Can you do things wrong, and still get results?

Absolutely!

As much as we all buy into the idea of success being linked to hard work and the proper application of sound principles, there is also an unquestionable amount of luck, or perhaps a better word would be randomness.

Hard work and the proper application of sound principles, increase the probability of success, but randomness can create challenges even in these instances, especially if the expectation is unrealistic. What I mean by an unrealistic expectation, usually has to do with comparing your results to someone else's, particularly someone who has achieved very significant results, but who you may perceive is not applying sound principles.

Your expectation then may be that your sound approach will yield vastly superior results.

A prime example of this is exercise, in which the variance in results varies dramatically between different individuals.

The randomness of genetic potential is immense, and some people are very muscular who don't even do exercise, or who perform exercise which is sub optimal, or even counterproductive.

Arthur Jones, the inventor of Nautilus strength training machines said something to the effect that a true ectomorph will not appear muscular even with 20 years of training, and that a true mesomorph will appear muscular even if totally untrained.

Genetics however, can seem like a bit too much of a convenient explanation (albeit accurate in most cases) for why someone achieves enviable results despite what appear to be sub optimal methods.

Results come from progressively overloading muscles, proper nutrition and adequate rest and recovery.

Another aspect of proper exercise is safety meaning that it should not produce either an acute injury or long term wear and tear to joints, ligaments, tendons, or even hurt someone's overall health in the long term by over stressing the body repeatedly over time.

However, another aspect of randomness other than genetics is survivor bias. In other words, the Olympic gold medallist who appears to have done everything right, (he won the gold medal!) may be one of a thousand people who followed similar methods, and the only one who did not suffer a career ending injury as a result, either through sheer luck or again, being genetically gifted to take on the abuse. (Although many athletes pay a high price later in life because of the very methods that allegedly helped them to achieve their peak performance.)

The science suggests strongly that most athletes do far too much overall exercise than what is needed or optimal. (note here, that I'm referring to conditioning, not skill mastery, which inevitably does require hours upon hours of proper practice)

However, when someone does a large volume of exercise, much of it, is by necessity, going to be of low intensity. So critics of high volume will cite overtraining as a likely result, but in fact, if the volume exerciser is doing most of his exercise at a low intensity then he may not be taxing his recovery ability enough to make a significant difference.

Assuming that on occasion, that person attempts a maximum or near maximum effort, then from the sheer volume of exericse, he happens by chance to actually stimulate his muscles to grow, and because he does it only occasionally, he does in fact avoid overtraining.

He will then conclude that his results are due to the many hours he spends exercising, when in fact, his results may only come from less than 5% of what he is doing, and the other 95% is irrelevant or may be even holding him back from getting even better results, but obviously the other 95% is not enough to actually prevent the results.

I'm using exercise as an example, but in fact the oft quoted Pareto's rule (the 20/80 rule) is at work here, and in fact probably in many cases is more of a 5/95 rule, where a very small part of what we do in any endeavour is responsible for the vast majority of our results.

Interestingly, sometimes the perfect can be the enemy of the good. Other people refine the adatation stimulus to such potency that there may be very little margin for error in the proper dosage. Intensity in exercise is akin to the potency of a drug. If a drug's potency is relatively low, then whether you take 30 or 45 ml of a cold remedy may be fairly irrelevant, but if the potency is high, then the diffence between optimum and toxic may be very small. So going back to the 5/95 principle, if you discover the 5% that is most effective, and you choose to focus primarily if not exclusively on that 5%, you may achieve amazing results but if you are overly zealous, you may do more harm than good, and be left wondering why your optimal methods did not produce the superior results to the individual who appears to you to be wasting countless hours of irrelevant or counterproductive effort.

Sometimes, you are just at the right place at the right time, or born to the right parents, or try so many things, that sooner or later, you stumble on something that works...(the harder I work, the luckier I get?)...

In the end, the point of this blog, is that we should be weary of "learning from other people's success" or comparing ourselves to others in general. We need to consider anecdotal evidence, but we need to consider it very critically and jump to conclusions very slowly. We also need to always think for ourselves, and not give undue credit to "experts".

Remember, exercise, in this case is being used to exemplify principles that apply to all natural systems, whether it be having a successful harvest, having a strong relationship or building a successful business.

Best to all, and thanks for reading!