I hope everyone has a great 2026 and here's a positive note.

you can achieve anything you set your mind to.

even if that statement is false and naive, why accept anything else? I'd rather be a blind fool, aiming at a target that I find deeply engaging and meaningful, than accept defeat, and live with that defeat for the rest of my life.

as I am typing this, I immediately remember of a few nuances to this idea, like a gambler at the casino.

if his dream is to be rich from gambling, even if that's on the most unlikely spectrum, highly subject to a factor of luck, should he keep at it?

so my initial premise is wrong, right off the bat.

but I don't think we should throw the entire premise out, just because of a few edge cases.

obviously if you're doing something dumb, you should stop.

but sometimes the line that separates dumb from smart, is hard to distinguish, especially when you're so consumed by an idea, that you're blind by the BS you, and others, tell yourself.

I don't know how to set a rule for that, we as entrepreneurs (I hate that word), play games of long tails, and they tend to carry low odds of success.

maybe thinking about each outcome with a positive expected value in mind, is a good threshold for what's a good idea or not.

but tbh, I haven't thought that deeply about it.

is starting a company +ev ? probably not for the majority of people...

is starting a company, willing to sink 5 years into it, with no prospects of return, focused on a single issue, higher EV , in the spectrum of that bet's EV?

maybe, and maybe there's a spectrum depending on the willingness of the person and the quality of his decisions.

I don't advise anyone to trade, but that happened to me.

what are the odds of a kid from a low income country, with a high school diploma and with a professional curriculum as an electrician, that he would do well in the field of financial markets?

probably none. probably I'd have told him to focus on something else.

yet, I love my life today, I love what I wake up to work each and every day, why would I deny myself of that.

there's a big factor of luck involved in why I am doing this still today. but there's another factor of blind willingness to make it work. maybe stubbornness and in another life, that could've led me to sink 10 years, on a pipe dream, that I could have spent getting better at a job.

so the question is really up to you and what you're willing to bet on this single thing you're pursuing.

and at the end of the day, what's there to life other than fighting for something meaningful to you that you can wake up each day excited for?

put your goals, whatever they are, somewhere you can measure them on a daily/weekly basis, and break it down into actionable steps to get there.

ignore all the noise, just keep working at it each day and try to legitimately get a bit better.

if you're not getting better, and being extremely self conscious about it, don't even bother, just do your current job better and try to scale that ladder.

if you sign up for the game of pursuing something of value, understand what you're signing up for.

you probably ain't gonna make it, and you have to accept that.

I did, but I got lucky.

but the positive note is, even if it all fails, in 1 year, you will probably be unrecognizable from what you were were today.

growth compounds and if you get the right skills, you can always use that elsewhere.

make sure you get skills you can use on a job in the future.

that is almost a guaranteed +ev decision.

I learned to trade, but even if it all failed, I now had a decent basis of math, statistics, coding, AI prompting, development, risk management, etc.

it just seems upside to me.

oh well, hope you have a better next year.