Confidence doesn’t help win the lottery

It doesn’t matter how sure you are that this is a winning ticket, the ticket doesn’t care.

And there are lots of lotteries in our lives.

I was talking to a fifteen-year old the other day. He’s decided to devote the next decade of his life to getting drafted to play in the NBA.

Without a doubt, effort and skill make a huge impact on whether you’ll even make the final 5,000 people who have a shot at making the NBA. But after that, it looks a lot more like a lottery than a meritocracy.

The resilient approach is to bring discipline and effort to the work, but to know, deep down, that you better have a plan B. That’s not a lack of faith. That’s simply smart.