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The Single Most Important Secret to Success

singlefounder.com

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My version of "The Secret" comes in two parts:

* Do lots of stuff

* Make failure fast and cheap

Also, this was submitted 6 months ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1195535

which in some way is a validation that it's an itme of (at least passing) interesting. Comments are closed there so you can't add to that (rather minimal) discussion, but it's interesting to see the points of view.

I like that. I think that is a good approach. However, this seems to me more of a business strategy than an answer to "what is the No. 1 thing you need to do to succeed".

One could argue that the question is somewhat pointless. And I think that, in a way, is what the article is saying. There is no number 1 thing.

I do like that business strategy that you describe though. It is not for everyone and every circumstance of course, but it is a good bet.

How specifically did this help you succeed?

By making sure failure is fast and cheap I become unafraid of trying things. Each thing I try, I try to work out why it will fail. As I explore options some things really do fail fast, others are more difficult to make fail. Some simply refuse to fail, and as I push them through, they succeed.

There are corollaries.

You need to have things try, so you need ideas and the means to pursue them.

You need to be sure they'll fail - it's important to understand that I'm not giving up on things because they seem hard (although that happens too), I'm exploring hard, testing hard, stressing hard. Only when I'm convinced it simply cannot succeed (which includes being too hard to implement for the calculated return) then I turn to the next idea.

I usually use this in the context of the research division of my company, but the same has worked for me as starting a business, and for friends in other contexts.

As with all the "Silver Bullets" it takes work to make it work, and it's not suitable in all contexts. But perhaps you can try it and see if you can make it fail ...

There are two rules for success in life.

Rule #1: Don’t tell anyone everything you know.

If you even have the ability to tell someone everything you know, then you don't know enough.

You may have a valid point, and it makes me a little sad.

I knew that answer! but there is something else for we, the mortals:

- Try, and try, and try, and try... producing goals in the world championship cup is not easy... but keep trying. Also, a minor league can be enough for you or for me.

- If you want an epistemologic suggestion, think in bounded rationality and context bound realities, balancing (don't know how!) rules of thumb, thinking and ignorance is good.

- Maximize information (customer feedback, clicks, A/B tests) and talk with different kind of people, don't believe in the wisdom of crowds.

"There is no secret ingredient" - Po from Kung Fu Panda. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441773/quotes

> "So the secret to success is to realize that there isn’t a secret."

Disingenuous title.

Allow me to contribute a short and glib alternative: "Keep failure cheap."

I believe that the secret to success is determination. You're bound to be successful sooner or later, it's just that some people would need 50 years or more to be successful and as far as i know, there aren't many people with that kind of determination. So the ones who have the ingredients necessary to become successful do so in a decade or less and don't even get the chance to quit out of despair.

I think everyone wants to know "the secret" when they can't figure out how to do it themselves. "The secret" they are looking for will be specific to their needs. It may not be secret at all, it is just not something they personally know or understand yet. Lots of little stuff adds up overtime and then one day, suddenly, it all gels. Then people start asking you what YOUR secret is.

Also, I would say one of the biggest secrets is learning to deal with yourself: What are you good at? What are you bad at? What is your personal Achilles heel? What is the missing ingredient for this specific project that you have a blind-spot on?....etc.

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