In baseball: getting a hit 30 percent of the time is Hall of Fame.
In business, there’s a ten percent chance a startup will last longer than five years.
In school: 30 percent is failure. 10 percent is super failure. 90 percent isn’t enough. It’s minus. To be considered elite in school, you need to be right 93 out of 100 times, consistently, year over year.
To further emphasize this 93/100 impact: I averaged 36 school weeks a year and five academic classes. Assuming a conservative 1 assignment graded per week, per class, on average, 36 weeks x 5 assignments x 14 years = 2,520 separate occasions of 93/100 reinforcement over a 13-year period.
I started getting letter grades when I was 9. So for 13 years, the majority of my schooling life, I felt guilty for being wrong more than 7 out of 100 times.
This is why getting a 2.4 gpa my final year in college was groundbreaking: I opted out of the metric I had cared about and the pain wasn’t that bad. A lot of students got As, I thought, but there was only one UCSB sports editor. I Learned my edge wasn’t 93/100, but building things. Back then, it was two blank sports pages. Now, it’s a block in Venice Beach.
The average student who has achieved 93/100 over the course of their lives trains behavior that fears the 7 out of 100 times they’re wrong.
Trains pursuing safety, when really safety is fear of death and if Kobe can die early so can we.
Trains teachers and administrators to coddle, both to keep institutional support and to avoid emotional backlash.
Trains a message nobody questions from elite colleges: we want risk takers, but don’t be too risky because you still need 93/100 to be considered.
Trains not only risk avoidance, but avoidance of risk calculation. Trains looking at that classic 10 percent startup statline and dismissing as a career option entirely. Blaming the entire field rather than the operators themselves.
Trains satisfaction with 8 percent returns, leaving your money to 500 experts (CEOs of the SP500) rather than trusting yourself, your knowledge, to find the edge and bend data to your will.