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A Ruler for Measuring Success📏

Originally published Translated

This article was machine-translated from Japanese by AI (Claude). It may contain errors. Read the original Japanese article.

Even when I talk with people who are all called "entrepreneurs," I feel that their perception of success differs greatly.

Some people start businesses because they see wealth, fame, and power as success, while others choose entrepreneurship in pursuit of leaving behind a better society or achieving something greater.

Even wealth alone varies: the amount of assets people aim for ranges from hundreds of millions of yen to tens of billions. The same goes for "society." Some people regard the whole world as society, while others call their immediate surroundings society, so the scale of the "society" they want to improve differs.

There are also entrepreneurs who look not outward but inward. Some choose entrepreneurship because they position it as a training ground for their own growth, and some probably start a business because they value the process over the result and simply "want to be doing something fun."

I think it becomes easier to make sense of these differences if we consider that they arise because people have different "rulers for measuring success📏."

The types of rulers for measuring success

Take entrepreneurship, for example. Founders of high-growth startups seem to use things like "the size of their wealth" and "their influence on the world" as one of their rulers, whereas founders of small businesses and indie businesses seem to use things like "the happiness of themselves and the people around them," "contribution to the local community," and "what is interesting to them in their own way."

Each differs in the "type" of ruler📏 used to measure success. Which type of ruler to choose depends on a person's values.

How many centimeters is success?

How far along that ruler someone must get to feel they have succeeded also differs from person to person.

For example, looking at wealth alone, some people are trying to start a business because they consider building assets of several hundred million yen to be success, while others say that several hundred million yen can be made by other means, so if they are going to do it, it has to be several billion yen.

Some people may also think not in absolute terms but in relative amounts, such as "the degree to which I am wealthier than those around me."

It is not only which type of ruler to use, but also how far one must go to regard something as success that differs from person to person. In that sense too, I think the metaphor of the "ruler📏" is easy to understand.

The risk of choosing an easy-to-understand ruler

I think that each person decides what kind of "ruler of success" to use to measure their own and others' success, and how far along it counts as success, and that each ruler should be respected. Still, I think that measuring one's own achievements with an easy-to-understand ruler is difficult precisely because of that ease of understanding.

Certainly, if you win a competition on an easy-to-understand ruler that everyone considers good, you will be clearly praised. But as a result, people gather around easy-to-understand rulers and they become popular, so the competition becomes fierce.

And in most cases, people can't help comparing, so if you choose an easy-to-understand ruler, the number of people you are compared with grows. Moreover, because "birds of a feather flock together," people who hold the same ruler tend to gather, and the differences between them become easier to see.

Suppose, for example, that you become an entrepreneur, achieve a certain degree of success, and build assets of several hundred million yen. But if you compare only on assets, there is always someone above you. You can see this right away by looking at something like a ranking of entrepreneurs' assets.

Of course, if you narrow the range of the "society" you belong to, you may be able to become the best within it, but then you become a "big fish in a small pond."

Japanese university entrance exams are the ultimate example. Even if you get into the University of Tokyo, Harvard and MIT come into view next. Beyond an undergraduate degree, there are doctoral programs and MBAs, and there is a "better" job, a "better" career, and a "better" title waiting for you.

If you entrust the ruler that measures such "goodness" to others, you are required to keep running faster than anyone else on the same track. Staying at the top in that field also takes considerable effort.

Holding an easy-to-understand ruler is convenient at first, but perhaps it is a structure that ultimately leaves you unsatisfied.

How "success and failure" look different depending on the time horizon of measurement

Another thing that is easily forgotten is over what span of time you measure success and failure.

If you try to measure success and failure over a short period or with a single measurement, the number of attempts is limited, so you tend to try to avoid failure.

If you can take a long-term view, you can think that it is enough to succeed big just once over the long run, and you will be able to choose to "take on challenges boldly, because even experiences of failure become fuel for success in the long term."

Take English, for example. If you care about success and failure in each moment, you can avoid failure by not speaking. But if you want to speak English fluently, you will ultimately acquire more English by boldly trying to speak it and failing, even if you are not used to it, than someone who did not speak. And someone who did not speak will not improve their English.

"Don't be afraid of failing" is often said, but even so, failure itself is scary. Yet if you think about over what time horizon you measure success and failure, you may come to feel like trying various challenges.

A ruler that sees failure as success

Another thing that is easily forgotten is that some people value not having failed, while others value the very act of having taken on a big challenge even if it failed.

In the context of high-growth startups, suppose someone is trying to take on a big field such as space. Compare

  • a person who previously succeeded in a different field with a small business or indie business
  • a person who previously took on a big challenge in the same field and failed

As a venture investor, wouldn't you want to invest in the latter?

The ruler of success is never measured by results alone. The number of attempts and the kinds of challenges one takes on also serve as a kind of ruler.

In that sense too, I think it is important to consider how to think about a "ruler of failure" just as we do a ruler of success.

The importance of having a ruler different from other people's

What is surely important is to find a ruler📏 that is slightly different from other people's while fitting you well. Then your effort and your happiness align. Furthermore, if that ruler matches an important problem or aligns well with society, then by aiming for success on that ruler, society's evaluation of you will align as well.

Having a ruler different from other people's is scary. But having a ruler other than money and fame will surely connect to personal happiness when viewed over the long term.

And personally, I hope that educational institutions such as universities can help widen the range of rulers people can choose from.

New students and new graduates who are about to step into a new environment have a chance to find a good ruler. Please do try to find a ruler of success that suits you.

The rulers students choose

On the other hand, what I think we should be careful about is choosing the kind of easy-to-understand ruler described above.

For example, when I talk with young people such as student entrepreneurs, I sometimes feel that they tend to have few types of rulers for measuring success, to set the degree small, and to have a short time horizon (not everyone is like this; it is only a tendency).

As for the type of ruler, if your own ruler is not yet settled, you are tempted to pick an easy-to-understand ruler from a third party. As a result, you tend to adopt rulers such as money and fame.

As for the time horizon, young people have lived for a short time so far, and they tend to think about the success or failure of things using the span of school (one year, or three to four years) as a unit of time. When such people say "startup," it is true that startups aim for rapid growth in a short period, but that is not a span of three to four years. Even a "short period" means nearly ten years. For a university student, that is about half of the life they have lived so far.

On the money side too, compared with the money they handle in daily life, it is understandable that winning a deal worth tens of millions of yen feels like a great deal of money. But in a startup, the amount of money to aim for is not on the order of tens of millions of yen but in the world of tens of billions.

They also tend to lean toward not failing rather than succeeding big. For example, if you start a business in contract software development, you will probably not fail and will earn several million yen, but it is hard to achieve a big success. Moreover, since such a business basically sells off your current skills piece by piece, the skills you can develop are limited as well.

Meanwhile, the role models of success around them to compare themselves with are peers who make a decent profit and live a good life, holding that kind of "ruler of success." Because of that situation, perhaps it becomes all the easier to choose a facile ruler of success.

📏 Ruler Battle ⚔

This is a structural problem. I think it is rather natural for this to happen if you simply live an ordinary life.

To break such a structure, I think we might even have a ruler battle, like elementary school kids who treat rulers as swords during recess and have a sword fight.

What that means is that those of us around them should say that the rulers we think are good are good📏. In slightly older slang, you could say it is like saying that something "emo" is emo.

For me, for example, I think "achieving something big" and "bringing about social impact" are cool, and I would be glad if the number of such people grew. I think it is also important to "know when you have enough," but I also think people who aim for something bigger or for uncharted territory are cool.

I think that people who took on a big challenge and failed are impressive for having taken on the challenge itself, and it even seems that being able to take on a big challenge with the support of those around them is itself the success. That is true both in business and in social activities.

In that sense, beyond whether someone has succeeded and gained wealth or fame, I hope more people will hold rulers such as

  • "How big and difficult a challenge did they take on?"
  • "How much were they able to have a positive impact on society through that challenge?"

and will praise such people1.

It would be even better to be together with people who hold such rulers. In particular, when you take on a big or difficult challenge, failing is normal. But if you can praise and console each other over those failures, I think that itself becomes a great asset.

The younger you are, the more you are influenced by those around you. Even a ruler borrowed from someone else gradually takes hold as you use it, and becomes part of what makes up your character. That is why I hope the rulers that surround young people will be more diverse and better for society as a whole.

In a sense, it is easy to take a relativist stance of "to each their own." But that preserves the structure. That is exactly why, these days, I think it is important to say without fear that cool rulers of success and rulers that are good for society are good; to say "That ruler📏 is really good!" to people who "measure things with a good ruler," and thereby try to change the structure; and to build communities and companions that people interested in such rulers of success can join.

Related reading

How Will You Measure Your Life?

Footnotes

  1. That said, even if someone is taking on a big challenge, I think it is not good to misrepresent facts, do something entirely ineffective, or do something ethically problematic. I think such downsides should be taken fully into account. ↩