You are making a mistake. It ultimately comes down to the drive that powers you.
If you are in it to be a billionaire then you're looking at it in the wrong way. It's a testament to the quixotic nature of life that you never, ever get what you're looking for.
I am in it to learn and grow as a human being, while trying to figure out what it means to be me on this ball of rock and liquid metal. I don't care if my start up makes a million dollars or a billion or a ridiculous trillion. I will work towards that goal, but my first priority is creating something beautiful and keep showing up everyday no matter what.
So, where does an education come in over here? Are colleges the only way I can learn in my life? Except for a few fields where direct intervention from a teacher is required I can learn a lot of things on my own. Whenever I face any problems whatsoever there is something called the internet to collaborate on.
Then again the question arises, why do people still fail? We're back to my initial point; drive. You can be an autodidact only if you are driven enough and there is a voice inside of you that tells you that you need to learn. Some people need flogging and "discipline" to do the same thing. They need to go to an institution to internalize things and get things done under a Damocles sword (exams).
Most people are like that. Some aren't and this is the difference between them zuckerburgs and me.
I respect your perspective and attitude, and while it may be a perfectly functional one to operate in, it is not realistic.
I'm not a fan of truisms such as "the quixotic nature of life that you never, ever get what you're looking for" and whatever it is called when you claim 1 factor of many is the culprit such as "lack of drive is the reason people fail" and "this is the difference between zuckerburgs and me".
Truisms are nearly always incorrect. I am looking for my keyboard. Well, it's right beneath my fingers. That should seem to disprove your theory of innate life quixoticness. I'm not meaning to be facetious. That's just how reasoning works. It's very likely that you perceive life to be this way because you don't give credit to the times where you do get what you're looking for, and, conversely, you may attribute too much to the times where you don't get what you really, really want (despite seeking it very thoroughly).
In terms of why people fail, and the difference between zuckerburgs and you, there are many, many different reasons. While you might have meant to say "the main reason" or "the main difference", it is my perspective that issues as complex as "what makes people different from one another" and "why do some people succeed, and some people fail" are pretty much unsolvable. There are just so many factors in each person's life, and the world in general, that it seems incredibly unlikely that one or two factors are behind any given characteristics of our life and world. This is also why I lend very low credibility to anything I read that says: "Want some big thing X, then do some simple thing Y" and other such link-bait articles. It is in their brevity they appealing, easy to believe, and probably wrong.
That being said, of course these types of life-experience and drama-driven topics are fun to indulge in, from time to time, but it takes a lot more than a few paragraphs and minutes of thought for me to take away anything other than: "Interesting..."
In specific response to "drive" being the main factor behind success, it's probably true that it is very important. There is also luck (a massive topic that encompasses anything from having your competitors succeed/fail [which recursively accounts for more luck], to whether or not you overhear a specific person say something when you're in a certain frame of mind [aka: Inception]), who you know, where you are, etc. Kyro was pointing out these attributes and their relation to the article, which I thought was insightful. And I definitely do not think he is mistaken in doing so.
You're right about truisms, but in this case making a billion dollar is something so vague and unsubstantiated that there isn't any fixed path to it. Whereas smaller short term objects and goals can be grasped and put into perspective. How can you do that with something as fluid as the path your life will take? It's certain that in the random chaos your plans will never work.
So, what happens when you set out to become a billionaire, or a millionaire with single minded intensity? You lose your ability to adapt and invest in the seeds that grow into something truly meaningful be it people, knowledge, observations, research, projects. So in essence by having that rigid goal in mind you're setting yourself up for failure.
Yes, I agree that people are complex beings and you can never factor them in, but what I have observed is that almost anyone who became anything in their lives at any level had a comparable amount of resilience. Whenever you do anything at all you will fail again and again and again. It will be as if the only thing you can do right is getting things wrong, but it takes persistence to move beyond that and that persistence is a combination of the amount of resilience a person has and what drives them.
As far as luck goes the interesting thing about it is that you have to be the one to walk through that door. Chance in itself can only go so far someone has to see the significance and exploit it, but that again is a function of the state of that person. Hence, you have a recursion. The luckiest people tend to be the ones who go the farthest.
On the other hand, my comment really might be a bunch of sour grapes. I can't go to college any time soon and I admit that I would love to be in the type of environment MIT offers. So, I have soul searched a lot and tried to see if I could convert this into something far more beautiful.
The only thing my life has taught me is that failure should be celebrated more than success.
If you are in it to be a billionaire then you're looking at it in the wrong way. It's a testament to the quixotic nature of life that you never, ever get what you're looking for.
I am in it to learn and grow as a human being, while trying to figure out what it means to be me on this ball of rock and liquid metal. I don't care if my start up makes a million dollars or a billion or a ridiculous trillion. I will work towards that goal, but my first priority is creating something beautiful and keep showing up everyday no matter what.
So, where does an education come in over here? Are colleges the only way I can learn in my life? Except for a few fields where direct intervention from a teacher is required I can learn a lot of things on my own. Whenever I face any problems whatsoever there is something called the internet to collaborate on.
Then again the question arises, why do people still fail? We're back to my initial point; drive. You can be an autodidact only if you are driven enough and there is a voice inside of you that tells you that you need to learn. Some people need flogging and "discipline" to do the same thing. They need to go to an institution to internalize things and get things done under a Damocles sword (exams).
Most people are like that. Some aren't and this is the difference between them zuckerburgs and me.