The other day someone tweeted how much they love the movie Moneyball about "an underdog team overcoming the odds with advanced sabermetrics." Which if you actually followed baseball around that time you'd know the A's didn't actually win anything except maybe their division. Billy Beane's team lost to the high-priced Yankees in the league championship series. Twice in a row, I think. In 2006 the A's got swept by the Tigers in the league championship series. And they haven't really done much since.
Meanwhile the rival Angels won a title in 2002. The low-budget Marlins won in 2003. The much higher-budget Red Sox won in 2004. The medium-budget White Sox won in 2005. The Cardinals lucked into a title in 2006. The Red Sox won again in 2007. The above-average-budget Phillies beat the low-budget Rays in 2008. The high-budget Yankees won in 2009. The medium-budget Giants won in 2010, 2012, and 2014.
What do all of these have in common? Nothing except they're all baseball teams. Teams of all budgets have won titles. Some have managers that use stats and others with managers who use their guts. Basically there is no one way to win a title.
Similarly, studies have shown that there is no one perfect diet for everyone. Low carb, low fat, keto, paleo, Mediterranean, Weight Watchers, Sugar Busters, grapefruit, or whatever they pretty much all have the same level of effectiveness. It's really all about what works for the individual. Just like running, biking, walking, lifting, Crossfit, yoga, and so on are all different exercise regiments that can work depending on the individual.
Monday I talked about essentially how random success is. And that's because there is no one way to achieve it. There are a lot of different ways for someone to succeed in anything: baseball, dieting, exercise, or of course writing.
A lot of books like Moneyball can claim they have a winning formula but there is no winning formula. If there were one formula for success, everyone would be doing it already. And if there were a secret to success, why would that person tell everyone?
Not that books about how to succeed in something are a complete waste of time. They can help to give you ideas of your own. The idea is to not follow them too slavishly. You have to find what works for you. Now if only I knew what that was.
3 comments:
A lot of success is about hard work but there is an element of chance in it. What works for one person doesn't always work for others. I didnt know about the moneyball story. They fooled me.
I also didn't know about the Moneyball story. Thanks for telling me about it. I've always believed that half of success was just luck (being born with the right support system, the right personality, the right look, and the right resources). In our country we tend to attribute success to being 100% skill and hard work, which then leads people who support this idea to punch down on those who fail to achieve certain milestones. When this is funny is when you know someone with this attitude, and then they fail to achieve milestones due to bad luck. I have a "friend" (more of an acquaintance really) who has had this attitude for twenty years. As a young man, he always believed he would be rich, punching down on anyone who thought otherwise (I've pretty much believed what I believe now all my life and have been vocal about it). So now that we are both middle-aged, he's struggling quite a bit. He complains about not getting opportunities and blames it on this and that. I remind him sometimes (and it makes him mad), "You used to say that success was all hard work, right? What do you think now?" And he just gets more firmly rooted and flings back into my face, "You'll see. It is just hard work and skill. I'm never going to support what you say about luck being 50% of why people are rich." I just shrug and say, "Whatever man."
I agree with you. There's never one formula or one way of doing things. Every individual has to find their own way
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