Winner's Laws

A while back Alan Schoonmaker had an article in CardPlayer Magazine (Winners Are Brutally Realistic: Part II) in which he discusses his concept of four Winner's Laws.

These laws are brilliantly universal and I wanted to share them you. They are:

1. Admit that you overestimate your abilities and other virtues.
2. Admit that you have some unrealistic expectations
3. Get an objective assessment of yourself.
4. Select your games very carefully

Aren't they great?

I suppose that to be truly universal you have to restate the last one. Maybe something like:

• Select the opportunity that maximizes your expectation

Or maybe that is still too gambler-speak. How about:

• Select the opportunity that is most likely to produce either short or long term benefits.

For everything that I have excelled at I have (knowingly or unknowingly) followed these rules. For everything that I have not done as well at I haven't.

1. Admit that you overestimate your abilities and other virtues.

• Confident people are generally winners and expect to be winners, but confident people are insanely likely to be guilty of overestimating how good they are.
• If you overestimate how good you are you won't improve. You won't even try to improve. Pretty soon you will suck.

2. Admit that you have some unrealistic expectations

• You are a confident person. You expect to do well. But some of your expectations are ridiculous. Admit it. You aren't going to win the Nobel prize or cure cancer. You also aren't going to get a glowing review followed by a promotion every year.

3. Get an objective assessment of yourself

• You overestimate your abilities and you have unrealistic expectations. How can you possibly be objective about yourself? You can't. Find someone who can.

4. Select the opportunity that is most likely to produce either short or long term benefits

• Opportunities come and go. If you choose the one that is convenient, or the one that is most "fun", you are probably costing yourself.
• Either choose opportunities that have demonstrable immediate benefit (e.g. the job that pays better) or the opportunities that can have long term pay-offs (e.g. the project that will force you to learn something new that you expect to be useful in the future).

Hope you liked these.

David