“i’m still alive though so i must be doing something right” — memo to the accidental achievers
survival is proof, mediocrity is strategy.
cold open
eleven words that feel like a shrug and a victory lap at once.
drop them in a quarterly review—watch KPIs dissolve into existential algebra.
the anatomy of reluctant success
“i’m still alive” – the baseline metric nobody benchmarks but everybody fears.
“though” – the pivot from humility to flex.
“so i must” – inference disguised as logic.
“be doing something right” – a results slide with no methodology section.
survival bias: the art of mistaking absence of failure for presence of genius.
the economics of endurance
markets reward the visible, but only the living stay visible long enough to cash in.
this phrase monetises respiration—turning heartbeat into bragging rights. in a world that worships hustle, merely persisting becomes a rebel act.
90 % – startups dead within 5 years
51 % – adults who claim they “stumbled” into their career path
1 – heartbeat needed to post a victory selfie
resilience or rationalisation?
deploy the line when metrics tank. if the board nods, you’ve bought time.
if they grimace, they read Taleb. either way, the phrase exposes who confuses luck with leverage.
we don’t chase perfection.
we invoice persistence.
footnote on statistical humility
alive ≠ optimal, but dead ≠ scalable. between those poles lies the cashflow of “good enough.”
celebrate it or scrutinise it—just don’t ignore the sample size of one.
closer
say it once. let the room mirror-check their pulse. then decide whether to iterate—
or simply outlast.