Success is Asymmetrical
I am thrilled to announce the launch of my new product, Ferryman! Your content should be everywhere, but the manual cross-posting is a total waste of your time and leverage. Stop wasting effort copy-pasting to LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon. Ferryman is the automated system that syncs your posts instantly, ensuring you maximize your audience growth with zero extra effort. Use code “SWEEKLY” at checkout for 1 month free of Basic monthly.
We often treat major projects, starting a company, launching a side hustle, landing a dream job, as if they require a 100% success rate on the first try. This mindset breeds analysis paralysis and fear of failure.
The reality, however, is that success operates with a beautiful and liberating asymmetry: You only need to be right once.
Think about the careers you admire: the founder who sold a company for a life-changing sum didn’t get it right on their first startup; they got it right on their third or fourth attempt. The developer who found their passion building a niche tool didn’t love their first five projects; they loved the one that finally clicked.
The singular, massive win often obscures a trail of failed experiments. A single, dominant success can wipe out years of losses and effort because the potential payoff is not incremental, it’s exponential. Because of this asymmetry, the only true failure is quitting the game before you’ve had enough attempts.
Success is a function of at-bats. If you accept that you only need one massive win, your focus immediately shifts from the quality of any single swing to the quantity of your swings.
Here’s how I see success:
success = f(attempts, time)This mean the most critical resource is the number of at-bats you can take.
This perspective should change how you prioritize your work and time:
Failing is Fine (Even Good): Stop agonizing over making your current project “perfect.” The purpose of this project isn’t to be The One; the purpose is to give you maximum learnings, minimum viable data, and to quickly advance you to the next attempt. Fail fast and fail cheap.
Prioritize Exploration over Optimization: Instead of spending six months fine-tuning a launch strategy for an app you think might work, spend those six months building and launching three different, smaller apps. Exploration is the engine that drives you toward the singular idea that breaks through.
Time is Passing Regardless: Time is the one constant in the equation. It will elapse whether you spend it paralyzed by indecision or actively swinging the bat. Since time is unavoidable, your only leverage is the number of repetitions you pack into that time.
The beauty of the “Right Once” mentality is that it removes the crippling pressure from your current project. It gives you freedom to always feel you have a next attempt. This week’s side project is not the final exam; it is simply practice for the game-winning swing that is statistically guaranteed to come if you keep stepping up to the plate.
Your job is to increase your volume of high-quality attempts. Don’t worry about being a genius. Just ensure you are the person who is most consistently taking swings. Are you creating a new piece of content every week? Are you adding a new feature to your product every month? Are you launching a new business idea every quarter?
The person who takes 100 swings will almost certainly hit the home run before the person who spends ten years perfecting the single perfect swing. Focus on volume, learn quickly, and trust that with enough attempts, you will inevitably reach the state where you are right once in a very big way.
Where you can find me online:
Drop a like ❤️ and comment below if you made it to the end of the article.
Brilliant reframe on failure as data collection rather than defeat. The success=f(attempts,time) formula captures something I've seen in practice with product launches where th survivorship bias makes everyone forget the founder's first 3 failed MVPs. What intrigues me most is how this compounds across a career because early swings teach pattern recognition that makes later swings way more efficent, so it's not just quantity but accelrated learning loops.