“This is the strategy for college admissions that we are using at the Khabele-Strong Incubator. Homeschoolers have done such a brilliant job at knocking down the doors of college admissions. Very, very few colleges these days require a high school diploma at all. Very few colleges really care about 20 credits, 30 credits, whatever. Forget the credits. What colleges want is amazing young people.

“The example I like to give is when I went to Harvard, the student with the lowest SAT scores in my entry class had been elected Mayor of a small town in Michigan at the age of 18. If your child can get himself elected Mayor of a small town at the age of 18, nobody cares about the test scores. Similarly, if he or she can write a software program that sells, if they can create a YouTube channel that gets a lot of hits, if they can write a novel and get it published — you know, if they do something amazing. That matters, in college admissions and in life.”

https://medium.com/@williamkiely/michael-strong-how-to-give-your-child-an-expensive-private-education-for-less-than-3-000-per-year-a8aa2f37b5c9

True.

Paul Graham suggests looking for work that doesn’t feel like work.
http://www.paulgraham.com/work.html

Another is to think about how your values and beliefs differ from the mainstream, since that might open up opportunities other people think aren’t important but you do.
http://blakemasters.com/post/22866240816/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-11-notes

If there’s an area that is generally important enough to the world to warrant notice and motivates people long term, chances are its going to have thick competition.

I’d add on that it helps if you are willing to do something that is so off-putting that most other people aren’t willing to do it, especially not long term.

But that’s a real bummer to hear.

It’s a great point Adam!

We should provide more recognise the people who initially join the founders at the right moment who make it possible for a project to actually take off rather than stagnate. I’m not sure how to do that though.