If you don’t get there, it doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t try hard enough.
I heard it in a video by Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez), talking about what happens when a job keeps moving toward abstraction and ideas. The higher you go, the fewer people are needed. And at some point, effort on its own stops being enough.
You can study more. Work more. Keep getting better. And it still might not be enough.
Because when the seats get scarce, the real dividing line isn’t how hard you work. It’s how rare the value you create is.
That’s an uncomfortable thing to accept. We’re used to thinking: “If I keep improving, sooner or later I’ll get there.”
But maybe the right question is a different one: what can I get so good at, and so rare at, that I’m hard to ignore?
Because the jump doesn’t happen when you start doing more than everyone else. It happens when you start doing something few people can really do well.
Effort moves you forward. The rarity of the value you create decides how far you can go.