After reading a recent post here with "best advice" from 13 prominent business people, I was underwhelmed. Now I know why. I'd rather hear from you guys than from them.
The best advice I ever got was from a board member of a startup I was involved in some years ago. He was a member of the European parlaiment, had started two multi million dollar companies, and generally a guy that you would want to listen to. His advice came at a very early stage of our startup and was very simple: Make a prototype that looks great, nobody will care how the hell it works but it has to look good.
The most important thing I learned in my business classes sophomore year of college was to make the investor visualize your product no matter what you're pitching. So if you want 100k to buy a kiosk in your local mall, make a 3D rendering of what the kiosk is going to look like. And if you are pitching a new kind of bacon to a group of VCs, make damn sure your cofounder is cooking it in the back of the room and everyone there can smell it. Getting a picture into the other person's head is 90% of getting the money at the seed stage.
"Find what race you belong in, drive yourself ruthlessly to win that race. If you win, great. If you lose, go read some comics and do some beers as there's no use winning if you can't smile all the way to the finish line."
It's from a coach from long ago, but it has served me well many times outside of running.
"After you go to the bathroom, you don't just stand there and look at what you just dropped in there for all night long. At some point you gotta flush it, man." ~ Kobe Bryant
"Whether you believe you can or you believe you can't, you're right." ~ Ron Sutton
* You can tell how badly you want [something] by observing your actions each day. Are they consistent with [attaining your goal]? ~ Brian Tracy
* Character is destiny. ~ Sigmund Freud
* Heaven and hell are a state of mind. ~ The Four Agreements
* We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do. ~ Mother Teresa
* There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. ~ Richard Buckminster Fuller
* After you go to the bathroom, you don't just stand there and look at what you just dropped in there for all night long. At some point you gotta flush it, man. ~ Kobe Bryant
* Whether you believe you can, or you believe you can't... either way you're right. ~ Ron Sutton at The SBRC
* There are some things you can do something about and some things you can't do anything about... don't worry bout stuff you can't do anything about. ~ Dunno
* Work Harder. Play Hardest. ~ Me
* Attraction is not a choice. ~ David DeAngelo
* Intelligence is defined by prediction. ~ Jeff Hawkins
* "Every beginning requires an ending, another revolution around the wheel of life. Death is not sad; the sad thing is that most people dont really live at all." ~ Dan Millman
* Magnify what's best. Focus on what's next. ~ Change How You See Everything book
* Focus attention on opportunities not problems, strengths not weaknesses and what can be done instead of what cant. ~ Change How You See Everything book
* A diamond is just a hunk of coal made good under pressure. ~ Rod Weckworth
* There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see. ~ Leonardo da Vinci
I got the best one word advice from a guy from BVP (Bessemer) -
Focus
meaning "focus on doing just one thing and do it really well". That was in the context of me pitching him a business plan that included offering the service, licensing the technology and selling hardware appliances. So he said - focus and develop exactly one of these things, which is what I eventually did. In a retrospective that was the best advice between all I received.
Even the most beautiful paintings, the best novels, and the greatest scientific discoveries were 95% drudgery to create. The reason most people never paint beautiful paintings and write world-changing novels isn't because they aren't smart enough, but because they don't find it fun.
right. they prefer pokemon or football or something that doesn't require much thought or learning. since they are smart enough to do better, they are guilty of having immoral values. they ought to find better things fun, but instead are wasting their lives.
edit: looks like 8 people so far noticed that they are guilty and don't intend to change anything.
they are guilty ... they ought to find better things fun
I'm pretty sure what the downmodders are reacting against is the absoluteness of your moralism. Personally, I'm not offended by it. I'm flabbergasted by it.
Edit: this just reminded me of one of the best pieces of advice I ever received: Judge not, lest ye be judged. How's that for swinging back on topic?
Yes, I know what they are responding to. I also noticed that they, and you, failed to comment on whether what I said is true.
They could do better, but don't, that's practically the definition of immoral. They value the wrong things, again, that's practically the definition of immoral. What am I wrong about? That some of the best things ever made are better than football?
pokemon and football are higher up on the universally accepted scale of morally justifiable hobbies than internet forum flamebaiting. sorry about this - someone needed to let you know.
guilty of having immoral values. they ought to find better things fun, but instead are wasting their lives.
There are no single accepted set of moral values so the term has no inherent meaning.
Where some groups say your thoughts are a moral choice it's far more common to say it's your actions that are moral in nature.
Of those groups that feel your thoughts are important most feel doing good works is not a moral imperative let alone creating beauty in the world.
So you are basically suggesting a world view without support. And thus you are just defining your terms and not presenting an argument supported by fact. This prevents a DH6 as there is no central point that could be refuted. You are not presenting an argument as much as presenting an unsupported opinion which falls under the same category as gibberish and is not refutable.
PS: "If you really want a DH6..." present an argument supported by facts.
just because people don't agree on what moral knowledge is true does not make the term meaningless. you go on to discuss what some existing opinions on the matter are, with no particular regard for which are true, just how common they are; that isn't a way to figure out what is true, and you haven't suggested a better view than the one i put forward.
PS No one wants a DH0 reply. And they shouldn't be upvoted.
PPS You aren't allowed to call someone's writing "gibberish" in a DH6, nor ought you write significant meta about what the person is or isn't doing, or does or doesn't "really want", or anything like that. Nor does it makes sense to imply you are going to give a DH6 reply and then, within it, say that it's not possible to give one.
just because people don't agree on what moral knowledge is true does not make the term meaningless
Words or phrases only have meaning when there is a shared understanding of what they mean. GLARPF people who JAVARA understand this SLFARL VERORLRA when they SFLLKKLSA. You can't agree to that statement because it has no meaning but at the same time you can't disagree with it. If you define love as the sky and then say "the sky is love" there is no meaning to those words. Basically defining terms is semantically identical to gibberish. IMO, this is why people gave up on philosophy as a science.
PS: I don’t disagree with your original statement because it lacked meaning.
There is shared understanding of what 'morality' means. There is also disagreement. The same can be said of a wide variety of other words, such as 'christianity', 'freedom', or 'liberal'. None of these words are meaningless or useless in conversation despite the existence of some disagreement about their meanings.
No, I wouldn't call that immoral at all. Immoral, to me at least, is when you cause harm to other people.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with deciding you don't want to devote enormous amounts of time and effort to something creative. For example, you can touch plenty of people's lives and have a tremendous positive impact on the world just by being there for your friends and family, something that devoting yourself to an intensely creative endeavor probably interferes with.
Don't get me wrong - entrepreneurs, authors, and other creative people are special people. That's why they are rewarded (sometimes) with praise, admiration, or money. But that most emphatically does not mean that they are better or more moral people than those who choose to live more ordinary lives.
But anyway, use whatever words you want, I've told you what I meant: living better, more fruitful lives with more learning and thinking. And people who could do that, but don't, are guilty of living badly, living below their abilities.
This is not just a matter of opinion or taste. For example, we are only able to communicate here because of scientific achievement; that is objectively more important than pokemon. And, for example, no one is perfect, so people who correct more of their mistakes end up better than those who don't. People who think and learn more are more able and effective at correcting their mistakes to improve themselves.
Morality comes from living and the way you live, not the other way around. Morality is just one of the tools we use to live better. It's definitely not something to judge how well we live.
I upmodded you because I think you raise a valid argument. But I do disagree, because I don't think it's immoral for a highly skilled doctor to quit his profession and open up a comic book store to sell Pokemon cards instead. Yes, society will be worse off for it. But does society have a right to tell the former doctor what profession he should take up? Morals would dictate that people have a basic right to do what they enjoy, as long as they aren't hurting anyone by their actions.
But is it a waste of talent for a good doctor to quit his job and pursue a less philanthropic effort? Yeah, that's probably valid.
I don't think he owes anything to society. I think he should do what's best for himself. If that's pokemon, so be it, but he'd be better off, and live a better life, if he cared more about thinking and learning and doing great things. Good ways of life reward the doer most of all.
This is completely contradictory to your original argument. Your original argument was 'if you can do "better" and you're not-> you are guilty of having immoral values' Completely neglecting the subjectivity of morality, this statement above says that he should do what is best for himself, even if that is pokemon or football (citing your examples only..nothing wrong with pokemon or football), and I think the only global definition of morality is what one 'should do' (with a different set of rules in each subset definition).
i don't see how you can call my position contradictory just b/c you disagree that morality is objective. that's not an internal contradiction -- i consistently consider it objective.
I believe that human beings have a fundamental right to waste their lives on completely meaningless pursuits. It's what separates us from the animals.
Your post made a very aggressive move by defining "contributes little back to humanity" as immoral. It's not a bad definition, but it's very different from the common definition.
i certainly didn't define morality by contributions to humanity. as you can see in the other comments, i specifically denied that one owes anything to humanity. rather, i said morality is about having and using knowledge of how to live well, and having good values, and that the primary result is to benefit yourself.
i certainly think people have a right to waste their lives. i will not stop them, forcibly. but i will verbally criticize that decision.
'are smart enough to do better' puts subjective definitions on both 'smart' and 'better'. It's also to say that your definition of better is right.
I'm certainly not one that prefering football or even pokemon is any kind of a poor choice. I happen to prefer programing. I prefer to stretch my mind instead of my physical or social limits. That is not to say that preferring to know what it takes to be a good corner back, and executing on that is immoral.
in a world that most people strive for more important stuff like their health and some food I wouldn't say fun is the reason they don't engage into creating something novel, although some go broke just for pursuing their passions.
ha... I actually am visiting Boston right now, and lived here for about three years before moving to SF.
Boston/Cambridge area is great if you are going to school, as they are tons of students around, but after school is done, it becomes boring really fast, and winters are miserable.
There are lots of smart people around in here, but you are more likeley to meet the guy with the businness idea that just needs a developer, or the guy that worked for years, and has enough capital and connections to hire a bunch of code monkeys to implement stuff, than smart hackers getting together to do something. A lot of tech jobs around here are boring, (financial companies, enterprise stuff), and if you are young, it will be a great handicap on how VCs will treat you.
keep yourself physically as well as mentally active, as mental ability (as well as other things) are directly affected if you let yourself go physically.
The first is from a YC founder. I don't remember who, but he said "Always say yes." I tried that out for a while, and it has worked pretty well. A lot of where I am in my life is because I just said yes when I normally would have shrugged it off.
The second is from an essay by paul graham. "When given two choices, always choose the harder one." This one has become a mantra I say over and over again to myself. It hasn't failed me yet.
And finally, from Steve Jobs: "Listen to your intuition. It tends to know where you're going better than you do."
I think if I mix those three pieces of advice, I'll have a pretty respectable life.
From the newspaper London Lite on Tue 6 May 2008: "All you have to do is say yes or no to things. It's easy." -- Singer, Joss Stone, 21, has a simple trick when it comes to managing her own career.
"When given two choices, always choose the harder one."
Whenever I have been brave enough to go this route, I have been rewarded... either with an awesome prize or wisdom.
Now days I usually look for the harder option. It doesn't make sense all the time since you might just waste a lot of time but it makes a lot of sense if it will cause you to grow.
"Look, if you don't wanna do school... just get really good at something. If you're better than anybody else at something you will always be in demand."
I have a vivid memory of being six years old and seeing my dad come in the door of the apartment we lived in at the time.
My father came from a working class family. On that day, he had already been going to night school for three years, and would continue for another four years before getting a degree in computer science (this was before the days of easy, short degree programs for adults with jobs). He wore a shirt and tie every day to his job but still looked like the kind of guy who wore coveralls to work.
He slumped. His hair, thick glasses, and briefcase were dotted with rain. He closed the apartment door, looked at me, and said, "Never become an expert in something you don't like -- because then people will want you to do it ALL THE TIME."
He was a lot happier after he got his degree, in part because I think there were more and better choices of things to become good at. (The money was better, too).
Welcome, Lisa. You helped me realize what I overlooked.
I automatically thought of a mentor for best advice when the real answer was many years before.
I too have many fond memories of waiting for my father to come home. His best advice was never said explicitly, but implied every single day of my childhood, "You can do anything you want, if you apply yourself and work hard enough." I still lean on that advice every day.
Thanks for reminding me that Mark Twain was right:
"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
100 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadMy first business mentor said it a little differently:
"Perception is everything until they buy!"
It's from a coach from long ago, but it has served me well many times outside of running.
"Whether you believe you can or you believe you can't, you're right." ~ Ron Sutton
My other favorite quotes are at: http://melvinram.tadalist.com/lists/906581/public
* You can tell how badly you want [something] by observing your actions each day. Are they consistent with [attaining your goal]? ~ Brian Tracy
* Character is destiny. ~ Sigmund Freud
* Heaven and hell are a state of mind. ~ The Four Agreements
* We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do. ~ Mother Teresa
* There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. ~ Richard Buckminster Fuller
* After you go to the bathroom, you don't just stand there and look at what you just dropped in there for all night long. At some point you gotta flush it, man. ~ Kobe Bryant
* Whether you believe you can, or you believe you can't... either way you're right. ~ Ron Sutton at The SBRC
* There are some things you can do something about and some things you can't do anything about... don't worry bout stuff you can't do anything about. ~ Dunno
* Work Harder. Play Hardest. ~ Me
* Attraction is not a choice. ~ David DeAngelo
* Intelligence is defined by prediction. ~ Jeff Hawkins
* "Every beginning requires an ending, another revolution around the wheel of life. Death is not sad; the sad thing is that most people dont really live at all." ~ Dan Millman
* Magnify what's best. Focus on what's next. ~ Change How You See Everything book
* Focus attention on opportunities not problems, strengths not weaknesses and what can be done instead of what cant. ~ Change How You See Everything book
* A diamond is just a hunk of coal made good under pressure. ~ Rod Weckworth
* There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see. ~ Leonardo da Vinci
edit: looks like 8 people so far noticed that they are guilty and don't intend to change anything.
I'm pretty sure what the downmodders are reacting against is the absoluteness of your moralism. Personally, I'm not offended by it. I'm flabbergasted by it.
Edit: this just reminded me of one of the best pieces of advice I ever received: Judge not, lest ye be judged. How's that for swinging back on topic?
They could do better, but don't, that's practically the definition of immoral. They value the wrong things, again, that's practically the definition of immoral. What am I wrong about? That some of the best things ever made are better than football?
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
guilty of having immoral values. they ought to find better things fun, but instead are wasting their lives.
There are no single accepted set of moral values so the term has no inherent meaning. Where some groups say your thoughts are a moral choice it's far more common to say it's your actions that are moral in nature. Of those groups that feel your thoughts are important most feel doing good works is not a moral imperative let alone creating beauty in the world.
So you are basically suggesting a world view without support. And thus you are just defining your terms and not presenting an argument supported by fact. This prevents a DH6 as there is no central point that could be refuted. You are not presenting an argument as much as presenting an unsupported opinion which falls under the same category as gibberish and is not refutable.
PS: "If you really want a DH6..." present an argument supported by facts.
PS No one wants a DH0 reply. And they shouldn't be upvoted.
PPS You aren't allowed to call someone's writing "gibberish" in a DH6, nor ought you write significant meta about what the person is or isn't doing, or does or doesn't "really want", or anything like that. Nor does it makes sense to imply you are going to give a DH6 reply and then, within it, say that it's not possible to give one.
Words or phrases only have meaning when there is a shared understanding of what they mean. GLARPF people who JAVARA understand this SLFARL VERORLRA when they SFLLKKLSA. You can't agree to that statement because it has no meaning but at the same time you can't disagree with it. If you define love as the sky and then say "the sky is love" there is no meaning to those words. Basically defining terms is semantically identical to gibberish. IMO, this is why people gave up on philosophy as a science.
PS: I don’t disagree with your original statement because it lacked meaning.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with deciding you don't want to devote enormous amounts of time and effort to something creative. For example, you can touch plenty of people's lives and have a tremendous positive impact on the world just by being there for your friends and family, something that devoting yourself to an intensely creative endeavor probably interferes with.
Don't get me wrong - entrepreneurs, authors, and other creative people are special people. That's why they are rewarded (sometimes) with praise, admiration, or money. But that most emphatically does not mean that they are better or more moral people than those who choose to live more ordinary lives.
But anyway, use whatever words you want, I've told you what I meant: living better, more fruitful lives with more learning and thinking. And people who could do that, but don't, are guilty of living badly, living below their abilities.
This is not just a matter of opinion or taste. For example, we are only able to communicate here because of scientific achievement; that is objectively more important than pokemon. And, for example, no one is perfect, so people who correct more of their mistakes end up better than those who don't. People who think and learn more are more able and effective at correcting their mistakes to improve themselves.
But is it a waste of talent for a good doctor to quit his job and pursue a less philanthropic effort? Yeah, that's probably valid.
Your post made a very aggressive move by defining "contributes little back to humanity" as immoral. It's not a bad definition, but it's very different from the common definition.
i certainly think people have a right to waste their lives. i will not stop them, forcibly. but i will verbally criticize that decision.
I'm certainly not one that prefering football or even pokemon is any kind of a poor choice. I happen to prefer programing. I prefer to stretch my mind instead of my physical or social limits. That is not to say that preferring to know what it takes to be a good corner back, and executing on that is immoral.
There are lots of smart people around in here, but you are more likeley to meet the guy with the businness idea that just needs a developer, or the guy that worked for years, and has enough capital and connections to hire a bunch of code monkeys to implement stuff, than smart hackers getting together to do something. A lot of tech jobs around here are boring, (financial companies, enterprise stuff), and if you are young, it will be a great handicap on how VCs will treat you.
Boston is just too conservative to be fun.
The first is from a YC founder. I don't remember who, but he said "Always say yes." I tried that out for a while, and it has worked pretty well. A lot of where I am in my life is because I just said yes when I normally would have shrugged it off.
The second is from an essay by paul graham. "When given two choices, always choose the harder one." This one has become a mantra I say over and over again to myself. It hasn't failed me yet.
And finally, from Steve Jobs: "Listen to your intuition. It tends to know where you're going better than you do."
I think if I mix those three pieces of advice, I'll have a pretty respectable life.
Ironically, another useful rule is "say no more often". It can help protect your sanity and your focus.
There are times when it's hard to know which of these excellent rules to apply. Perhaps the secret is to listen to your intuition. :)
Whenever I have been brave enough to go this route, I have been rewarded... either with an awesome prize or wisdom.
Now days I usually look for the harder option. It doesn't make sense all the time since you might just waste a lot of time but it makes a lot of sense if it will cause you to grow.
Good tip!
Stated slightly more poetically by Robert Frost:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
:)
- Dad
-Paul Buchheit
My father came from a working class family. On that day, he had already been going to night school for three years, and would continue for another four years before getting a degree in computer science (this was before the days of easy, short degree programs for adults with jobs). He wore a shirt and tie every day to his job but still looked like the kind of guy who wore coveralls to work.
He slumped. His hair, thick glasses, and briefcase were dotted with rain. He closed the apartment door, looked at me, and said, "Never become an expert in something you don't like -- because then people will want you to do it ALL THE TIME."
He was a lot happier after he got his degree, in part because I think there were more and better choices of things to become good at. (The money was better, too).
I automatically thought of a mentor for best advice when the real answer was many years before.
I too have many fond memories of waiting for my father to come home. His best advice was never said explicitly, but implied every single day of my childhood, "You can do anything you want, if you apply yourself and work hard enough." I still lean on that advice every day.
Thanks for reminding me that Mark Twain was right:
"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."