with time and practice, can be mastered.

"All the goals you have in life are just two to five core skills that if you can get good enough at can help you reach your goal."

• The quote underscores the idea that focusing on a few key skills is crucial for achieving life goals.

• Encourages finding a unique intersection of skills to stand out and minimize competition.
• Stresses the importance of not spreading oneself too thin across many skills or focusing solely on one.

"This intersection of skills makes you unique. This Focus puts you right in the middle where you don't need to spend $10,000 hours getting good at a single thing nor do you have 10 plus surface level skills that anyone can learn in a weekend."

• The quote conveys the strategy of creating a niche skill set that balances depth and breadth, enhancing uniqueness and marketability.

• Advises against chasing popular trends or following paths set by others, which may not align with personal goals.
• Emphasizes the need for focus and dedication to skill development as the price for achieving desired outcomes.

"If you know that you're two to five skills away from your goals forget the hot new thing forget blindly chasing a path set by others all of those won't help you."

• The quote reinforces the importance of staying focused on personal skill goals rather than being distracted by external trends.

• Recommends a balance between consuming content and practical application in skill building.
• Encourages starting projects with enough knowledge and learning more as challenges arise.
• Warns against over-preparation that leads to inaction.

"You should learn just enough to get started do something and only when you get stuck go back to learning."

• The quote highlights a pragmatic approach to learning, advocating for action-oriented skill development.

• Suggests identifying and emulating qualities of individuals who embody desired skills and achievements.
• Encourages reflecting on personal goals through the lens of successful role models.

"If you don't know what to do next think about someone with the qualities you would like to emulate."

• The quote advises using successful individuals as benchmarks for personal development and direction.

• Emphasizing the importance of taking action quickly leads to fast iterations and corrections.
• Making thousands of small decisions helps refine direction and improve outcomes.
• Focusing on doing good work is more rewarding than mediocrity.

"Once you have an idea, go do that. It's ultimately becoming a person with a high bias for action. Speed is important because you get fast iterations even if you go in the wrong direction."

• Encourages immediate action to foster quick learning and adaptation through iterative processes.

"Do them a lot until you know what good looks like, then it's almost always better to focus only on doing good work because the world rewards excellence a hundred times more than it does mediocrity."

• Repeated practice leads to mastery, and excellence is significantly more rewarded than average work.

• Focusing on one thing at a time is crucial for developing a strong work ethic.
• Hard work is foundational before leveraging skills for greater output.
• Daily efforts help distinguish between high and low leverage activities.

"Being able to focus on one thing is called building a strong work ethic. Once you go through the process of working hard, you can begin to apply leverage."

• Concentrated effort builds work ethic, and leverage maximizes output from input.

"As you begin to grow in skill, you'll learn which things you do are high versus low leverage, but this is only done by putting in the work every day."

• Continuous work helps identify and differentiate between tasks that provide greater returns on effort.

• Resistance is a daily force that prevents progress but can also indicate important work.
• Starting is the key to overcoming resistance and easing fears about tasks.
• Building evidence of capability through action helps mitigate future resistance.

"Standing between you and your goals is a force called resistance. You can simply think of it as the reason that stops you from doing what you said you would do."

• Resistance is an obstacle to achieving goals but also a guide to significant tasks.

"When there's resistance, it can help you find the important work you're avoiding, but there's a way to lessen it, and that is to just get started."

• Resistance highlights avoided tasks, and initiating action is the solution to overcoming it.

"You do what you need to do, and you've built some evidence that you're capable. You prove to yourself that you can start and finish something."

• Completing tasks builds self-evidence of capability, reducing future resistance.

• Setting massive goals without proof of capability can hinder progress.
• Small actions towards big goals help build foundational evidence of ability.
• Daily resistance can be countered by reflecting on past achievements.

"For me, I set massive goals but never built any proof that I could do the things that I said I would do."

• Large goals require evidence of capability, which comes from completing smaller tasks.

"Tomorrow you'll face resistance again, but this time you can look back at all the work you've done today and think to yourself that wasn't so bad."

• Reflecting on completed work helps combat future resistance by providing a sense of accomplishment.

• Building confidence involves keeping promises to yourself, which builds trust in your own word.
• Success is achieved by maintaining belief in your ability to reach goals, even when facing challenges.
• Perseverance is key; past failures do not dictate future outcomes.

"By doing what you said you would do, you begin to build trust in your word. This is called confidence."

• This quote emphasizes the importance of self-accountability and how it contributes to personal confidence.

"Just because you failed in the past doesn't mean you can't succeed in the future."

• Highlights the idea that past failures should not deter future efforts and success is still attainable.

• There are no shortcuts to success; consistent effort on fundamentals is necessary.
• Historical and contemporary achievements are often the result of persistent adherence to basic principles.
• The belief that one can bend the world to their will is a powerful motivator.

"The new hack, trick, or system is not going to change your life in 2 weeks."

• Dispels the myth of quick fixes and emphasizes long-term commitment.

"People all around the world and throughout history have done some version of what you want. They have simply stuck with the same boring fundamentals over and over again."

• Reinforces the importance of consistency and dedication to fundamental practices.

• Success is distinguished by the effort applied towards goals, not just the goals themselves.
• Many people fail because they give up too soon, often due to impatience.
• Embracing the process and finding fulfillment in progress is crucial.

"It's the effort that sets you apart, but to be honest, most people don't even work that hard towards their goals."

• Points out that effort is a key differentiator in achieving success.

"People quit too early because they didn't get what they wanted fast enough."

• Explains how impatience can lead to premature abandonment of goals.

• Monk mode involves focusing intensely on a single goal for a period of time.
• Consistent, long-term focus builds the skill of concentration and prepares one for seizing opportunities.
• Learning to push oneself over extended periods is essential for achieving significant results.

"Learn how to work hard and push yourself first because if you've never focused on something for a long span of time, you don't know how far or hard you can push yourself."

• Encourages the development of focus and perseverance as foundational skills.

"Be consistently good for months to years and build the muscle of focus."

• Suggests that long-term consistency and focus are key to achieving excellence and readiness for opportunities.

• Emphasizes the importance of being impatient with short-term goals while remaining patient with long-term aspirations.
• Urges the need to move quickly in the present to achieve goals but also to persevere and not give up on long-term objectives.

"You need to be impatient with the short-term and patient with the long-term, an urgency to move quickly right now but a perseverance to not give up on your goals."

• Highlights the dual approach of urgency and perseverance as crucial for success.

• Advocates for injecting fun into the process of achieving goals, suggesting that having fun is a skill that can be improved.
• Stresses the importance of enjoying life and not taking it too seriously, as this can lead to greater persistence in pursuing goals.

"Have more fun. The project I'm working on right now is hands down the most fun that I've had in any of the 20. It's done the best, but I've put all of the past lessons in getting here for you."

• Illustrates that integrating fun into projects can lead to better outcomes and sustained engagement.

• Encourages writing a detailed plan of how one's life should unfold, including becoming part of the top 1% in areas of personal importance.
• Suggests describing transformative life events and the type of person one becomes through these experiences.

"I want you to start by writing a detailed plan of how your life went. Write about how you became the top 1% in all of the parts of life that you cared about."

• Emphasizes the power of visualization and planning in shaping one's life and achieving high-level goals.

• Encourages reconnecting with a sense of childlike wonder to make life more enjoyable.
• Advocates for pursuing wild plans and making efforts to realize them, suggesting that fun is a critical component of life.

"If you're asking how you can make life fun, there's a childlike wonder still inside of you. Let forth your wildest plans, big or small, and make an effort to do them."

• Highlights the importance of imagination and creativity in enhancing life's enjoyment and fulfillment.

• Asserts that at the end of life, people often reflect on the fun moments and wish to relive them.
• Encourages recognizing the potential for fun in every moment, whether big or small.

"At the start of life, all we want to do is worry about the future. At the end of life, all we can do is think about the past. It'll be the moments that you had fun that you truly look back and want to give up everything to go back to."

• Suggests that fun moments are the most cherished and memorable, urging individuals to actively seek them out.

• Discusses the importance of facing new and uncertain situations with excitement and courage.
• Suggests that the best opportunities often come when one stands at the threshold of the unknown, ready to carve a new path.

"You see the biggest breaks in life aren't from window opportunities where you can see it all. Every risk, every reward, the pathway already paved for you."

• Emphasizes the value of embracing uncertainty and the potential rewards of stepping into the unknown.