Productive people do not believe in fate. I'm sorry this may offend some of you. But it's simply true if everything is your fate Well, why work hard it'll just happen anyway why spend a lot of time taking risk innovating starting a company? Hey, it's just fate if it's meant to be it's meant to be is the attitude many people have. That is not the attitude I've encountered. With most highly productive people most highly productive people believe they control their own fate.

Now they have enough self awareness to know that maybe you were born really lucky I happen to be born lucky I happen to be born and a particular period of history. I was born a white man in 19, a white boy in 1962 in the United States, and I had two college educated parents so the deck with this deck was stacked heavily in my head. favor. It's not that there's fate but the deck was really stacked in my favor, by still have a tremendous range for having a huge success, some success, moderate success, no success or abject failure. And there are people who have the same conditions I did, who have ended up failures. And there's some people who've born in my situation, much more successful and productive than I am.

The point is, you have to be aware of certain constraints, sure, and certain luck that may have happened in geographic constraints historically, by and large. If you aren't allied in this day and age, and you want to be productive, you have to look beyond whether it's racism, sexism, classism, content, ism, I think I just made that up. Realize, ultimately your productivity, your success is going to be up to you. And you can't simply make excuses. And you can't say it's fate. You make your own fate.

The second you decide you have no control that you're just a passive vessel and there's some other larger control out there. Then, I don't know how you have motivation, frankly, because if someone else is controlling things, why work hard? Why try. If you don't control your own fate, you are destroying your productivity in my view, that may sound harsh to some of you. I'm not saying you can't ever be appreciative of some good fortune. I've had plenty of good fortune in my life.

But I don't think of it my ultimate trajectory in life is fate. I think of it as I was born with a whole lot of advantages. And now it's how do I want to navigate it based on what I want to try what I want to produce. Again, a lot of people were born on third base and think they hit a triple to use an American baseball analogy. I'm not suggesting that people who are successful did it just because they're harder working. Now, a lot of times luck is there.

But if you want to be as productive as possible, I do believe you have to have the mindset that you have the ability to control outcomes. Otherwise, why bother? Just sit on the couch and wait for things to happen.