The Efficient Market Hypothesis posits that “all asset prices reflect all available information”. Simply put, everything is priced in and it is impossible to consistently beat the market by picking stocks.
I personally extend this concept to a lot of different areas in my life, usually at my own detriment.
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Not investing in stocks/prediction markets/other assets, because I didn’t believe I’d get above average returns and it’d be futile.
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Not starting my tutoring business earlier, because I believed tutoring was a saturated niche in Victoria and it’d be impossible to compete with other companies and I’d require some sort of differentiating factor.
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Not starting my blog sooner, because I thought the only topics I’d be able to write on would be Obsidian and Anki. I thought everything else I’d talk about would be regurgitating other lessons I’ve learned from others and wouldn’t be providing new information.
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Not creating apps/tools, because I believe if it was truly a great idea someone else would’ve executed on it by now and succeeded.
All of these are of course not true:
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There are financial advisors, funds, and traders who consistently return above market returns with lower risk.
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Tutoring is not saturated, and my own business has been extremely fun to start and grow.
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I haven’t even written about Anki or Obsidian thoroughly yet, not sure what I’m waiting for I think it’s because I leave these till the last hour (it’s 11:46pm) and want to really cover them in-depth. Additionally even if my writings/learnings have been covered by others, it’s likely that the ideas/concepts I write about are new to my audience.
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New apps and technologies get built all the time.
I’ve been aware of this mental shortcoming for a while and am going to use this new year to properly reframe my mindset henceforth. Please let me know about other self-limiting beliefs you guys have experienced etc I’d be really interested in hearing other perspectives!