

Less Everything - Taking Risks - auston
http://b.lesseverything.com/2009/10/29/the-right-decision-should-make-everyone-squirm

======
msluyter
Lots of selective memory and faulty reasoning here. Take his first example:
"Took art classes in high school instead of working out with the football
team. I design for a living now." It's easy to retroactively give a positive
interpretation to any life choice you might make, but consider the
alternative. Had he chosen football instead of art he might be looking back
thankfully that the decision lead him down the path to becoming an NFL star,
or sports announcer, or whatever.

Similarly, the folks who took risks, ignored the common wisdom, and failed
miserably may not be writing blog posts extolling risk taking and ignoring the
common wisdom. IMHO there's no sound generalization to make about risk.
Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not, and plenty depends on our attitude
towards it.

~~~
ewjordan
_Had he chosen football instead of art he might be looking back thankfully
that the decision lead him down the path to becoming an NFL star, or sports
announcer, or whatever._

The likelihood of football leading directly to a career path (rather than
through connections obtained while playing) is far lower than the similar
probability for art, though - there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that
directly use art skills, whereas the number of football jobs is far lower
(even if we include high school coaching in the equation).

In that sense, doing art is really the "safe" option, at least compared to
playing football. It only feels less safe because in high school playing
football is a lot more respected than doing art.

~~~
jonnycoder
I chose to work out and play h.s. football. I'm a developer at Intel, so maybe
I learned a lot of discipline playing football? Or maybe I'm more inclined to
do corporate work...

"It's easy to retroactively give a positive interpretation to any life choice"

~~~
lessallan
Johnny I'd say you followed the head sheep. Now you're in a cubical wearing
khaki pants to work spending your day on ycombinator news, dreaming about what
could have been.

~~~
jonnycoder
Maybe, if I stop learning and creating new things. And I wear jeans and flip
flops.

------
Mongoose
More of an interesting anecdote than evidence of a trend. Between name-
dropping Seth Godin and mentioning how he eschewed football, this comes off as
a linkbait appeal to the internet design crowd.

------
arnorhs
Is he asking for our approval of him buying that Lincoln Continental? And why
is that risky? Might not be dead-center-mainstream.. but a lot of people still
buy old cars like that. Maybe people around him feel strangely about it since
it might be out of character? I don't know, has the author owned any other old
vehicles? Sorry if I'm being too critical here

~~~
briancooley
I think he was just using it as a nice lede. And he had a picture.

~~~
lessallan
It's about breaking the trends. The classic car is just an example of what
most people DON'T do. Most people think the safe choice is to purchase a
vehicle with a warranty because they know what they're getting into.

------
BigCanOfTuna
How much of a risk is it to not follow a career that you don't like (he's says
he wasn't passionate about football in his comments)? I'd say that was the
appropriate decision, not risky.

"5. Put in every dime I owned into Less Everything so Steve and I could change
our piece of the internet."

OK, maybe, but answer the following questions and then we can ascertain the
amount of risk taken:

1\. approximately how much money?

2\. how old were you?

3\. did you have a mortgage

4\. were you married at the time

5\. did you have children?

I applaud his success, but we’re not really talking “Sell your parent’s farm
for a 1 in a million chance” level of risk here, are we?

------
jonnycoder
His examples seem to be more about making choices than risks. I choose not to
buy a new Prius because it's an insane waste of money compared to the used car
I bought at 20k miles. I also felt my choice was better for the environment
(30mpg highway on a used car, compared to 50mpg new car).

His choice to buy that old car is a wise one, it will probably maintain value,
while his expenses/maintenance will be lower on a car that's simpler to work
on or buy parts for.

------
jksmith
You can take risks with anything that you want to explore your limits with, be
it with a business decision or a sport. I've absorbed a fairly substantial
amount of risk financially with ventures, and that's actually a thrilling
thing. I think the seed of that though came from the times I stepped out on
the field knowing I was about to risk some serious injury because of some
particular circumstances, then managing to scrape by on the thinnest margin.

