I was just reading Seth Godin's blog where there was a little cartoon quote saying "the market for something to believe in is infinite". Some of you might know that I was in Vegas for the weekend, and nowhere else is this philosophy more evident. We all want the big lotto ticket to hit, we want to believe that betting our 401k on the 40 to 1 odds is the right thing to do, but it almost never works out. Heck, Casino War (or alternatively "high card") is even offered, where your odds are exactly 50/50 in the long run and effectively zero in the short run (unless you have excessive amounts of cash to ride out the streaks of bad luck). Now, there is nothing wrong with having the big dream as long as it comes with the understanding that to get there, 90% of the time you have to grind it out.
An apt poker quote from the movie Rounders:
"Guys around here will tell ya...you play for a living. It's like any other job. You don't gamble. You grind it out. Your goal is to win one big bet an hour, that's it. Get your money in when you have the best of it, and protect it when you don't. Don't give anything away."
The same applies to product development, startups, etc. There is chasm between you and the big dream and hard work lays in between. Of course, Mike McDermott goes on to say:
"But finally, I've learned this...If you're too careful, your whole life can become a grind"
Grinding is a good way to get you inch by inch to your goal, but there comes a time when you need to take a risk, double up when the odds are in your favor and hope for the best :-)
As a side note, it probably helped that I won a bit this trip. My attitude could've been very different had I lost big!