The saying "you reap what you sow" has almost become a sort of cliche conventional wisdom at this point. Passed down from generation to generation, we're taught that the people who work hard are the ones that win big. While it's generally true that hard work is the main component when it comes to achieving relatively average sized returns, it starts to have diminishing returns the higher up the reward ladder you go. There's no doubt that in order to achieve extraordinary results, hard work is needed. It's easy to understand why someone who plays basketball for one hour a day can quickly outpace the person who plays basketball for one hour a week. But what happens when you turn the hard work knob all the way up to its limit? Why does the software engineer who works[^1] 8 hours a day have a much larger reward potential than the taxi driver working those same 8 hours? Or better yet, why might a founder who works 3 hours a day have the potential to make much much more than both of them combined? Once our hard work reaches a certain threshold, it stops acting as a scalar for reward, and instead maintains itself as a necessity for greater rewards. The real multiplier for outsized returns, which conventional wisdom neglects to talk about, is choosing the correct thing to work on in the first place. Perhaps a more accurate phrase might be something along the lines of "If you work hard enough, and you choose the right thing to work at, you'll have the potential for massively outsized, non linear rewards". What you work on determines your reward ceiling, and how hard you work determines what percentage of that ceiling you're eligible for. This means a lazy amount of work focused in the right areas can net you far more than a lot of work in the wrong ones. This feels counter intuitive because very few things in the human experience comes with an exponential relationship between effort and reward. Other than the last 100 years, the idea of outsized rewards wouldn't have even been an option for anyone except a handful of living beings at any single point in time. While technology has made outsized returns a possibility for far more people than ever before, it's not accessible unless you know where to look. Day to day life teaches us that most rewards have a linear, or even logarithmic correlation to effort[^3]. When you first pick up a new skill, your improvement doesn't feel exponential. In some cases it might even feel negative. For example, when I first started learning soccer at the age of 29, I had no idea how to properly kick a ball. I was decently accurate (relatively speaking) when I just aimed and toe punted, but I was quickly corrected by my wife, who is a lot more experienced, when she instructed me to use the side of my foot instead. The first few days I tried it, there was a clear decline in performance. Despite putting in more effort, I had actively gotten "worse"[^2]. This is how most skills are when you first start learning the fundamentals. First you unlearn any bad habits you've picked up subconsciously throughout your life, and then you can start consciously moving in the right direction. This process of "[[unlearning to learn]]" doesn't just happen at the initial stages of mastery, but like a fractal, the more you zoom in, the more there is to learn and unlearn. When it comes to learning new skills, our conventional "just work harder" wisdom can lend itself well, but it stops scaling quickly. An entrepreneur who spends 5 years writing code and running a niche esports startup, might put in the same or even more effort than an entrepreneur who focuses on something with a larger market, only to receive far worse returns. And not just linearly worse, but exponential worse. I know because I'm the idiot that did the esports thing. When it comes to hanging in for the long haul and trying to make it big there are of course other factors at play as well. Things like doing something you enjoy, following your curiosity, and leaning into your strengths all play a role in achieving something extraordinary. But if you're worried about how large the pot of gold is at the end of the rainbow, your best bet is to choose the right rainbow and don't let up on the gas. --- [^1]: What "working" on something means is a debated idea, but for our purposes, we'll assume working on something means any kind of conscious or unconscious time dedicated to achieving a goal. [^2]: I use worse here loosely, anyone who enjoys the art of learning will note that unlearning a bad habit in exchange for a better one, while you may take a temporary hit in performance, is generally considered better. [^3]: At least in the short term, where most people look for rewards from hard work.