Ask a hundred students at Harvard Business School if they expect to be up for a good job when they graduate, and all of them will say “yes.” Ask a bright ten-year old girl if she expects to have a chance at a career as a mathematician, and the odds are she’s already been brainwashed into saying “no.”
Expectations aren’t guarantees, but expectations give us the chance to act as if, to trade now for later, to invest in hard work and productive dreaming on our way to making an impact. Expectations work for two reasons. First, they give us the enthusiasm and confidence to do hard work. Second, like a placebo, they subtly change our attitude, and give us the resilience to make it through the rough spots. “Eventually” gives us the energy to persist.
https://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/06/the-tragedy-of-small-expectations.html
