The right-sized opportunity

A coworker of mine puts daily thoughts on LinkedIn. Recently, he asked “Would you rather have modest success that comes from your effort or massive success that comes from chance?”

For this question, I think about golf. You can aim perfectly, swing perfectly and if the wind is fluctuating wildly, no amount of perfect execution will tell you exactly where the ball is going to wind up. There is a probability of chance in every shot, and much more chance in bigger shots like driving vs. putting. 

So an improved version of the question is, “Do you want to work on something huge where success is nearly out of your control but the rewards are high if chance works out? Or, do you want to work on something more modest but that your skills and abilities play a much bigger role than chance?” 

My thought is when most people are young they think of the bigger more chance filled opportunities because they don’t have much skill anyway. As we age, our skills develop and we see opportunity to be valued and do something in our control that excites us and we move towards the correctly sized opportunities. However, this is just a generalization. 

Finding the right sized opportunity is an important part of life and has many relations to the following:

• The ability pyramid
• Organizing something valuable
• Having Patience