About

My name is A.T. M., and I am the author of the upcoming novel <TBD>.

I write for my own enjoyment, but I do it with enough respect for the reader that I hope you will enjoy my writing as well.

I try to follow the SUCCESS formula, something I boiled down based on my observations of people that I admire and their career paths. Hopefully, I will achieve my own version of success based on it, much smaller in scale but fulfilling on a personal level.

The SUCCESS formula (in my opinion)

10% hard work, passion, and continuous practice. You can get good at pretty much anything by doing it long enough and with passion. Past a certain point, you even start getting experimental in a way that people like to mistakenly call “talent”, the word which single-handedly kills the very things it stands atop. Most humble and successful people are just self-aware. Also, nobody likes a show-off.

40% luck*

50% the people you know. If you don’t know anyone who’s anyone, you already start with a 50% handicap. For people who don’t aim for a ridiculous level of exposure, this 50% ceiling is absolutely fine.

Anyone who found success and talks about “raw talent” or “genius” or simply doesn’t start with luck and/or connections is simply full of shit and trying to trick the gullible. There are 8 billion people in the world; it’s almost guaranteed there are at least THOUSANDS of people out there capable of better things than what’s currently the mainstream offering. The talent off the market. And it’s pretty much guaranteed that it happened throughout history, as the democratization of arts and sciences is a recent development. I am 100% sure that there was a “better Shakespeare” out there that slipped through the cracks due to stupid, arbitrary reasons, and the one we got is just the best we got. Applicable to all arts, sciences, political figures, etc.

* You can increase this percentage and shrink the influence of ‘people you know’ by A) being particularly lucky or B) doing the thing you’re doing long enough; statistically, this just makes you more likely to stumble into a lucky break.