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- Peter Thiel on why shortcuts worked perfectly for Boomers but are “deadly” if you’re a Millennial
Peter Thiel on why shortcuts worked perfectly for Boomers but are “deadly” if you’re a Millennial
Thiel believes the effectiveness of “shortcuts” in life oscillates from generation to generation:
“It’s a good idea to take shortcuts in a world where nobody takes shortcuts. In a world where everybody takes shortcuts, maybe the shortcut isn’t going to work and you’re actually better off figuring out the other thing.”
He gives politics as an example:
“The shortcut in politics is, ‘I’m not going to figure out what I think about the issues; I’m just going to look at the polls.’ The pollster was the one who was really for President, and that was an effective Boomer technique for many years. If you had a better pollster, you could more quickly get to where the crowd was going, and you didn’t need to waste time thinking about stuff. In a world where very few people are doing it, that can be a very good strategy. But by the time you get to the Millennials — when everyone’s been trained to take shortcuts — it doesn’t quite work.”
Thiel continues:
“It vaguely maps onto tracking. Tracking in school or tracking professionally is a shortcut to a successful career. Baby Boomers who stayed on track did quite well… you went to law school, you became a partner at a law firm, and the tracks worked. By the time we get to the Millennials, they know all the tracks you’re supposed to do, but the tracks work less well when everyone knows them and everyone’s doing the same thing. There are these similarities between the Millennials and the Boomers, but in practice it’s working really differently. The things that would’ve worked perfectly for you as a Boomer are deadly if you’re a Millennial.”