The price of gold – how bad do you want it?

When I was a kid, it dawned on me that to be among the best, you had to be the one willing to sacrifice the most. Because there are diminishing returns up there, and when everything is equal (talent, biology, etc), then what you cut of to dedicate to the craft is one of the last differentiators.

So really, did I want to be among the best that bad?

And I realized I didn't.

The price is too high.

I was hoping this would be about actual gold...at $2,376.30 USD an ounce becoming a prospector starts to make sense again.

> Do you want it bad enough to skip going to movies with your friends...? To miss a prom...? To read some books... instead of playing videogames? To go to sleep early instead of watching a good movie...?

Wait, I could have gone for a gold medal instead of learning how to program?

> Do you want it bad enough to skip going to movies with your friends and use the evening off for necessary rehabilitation procedures? To miss a prom in order to take the extra practice? To read some books about nutrition instead of playing videogames? To stop posting motivational pictures and actually go running in the pouring rain? To replace fries and chicken nuggets with vegetables and high-protein meals? To go to sleep early instead of watching a good movie?

Reading this hurts. I’ve been mentoring young people for a while and one increasingly common theme is that some of them don’t want to give up anything to advance their careers. I can barely convince them to update their resumes after I spend time reviewing them and writing feedback. They refuse to practice any coding problems. They are disgusted by the idea of doing any work to prep for interviews.

An increasingly common problem is that I’ll recommend one thing but then they’ll go on Reddit and see 20 comments from people telling them not to do it. Some of them will get job interviews, receive a short take home problem (less than 60 minutes of work. They copy paste them to Slack so I know they’re not excessive) but then they’ll refuse to do it because Reddit told them they should never do any work for a job interview. Then they’re shocked when they’re dismissed from the interview process.

On the other hand, some of the mentees will take any opportunity to get ahead and run with it. They practice LeetCode in moderation. They customize resumes for each job application. They do practice interviews and ask for more feedback. And not surprisingly, it pays off. They get jobs quickly.

I wish I was better at highlighting this difference to people, but the current social media trends are pushing people toward thinking laziness is a virtue, or that working hard on anything is for suckers.

HN at its finest: majority of the discussion on this article is about gold, and not the actual article.

Winning has become everything because the consequences of losing (or not competing) are increasingly harsh.

In retrospect, the article was what one should have expected given the second half of the title. And it was quite interesting. But yeah, I thought this would be about the bullion gold.

I think most winners these days are cheaters because it makes sense to cheat. Living life as a 'free' honest person nowadays is almost as bad as being in jail... So of course, given less than a 50% chance of going to jail, most people will happily cheat through their lives and think the risk is a fair trade-off.

Heck, some might think it's a fair trade-off even if you get caught. Just ask Elizabeth Holmes and her millionaire husband.

Having read (and greatly enjoyed) books by Alonzo Delano and William Lewis Manly recounting their experiences during the California gold rush, I greatly appreciate gold as being able to calculate how much a dollar was worth back then and how much they were making in a day. My calculations say it was around $130 today's dollars.

And the miner towns had ridiculous prices, like a breakfast was in the $2-$5 dollars at some point.