What Are the Odds of Becoming a Black Belt?
December 18th, 2006 by Steve Pavlina
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People often ask me to help them assess what their odds of success will be in some new endeavor: What are my odds of succeeding as a full-time blogger? What are my odds of succeeding as an indie game developer? What are my odds of succeeding as an entrepreneur?
On the surface it seems intelligent to assess your risks before embarking on a new venture. Unfortunately the way I’ve seen most people do this is rather silly.
Often such seekers will look for a certain statistic to help them assess the risk: What percentage of people who attempted a similar venture actually succeeded to the degree I’d like to experience? For example, if you want to earn $5000/month as a blogger, your question would be, “What percentage of bloggers who try to generate full-time income actually earn $5000/month or more?” Suppose it’s on the order of 1%. You then interpret your odds of success as the same figure.
What does such a statistic have to do with your personal chance of success? Nothing at all.
To me this is like asking, “What are my odds of success in kung fu?” If you’re committed to becoming a black belt in kung fu and are willing to put in the time and training, you’ll probably do just fine. But if you’ve never studied martial arts and are looking for a fast and easy road to success, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
In many fields you only see a 1% success ratio because the other 99% are merely taking up space. They’re just dabblers, not serious contenders. You’ll often see this 1% figure in fields with a low barrier to entry such as blogging, acting, or music. You’ll find a small percentage of people who are really committed to mastery, but the rest have virtually no hope of notable success.
Pulling away from the pack in any field is largely a matter of choice. That choice is a commitment to mastery. But very few will make this choice because it requires hard work, resolve, patience, self-discipline, and a long time perspective. A would-be actor who gives up within the first year clearly hasn’t made this choice. Nor has a blogger who quits after six months. If you want to succeed in a new field where you lack experience, you should be thinking of at least a 3-5 year commitment. If that scares you away, then save yourself the time you would have spent dabbling, and don’t bother.
When you start out in a brand new field with no experience, you’re going to suck… most likely really suck. But the worst part is you won’t even recognize how truly pathetic you are. There you are, setting off on a new venture, brimming with confidence, and you’re completely incompetent and don’t even know it.
So what happens? You’re going to screw up. If you’re lucky your results will just be bad instead of painfully bad. But screwing up is perfectly OK. That’s supposed to happen. Screwing up is how you learn. Every mistake helps you make new distinctions and increase your skill.
Consider a martial arts student who spars for the very first time. The student lacks timing, speed, coordination, balance, endurance, and flexibility… not to mention confidence. Sparring involves trying to avoid banging knees with your opponent. But everyone starts out this way. Even the most accomplished black belts began as white belts.
As you build skill, which normally takes years to achieve competency in any worthwhile field, you move out of the 99% and into the 1%. That 99% will continue churning away with high turnover. Dabblers will enter the field, try it for six months, and give up after concluding it’s too hard. A challenging field is good though because it means your long-term investment in skill-building will mean something, like a black belt. It wouldn’t be much of an accomplishment if it was too easy.
Imagine starting as a white belt in kung fu with no previous martial arts experience. You go to your instructor and say, “I want to compete in sparring tournaments at the black belt level.” Your instructor will probably laugh at you. If you were to spar a halfway decent black belt, you’d take a beating every single time. If you spar 100 matches, you’ll lose 100 matches. This is where the dabblers conclude that it’s impossible for them to succeed in kung fu. Those who are committed, however, know that they have a long road of skill-building ahead of them. Becoming a black belt is a choice, albeit certainly not an easy one.
What’s unfair about easy-entry fields like blogging, acting, or music is that white belts and black belts are thrown into the same pool. White belts are forced to compete against black belts who’ve been honing their skills for years. It’s totally unfair. But that unfairness is what provides the challenge and makes it fun.
When you start out as a white belt in an unfair playing field, you get creamed. The black belts beat you again and again. No matter what you do, nothing seems to work. But when you’re committed, you know that early success isn’t to be expected. This is the training phase. Your goal is to survive and to learn, not to win. That’s where you have the advantage because as a white belt, you can develop your skills much faster than a black belt.
So you train. And train. And train. And if you stick with it long enough, eventually you’ll find yourself a black belt in your field. At that level everything becomes easier because your skills have risen to the challenge. Consequently, you’re able to achieve and maintain positive results that are virtually impossible for those who are just now entering the field. Then you’ll have to figure out what to say when people begin asking you, “What are the odds of becoming a black belt?”
Your odds of success in your field of choice won’t be found in any statistics. Success is a choice, not a coin flip. You succeed by deciding what you want, knowing why you want it, and committing to it.
December 18th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
[...] Steve Pavlina just posted an entry on What Are The Odds of Becoming A Black Belt. He doesn’t specifically list the odds of becoming a black belt, rather he uses the time, effort, dedication and training necessary to achieve a martial arts black as a metaphor for achieving success in other areas of life. [...]
December 18th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
[...] Check out Steve Pavlina’s post about fields with low barriers to entry, where 99% fail. Seems very applicable to trading. A quote: Imagine starting as a white belt in kung fu with no previous martial arts experience. You go to your instructor and say, “I want to compete in sparring tournaments at the black belt level.” Your instructor will probably laugh at you. If you were to spar a halfway decent black belt, you’d take a beating every single time. If you spar 100 matches, you’ll lose 100 matches. This is where the dabblers conclude that it’s impossible for them to succeed in kung fu. Those who are committed, however, know that they have a long road of skill-building ahead of them. Becoming a black belt is a choice, albeit certainly not an easy one. [...]
December 18th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
[...] Steve Pavlina just wrote a post about a person’s chances of success in a particular endeavor that summarizes how I feel on the matter. Most people stick with their corporate jobs because they are afraid to fail. Conversely, I’m much more afraid to never try. I’m scared to death I’ll get stuck in a life I don’t want. My ultimate goal is to obtain total control over my own employment, thereby owning my own time. It’s a freedom thing. I don’t even care about getting rich. I just want to get by on my own terms doing what I want to do. [...]
December 19th, 2006 at 8:11 am
[...] He just posted a great article titled, "What are the odds of becoming a black belt?" The bottom line is quite simple, really. Any informed person will check their sources when they decide to embark on a new journey (or business, or task, etc.). They try to find out how viable it is, if they can succeed, and so on. Those are all perfectly legitimate questions and ones that should be asked. [...]
December 19th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
[...] From a dead-on post by Steve Pavlina: Often such seekers [of success in any arena] will look for a certain statistic to help them assess the risk: What percentage of people who attempted a similar venture actually succeeded to the degree I’d like to experience? For example, if you want to earn $5000/month as a blogger, your question would be, “What percentage of bloggers who try to generate full-time income actually earn $5000/month or more?” Suppose it’s on the order of 1%. You then interpret your odds of success as the same figure. [...]
December 19th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
[...] Steve Pavlina just posted an article talking about the chance of becoming a black belt has no bearing on whether or not you would succeed, because success is a choice, not a chance. Most black belts start as white belts, and it takes years of learning to become worthy of black belt. It is the journey that makes it a worthwhile experience. [...]
December 20th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
[...] Steve Pavlina has a very good blog post today starting with “What are the odds of becoming a black belt?“. It’s a problem that many teachers come across of students ( usually adult ) who believe that learning a language is hard or even impossible for them. Steve spells it out in a very nice way, saying that if you put the effort in, start at the beginning and work your way up, everyone can become a black belt, you just have to choose it. [...]
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[...] Great posting over on Steve Pavlina’s blog about having to be committed to your cause if you want to succeed. [...]
December 25th, 2006 at 11:01 am
[...] A really great article I recently read called, “What Are the Odds of Becoming a Black Belt?” by Steve Pavlina. What can first be said is that if you haven’t already, you should really check out all the stuff this guy, Steve Pavlina, has to say, because when it comes to personal development, he certainly has a great idea of what he’s talking about. The article itself refers to the sort of attitude you should have to pursuing your own personal success. When faced with an opportunity, it is always surprising how many people will take one glance at it, give up, and then move onto something else without even really getting into the thick root of it. The goal might be the destination, but the focus is on how you get there, and that of course goes with that classic saying, “It’s not about where you go in life, it’s how you get there.” The same could be true for virtually anything you’re going to achieve. [...]
December 29th, 2006 at 4:10 am
[...] Not only do I blog, I also read other blogs and thanks to newsreaders, I can follow up on several blogs at once. I was reading Steve Pavlina’s blog today and I read an entry he made on the 18th – What are the odds of becoming a Black Belt? Yes, that’s where I got the title for my blog entry. [...]
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[...] Why do you blog? – Ask yourself this question. Will you be in it for the long run? Is blogging for you? What are the high and low points associating with your journey of becoming a problogger? I recommend you to read an excellent series of posts from Entrepreneur-Journey. Is it easy to be a problogger? Steve Pavlina will give you a dose of reality and also a much-needed boost of morale from his Kungfu-style philosophy. [...]
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