Dru's Notes

An AI, asked what separates the ultra successful, named tolerance for ambiguity. Most people resolve the not-knowing too early and call it prudence. Running experiments daily is how you train the opposite.

Show Notes

An AI, asked what separates the ultra successful, named tolerance for ambiguity. Most people resolve the not-knowing too early and call it prudence. Running experiments daily is how you train the opposite.

Featuring: Mark Cuban

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Creators and Guests

Host
Dru Riley
Founder of Trends.vc
MC
Guest
Mark Cuban
Featured in Dru's Notes: An AI Named the One Trait That Predicts Success.

What is Dru's Notes?

One mental model each day in a few minutes. Habits, business, building products and thinking clearly. From Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc.

"You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work."
Krishna

I saw a post on X from an account that does one thing: feed a prompt to the strongest AI models and screenshot the answer. Someone asked what one small, unnoticed thing separates the ultra successful.

The answer was tolerance for ambiguity. Most people have an uncomfortable relationship with not knowing. They resolve it too early: chase consensus, wait for certainty or quit the moment the picture gets murky.

What looks like prudence is fear dressed up as reason.

I run at least 21 experiments a day. For a long time I thought the point of each one was a win I could point to. Most of them miss. The point is the experiment itself: I do the work without knowing how it turns out.

Today that meant:

- cook a recipe I might wreck
- swap the photo on my Kindle author page
- pin a comment to funnel my YouTube viewers
- try the new interest targeting on a paid ad

Experiments build tolerance for ambiguity. Each time you act without knowing how it turns out, the next one scares you less.

The recipe, the funnel, the new targeting, the Kindle photo. I ran them today without knowing how any of them would go. You can't see where an experiment leads until you've run it.

What would you try today if the outcome was not the point?