There are many powerful lessons to teach you, many ideas we believe can change your life. Some ideas mature over time. A long game played over decades. Some, like this next idea, can change your life in a flash.

We are talking about asymmetry.

Perfection is often described as symmetrical. Balanced. Circular. Beautiful in its proportionality.

Asymmetry is the opposite of balanced. It is the opposite of circular. Yet, it is not, as one might expect, always ugly or imperfect.

It is true asymmetry is the opposite of symmetry. It is the opposite of balanced, circular. Yet both symmetry and asymmetry can be perfect. Experience teaches us there are times when the opposite of a truth is not a lie, but another truth.

And while we strive to achieve perfection in balance, beauty, and other symmetrical outcomes, it is also vital to use asymmetrical techniques to achieve asymmetrical outcomes. And this is what we want you to do. Always seek balance while paradoxically focusing your attention on opportunities offering imbalanced rewards. How? Let's back up.

How were you taught to live life?

Were you taught to go to school, get good grades, play some sports, volunteer at your church, and maybe, if you were lucky, you would get a scholarship, pay, or borrow for the costs of attending college?

So you did it. You were the prototype student. Got great grades. Jumped the hoops, maybe played them. And you paid for your education. In one way or another. And maybe you decided you are a glutton for punishment, and you signed up for graduate school.

Where do I sign?

The media outlets will tell you how the student loan thing is working out, and you might have firsthand knowledge of it yourself, but here is what the news will never tell you:

The way you were taught to live life was wrong.

Even scholarship recipients and those blessed to attend college without borrowing face the marble reality that our schools do not, strangely, prepare us for our adulthood. The first twenty years of our lives do not prepare us to face the next five years, let alone the next eighty plus.

When most adults answer how we want to live life, we say we want happiness, our health, and freedom. We answer it this way as universally as anything these days can be considered universal.

However, following the way we were taught to live our lives leads not to happy, healthy, or free. It leads us to misery, illness, and indebtedness. It leads us in the exact opposite direction. Why? WHY?

Because you did not have enough of the right information. Sure, someone else did, but the real reasons have always been in front of you, buried in the noise of average.

The most important idea we can introduce you to is asymmetrics.

The easiest way to introduce you to asymmetry is to talk about the right information.

We already touched on traditional education, so let’s try something different. A sales transaction. Buying a good.

Imagine you are in the market for a new car (never buy a new car). You are buying one at possibly the worst time ever. But you have done your due diligence online. You are ready. You are prepared. And yet, the dealership will still have a tremendous advantage over you. Why? Because they have greater access to large amounts of relevant information. And thus, they “win” the deal. Over and over.

In such unbalanced transactions, there are ways we think tip the balance, such as having the endurance to stomach an hours-long, even days-long, negotiation. You might also know a salesperson who gives you "inside information." But these are not a true leveling of the scales. The dealer is still making their money. And thus, for most of us, the car acquisition process is a liability, not an investment, and much of the reason why is because we are at a severe disadvantage.

So, let’s take this and turn it another way.

Where in your world are you the dealership? Where do you hold an asymmetrical information advantage?

A lawyer by training knows far, far, more about the law and legal system than the average person. The same goes for a collector of comic books about comic books. Think on where your attention is paid during your income-earning and leisure hours. Think of your vocations and avocations.

This is the time to be knocked off kilter. There is asymmetry everywhere, from information to outcomes. From risks to rewards. Look for them.

The biggest failure in conventional thinking is the lie that failure is a bad outcome. An undesired outcome. A fatal outcome.

The truth is you must incorporate failure into your life. Into how you live it. It is a necessary, expected, and planned part of life.

The thing to avoid is the catastrophic failure. The all-in failure. The Rounders kind of failure. But even that you can rise from.

So what kind of failures should we seek? What kind of life should we live?

Seek those failures imbeded in asymmetric opportunities. The high payoff, low cost kind. The high reward, low risk kind. The moonshot reward.

You are not seeking 100% success. Nor 100% failure. Find the path which results in a ten percent chance of a one hundred times return. Such opportunities do exist. Yet accept the reality that to this model is the expectation that you will fail nine out of ten times. And that is ok. It is ok. We promise.

The most common examples of asymmetric opportunities include starting your own business, creating your own content, choosing the people you love, and learning to code. All of these are asymmetric. Staggeringly unbalanced in your favor. And yes, you are going to fail in all of them. If you think you did not, you just failed in a different, sadder, way. You settled.

We believe asymmetric opportunities rest in at least two core stacks:

Advocacy and Construction.

There are infinite asymmetric opportunities for those who venture forth.

There are infinite asymmetric opportunities for those who build (and dismantle to examine) and tinker.

The world belongs to the advocates and constructors.

What do you believe in? What do you know? Can you persuade others to follow you? Do you have vision?

Can you turn what you know into something actual? Can you take someone's vision and develop something tangible?

These are the opportunities for exponential growth. And this is how you should have been taught to live life.

Live with balance. Look for the imbalances.

When Warren Buffett first started investing, he used what he called the “cigar butt” method. He looked for underpriced companies that still had a little fire left in them, like a discarded cigar butt with one last puff.

We dislike the analogy, but we remember it. Before Buffett became Warren Buffett he was just Warren, and Warren looked for adequate rewards he could find risk free (the low cost of acquiring a distressed or otherwise severely undervalued company).

As his fortune grew, his framework matured from this “Buy an bargain company at a great price” to his current model of “Buy a great company at a fair price.”

And that is what you can do. As you achieve the rewards that first come with asymmetrical returns, emulate Buffett.

Start with low risk, high rewards. Cigar butts are fine in the beginning.

When you get to a certain level, which we all want to achieve, shift to higher rewards (and remember these are not just financial), at higher risk (in the form of more time, attention, and monetary cost).

Where do you start?

Consider how little you have you spent thinking of the following decisions before actually deciding on them: Where you live. What kind of work you do. Who you live life with. We spend such little time on actually choosing these paths of where to live, where to work, and who to love and so much time living with their results once chosen.

So flip it. Start to think of life’s choices as investments. Start thinking about this now. What will you invest in?

What geographical area will you invest in your housing?

In what labor will you pour your life's energies?

In whom will you entrust with your investment of love?

The more time and attention you invest in these decisions, the greater asymmetry you will create.

The greater asymmetry created, the more symmetry in your overall life. Balance in the unbalanced.

If you are fortunate enough to not be at war, to not be suffering, as some of our fellow humans always are, then know how selected and blessed you are, doing nothing other than reading a blog. To read during leisure is asymmetrically rewarding in itself.

But what could you be doing right now?

What could you invest your time in right now which makes you kind of nervous, scared, and excited because you know exactly what it is?

Go. Do it. Take your time. Relax. You are expected to fail. This is the way.

Tell us how you did. And why you will keep going.

Maybe no one has told you this in a while, maybe ever, but we are rooting for you. We believe in you. Because we are you.

Act.