> If you take a lot of chances, that adds up eventually and you'll have some big wins. Just do it safely, so that they don't add up to a lot of big losses, too.
And here is great contradiction in this whole essay. You can't "safely" take a lot of chances and not lose big, when in most cases to have big wins, one has to do unsafe things...
This is also why folks who have a safety net (in terms of family wealth, etc) tend to do better as entrepreneurs. Not sure this essay is helpful.
Falling down when you're 50+ is a HELLAVA lot riskier than falling down when you're younger.
This appears to be a blog post about risk tolerance - which of course changes dramatically depending on lots of factors. If I fall as a middle-aged person, I'm much more likely to cause permanent, irreparable harm to myself - which, maybe not worth the rewards.
I'm at a point in life where all the major forks are in my rear view mirror. But when you are young, energetic, don't have dependents and have time to recover then you should absolutely take calculated risks. Playing it safe will haunt you in your later years.
Like in some English-speaking regions of US, Canada, maybe Australia, they end every sentence with a rising intonation like a question? Or some people, perhaps with insecurity about who they are, end their sentences weakly without determination and final authority, so it sounds like a question - like seeking approval of those around them? And then there's the "TED Talk candence" as another comment phrased it, often heard in corporate presentations or speeches, the patronizing tone of engaging with your audience like kindergardeners, asking them a non-question only so the speaker can spoon-feed the answer?
The thing is, falling down (ie. failing at things) can take a lot out of you, physically, mentally, financially, spiritually.
For most of us, taking calculated risks is better than simply taking more risks.
And the risk calculation changes based on your personal circumstances: physically falling has a greater impact on an old person than a young person, making a financial mistake has a greater impact on someone who has no savings than someone who is wealthy, etc.
So "let yourself fall down more" isn't really one size fits all advice.
I did some napkin math the other day, and my kids at half my size prob hit the ground with 1/2 the stress that I do. Certainly could take more risks falling with a 50% reduction in harm. The extra rotational energy from 70" vs 40" will do it.
> Falling doesn't have to be dangerous. You can fall a lot without getting hurt, if you learn to fall safely. With inline skating, you have protective gear (helmet, knee/elbow pads, wrist guards) which protect you, and you have techniques for falling which let you use this gear to its fullest potential.
Is that actually true? Is it possible with enough protective gear, that falling can be safe, even for older people? Doesn't your own body weight come into the picture, despite helmets and knee pads? (Genuinely curious!)
IME yes, it absolutely can be. I am approaching middle age & still comfortably enjoy pushing myself in physical activities where falls are likely, with zero significant injuries aside from a couple sprained ankles from playing basketball (& technically the ankle rolling came before the fall in these couple mishaps; letting my body roll/fall out of it just helped reduce the severity). Also it's more about technique & familiarity/reflex training than safety gear, although I do wear a Zamst ankle brace on my weak ankle whenever I play basketball & started wearing a helmet for snowboarding a few years ago. Jackie Chan & Buster Keaton were even better at this, although they pushed it a lot farther & did sustain major injuries in their stunt careers.
However, there's a big caveat: I've been practicing falling safely since a young age & really mastered it in my teenage years practicing martial arts & snowboarding. I'm sure it's much harder & more dangerous to learn if you first start in middle age, although I'd imagine it's still possible with the right training & appropriate caution.
This really isn't useful advice since physically, economically, and reputationally, "falling down" when you're younger incurs exponentially less risk.
Virtually all legal systems make a clear distinction between "children" and "adults" precisely because of these sorts of external and embodied judgment factors.
It's certainly important to prevent falls. Especially as adults, we tend to lack the energy to get up. In that respect, children are amazing. I recently started studying for an LLM as a hobby, but I keep falling over and spending less time getting up. I often think it would be easier to just give up and go to sleep.
Highly recommend Rodney Mullen's public speaking on the greater value of Skateboarding and the importance of falling (i.e., it teaches you how to get back up).
I've gotten much more cautious since I had a fall a few years ago and realized that I'm not so invulnerable now. I was ice skating - I'm a very good skater and grew up on skates around the same time I learned to walk and played on traveling hockey teams my entire youth. Someone fell on the ice and I reached down and was helping them up when my skates slipped out from under me. I fell backwards and cracked the back of my head on the ice. I swear I felt my brain slosh in my head. Luckily no concussion or other injury but since then I've just taken way fewer risks and I don't plan on changing that.
“ If you take a lot of chances, that adds up eventually and you'll have some big wins. Just do it safely, so that they don't add up to a lot of big losses, too.”
“Just” do it safely. If it’s safe, you are not really taking chances.
"safely" is shorthand here for "with an appropriate degree of safety net and recoverability". There is a whole spectrum of risk between "only carrying activities that are 100% certain to succeed" and "trying anything, absolutely anything, with no thought given to how I'll react/self-protect if things go wrong"
doing something more doesn't make you better at it. learning to do it better is what makes you better. people are quite capable of doing a lot of something without ever getting better.
Luck plays a role in this. My grandmother took so many falls, in the process broke her leg once, and then proceeded to take even more falls, and she was lucky to never break anything again.
I'm not saying falls are recommended for the elderly, or that they should take risks that can lead to falls - but luck, just like I'm anything in life, plays a role.
Some people can't afford to live like they're made of glass, with all the support a available for them to prevent such events.
If you're not a wealthy elderly, or if you don't have a family willing to take sacrifices, then your luck starts to drop A LOT.
I picked up inline skating at ~39, I realized that for all my cycling and lifting my balance and propreoception was crap and skiing once a year wasn't going to solve that problem.
I slapped on all the padding I could and it took me nearly a year to get my bodyweight outside of my feet and really carve at high speed. Why? Because my flexibility, strength and muscle activation all had weird gaps.
I ended up getting a slackboard as well about a year in.
I am basically impossible to knock over now, I can wear sperrys on ice, my legs and core are incredibly strong in a way lifting heavy never accomplished, I no longer have weird little muscle pains, all the muscles are strong.
When cycling I used to have occasional knee pain in my left exterior of my knee. No longer.
I've found 3 fast stretches to do after... I mean, rollerblading is basically yoga (which I find boring) at 15mph with pebbles and no ability to bail, it's fucking awesome and pretty damn hard.
I wear all the pads and it's glorious, I'm ~40 and I haven't felt this athletic since my late 20s.
I was getting sore before I started, that creeping old man shit, now I skate between 3 and 30 miles a week and its great. I skiied 3 days straight at 11k ft elevation and had no muscle soreness and no multi day fade, it was unreal.
Signed up to walk my first ever in my life 5K at the end of this month and I'm already getting some improvement in my balance with just walking more and faster.
Tell me more about the slackboard... any particular way you play with it? 41 and have lost what very small amount of snowboarding skills I had in my 20s before I was 30. I have looked at them and the balance boards because I know I need to do _something_.
I'll join the chorus of saying that falling down at age 40 means my skinned knee is still healing three weeks later. I'm very risk tolerant, but it's striking how the tides have turned on healing.
> If you take a lot of chances, that adds up eventually and you'll have some big wins. Just do it safely, so that they don't add up to a lot of big losses, too.
And here is great contradiction in this whole essay. You can't "safely" take a lot of chances and not lose big, when in most cases to have big wins, one has to do unsafe things...
This is also why folks who have a safety net (in terms of family wealth, etc) tend to do better as entrepreneurs. Not sure this essay is helpful.
Step 1 have resources, Step 2 boot strap yourself.
If you really want to succeed, you need to pick the best parents.
Falling down when you're 50+ is a HELLAVA lot riskier than falling down when you're younger.
This appears to be a blog post about risk tolerance - which of course changes dramatically depending on lots of factors. If I fall as a middle-aged person, I'm much more likely to cause permanent, irreparable harm to myself - which, maybe not worth the rewards.
Came here to say this. I don't want to fall down not because I fear the fall, I fear the not getting up.
I'm at a point in life where all the major forks are in my rear view mirror. But when you are young, energetic, don't have dependents and have time to recover then you should absolutely take calculated risks. Playing it safe will haunt you in your later years.
> But the thing is? Falling doesn't have to be dangerous
Every time you use a question mark in place of a comma? A kitten dies.
TED Talk cadence speech and now I guess writing thanks to AI is SO cringe
question marks for non-questions drive me crazy. when i read them i hear an annoying tone, that's all. makes me vomit.
Like in some English-speaking regions of US, Canada, maybe Australia, they end every sentence with a rising intonation like a question? Or some people, perhaps with insecurity about who they are, end their sentences weakly without determination and final authority, so it sounds like a question - like seeking approval of those around them? And then there's the "TED Talk candence" as another comment phrased it, often heard in corporate presentations or speeches, the patronizing tone of engaging with your audience like kindergardeners, asking them a non-question only so the speaker can spoon-feed the answer?
I hope you appreciate the irony of your distaste for people's mis-punctuation while also Altman-casing your objection.
that's not actually irony. i'm not bothered by only using lowercase.
hey, do you know that just because i don't like something you do, it doesn't mean you're bad, or even that i'm saying you're bad?
It reads like NPR sounds.
The thing is, falling down (ie. failing at things) can take a lot out of you, physically, mentally, financially, spiritually.
For most of us, taking calculated risks is better than simply taking more risks.
And the risk calculation changes based on your personal circumstances: physically falling has a greater impact on an old person than a young person, making a financial mistake has a greater impact on someone who has no savings than someone who is wealthy, etc.
So "let yourself fall down more" isn't really one size fits all advice.
I did some napkin math the other day, and my kids at half my size prob hit the ground with 1/2 the stress that I do. Certainly could take more risks falling with a 50% reduction in harm. The extra rotational energy from 70" vs 40" will do it.
This post rests on:
> Falling doesn't have to be dangerous. You can fall a lot without getting hurt, if you learn to fall safely. With inline skating, you have protective gear (helmet, knee/elbow pads, wrist guards) which protect you, and you have techniques for falling which let you use this gear to its fullest potential.
Is that actually true? Is it possible with enough protective gear, that falling can be safe, even for older people? Doesn't your own body weight come into the picture, despite helmets and knee pads? (Genuinely curious!)
IME yes, it absolutely can be. I am approaching middle age & still comfortably enjoy pushing myself in physical activities where falls are likely, with zero significant injuries aside from a couple sprained ankles from playing basketball (& technically the ankle rolling came before the fall in these couple mishaps; letting my body roll/fall out of it just helped reduce the severity). Also it's more about technique & familiarity/reflex training than safety gear, although I do wear a Zamst ankle brace on my weak ankle whenever I play basketball & started wearing a helmet for snowboarding a few years ago. Jackie Chan & Buster Keaton were even better at this, although they pushed it a lot farther & did sustain major injuries in their stunt careers.
However, there's a big caveat: I've been practicing falling safely since a young age & really mastered it in my teenage years practicing martial arts & snowboarding. I'm sure it's much harder & more dangerous to learn if you first start in middle age, although I'd imagine it's still possible with the right training & appropriate caution.
My grandfather fell down, broke his leg and then died in the hospital.
I was just yesterday feeling the perfectionism (what will people think) keeping me from releasing my first blog post.
Some comments are literal: "but I actually won't be able to get up again" and that's fair.
I would say a more complete version is: "take risks that won't end you and learn from the feedback."
The blog made HN-popular, so congrats! And there's lot's of feedback to learn from. So what you wrote actually already has been proven itself!
This really isn't useful advice since physically, economically, and reputationally, "falling down" when you're younger incurs exponentially less risk.
Virtually all legal systems make a clear distinction between "children" and "adults" precisely because of these sorts of external and embodied judgment factors.
It's certainly important to prevent falls. Especially as adults, we tend to lack the energy to get up. In that respect, children are amazing. I recently started studying for an LLM as a hobby, but I keep falling over and spending less time getting up. I often think it would be easier to just give up and go to sleep.
Highly recommend Rodney Mullen's public speaking on the greater value of Skateboarding and the importance of falling (i.e., it teaches you how to get back up).
https://player.vimeo.com/video/77731599?title=0&byline=0&por...
I've gotten much more cautious since I had a fall a few years ago and realized that I'm not so invulnerable now. I was ice skating - I'm a very good skater and grew up on skates around the same time I learned to walk and played on traveling hockey teams my entire youth. Someone fell on the ice and I reached down and was helping them up when my skates slipped out from under me. I fell backwards and cracked the back of my head on the ice. I swear I felt my brain slosh in my head. Luckily no concussion or other injury but since then I've just taken way fewer risks and I don't plan on changing that.
“ If you take a lot of chances, that adds up eventually and you'll have some big wins. Just do it safely, so that they don't add up to a lot of big losses, too.”
“Just” do it safely. If it’s safe, you are not really taking chances.
Survivor bias is a helluva drug
"safely" is shorthand here for "with an appropriate degree of safety net and recoverability". There is a whole spectrum of risk between "only carrying activities that are 100% certain to succeed" and "trying anything, absolutely anything, with no thought given to how I'll react/self-protect if things go wrong"
This is why skateboarding is a great hobby. You learn from a young age that falling is normal and necessary for progress.
Falling is a skill like any other - the more you fall, the better you get at it.
doing something more doesn't make you better at it. learning to do it better is what makes you better. people are quite capable of doing a lot of something without ever getting better.
90 year olds must be excellent at falling then. At least way better than toddlers.
Luck plays a role in this. My grandmother took so many falls, in the process broke her leg once, and then proceeded to take even more falls, and she was lucky to never break anything again.
I'm not saying falls are recommended for the elderly, or that they should take risks that can lead to falls - but luck, just like I'm anything in life, plays a role.
Some people can't afford to live like they're made of glass, with all the support a available for them to prevent such events.
If you're not a wealthy elderly, or if you don't have a family willing to take sacrifices, then your luck starts to drop A LOT.
You skate, sing, code and play saxophone? That's pretty badass.
I picked up inline skating at ~39, I realized that for all my cycling and lifting my balance and propreoception was crap and skiing once a year wasn't going to solve that problem.
I slapped on all the padding I could and it took me nearly a year to get my bodyweight outside of my feet and really carve at high speed. Why? Because my flexibility, strength and muscle activation all had weird gaps.
I ended up getting a slackboard as well about a year in.
I am basically impossible to knock over now, I can wear sperrys on ice, my legs and core are incredibly strong in a way lifting heavy never accomplished, I no longer have weird little muscle pains, all the muscles are strong.
When cycling I used to have occasional knee pain in my left exterior of my knee. No longer.
I've found 3 fast stretches to do after... I mean, rollerblading is basically yoga (which I find boring) at 15mph with pebbles and no ability to bail, it's fucking awesome and pretty damn hard.
I wear all the pads and it's glorious, I'm ~40 and I haven't felt this athletic since my late 20s.
I was getting sore before I started, that creeping old man shit, now I skate between 3 and 30 miles a week and its great. I skiied 3 days straight at 11k ft elevation and had no muscle soreness and no multi day fade, it was unreal.
Signed up to walk my first ever in my life 5K at the end of this month and I'm already getting some improvement in my balance with just walking more and faster.
Tell me more about the slackboard... any particular way you play with it? 41 and have lost what very small amount of snowboarding skills I had in my 20s before I was 30. I have looked at them and the balance boards because I know I need to do _something_.
I'll join the chorus of saying that falling down at age 40 means my skinned knee is still healing three weeks later. I'm very risk tolerant, but it's striking how the tides have turned on healing.