Rohit: "I think I took the wrong path. OK, not so much the wrong path but the wrong approach to the right path."

Anil: "How so?"

Rohit: "I shouldn't have worked so hard all these time. I should've just party more."

Anil: "You don't like parties that much."

Rohit: "You know what I mean. I'm saying I should've fucked around more, be decadent once in awhile as opposed to abstaining most of the time."

Anil: "You're regretting being the marshmellow kid who delayed your gratification and waited for larger reward?"

Rohit: "Yeah I'm starting to think I would've ended up in the same place with half the effort I spent."

Anil: "And still get your lifetime achievement award on that wall of yours?"

Rohit: "Probably, and not because I'm that talented. Look I thought that without my hard work I wouldn't have gone this far. But that's simplistic."

Anil: "You want to say it's luck."

Rohit: "No it's not luck either; it's the wave. Think about it, you and I came from a period of boomtime. The macro economy situation was optimal, the economic pie was growing. There were more opportunities than there were warm bodies to exploit them. All you have to do to stay afloat is to not be a deadbeat."

Anil: "So long as we're in a place that's growting fast, we're going to end up in a better state than not, unless you go out of your way to wreck yourself. That's what you're saying?"

Rohit: "Pretty much. I could've played more Counter-Strike and still have gotten my lifetime achievement award, because the macro economic tailwind simply can't help but push us to higher places.

Rohit continues: "It could very well have been the opposite. Without the tailwind of economic growth, all my effort would've count for nothing. I could've worked twice as hard and ended up worse off than when I started."

Anil: "It's indeed not easy to notice a giant wave when you're in the middle of it."

Rohit: "I fear I've misallocated my finite resources. I could've played so much harder and end up better for it."

Anil is almost convinced.

Anil: "No hold on. This tailwind you're talking about. It's as much about a place as it's about a domain."

Rohit: "How?"

Anil: "There are always people in a gangbuster region doing dead-end work. They hardly get any tailwind busting their asses. Yet you get to move up the social ladder compared to them. Why? Because you work in a sector with tailwind and they didn't."

Rohit: "Sounds right. I think I know where you're going with this."

Anil: "Why didn't they?"

Rohit: "They didn't catch the tailwind. For whatever reason, they didn't know how to."

Anil: "Right. What did it take for you to get to work in this domain to begin with? You put in helluva effort without even knowing it."

Rohit: "Maybe."

Anil: "Things get easier when you've caught on to the wave, but the hard part is getting in front of it before it reaches."

Rohit: "You're right, I didn't realize much of what I do is about staying ahead of the curve."

Anil: "Think about the effort it takes to learn to do what you do. And then think about the hard work it took before that to decide that it's the right thing to work on. How much time does it cost you and me to try to spot what's coming? How about the cost to even qualify to do so?"

Anil continues: "If you've been complacent about it, you wouldn't have been able to spot future waves in the middle of parties. Some people might, but you can't."

Rohit: "Had I been complacent I would've ended up where everybody else ended up. It might still be net positive when the entire region has grown richer, but I would've stayed in the same social strata."

Anil: "Maybe that's not a bad thing, but that's not what we're talking about. Be careful of playing the status game. The point is you're wrong about having to pay the price of effort. To be able to catch any tailwind at all is itself the hard work."