How to Uncover Your Creative Talent by Using the "Equal Odds Rule"

For people that are driven by creativity or have ambitious career goals it’s often hard to decide: what should I work on to make the most of my time? It feels like choosing the wrong path could set you back months of years, but according to the Equal Odds rule that may not be the case.

“The Equal Odds Rule says that the average publication of any particular scientist does not have any statistically different chance of having more of an impact than any other scientist’s average publication.”In other words, any given scientist is equally likely to create a game-changing piece of work as they are to create something average that is quickly forgotten.

Translated to the world-at-large: You can’t predict your own success. Scientists, artists, inventors, writers, entrepreneurs, and workers of all types are equally likely to produce a useless project as they are to produce an important one.

Using AI Right Now: A Quick Guide

If you’re struggling to find a good place to start when it comes to exploring AI, Ethan Mollick is the best non-technical person to follow in the space. That’s why I was very excited to see him share this getting started guide aimed people who don’t follow every cutting edge advancement. As someone familiar with explaining complex concepts simply enough for non-experts, I wholeheartedly endorse his work.

Every few months I put together a guide on which AI system to use. Since I last wrote my guide, however, there has been a subtle but important shift in how the major AI products work. Increasingly, it isn't about the best model, it is about the best overall system for most people. The good news is that picking an AI is easier than ever and you have three excellent choices. The challenge is that these systems are getting really complex to understand. I am going to try and help a bit with both.

I (don't?) want to say yes to everything

I often reflect on my work experience, describing it as a cycle. Three months of excitement and learning, followed by three months of intense building, then three months of burnout, and finally, three months of recovery. I don’t want to live this way anymore though, so I've been actively disrupting this pattern over the past couple of years. My tendency to burn out stems from saying yes to everyone's ideas when I'm excited, knowing it will excite them too. That's why I appreciated a post by Cassidy Williams, which highlights that saying no isn't about taking away joy but about creating space to say yes to what truly matters.

Whenever I release a project publicly, people always have feature requests for it. And because most of my projects are open source, I can usually say yes to building it, or someone can implement said feature, and I can choose to say yes to how they built it.