# The Art of Doing it Anyway

*By [Ansh Chokshi](https://anshchokshi.com) · Mar 21, 2026 · 5 min read*

Canonical: https://anshchokshi.com/write/the-art-of-doing-it-anyway

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## Being early and being right are the only ways to get exponential outcomes. Everything else tends to grow slower than you expect.

The real game is simple. Put yourself in positions where those two can meet, and do it often enough that one works in your favor.

The more bets you take, the better your chances.

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## In your twenties, this matters even more. This is the phase to take concentrated bets, not scatter your effort or constantly hedge.

Hedging works when you already have volume. At the start, volume comes from committing, not protecting.

You've heard this before: not taking risks is the biggest risk. But in practice, it's more subtle.

It's not about doing random things. It's about walking away from something too soon, just because it didn't show results fast enough.

Now think about this. If you chose a path with a low success rate, how would you behave?

Would you treat the first few outcomes as the answer, or would you assume the signals are weak and give it time for something real to show up?

That difference is small, but it changes everything.

People who benefit from timing don't expect clarity at the start. They expect noise, and they stay long enough to see if they were right.

I've seen this up close. When I joined Seismic as an intern, AI wasn't even a main focus. It was a small ML team working on hard problems without a clear long term vision, this was before the ChatGPT and LLM wave.

At the time, it didn't feel like momentum. It felt like ambiguity. The work was hard, the signal was weak, and it wasn't obvious where it would lead. But over time, the same work started to make more sense in a different context, not because it changed, but because the world around it did.

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## There's a reason many high performers were once gamers or athletes. They learned this early.

The game doesn't end when you lose. It ends when you stop playing.

Lose a level and you restart. Die at the final boss and you start again. But the second run is never as slow as the first. You've seen the traps, you recognize the patterns, and even in the worst case, getting back takes less time.

That's how progress actually works. You're not starting over. You're building forward.

Action produces information. Every attempt sharpens your judgment, and after a point, it comes down to appetite.

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## The discomfort of discipline is nothing compared to the pain of regret.

Strategy matters. Luck matters. But neither replaces being early and right, and nothing helps if you don't stay long enough for timing to work in your favor.

Keep placing concentrated bets on things that feel ahead of the curve, and stay with them long enough to learn.

The odds shift. Not instantly, but eventually.

And when they do, the outcome is rarely small.

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More essays by Ansh Chokshi: https://anshchokshi.com/llms.txt