From easy to difficult, they are becoming billionaires, climbing Mount Everest, winning the Olympic champion and the Nobel Prize. In other words, many friends around me think that being a billionaire is relatively simple compared with the other four things. Although this judgment is easily influenced by personal circumstances, we can still have some objective basis to measure it, such as data.
How many billionaires are there in the world? In fact, there are only about 2000 people. If you count the billionaires in history, it will reach about 2500. More than 4,000 people have climbed Mount Everest in history, far exceeding the number of billionaires. There are more Olympic champions. In recent Olympic Games, there will be about 65,438+0,000 champions in each session. This is because although there are only more than 300 Olympic events, including football, basketball and other team events, the number of gold medal winners is actually quite large.
Among these four items, the number of Nobel Prize winners is the least, less than 1000 in more than a year. However, if we consider that the number of people devoted to science and literature is far less than that devoted to business, the chances of business practitioners becoming billionaires may even be less than the chances of scholars and writers winning the Nobel Prize.
In this way, many friends around me actually underestimate the difficulty of becoming a billionaire. This makes me feel very interesting. I just want to talk to you through this letter. Why do some people underestimate the difficulty of becoming a billionaire? Where is the misunderstanding here?
How to measure the difficulty of a goal?
In my opinion, how easy it is to achieve a goal depends first on what kind of goal it is. The goal of a single standard is easy to achieve, and it is even easier if this standard can be measured quantitatively. On the contrary, if a goal can be achieved, it is determined by many factors in all directions, and even there may not be a unified measure in every aspect, then it is very difficult to achieve such a goal.
Of the four things we mentioned earlier, the goal of winning the Olympic champion should be the most clear and easy to quantify. 100 meters You ran 10 seconds, which is 9.9 seconds, which is an obvious fact. Last year, you ran 10 second. This year, you have steadily increased by 0. 1 second, and your ranking may rise from the previous 20 to the top 8. Moreover, there are many experienced coaches in the world about how to train an Olympic champion. If you are trained in their way, your performance will improve steadily.
If a child in your family is seriously engaged in a sport, or you find a very good cram school teacher to help him with his math, you will find that the child's progress is very obvious. In this matter, as long as you work hard and train without discount, you can basically ensure steady progress.
Climbing Mount Everest is relatively complicated, because it involves all aspects of cooperation and accidental factors such as weather. But today, climbing Mount Everest has actually been broken down into a set of routine movements. There are four people around me who have climbed Mount Everest, and one of them is the first woman in China to complete the 7+2 feat. The so-called "7+2" means climbing the first peak on all continents, plus reaching the South Pole and the North Pole.
From the description they gave me, although the process of reaching the top is very difficult, there is evidence step by step. As mentioned earlier, the woman who got "7+2" is my senior in Tsinghua Computer Department. Later, she even took part in the training of climbing Mount Everest, and the training target was teenagers.
Looking at winning the Nobel Prize, the difficulty of this matter suddenly increased a lot. A very important reason is that there is no routine for you to imitate a study that has not been completed before. Don't say that the goal is unclear, even which subject to choose and which direction to work in are uncertain.
Moreover, in the process of research, the level of researchers can not be simply measured by quantitative indicators. The Nobel Prize is not awarded to scholars who have published the most papers or been cited the most times, nor to writers who have sold the most books. Whether a scientific research project can be completed or not tests the comprehensive quality of scientists; How much influence this topic can have is often known decades later, and scholars can't predict it when doing research. By comparison, you will find that it is not too difficult to predict the Olympic champion, but it is not easy to predict the Nobel Prize winner.
Why is it so hard to be a billionaire?
Let's look at the matter of becoming a billionaire, which is also a complicated matter, and there is no unified standard. We don't consider those who become billionaires by inheriting property here, but look at those who have achieved this goal through their own efforts. Most of them are entrepreneurs, followed by some professional managers.
Entrepreneurship is typically complex, there is no unified standard, and there are many influencing factors. Successful entrepreneurs also have different entrepreneurial directions. It's not like climbing Mount Everest. The predecessors have made a path, you can follow it. Climbing mount Everest has even developed to. Every spring, Nepal's guides first explore a road, put stakes and tie ropes on it. All you have to do is follow the rope, and the difficulty is much reduced.
Of course, some people will say that entrepreneurship also has a direction. If the product is well made and the market ability is strong, the possibility of success in starting a business is great. But if you think about it carefully, what is "a good product" is hard to measure in itself.
It's also a cell phone. If the head brand mobile phone is compared with other brands' mobile phones, the hardware indicators of everyone may not be much different, but the price of the head brand mobile phone may be twice that of the other party, and users will buy more. The fact that the product is good or not is not easy to quantify. If it is difficult to quantify, it is often unclear about the direction of improvement.
Looking at the market again, some people will say that the market can be quantified. The more users there are, the better the market will be. But users are a result, not a cause. They all spend money on advertising. Why can some brands still gain market share and maintain it after spending money? Why are some brands short-lived after spending money? There is a lot of knowledge here.
If you know the story of billionaires, you will find that they rarely succeed in other people's way. They all need to find their own way. I know several times more billionaires than those who have climbed Mount Everest. It is certain that each of them does something and takes a different path.
Where is the misunderstanding of measuring the difficulty of the target?
A big misunderstanding that many people do now is to simply project multi-dimensional things into one or several dimensions, and use some indicators to quantify those things that should not be quantified.
It is not a bad thing to simplify multi-dimensional things and set quantitative measurement indicators. It is very effective in many cases. For example, in the 100-meter race of the Olympic Games, we need to set up a standard track and use a unified clock to simplify the complicated thing of running. Otherwise, if you simply ask who is the fastest runner in the world, it will be difficult to measure. Does this fast mean fast running or sprinting, fast on a mountain of 6000 meters or fast in a swamp with 50 kilograms of weapons? I don't know.
Similarly, the college entrance examination uses scores to select talents. The cultivation and selection of talents is also a multi-dimensional matter. The college entrance examination first narrows the scope of consideration to several dimensions, that is, several courses; Then use the score to quantitatively examine the knowledge level and learning ability. This measure is simple and clear, but it certainly can't fully reflect the true level of a young person. It can only be said that if the cost of selecting talents is considered, this is the best method at present.
However, we must realize that there is a problem in exam-oriented education, which is to simplify the complicated matter of talent training and rely too much on quantitative indicators. We have accepted this measure since childhood, and over time this way of thinking will affect the understanding of the whole society.
For example, we often say that our children are good students, and their grades are all A's, which obviously turns a good student, which should have been considered in many dimensions, into a measure by performance data. You will often hear that Zhang San was far behind us at school, so we don't know how well he can get along today. In fact, the so-called "far less than" may not be true, but it is probably just that the results were not good that year.
This is not only true for children's education, but also for other aspects. Everyone works around quantitative indicators. For example, today, the number of papers read by China University is almost the highest in the world; Looking at the number of patents, China's patents are among the best in the world. But in these huge data, how many truly remarkable achievements are there?
I think this is the influence of education. If we are trained to measure good or bad with a single standard when we are educated, we will be too lazy to cultivate our real comprehensive ability and do things that others have not done and are difficult to measure with data.
If you ask an ordinary person, do you think you can win the Olympic gold medal? I guess most people will admit that they won't. But if you are asked whether you can become a billionaire, some people may say no. Why is this happening?
In my opinion, an important reason is that we have to admit the visible weaknesses. Usually 100 meters can only run 13 seconds, then you know you can't run 10 seconds. Many people are unwilling to admit those weaknesses that cannot be measured by data, such as low emotional intelligence, arrogance, stubbornness, weak market ability and so on. These are obstacles to a person's career success, but because there are no quantitative indicators, many people deny it in various ways, and even believe it themselves. Because it can't be quantified and tested, these qualities usually don't become hard indicators for further studies or job hunting. As a result, few people will admit these "unmeasurable" shortcomings, and even if there are, they will not pay attention to them.
summary
This letter tells you how difficult it is to become a billionaire. Of course, it doesn't mean that you really need to start a company to earn $654.38 billion, but I want to remind you that the difficulty of many things lies in its complexity and difficulty in quantification. If we are used to using a single-dimensional quantitative index as a measure, we will underestimate the true difficulty of many things. If we adopt this method in personal growth, it may lead to the lack of some abilities, and we don't even know it ourselves.
Whether doing things or personal growth, we need to pay attention to more dimensional factors and those abilities that cannot be quantified. Knowing this, even if we can't become Olympic champions or billionaires, we can still go up a storey still higher on our own.