The odds are 3 to 1 against you, so how will you make sure you win? I would like to share a simple map on how **Understanding** (_What to do_ to succeed) and **Skill** (_How to do_ things correctly) work either for or against you in your quest to personal and professional success. (Right now, I am learning a lot after having done the right things in the wrong order in a recent venture.) But, _learning is good_, so let me indulge you in my failures and successes alike and provide you with a map that will hopefully make sailing smoother for you. **_1\. The North-Eastern Land of Milk and Honey: Doing the Right Things Right_** The best-case scenario (aptly colored in green in our map.) You’ve done your research and you’ve practiced your skill-set. You’ve gained an understanding of what the right steps are and you’ve deeply learned how to do them right. For example: You know that, to start a business, you want to talk to customers to understand their pain. You understand the premise of it. Plus, you’ve done your research about how to do these customer interviews correctly! You’ve read up on how to avoid leading questions, and that talking to your potential customers actually means listening most of the time. There is a very good chance you’ll learn something of value for yourself and create the success you seek. **_2\. The South-Eastern Mountains of Jon Snow: Doing the Right Things Wrong_** One of the two “better” worse-case scenarios (because you’ll at least learn a little bit if you are lucky, but likely you’ll still fail) “You know you want to do the right thing but _you know nothing_ on how to do it.” For example: You understand how important it is to talk to customers. You’ve read high-level blog posts about how to find them and gotten a few leads. Unfortunately, you did not spend any time learning _how_ to talk to them. So, instead of listening, you wind up pitching your idea and receive luke-warm enthusiasm and a bunch of maybes. You tried to do the right thing (talk to customers) but wound up sweating the technique. This will likely kill your startup. Not right now but in the future. **_3\. The North-Western Desert of Confusion: Doing the Wrong Things Right_** Another one of the “better” worse-case scenarios (because you’ll at least learn a little bit): “You’re really good at it but it still doesn’t _work_.” For example: You didn’t read about listening to customers first but instead plowed through (months) of learning to code up web-applications. At this point you can build anything and so you do. An idea pops into your head, you go full-force on it without considering “who” would actually use it. It’s a great idea. You mom thinks it’s a sure winner. And because you’re skilled, you build this thing with all the latest hoo-ha’s the market has to offer. It’s a TDDNoSQLAgileScalaHerokuSSL of a beast. It works and it will scale to millions of users. But they never come. Because you did the wrong thing. Albeit, technically, you did it well. It’s a sad story. **_4\. The South-Western Swamps of Ignorance: Doing the Wrong Things Wrong_** This one is arguably the worst. You’re uninformed about what your first step should be and you do not have the skills to execute. You’re screwed. You “think” that starting a startup today means that, just like Zuck in The Social Network, you bang your fingers (or head) against a keyboard just long enough until, magically, someone throws $100k at you (while you’re wearing a bathrobe.) Then, after a bit more banging against your keyboard, mysteriously, millions of users flock to your thing. And although you don’t even know how to code or how to deploy to a server your company is valued at billions of dollar. It’s all magic. Just like in the movies. Except it isn’t. If you do the wrong things incorrectly, you’ll wind up with nothing, not even a solid lesson or two. You’ll have to completely revisit how you think about this stuff. **_How to Increase Your Chance of Success_** Whatever your doing right now–be it starting a company, trying to do a better job at work, improving your lifestyle–you can increase your odds of success knowing about the map above. _Broaden Your Horizon_ Increasing your understanding means you have to broaden your horizon. Aim to deeply understand the place you’re trying to reach. Understand the dynamics and its life-cycles. You can’t learn enough, always strive to learn more and vaster. Cover a lot of ground. Read books, blogs, newsletters, watch videos, listen to podcasts and talk to experienced entrepreneurs and practitioners. Never stop learning more. _Sharpen your skills_ Sharpening your skills means you want to go really deep and master a skill. Because, even when you know the right things to do, you’ll still need to make sure you’re doing them right. Learn a skill and get really deep into it. Become the reigning expert on it. For example, if you want to be the technical person, learn to program and then implement a couple of projects end-to-end. From the first line of code to the finishing touches on running it in a production environment. **_Final words_** First of all, thank you for reading this. Clearly, this isn’t a complete theory. But I’ve been using it regularly now to monitor what I am doing against my personal success metrics. My examples have been around technology entrepreneurship but I think it can be applied to other fields of interest: Love, sex, education, diets. How do you navigate yourself to success? Share your experience in the comments below.