> The second component of the antidote is chance meetings with people who can help you.
This is the key. Stumbling into friendships with just a handful of amazing people will change your life by orders of magnitudes. There's a simple probability explanation:
Let's label the group of individuals who are in the top 10% of driven, creative people "Group X".
If Joe and Bob are both in Group X but never meet, their combined total output is 2.
If Joe and Bob meet and become friends, they multiply their output by 1.1 so their new combined output is 2.2:
Joe&Bob = 1.1(Joe + Bob)
2.2 = 1.1(1 + 1)
And exponentially it grows:
Joe&Bob&Sue = 1.1(1.1(Joe + Bob + Sue))
So you can literally calculate the expected value of Joe's output by simply calculating the probability that he will meet a Bob and a Sue and so on...
The probability of meeting driven, creative people in the Valley only has to be a tiny bit higher to see drastically different outcomes. It's a lot higher, and so we have orders of magnitude discrepancies.
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> The second component of the antidote is chance meetings with people who can help you.
This is the key. Stumbling into friendships with just a handful of amazing people will change your life by orders of magnitudes. There's a simple probability explanation:
Let's label the group of individuals who are in the top 10% of driven, creative people "Group X".
If Joe and Bob are both in Group X but never meet, their combined total output is 2.
If Joe and Bob meet and become friends, they multiply their output by 1.1 so their new combined output is 2.2:
Joe&Bob = 1.1(Joe + Bob)
2.2 = 1.1(1 + 1)
And exponentially it grows:
Joe&Bob&Sue = 1.1(1.1(Joe + Bob + Sue))
So you can literally calculate the expected value of Joe's output by simply calculating the probability that he will meet a Bob and a Sue and so on...
Joe's Expected Output = 1(1.1 * Prob(Meets Bob)) * (1.1 * Prob(Meets Sue)) ...
The probability of meeting driven, creative people in the Valley only has to be a tiny bit higher to see drastically different outcomes. It's a lot higher, and so we have orders of magnitude discrepancies.