Sebastian Marshall made an awesome post recently, titled “Steps to Achievement: The Pitfalls, Costs, Requirements, and Timelines.” I’m actually going to set aside time to read it over again a few times and internalize it, because its beaming with great notions and strategies. Many of the links he provides in the post are also quite helpful.

Many popular careers have a linear path. For example, becoming a doctor or lawyer is a very streamlined process. There’s schooling, followed by work experience/research, followed by admission tests (mcat/lsat) and application process, then professional schooling, then internship/residency, and on and on. It’s all very organized and structured. If you have chosen a career or goal that doesn’t have such a linear trajectory, I think Sebastian’s post is a very valuable exercise to do.

But I think there’s also an underlying point in this post, and that is this: if you’re smart and hard working, you can get to where you want to go in the most efficient manner possible. I imagine the process as being half scientist, and half ship captain. You have to mesh the process of exploration, discovery, fact checking, and theorem proving with the pragmatics of steering, managing short-term and long-term issues, risk management, and ultimately getting from A to B in one piece.

One thing I’ve noticed in this list is, it doesn’t call for supernatural abilities. I can’t imagine anyone not being able to apply these set of thought patterns to their circumstance, no matter what their particular talents. A fitting quote is one from architect Joshua Prince-Ramus, of REX Architecture (known for Seattle Public Library):

Architecture is not created by individuals. The genius sketch… is a myth. Architecture is made by a team of committed people who work together, and in fact, success usually has more to do with dumb determination than with genius.

I think its the same for individual goals as it is for architecture. It has more to do with dumb determination than statistically high levels of IQ, or some particular talent. Sebastian’s post, and the linked posts to Less Wrong create a great framework for anyone to get started on their goals. The careers listed above and other professional careers usually utilize a top-down approach, breaking goals into discrete steps (schooling -> experience -> specialized schooling -> experience).  For goals that are more open-ended problems (with many solutions and paths to those solutions), these posts identify the major base elements for creating an emergent process you can continually fine tune as you progress on your goals.

I’d also like to add two points that work for me as well:

Rethink First Principles: If your goal is A, you’ll probably become aware of the standard/common ways people before you have reached A. This will seem like the most pragmatic method for getting there yourself. But sometimes, it is helpful to rethink if the common strategy is most efficient for your particular situation/skillsets.

A few examples: If your goal was to become a Value Investor, you might recognize the way most people break in is to get into a top undergraduate B-school -> work in investment banking for two years -> get an MBA from a top school, preferably one that focuses on value investing (Columbia) -> get a job at a value fund. Or to copy someone like Warren Buffett’s path, which many people try to do.  One of the most interesting examples of someone questioning first principles in this arena was Mike Burry, of Scion Capital, who was featured in Michael Lewis’s “The Big Short.” He was a medical resident when he started investing. He realized that even though Warren Buffett is the most successful value investor in history, his approach wouldn’t work for Burry. It was this same awareness that led him to utilized credit-default swaps, venturing out of the ‘typical’ area of value investors, which generated his astounding returns.

Another example is one I found on reddit. thedevilyousay makes an interesting comment, on the topic of someone wanting to leave law school for the pursuit of film school:

One of the alumni of my law school created (and is the operating mind behind) one of the most successful television shows of the past decade. His advice is to be smart and to put yourself out there. I heard a quip once about the fallacy of people thinking they need film/TV school to get into the industry. I can’t remember what his exact words were, but it was something along the lines of “That’s what you do when you know you can’t hack it.”

I also went to school with a friend whose goal was always to be in film. He never wanted to be a lawyer. He went to law school because he suspected it would better position him in the industry. He focused on entertainment law, criminal law (for the Hollywood factor), and did some tax (the movie industry is very tax driven), alternative dispute resolution (the problem-solving factor), and negotiation (obvious). He is now arguably the most successful out of our whole group. He is a writer primarily, but his competency is so apparent that he’s also tasked with more executive roles with every project he does.

The last example is of my own. I’m currently in attempts to break into an industry where hard science PhD’s are the standard. It is a relatively new industry and academia is not yet the place of expertise and the cutting edge. After speaking with multiple folks who work in the industry, I’ve realized pursuing a PhD (which would take 5+ years) would not be the most efficient use of my time. I’d be able to break in, at a lower level, and work my way up and in those 5 years, be in a much better position. This has made my goals for the next few months much more terse and dense with skills I’d have to pick up. I have given up the better paved and safer path for one that is riskier, but of higher efficiency and lower opportunity cost.

Avoiding Standard Error: Being a sloth and unreliable create such an asymmetrical negative payoff for what little upsides they bring you. So does fostering addiction or dependency, letting impulsions go unchecked, or being envious or resentful. So does not studying or taking seriously your susceptibility to the natural cognitive biases we all have. If you set out to eliminate standard error, or things that can inherently cloud your judgement, you may realize the low-hanging fruit thats occasionally up for grabs that others might overlook.

I hope these two points can add in a modest way to the points linked above. But to reiterate what I like about this approach is, its quite amateur, and I mean that in a positive way. It admits to a lack of professionalism and polish, and nor does it constrain you to one particular set of goals. Its simply a set of tools you should include in your repertoire as a trail blazer.

What skills bring the greatest ROI? What skills are widely applicable to all persons, independent of one’s goals, circumstance, age, culture, and level of wealth? While practically no skill can guarantee the promise of success (whatever your definition may be), there are skills that can certainly minimize misfortune. For example, someone lacking the faculty of reason will have a terrible time navigating through the natural vicissitudes of life. They will misattribute behavior and reach false conclusions. Any event of coincidence can solidify wrong beliefs. Rationality, therefore, is a valuable skill to develop – useful in pretty much any situation imaginable.

Other skills that can aid intelligent decision-making are scientific rigor, intellectual humility, emotional intelligence, and good temperament. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but I’ve listed enough to recognize a pattern. I’ll try to go more in-depth of each in a future post, but the way in which they relate is they are abstractions of literal processes. Abstract ideas have more breadth than literal ones. Scientific rigor, for example, is an ethos of the hard sciences. Its adoption in management theory, economics, the social and life sciences, and investments, intensified the rate of discovery and propagation of new ideas in those fields.

Skills with high ROI classify as those skills that are most useful most of the time. They have breadth. They most accurately (but maybe not perfectly) describe the way the world works. The skills that require success may not be the same the same skills that prevent you from failing. Likely, the skills you need to be successful are narrow (deep technical expertise). And the skills you need to keep from failing are broad (always considering facts, avoiding groupthink, hubris).  I like the idea of keeping the goals of succeeding and not failing separate. “How can I be successful?” and “What will cause me to fail?” identify different parameters to address. Keeping both in mind may just be the way to stay in the game the longest.