Want To Create A Big Life For Yourself? Start By Taking Small Bets.
Achieve great things starts through taking small action
Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash
Success in any domain of life is the consistent accumulation of small wins over time.
Success, therefore, is a process, not an event.
You rarely become successful overnight. What looks like an overnight success is often years or decades worth of training and preparation. As Lionel Messi once said, “it took me 17 years to become an overnight success”.
Success does, however, depend on luck.
There are factors outside your control that can impact how successful you are. The random lottery of genetics, who your parents are, and where you were born can predispose you to certain outcomes in life.
But what many people don’t understand is that you can control and create your own luck. No matter where you start in life you can take small actions to increase your odds of success. Whatever that definition might be for you.
Through using this process of “small bets” you can increase your surface area for getting lucky.
At the end of the day, all that luck involves is preparation and opportunity coming together. While you can’t always control the opportunities you might get, you can prepare yourself for them.
Creating Your Own Luck Through Small Bets
Author Peter Sims introduced this idea in his book aptly titled: Little Bets.
Using case studies of Steve Jobs, Frank Gehry, and Chris Rock, Sims argues that these pioneers didn’t start with a grand vision of an entire project in advance.
Instead:
“They made a methodical series of little bets about what might be a good direction, learning critical information from lots of little failures.”
Chris Rock would famously test his stand-up routine by visiting smaller comedy venues and with a pen and paper testing new material with a live audience. He would meticulously take notes and edit in real time.
Once he felt the material was ‘ready’ after several revisions, he would incorporate the act into his full show. Little bets helped Chris Rock become a world-famous comedian.
Making little bets is a hedge against uncertainty. And an antidote to complexity. The world is too messy to know what will work ahead of time.
Chris Rock had an idea of what might be funny but he still needed to place little bets to understand what would resonate with a live audience.
Little bets are a calculated and controlled experiment to understand what might work. What looks like talent is often the result of dedicated and deliberate little bets on the future, placed consistently over time.
Place enough little bets and the future looks a lot less uncertain.
Small Bets You Can Make Today To Change Your Life
You might not be creating groundbreaking technology or have aspirations to become a stand-up comedian, but you can use the idea of little bets to radically improve your life.
There has never been a better time to start making small bets that have the potential to change your life for the better.
The first principles for making little bets:
“You look for places to make bets that have a high upside and a low downside. Instead of placing big bets on your future, bets that could wipe you out, you make smart strategic moves and iterate over time.” writes Ayo Awosika.
What are some examples of little bets that have limited downside but unlimited upside?
Content creation
Creating content on a YouTube channel, Instagram page or Medium account every day increases your potential for success. Every piece of content compounds. You only need one viral article or video to establish you as a thought leader. Even if most of your content fails, which they probably will, your only downside is losing a bit of time. Even then, you’ve learned skills and built potential and momentum for future success.
Online business
The internet has massively expanded the range of low-cost, no-inventory businesses you can have. Got a business idea? Create a cheap landing page that showcases the product and takes pre-orders. You can quickly test whether there is a market and appetite before committing to building the product.
Creating a prototype
I’ve got a friend who is creating an app that has the potential to revolutionize the sector he is in. Right now he has a prototype of the app and is looking to get VC Funding. The cost of his prototype is fixed in terms of money and time. But if successful, he can rapidly scale his business and become wealthy in the process.
These examples above are just that: examples.
You can create little bets in different contexts and domains. You just need to think creatively and outside of the box.
You might have to go against traditional thinking and upset a few people. But you have to crack a few eggs in order to make an omelet.
The formula for placing little bets is:
Find opportunities that protect your downside and maximize your upside.
Testing those opportunities creatively via the internet or leveraging technology to create low-cost, limited-risk little bets.
Iterating with data or feedback from end-users.
Exploiting and scaling once you’ve found a winning opportunity.
By taking little bets, you can create success for yourself in 2022. Don’t overthink it. Keep it simple. You don’t need to quit your job or declare anything over social media.
Start to build your empire in silence. Let your results speak for themselves.
Keep your 9–5 weekday job and use the weekends for experimenting and learning. Over the course of a year, that’s 52 shots on goal you can make to improve your life.
It is rare that you can do something badly 52 times in a row. You’re bound to improve and learn, even if you’re not putting in 100% effort.
Even if most of your small bets don’t work out, you are still learning new skills and building the foundation for future success. Every small bet you make accumulates and builds momentum.
I’ve been writing on Medium consistently for almost 2 years, co-founded a successful podcast, and started a freelance business and my own website while holding a full-time job.
Each one of these actions started off as a small bet. One blog post. One conversation. One client. I had a big vision for what I wanted to achieve but needed to start small to avoid overwhelming myself.
It’s not the amount of time or hours you put into something. But the number of iteration cycles you can move through is. Creating faster iteration cycles through small bets means faster progress toward your goals.
As Naval Ravikant says:
“You want 10,000 iterations, not 10,000 hours.”
Summary:
The approach behind small bets can be summarised into eight words.
Think Big. Start Small. Iterate Constantly. Scale Rapidly.
Each small bet you make increases your odds of success. Make more bets and you dramatically increase your chances of changing your life for the better.
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