There’s one truth almost nobody tells you: life doesn’t follow “normal” rules.

Height, IQ, fruit sizes — sure, they all sit around some average.

But money, opportunity, success, failure, luck… those follow a completely different rule:
a few get almost everything, the rest get almost nothing.

And here’s the funny part: we’re raised to act like the world is normal.

Study hard. Get a stable job. Save a bit. Wait for promotions. Be careful. Be consistent.

That’s the logic of a world where results add up little by little.

But money and success don’t add.
They multiply.

Pareto figured this out more than a hundred years ago: income doesn’t spread evenly.
It stretches into a long tail where a tiny group earns 10×, 50×, 100× everyone else.

Not because they work 100 times harder — but because they’re playing a different game.
you work → you get paid
you don’t work → nothing happens

But the real world — especially today — works through multiplicative effects:

  • One lucky break can matter more than five years of effort.
  • One project can change your entire career.
  • One connection can shift your trajectory completely.
  • One idea can open a door you didn’t even know existed.

In this kind of world, the “average” is meaningless.

Sit in a room with a billionaire and the average net worth jumps into the billions —
but your wallet hasn’t changed one bit.

That’s how long-tail systems work: a single extreme case dominates everything.

And the tricky thing is: power-law worlds look normal most of the time.

A forest gets thousands of tiny fires every year — barely noticeable.
But one dry season, one windy day, one spark… and the whole place burns down.
Nothing special about the spark. Just the right moment.

YouTube is the same. Millions of videos get almost no views.
But the top 1–2% swallow the entire platform.

Startups?
Most fail.
A few go crazy and pay for everything.

The pattern is everywhere.

But most people are living as if life still works like school:

  • steady effort → steady results
  • be consistent → you’ll get there eventually
  • avoid risk → you’ll be safe

This mindset keeps you comfortable, not successful.

If you want to win in a power-law world, you have to play a power-law game.

This does not mean taking wild risks.
It means creating many small, cheap opportunities where one of them might take off.

Think of it like planting seeds.
Most won’t grow.
But one strong tree can feed you for years.

Examples:

  • A blog post on the right topic can put you on someone’s radar.
  • A tiny open-source tool can land you a job offer.
  • An email to the right person can change your path.
  • A weekend side project can open a new career lane.
  • One lucky conversation can raise your income permanently.

These things cost almost nothing — but their upside is huge.
And the more chances you create, the more likely you’ll hit one of those rare, life-changing outcomes.

But you can’t let yourself “die” before that hit arrives.

Meaning:

  • keep a stable job
  • don’t go all-in on one idea
  • don’t burn all your savings
  • don’t spend three years chasing a single project
  • don’t bet everything on one shot

Stability keeps you alive.
Survival gives you time.
Time exposes you to luck.

In the end, getting rich today isn’t about grinding steadily like the old advice says.
It’s about taking many small chances, keeping your downside tiny, your upside open,
and staying in the game long enough for something big to happen.

You don’t need to win every time.
You just need one win.

One hit pays for all the misses.

Most people grow up thinking life works like a salary: