Sunday morning breakfast. And suddenly… “This is not fair!”

Say hello to my daughter, whom I’ve asked to clean up the table.

First, I am proud of her attitude. I would never have imagined pushing back like this against my parents.

Second - she is right. It’s not fair at all. We eat all together, but this time it’s her chore to clean it up. We don’t have any system. She doesn’t do this every day. This is a type of chore that happens once in a while between the three of us. Oh, I wish the cat could clean up too. Then it would be four of us.

In general, whole life is like this. It’s not fair, and on top of that, no one guarantees anything. As Charlie Munger said in one of his public speeches: “Have low expectations. Have a sense of humor.” Chasing fairness is a time-consuming, frustrating process that leads to rage and depression.

I’m telling you, this is the easiest path to get yourself unhappy. I spend a lot of time rationalizing things that happened to me, my friends, and my family. A lot of those things are not fair. But guess what? I lowered my expectations. I channeled my brain computations on things that matter.

In career and entrepreneurship, fairness is often just a myth. Large companies may present it attractively in their vision documents. Reality is different. If the best product experience would win. Will we all use SalesForce today? NO.

Real winners learn the rules of the game, even when the rules suck. They find leverage, timing, and allies.

Look at successful patterns. Double down on things that are working at the moment. Fight for advantage, not for fairness.

There are always others who are doing it better than you. Become a pattern-matching learning machine. Study every day, learn something new, and apply it.

If you’re still worried about my kid, then you need to know that I ended up splitting the work with her. It turned out that somehow she has an ability to negotiate a lot better than I do. Something I need to learn.