Struck me that we don’t sufficiently distinguish between 2 kinds of risks:
1. Risk of failure
2. Risk of victory that is only revealed to be pyrrhic in hindsight when true costs are revealed
Most of the risk for reasonably talented and competent people is type 2.
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Nothing worth doing presents a price estimate up front. All you can know is whether you can afford the price of irrevocable commitment. After that it’s do X or bust. Changing your mind or quitting beyond the point of true cost legibility is almost as costly as pushing through.
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Many successes we end up living with are the result of thinking at some point: I’ve already paid 99% of a sunk cost and I’d rather have something rather than nothing to show for it by paying the last 1% even if it isn’t truly worth it
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Every significant success is explicitly chosen at the final moment. This last step involves trivial skill and marginal effort. It is merely the decision to actually accept the prize and therefore commit to living with the success. The cost has been incurred but still illegible.
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Chances are you won’t know whether the prize was worth the price until you’ve lived with the success for long enough for both to be integrated into your identity and you become the fully transformed product of both the effort and reward. You are a series of price+prize deltas.
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Big life level-ups: graduations, marriages, parenthood, home ownership, boat ownership all seem to be of this type. You’ll either love or hate the growth delta based on whether prize-price is revealed in retrospect to be negative or positive, once it’s in your bones.
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home and boat ownership seem dubious IMO
then again, have never experienced either so what do i know :)
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Other major undertakings of this type: changing cities or countries, writing a book (don't I know it) or making a film...
There comes a moment, or can, when you know the victory is likely to be pyrrhic but you're so invested that coming away with nothing at all is inconceivable.
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The mental hedge for living with pyrrhic price-prize delta experience is convincing yourself that key lessons were learnt during the journey that give you wisdom dividends.
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