Goals can also cause a myopia that makes it so we can't see other paths that are available to us, the other opportunities we might be able to pursue … - Annie Duke

We want the world to make sense in this way, to be less random than it is.

Poker teaches that lesson. A great poker player who has a good-size advantage over the other players at the table, making significantly better strategic decisions, will still be losing over 40% of the time at the end of eight hours of play. That's a whole lot of wrong. And it's not just confined to poker.

But for so many of us, that fear of falling short makes us not want to start. As Richard Thaler quipped, "If a gold medal in the Olympics is the only grade that passes, you do not want to ever take your first gymnastics class."