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Friday, 5th June. 7 PM.

It happened again. As it regularly does.

As I scroll through my DMs on X, my eyes linger on one message in particular:

"(...) even though I put in a ton of effort, it seems like I never get anywhere."

This message did not draw my attention because it was something novel or substantially different.

No. I noticed it because it is already familiar.

By now, I have likely already lost track of how many times I have received near-identical DMs. It is always a variation of the same message: "I am not where I want to be."

Above all, one thing needs to be put plainly: you are not deficient.

But you lack a component of success: knowledge of mechanisms. You have resorted to the idea of merit because life does not grant you a clear passage anymore.

Working hard to secure measurable results seems reasonable, and on the surface, appears to be perfectly logical. But this worldview lacks both direction and position, both of which are vital.

This lack of guidance is a widespread issue. A particularly vicious one at that. Frequently, the principles that determine success are hidden in plain sight.

The real divide is not income anymore. It is an understanding of the world itself.

Because now more than ever, the world operates on a set of constants that no institution will teach you. Not because they are a well-kept secret, but rather because they are uncomfortable.

In fact, you may not even accept these laws.

Nevertheless, it always ends in the same drawn-out cliché: the worn-out idealist returns to embrace what he previously rebelled against.

In this article, I want to convey to you the direction you should have received a long time ago. Do note that I am no guru, nor do I consider myself a self-help writer.

Contents Include

This article examines the five principles that determine the discrepancy between effort and results. Not sentiments, nor personal philosophies. Just the raw science behind life and success.

A Lack of Direction

Before the modern age, life was much simpler. Work hard, get rewarded adequately, then buy a house and start a family.

Looking back, it was a restrictive worldview, but it worked. Morale was high, institutions held strong, and the economy was stable. At least as stable as modern economies can be.

Now look at where we are today. A precarious position: morale has largely been shattered, the world is as divided as ever, and an unstable economy exacerbates these issues.

The clear path does not exist anymore. It is fragmented by uncertainty:

"If I work hard, I may get rewarded adequately, then buy a house if I have enough money, and start a family if I meet a special person."

The result? People are still trying to work hard, just without the goals that the previous generations had.

The person working incredibly hard and going nowhere is not deficient. The reason they go unrewarded is precisely that the model that enabled success in the past broke down. But the effort put into it did not.

The result? Asymmetric investment. You actively put in more work for less result. That is the direct result of a model failure, not a competence or skill issue.

The average person is now operating on a false model that steadily undermines their progress: "Show up, work hard, get rewarded" is incomplete at best and actively misleading for anyone who wants outcomes that exceed the equilibrium.

Principle 1: Effort is Linear, Position is Exponential

Whether hard work translates to success depends almost entirely on position. Working three years in the wrong position produces far fewer results than two years of moderate work in the right position.

That gap widens annually, and at year ten, the difference between a bad position and an optimal position is not even close anymore.

The bottom line: your position is a variable that multiplies your output.

That is why you always see various successful individuals repeatedly preach hard work. What they do not tell you is that it worked for them because their position was simply superior to the one you held.

The entire mechanism behind this was identified by the American economist Sherwin Rosen, whose work on superstar markets explains how small differences in capability or position, when combined with leverage (scale, reach, reputation), produce enormous differences in outcome (Rosen, 1981).

They earn ten times, or a hundred times, more than you because their output scales in ways that linear effort cannot. Though you should understand that the same applies in the opposite direction: effort without leverage either scales linearly or does not scale at all.

The Types of Leverage

Active leverage is the most undervalued asset by the average person. To wield it properly, you should be able to differentiate between the different types of leverage.

What You Must Ask Yourself

The correct question to ask at any point in your career is not, "What produces the most output now?" Instead, you must ask yourself, "What compounds the fastest from this position?"

The former is chasing immediate gratification; the latter represents genuine optimization.

Principle 2: Invisible Competence Is Just a Hobby

Life is a game of odds. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the competent individual who goes unnoticed. Not so much from lack of talent, but from their invisibility.

They are passively waiting, hoping to be discovered. For them, waiting feels like a viable and clever strategy because it requires no extra effort. This assumption keeps them invisible.

Because when life is a game of chance, the one electing to play it like a lottery never maximizes their actual odds of succeeding.

Who is really to blame for these circumstances? The job market, or the inability to position yourself in a way that conveys your skills?

These questions are equally diagnostic and disturbing.

What you must inevitably realize is that people can only act on information they receive. And visibility is the primary source of information 99% of the time. Thus, picking the more visible person is not "unfair"; it is plain logic, because the market cannot price what it cannot see.

Every single person's market value is determined by others' model of their value. That model is updated every time new information is fed to the observers.

But not all sources and signals conveying information are made equal. Game theory has a specific name for this: the "costly signal," a concept formalized in Michael Spence's job market signaling model (Spence, 1973).

The Costly Signal

A costly signal is an action that is expensive or at least challenging to fake. Yet, what most understand far too late is that the costly signal is not corporate jargon or low-level persuasion.

Never is the costly signal merely a product of a few cleverly constructed sentences or words. Its potency and value stem from the fact that you will be paying for any adverse effects.

Astute examples of the costly signal are documented results, public demonstrations, and verifiable claims (with sources). They are costly because you opt to broadcast them in public, and you have to shoulder the blame whenever a dire incident occurs.

Acts like these radiate confidence while demonstrating visible competence and expertise. That alone is more persuasive than a thousand clever declarations of value.

Your odds are entirely dependent on the costly signals you decide to convey to others. Mere competence is not costly, nor is it visible. If you produce exceptional results, show them openly by demonstrating your knowledge or documenting your findings.

Furthermore, you must always remember that what people cannot see virtually does not exist to them.

Principle 3: The Market Is Indifferent to Effort

It only pays for perceived value delivered. I am writing this principle in a straight-to-the-point manner because it is an acute disease that you must be cured of. Working hard is the status quo assumption.

Everyone acts like it is the secret key and that you must continue working harder. Yet not even the world's most successful individuals work that hard. Most of their time is spent delegating and managing those who work for them.

That is the strict difference between a CEO who exerts and controls leverage and a worker who is tasked with mere input.

Nobody cares that you "grind" 10 hours a day.

Nobody is bothered by your productivity routine.

Nobody cares how well you fold your bedsheets before working.

In the end, they only see the results they actually get.

Someone who works for ten hours but produces fewer results than the individual who works for five hours but generates quantifiable outcomes will always be placed last.

That's because reward is not calculated by the hours you put in or by the sacrifices you made along the way.

The market only rewards outcomes, and more specifically, the extent to which a problem was solved for someone who needed it solved. Because price is inherently determined by the value to the buyer, not the cost to the producer.

This is a lesson in basic, rudimentary economics that most people apply to products but somehow refuse to apply to themselves.

You are the product.

A person who works for sixty hours a week usually works on problems the market does not urgently need to solve and will thus be paid less than a person who works thirty hours on the acute issues.

The market's indifference to effort is real.

Ask yourself, "What problem do I solve?"

If that concern is too niche for the market to care or so broad that a million others already work on it, then you have lost and must aim to reconsider.

No one will put it to you that bluntly.

Principle 4: Most People Are Solving The Wrong Problem

And they do it in a very efficient manner. Which is a shame, considering that you could get everything right, master the product, develop an optimal position, end up being visible, but nonetheless fail because you chose the wrong issue to solve.

Getting better at what you do is structurally useless if what you do is irrelevant in the grand scheme of the market. Is what you do actually connected to a desired outcome?

The 1993 research by Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer on deliberate practice found that undirected effort does not produce expertise (Ericsson et al., 1993). Whether effort is compounded into skill is contingent upon feedback and the selection of appropriate problems.

You can be extremely efficient at a task and still stand still because efficiency has never really mattered in the grander scheme.

Now, for my (aspiring) entrepreneur readers: Do not even attempt to say something like, "I show people how to develop mindsets, so the desired outcome is having a strong mindset!"

Yes, that is a viable outcome. But there is one issue.

Millions already do that. And you are probably not as unique as you assume. That in itself is not an issue. Even I started with a rudimentary concept like that and believed I solved world hunger when my account was once a precise replica of standard self-help nonsense.

You do not even need to scrap the whole concept.

You need to rebuild. Adequately.

For this specific goal, decide on five values you want to actively wage war against. Broad values that most people have an intimate relationship with.

Then create your philosophy and modus operandi around that. As long as these values are actual values and not just platitudes like "being lazy = bad," you now have an exponentially higher chance of succeeding.

Mastering the wrong problem is worse than failure because it drains your energy as if you were working on something that mattered.

Principle 5: Time Spent is a Cost. Results Are the Return

"Time is the most valuable currency." A widespread platitude, but it is undeniably correct. Hours worked, tasks completed, and effort expended are real costs. And they tend to be invisible.

You cannot see the extent of the return you work for. Hence, time spent is an invisible cost that will appear on your bill nonetheless. And it is ruthless. You already know that: working on a project only for it to yield no return.

Certainly, it is always tragic when grand expectations are shattered into mere confusion. That underscores the central issue.

When we think of costs, our minds usually wander to money almost immediately. Most people already track the money they spend rather well. The same cannot be said for time.

The person who tracks how hard they are working is actually measuring a cost, not a result. Time spent does not equal results. The person who calculates what has actually changed as a result of their time spent is measuring a return.

Two distinctly different approaches.

Time/Output Equations

Output (what you produced) is never the same as outcome (what changed because you produced it).

An email is output. A decision by the recipient that was caused by the email is an outcome.

A meeting attended is an output. A relationship changed by the meeting is an outcome.

A book read is output. A behavior changed by the book is an outcome.

Institutions reward outputs because they are measurable and attributable, not because they are inherently equal to the outcome. For the institution, relying on output is far easier because the cost of focusing on outcomes would exceed the bureaucratic cost contingent on outputs.

What you need to realize is that you are not an institution. You likely have less money than one, fewer workers than it, and far less external funding. They do not play strictly optimally because they can afford to play the game of mass: more workers produce more output, and across enough volume, some output becomes an outcome. They can also measure each worker's individual efficiency, a luxury the average person cannot afford.

Institutions brute-force success because they have the capacity to do so. So, they spread the lie that hard work equals success.

That is only true when operating within an institution. Not when you are working alone. The market rewards outcomes because the outcomes matter. Most people resort to output alone. That is the metric the institution needs and rewards. The market is indifferent to it.

Track your outcomes. Every significant expenditure of effort must be intended to produce an outcome. Effort has a habit of producing output without return, and that cost has no payoff.

The honest accounting of this is extremely uncomfortable, but it is the only diagnosis that leads to correction.

Bitter Diagnostics

The person who sent that one DM is not lazy. Nor are the countless others who sent similar DMs. They are also not undisciplined, nor are they deficient.

Because your model of the market is your true enemy. Everyone shares their own assumptions of what the market may reward, and they are almost certainly wrong or naive.

You likely do not need to work harder or "grind" more. Gurus will tell you otherwise, because blaming the individual is easier than admitting the mechanism.

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Sources

Rosen, S. (1981). The Economics of Superstars. American Economic Review, 71(5), 845-858.

Spence, M. (1973). Job Market Signaling. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87(3), 355-374.

Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363-406.