Derek Thompson

I mean, of course, has an effect, but that's not the defining trait.

It's not skills per se because skills can be learned.

It's persistence.

That's really what it is, is that successful people are losers.

What do I mean by that?

They lose more.

They lose more often.

If you talk to successful people, they'll tell you all the times that they failed.

Whereas the unsuccessful people, the people who didn't meet their goals, are the people who said, yeah, I tried, it didn't work.

And they never try again.

So persistence is the key factor.

In order to persist, we need motivation.

And so how do we persist?

How do we unlock what's in us?

Maybe I can share, I think, a study that really illustrates the point.

The study that Kurt Richter did in the 1950s.

And Kurt Richter had a very simple experiment.

But yeah, continue with the Richter study.

But the rats in the study are dead already, so we should just learn from them.

So you can't do this kind of study anymore, but it's worth noting because I think it really reveals something about how the mind works.