Most of the successful abnormals have deep motivation to do things differently. They may even seem like rebels. If we are fearless & ready to take risks in life, we may be coined as abnormals & there is a chance of success as well.
I honestly believe the vein of this book being presented is "try hard and maybe you'll get lucky."
I'm sorry I can't find it, but there was an article on here a month or so ago called something like "to get ahead, focus on the metagame." The idea is to work on things that will help you get actual benefits in life. For example, spend your energy at work making sure your boss knows you do a good job, and forget about actually doing a good job. While some folks find that hard to swallow, it's how you get a high salary and promotions.
You imply that what makes you happy makes others happy.
A programmer who obsessively programms random side projects in his spare time is completely engaged with them and likes to do that because he enjoys it on some level.
So if you think that this is worse than watching netflix or wasting time with mundant social interactions...well...I guess that doesn't make you bad.
If you are doing whatever makes you happy, what is this style of article for? If you are trying to alter what makes you happy to be successful then maybe that is a recipe for unhappiness.
Lol this comment is absurdly condescending. I think the issue is more with picking "abnormal" as a goal, from reading this book, and then trying to develop abnormal traits to get there; in contrast to being intrinsically motivated to work hard on and specialize in something, which is obviously fine.
Additionally, one could argue that fixating on the "abnormal" language is a surface level reading of this and an unfair criticism, which I think is partially true. But if I were to rephrase "be abnormal" based on this article, it would just end up at "be unusually good", which isn't very insightful.
The opposite of being singularly driven in the way you describe is not necessarily 'watching netflix or wasting time with mundant social interactions' (sic).
Do you really think those are the only two options? You've made a strawman out of his (admittedly short) response.
I can imagine someone who pushes themselves outside of work, and also makes time for sports, loved ones, and other intellectual pursuits. Perhaps by cutting down on some of that mundane time wasting you mentioned.
Maybe so, but a better comment would explain why. Otherwise it just reads as a sort of "nuh-uh", which goes against the HN guideline against shallow dismissals:
Yeah, this sounds like a slightly more demented, self help-ey version of Outliers. The actual bullet points here are less weird than than "be abnormal", they're more pretty standard entrepreneur-oriented self help fare.
Happiness is highly overrated and I doubt it even exists as a constant state of being. People thrive on different amounts of stress and many people need a certain amount of stress to remain sane.
My understanding is that people have a pretty consistent "set point" of happiness that may vary, but generally returns to the set point. See research on lotto winners.
We surveyed a large sample of Swedish lottery players about their psychological well-being and analyzed the data following pre-registered procedures. Relative to matched controls, large-prize winners experience sustained increases in overall life satisfaction that persist for over a decade and show no evidence of dissipating with time. The estimated treatment effects on happiness and mental health are significantly smaller, suggesting that wealth has greater long-run effects on evaluative measures of well-being than on affective ones. Follow-up analyses of domain-specific aspects of life satisfaction clearly implicate financial life satisfaction as an important mediator for the long-run increase in overall life satisfaction.
Does Money Buy Happiness? A Longitudinal Study
Using Data on Windfalls
The most fundamental idea in economics is that money makes people happy. This
paper constructs a test. It studies longitudinal information on the psychological
health and reported happiness of approximately 9,000 randomly chosen people. In
the spirit of a natural experiment, the paper shows that those in the panel who
receive windfalls -- by winning lottery money or receiving an inheritance -- have
higher mental wellbeing in the following year. A windfall of 50,000 pounds
(approximately 75,000 US dollars) is associated with a rise in wellbeing of between
0.1 and 0.3 standard deviations. Approximately one million pounds (1.5 million
dollars), therefore, would be needed to move someone from close to the bottom of a
happiness frequency distribution to close to the top. Whether these happiness
gains wear off over time remains an open question
The first link is super interesting, thanks for sharing! We are at a weird point in the social research space where we can't run any double blinded studies, so end up with a lot of conflicting information.
Worth pointing out that the second link addresses year 0-1, which most proponents of the happiness set-point agree is changed. IIRC, the original research looked at satisfaction and happiness around the 2 year mark.
There is also the concept of the hedonistic treadmill, which may not be provably true, but has certainly been present in my own life (and a useful lens to examine my life through).
Because one is not a robot. Our purpose in life is not to serve others and be useful without serving ourselves.
Doing both is great of course, and leads to the most successful societies we have today.
who's a super successful normal person then? I nominate Henry Ford, for no particular reason.
I sort of think people will find something abnormal about any super successful person, a great success implies greatness and strangeness beyond the success.
Many normal people are super racist, so, Henry Ford does indeed qualify as a super-successful normal person.
My meta-point, of course, is that while excellence and the desire to achieve it (along with a bit of glory) can be admirable, success in life - in living your life, a good life - is wildly different from the famous people - any of them - whom society presents as a "success."
I'd rather be healthy and have meaningful, healthy relationships and "unsuccessful" than unhealthy and "successful" - and, I think that's _real_ success!
I guess it was off-topic and hopefully that was why you got downvoted, and not because people didn't want to be reminded about Henry Ford's racism but who knows. Anyway I didn't downvote, have upvoted now to make up for it even though I'm kind of a judge people by the standards of their time type re Ford's morality. I'm sort of tired of people downvoting for what seem frivolous or personal reasons.
I spend hours every day dedicated to doing things to improve my skills to become more valuable in IT. People think I'm crazy, but in the time frame I have begun to do this (since my daughter was born) I can now probably run circles around anyone else who would have started at the same time.
Hours of dedication, every day, is not normal. It's probably not healthy either, but I got a late start and I need to catch up.
I'm curious about the timing. Many people seem to find it more difficult to maintain this level of dedication after they have kids. What made things different in your case?
Not OP, but I've had friends in similar situations. When infants, they're pretty easy to keep an eye on while cramming / self-teaching. It's when they start running around more that it becomes harder, especially if you have a significant other who is also busy with work.
Usually it is partner that does all the nighttime waking up during baby time. And the partner that deals with all the interruptions the toddler produces and the partner that generally does all childcare.
And then partner leaves you from anger at your self-centered approach to existence.
Not speaking from experience - I just have three kids, do what I can to take care of them despite being the primary breadwinner, and can't imagine the resentment that must stack up if you just drop all the sleepless nights and weekends of kid-juggling on your partner.
Never mind that you'll lose 7/8ths of the whole point of having kids with this approach, too.
I'm sorry about this, I only now realized how many people responded to this post. I kind of which that Hacker News had notifications so you would know that I am replying to you. At this point replying seems like sort of a lost cause but if you do happen to get this I thought this question was important enough to warrant answering.
That level of dedication came to me because I was not very disciplined when I was younger and hadn't developed any marketable skills. I grew up poor and I didn't want her to grow up poor. So I threw myself into something I had an aptitude for and I started working my ass off at getting better at it. Though, one could say that any effort is considerably more than I had put in before.
I really want what is best for my daughter. I have to give her a better life. So because it has become so important, that's why I work so hard. She interferes sometimes, but I'm not going to let that stop me from giving her a better life.
In IT you need to average a few hours per week learning new things just to keep up, since the half life of what you already know is probably about 5 to 10 years. Other professionals also need continuing education, such as doctors, veterinarians, and lawyers, but IT probably requires more than other professions.
You can also learn the new technologies on the job. It requires some active career manenourving and perhaps can't always be done, but I have spent very little amount of time learning outside of work hours in the past 7 years, and am making top rates (and working with latest in-vogue tech).
I've found this mindset has led to some of my least healthy and least-disciplined decisions.
Then again, I think of "discipline" as doing the work to tend to the garden that feeds you. Maybe in your life-situation, you need to pass up the opportunity to play with a child.
Curious about what you're doing. I also dedicate a good amount of time each day to learning, but am still pretty skeptical about the ROI for some of the things I'm doing. I spend a lot of time on Coursera, reading eng. blogs, watching WWDC videos (since I do iOS).
Doing that will make you more better in the iOS space, so it's definitely worth doing; there is a LOT to learn in that area.
What has been my personal compounding interest kinda thing has been architectural design, data modeling and databases (SQL), loads of things that are not exclusive to one language or environment.
Lots and lots of practice in programming projects that I personally find interesting. I read a lot of tutorials when she was born, but found no tangible rewards. It was only when I begun to put theory into practice that I started to see results.
But the biggest thing I did was get a job in IT. Then I went back to college. In college I think I work harder than most of my peers, who seem to struggle with something as simple as appending to a list in Python, or understanding a while loop in Java.
Meanwhile I am working on a portfolio so I can get a job as a programmer. Here's one of the sites I made recently: http://pichart.com It's not much, but it's a start.
The funny thing about knowledge work is that it sits somewhere between additive and compounding.
Additive like: Let's say you shovel sand into a pit and you shovel 1% more than your peers every day for a year. By end of year, you will have shoveled 1% more.
Compounding like: You're a derivatives trader and make 1% more returns every day for a year than your peers. By end of year you will have made 3780% more.
Knowledge isn't perfectly compounding, but it must necessarily build upon previous knowledge. Abnormal levels of investment and dedication in learning definitely pay off in the long run and compound faster than you would think.
Spend time looking for absolutely well curated, well reviewed learning texts regarding a topic that interests you, often in the form of a university course or a blog on a specific topic. Then dedicate time every day to go through it, really be present, make notes and finish. Try learning approaches like spaced repetition learning.
If you want to solidify your knowledge, make a 30-min talk for your peers about the topic. Commit to make it perfect and be prepared for their questions.
And remember that friendship must be actively maintained.
Every fact worth learning will be useful in the application of some particular skill, and will be of little use outside that context. Skills are the part of this equation that compound with each other, and sometimes in unintuitive ways; the more and varied mental skills you’re able to acquire, the easier it gets to learn new ones.
What I've found is that the real challenge for a beginner is making continuous and sustained progress. The key number in the (1.01)^365 equation is the ^365 part. Do something difficult every single day.
Beyond just sticking with it, you also need to continually challenge yourself. Avoid staying into the comfort zones that fear and ego will shunt you into.
These are very difficult to do as a beginner because you're going to encounter so many demoralizing roadblocks. I still remember when I first started writing code. It was incredibly painful. Things that now take me minutes would take days.
The real key here isn't some technique that will make the learning easier, it's in getting the emotional fortitude to push through these struggles. Your struggles will be unique and it's impossible for me to prepare you with solutions for every novel challenge you face. "Ask not for lighter burdens, ask for stronger backs" and all that jazz. There's a lot of resources online, esp. on Youtube, about increasing mental discipline. Cold showers, fasting, mental discipline, stoicism, etc. I recommend investing some time into trying these techniques for improving pain tolerance.
Handy people can truly appreciate how true that statement is.
If you fix enough things, you build a collection of tools and techniques that let you fix just about anything. You also build a lot of confidence in your own repair skills.
Two years ago, I bought my first motorcycle. I was afraid to change the oil on it. I'm currently rebuilding a motorcycle engine. A lot of that knowledge carries to bicycles and cars, so in a sense, it compounds.
Never in my life have I found these totally generic advice collations useful.
They're always vague, unfalsifiable, borderline platitudes. They "work" for the same reasons horoscopes work, and I think a sizable minority, if not majority, of people publishing such work are just sociopathic profiteers.
This post is an advertisement, but sadly that seems to be the origin of most content on the internet now - at least the SEO optimized results that fill the first (1-10?) pages.
As a counterpoint, I’ve found these books to be extremely useful and it has had profound positive impacts on my decisions.
It’s not telling you to wake up at 4am because that’s what [unicorn startup ceo] does. The advice given here is how to step back and find solutions, which is great for people who have difficulty arriving at those points.
Likening it to horoscopes because it doesn’t work for you is like me dismissing books on dieting because I’m already slim.
Lots of people don’t have positive role models, good teachers, mentors, or even stable parents. So even things as simple as “don’t be quick to anger, step back and think about the long term consequences” are lessons that many people have never been taught.
> Never in my life have I found these totally generic advice collations useful.
I only check the HN comments for posts like this. That's where the real meaty content is where actual programmers/engineers talk about what may or may not have worked for them.
Another book selling the illusion of control. And this idea of "becoming abnormal" borders on creepy and cultish.
Successful people have the right combination of personal traits for the circumstances they find themselves in. In other words, they got lucky, and that luck will NOT translate to anyone else. And that's really about all you can say about it. Sure, learn some time management and people skills, but the rest is beyond your control, so stop worrying about it and be comfortable in your own skin. You're not going to be wildly successful, but you'll have a far better time being happy. And time is the only thing given in about equal measure.
>Successful people have the right combination of personal traits for the circumstances they find themselves in.
Personality traits aren't set in stone: people can and do change their personalities. Just not when they believe such things can't be changed, because somebody who believes something cannot be changed is not going to find a way to change it.
Warning: this post is a generalisation that could offend some people. I’m writing it because I feel I have to.
This reads _very_ American. By that I mean both a good and, more so than ever in 2020, a bad thing.
The good is obviously the undying optimism, self belief resilience and competitiveness I see displayed in the American way of life so often.
The bad is how it lays the responsibility for outcomes solely at the individual’s feet. “Not terribly successful? Stop blaming your kids, your marriage, it’s YOUR fault, you’re the one not doing enough”.
When does society get a share of the blame? When do you stop playing a game that’s rigged against you? Do you forever keep doing _more_ reducing yourself to a life of penitence and toil to be “exceptional”?
This black or white, if I’m not a winner I’m a loser mentality is terribly unhealthy to the individual, society and frankly, to other nations.
I didn't read any of that in this article. Maybe the not accepting excuses point?
One type of leader I've encountered in my career is the one who won't accept accept excuses. "If you can't do it, I'll get someone who can." It's not personal, it's a business.
Another type of leader I've encountered is one who builds the team up and accepts the occasional failure, knowing that in the long run there may be more wins because the team will grow professionally.
Personally, as a leader I find myself more in the second group. However, both are really equally valid, in the long run--in that they have an equal chance to achieve business goals.
How are the other two points (Don't languish in what you can't change, look for a solution in every failure) an "American" viewpoint?
This is definitely a fair critique, and as I myself am _very_ American, I feel I should respond, if only to understand better myself.
> The bad is how it lays the responsibility for outcomes solely at the individual’s feet.
I’m curious: shouldn’t a manual for self improvement emphasize individual responsibility? Granted, it would be a terrible way to evaluate outcomes. But that’s not the goal here. The goal is to be individually exceptional.
> Do you forever keep doing _more_ reducing yourself to a life of penitence and toil to be “exceptional”?
This seems like a bit of an exaggeration. The article doesn’t advocate a narrow, singular focus on these 3 traits. That would be terrible advice (even if the goal is to emulate Ms. Buffet, for example). Of course there are reasonable limits. Who said otherwise?
> When do you stop playing a game that’s rigged against you?
“Relentlessly solution driven” in fact requires this, no? If you can’t win because it’s rigged, change the game.
The bit that bothers me, I guess, is that it seems so easy to give up on hard things if you don’t believe the bits the article states. I know many smart people who can’t ignore things they can’t control - and it makes them unhappy. I know others who struggle to focus on solutions rather than blame - and it makes them unhappy too. Why do these traits, in moderation, make Society worse?
Hey curiousllama, I think you bring up very valid points. A few other posters have brought up one or two arguments that have some overlap so let me try to clarify where I’m coming from and post a useful response.
I don’t advocate that the individual shouldn’t bear the brunt of the responsibility. I’m trying to say that the responsibility should be _shared_ by society.
I see how the main goal of the book is indeed to focus on the individual and their drive to being “exceptional”. So for people who find themselves dissatisfied with their comfortable mediocrity, so to say, I can imagine there is some value here in solving problems and removing obstacles.
Finally, what I’m trying to say is: I think this concept can and is applied very generally to a large population that find themselves, at the individual level, at drastically different positions in the hierarchy of needs. What roadblocks are you powering through when you might not have shelter or food? When you feel unsafe? Should we dismiss those individuals’ “excuses”.
That’s what I meant by very American. The example of Ms B. Who is clearly a one in a million type success story. Should we really bother dismissing every other pressure around us because someone was somehow able to do it? We’re her children happy and healthy? Did her marriage survive? Should we all strive to be Ms B, costs what it costs, regardless of food, shelter, security, health etc.
I've been thinking about this problem a bit too, this distinction between individual and collective responsibility. Here's what I've arrived at so far:
First, you have to have your own definition of success. Not everyone wants to be a rich entrepreneur with a million side hustles. Don't fall for the implicit message writers like this promote that you are a loser if you haven't built a multi-million dollar business from scratch. Identify your own goals and what makes you happy and work towards that even if its not in line with what pop leadership articles like this promote.
Second, forgive me for re-stating what this post already said, but focus on what you can control. This is where individual responsibility is important. Not only will you be more effective, but you'll be happier.
Third, you should make efforts that are within your control to improve structures and institutions that are making it easier for some people and harder for others. I would argue there is a moral imperative on those of us who are the beneficiaries of these systems to put extra focus here. Vote every chance you get. Donate time and money to organizations pushing for systemic change. Find opportunities to make the world a more equal place and act on them.
Blaming society and sitting back is counterproductive. Blaming society and taking agency with respect to that injustice is a productive, performing response. (As is trying to “tough through” the adversity, as unlikely as that is to succeed.)
At the individual level, focussing on elements one has control over is a sensible strategy. At the society-wide level, the discussion must be more complex.
> Blaming society and sitting back is counterproductive. Blaming society and taking agency with respect to that injustice is a productive, performing response. (As is trying to “tough through” the adversity, as unlikely as that is to succeed.)
> At the individual level, focussing on elements one has control over is a sensible strategy. At the society-wide level, the discussion must be more complex.
It's a recipe for beating-oneself-up misery for most people, though.
It's all a bit zero-sum, right? Anything "exceptional" stops being exceptional when everyone thinks the secret to doing better than others is to do those things.
You'll never have a world where any individual can simply "go make themselves exceptional" because exceptional is by definition the exception.
This works out ok for the people who happen to have the right conjunction of exceptional ability and market demand for that sort of skill.
But the people preaching this stuff are much more commonly the ones sitting where they are by fortuitousness or historical accident, who greatly benefit if the "other people" believe it's their own fault they're stuck in a constantly-intensifying rat-race (over the last 5 decades or so).
There's no danger of everyone being exceptional though, given human nature, which is essentially the point. Normal emotional defensive mechanisms such as making excuses and avoiding confrontation impede your long term goals. Trying and failing "hurts" more than not trying at all, so there's a self-defeating optimization process being performed by people typically. Of course your own mind isn't the only obstacle holding you back, but it can be a big one. I agree this kind of fluff is off-putting for technical-minded people, but the value of the point seems pretty clear.
As for the anecdotes and success stories, I also agree they are not convincing. In business they can be very useful though, since starting a new venture requires a lot of leaps of faith and uneducated decisions, something paralyzing to most people. Having a model for how others proceeded is very valuable.
Your points here are exactly why I am no longer religious.
Also, if you are easily offended, I'd skip the rest of this, I do not want to offend anyone, these are my opinions alone.
If you worship any God, then you can never be as good as your God. You can never be #1 even after you die. The whole framework sets you up for a life of the inability to win. You are at BEST going to be #2 because you can never ever be #1. Every religious person who worships a God is going to feel like they are a loser; because they are not and never will be #1 a 'winner'. It is exhausting.
I have not had a good experience with Christians in my everyday life. I'm sorry to say that, but when I meet someone and they tell me they are Christian; I immediately become suspicious of them. I have learned this from many, many interactions.
I think it has something to do with comparing yourself to God. "I am not #1. Sometimes I am close to #1 and sometimes I am very far from #1. When I am far from #1, maybe I steal a little or lie a little. I know I can get closer to #1 later and be forgiven (by the true #1)."
It's a sliding scale. There's no permanence.
They only way to win that game is to not play. Once you realize that not only are you already #1 there is no #2. You are responsible for you. That means you live exactly by your own personal values. For me it means I never lie or steal and that decision is not based on how I feel about myself!
I have a friend who is a Buddhist monk. We were talking about emotions recently and she said something I now think about every day: "You can't control your emotions. Don't even try, they are far too powerful. You can only control your BEHAVIOR."
I am in control of me. Nothing else is in control of me, not even my own emotions. And since I am in control of me, who else is to blame if my life is not working out?
That's not American my friend, that wisdom is ancient.
Well that depends on your value system. If you define your own value system, you decide where you are. If you get a value system from someone or something else: they decide.
Thanks. Are you #1 in honesty? Are you #1 in hard work? From what I understand, you do not believe in a God because believing in one means you will never be #1 in honesty or #1 in hard work, and it is your goal to be #1 in them.
It's a strange way of looking at things, because you cannot really measure being the worlds most honest person, unless you meet and test all the 7 billion people alive today, and how exactly will that test be conducted? And since we're not restricting being #1 to human beings (God is not human), how about ants? I'd say an ant is more hardworking than any human being alive, so none of us will ever be #1 at hard work. Whats so wrong with being #2 at hard work? Or even #8888,888,888,000 at hard work? I doubt I am #1 in anything I value (independence, knowledge etc) but it does not matter at all. The opposite infact, seeing people better than me in things I value only inspires me to greater heights.
You are not in control of you though. You are at best a little boat on the governmental, legal and economic ocean; and those waters are full of monsters.
I respect your opinion - it's hard to put those out there.
As a counter thought, would a 'hole' in the argument be that religion doesn't ask, require, or expect you to be #1. It just asks you to try to improve and to become a better person. How could Gd expect you to be as good as "he/she/it/they"? Gd would have created you, and designed your limitations.
Why not separate G*d's expectations of you from your interpretations of it? Just say "i'm falliable, always will be; always improving, always will be"
So what you are saying is God built failure into me intentionally. Therefore I could just point to that and say "Well I failed because I was prebuilt knowing I was going to fail". I don't accept that. I say "I failed because of something I, personally did not or could not do yet. I will correct that. It's not divine, it's just work and it's on me."
Depends on your branch. Calvinism claimed there were only 1300 Elect who were guaranteed a place in heaven. Lot of effort spent trying to figure out your ranking
It's not the competion that matters, not even playing against or defeating the #1 tennis player. Think of it as a tennis point being played. If both you and #1 play the point perfectly, a beautiful play that will remain in tennis history and create a sense of wonder in many people that watch that point, it does not even matter if you win or lose the point, what truly matters is being part of something great, greater than yourself, greater than the current #1 in the tennis.
But to be able to do that, it requires a lot of work, a lot of dedication, and a mindset of playing for the game's sake, playing to feel good and have fun and make other people feel good watching, not trying to win a competition. Also, it doesn't mean that the point could not be played in a different way which is also perfect and beautiful in its own, so other people could potentially play that point and that doesn't mean they're lesser players that you, and it doesn't mean that somebody who can win all points and matches is also playing the most beautiful tennis ever.
You've described the hero's journey but I don't see how it applies to the context of this thread? Is your point; that the metaphor for something greater than yourself is an adequate replacement for religion or something?
Why can't I be better than God? Interpersonal comparisons are never particularly healthy, but I don't see how he would always come out on top. He had questionable design aesthetics sometimes, to say nothing of the often deadly implementation bugs. And that's not even getting into the choice to build things in his system that can be used for terrible, immoral purposes.
Your whole post is extremely American. Why do you want to be #1 compared to anyone, let alone compared to God? You are no longer religious because your self-centric world-view is incompatible with believing anyone can be better than you, which includes God? I have trouble believing you are serious.
You completely missed my point. Here: God doesn't exist, I'm in competition with myself only, I can't control the outcome or anyone or anything at all including my emotions, only my individual behavior.
I see. That makes more sense. That being said, you are still framing life as a competition/game which I'm not sure I see the point in. For what it's worth, I view religion mostly as a mechanism for encouraging behavior which is collectively beneficial. We are all better off if we act in ways that are trustworthy, even if that means individual sacrifice in some cases, and so the whole afterlife b.s. is just a way of suggesting a lifestyle which is pro-social. Case in point, even people who supposedly believe in paradise don't act like it.
We do live in a society where we are constantly bombarded to do more, learn more, be better. The cost of this though is a reduction in family time, personal time and just me time. In many organizations, in order to retain your position you have to continuously improve your skill set, there is no room anymore for just getting a job, working a 9 - 5, going home to be happy and to see your family and then retiring with a solid retirement after.
Its just a constant hamster wheel where we are desperate just to survive. Every year benefits cost more and provide for less. Every dollar you earn buys a little bit less. Houses cost a little bit more. Economically every 10 years now there is a massive event that spurs massive layoffs where everyone that was just doing their job is let go and only the elite remain. Those that are let go are forced to step down the totem pole and take jobs that provide a salary that leads to a reduction in security.
Life now seems to just be about work and work just seems to be about squeezing every hour and dollar out of you until someone younger and hungrier comes along to take your place and be bled by the system. I don't think that this is the way its supposed to be.
Surely radical individualism results in the individual blaming society at their whim. You stop playing a game that's rigged against you as soon as you can afford a plane ticket.
Where are these countries that will just lift the road up to meet your feet as you walk forward?
Well let me ask you this, can you answer like where are you located? Do you have any near term- long term goals!? What do you believe is specifically holding you back from achieving any one of the goals that you mentioned? Have you got any specific measurable plans laid out in an effort to achieve some of those goals? How do you manage your Time? I could go on for some time with similar questions to get to the bottom of whatever your concern or goals may be, this is coming from a performance coach perspective. Try answering some of these, genuinely and if possible report back because as an American living in a highly dense and competitive metro city, I’ve seen many rise and many fall. This is why we are the way we are.
This article was focused on business and used sports metaphors exclusively - these are fields in which the "American" approach works well because you're competing with other people with binary outcomes. Obviously this is not the best approach for science where the outcomes are less black and white.
Well of all the generalizations used to describe americans nowadays this may be one of the nicest.
But I do have to say, as for blame, society gets eviscerated 24/7 on every public forum and other platform. Stories like this are more the exception, even here. For every professor publishing on "individual success" there may be 100 researching "group studies" of one kind or another.
I've watched enough people grow up, become rich and powerful, then find in their 40s they have absolutely no skills to enjoy the fruits of their labor. They stopped practicing empathy so long ago to get to where they were they don't even realize how much of life's genuine enjoyment they are missing. There are a few who have the time of their lives the whole way through. Not very many.
In short, just because one can, doesn't mean one should. Understand that you are closing off doors as much as opening new ones - make sure that you don't forget which ones you deep down don't want to close off.
>Understand that you are closing off doors as much as opening new ones
You can't have everything. You must sacrifice family if you want success and if you want family you must sacrifice success. Some people aren't even aware of that and blame the former for their lack of success.
I don't think that's true at all, pulling two obvious examples out of the air, both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, two of the most successful men in history, are both seemingly dedicated to their families.
Success is also a subjective term, success here is (I think) implicitly being defined as wealth, both Gates and Buffett are hyper-successful, and I know plenty of more-ordinarily successful people with families too. Actually, I'm almost certain I know more successful people with families than I know successful loners.
>both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, two of the most successful men in history, are both seemingly dedicated to their families.
So the richest (for most part of time) and second richest man have privilege to spend time with family? What a surprise
>Success is also a subjective term
Let's not play the word game, if you made a billion dollar last year. You are successful, this is pretty much the normal definition of it. Don't change it to fit something like family matters, community matters or noble purposes imho
I don't view anyone who has amassed anything under $10MM in networth as successful; I believe me and the parent are in agreement on this.
You cannot amass this much wealth in a reasonable -- 40-50 y.os need not apply -- timeframe if you have a family commitment. Even significant others may become detrimental to that end, if they cannot accept that they're #2 now. Close relationships take time. An absolute fuckload of time.
In order to gain that amount of wealth, it takes years of 70+ hour work weeks. You will neither have the time nor inclination to spend time with tour loved ones if you're truly operating on all cylinders. If you're not, that's fine. That's your choice, but there's many more out there that don't have those kinds of personal hangups and will dedicate more time to winning.
You would not be able to understand unless you've been there.
Oh and Warren Buffett is not a paragon of family values. He has had falling outs with and disowned one of his children -- the rest is washed away by PR firms.
Gates too. Melinda would barely see him in the early days of MSFT. Neither would his first newborn child, while Gates was wrapped up in the antitrust suits.
These people were businessman first and foremost. They did not get to the top of the food chain by spending quality time with their children. Theire businesses (or passions) will always be #1 to them.
Invariably, these men have spent less time with their children and wives than any poor south americans -- who happen to have higher emotional wellness than their American counterparts.
This isn't about not having a family. Many high perfomance men have families, but they always take a back seat to their missions. Perhaps in later life when they're more established, that changes; I've seen it happen.
I think it's because I was able to connect with people so well when I was young that I went down this path.
It was just a game at the end of the day. Make the right moves, win the right prizes. But like any game, you lose the magic after a while. And unlike video games, you can't just step back and take a break from doing it, it's an unavoidable part of being human.
But you're not off-base. At this level you definitely lose touch with everything people find "normal." I've found myself not caring about other people or their problems. Why would I?
Group dynamics are emergent behavior that's coded into our DNA to increase survival, prisoner's dillema style. If someone does nothing for me or adds nothing to my life, why would I give them any of my empathy? Can't they fix their own problems? Do they wish some knight in shining armor would ride in and save them? Do they want a handout? My empathy, for free? How selfish is that.
Every problem has a solution, endless complaining gets one nowhere. When I was broke and homeless, I'd get my own hands dirty. Now that I'm comfortably wealthy, I can throw money at whatever problem pops up.
Whatever problems, emotional, physical, mental, sociological, economical, yada yada yada, that you have are your own responsibility. No one really gives a shit about anyone else; all relationships are transactional, and if you're not offering me gold beads, you're not getting my muskets.
Ranting aside, that's a brief intro to my experience and worldview. If any particular piece resonated with you strongly, please leave a reply. I'm always interested in seeing original ideas, how infrequent it may be.
> I don't view anyone who has amassed anything under $10MM in networth as successful;
> If someone does nothing for me or adds nothing to my life, why would I give them any of my empathy?
> Whatever problems, emotional, physical, mental, sociological, economical, yada yada yada, that you have are your own responsibility. No one really gives a shit about anyone else; all relationships are transactional, and if you're not offering me gold beads, you're not getting my muskets
Let me guess, you're American or living the US ?
We're not hunter gatherers anymore, we don't have to act like cavemen whose sole purpose is to to accumulate as many shiny stones as possible even if it means destroying other people's life. Sure if you decide to see the world as full of people trying to take advantage of you that's exactly what you'll see everywhere,.
What's the point of living in societies if it's to live like everyone is out there to get you and not solve problems together. You can become wealthy enough to not worry about money without acting like a 6 years old kid trying to get as many pokemon cards as possible.
I wasn't given a choice in this matter. I was dragged into this world without being consulted first. Now I am forced to align myself and my interests to countries that don't give a shit about me, and towards people that had never and would never reach out their hand, to help another's, as dirty as it might be. Why should I participate in any of this? That is exactly the point; there is no point in my participation for me, because I gain nothing, but others do gain -- at my exepense.
Few are truly out to get me, but none are truly out for me. I can say the same for just about all people in this country, even if that fact hasn't had an oppurtunity to be tested yet. We can solve problems together, but that requires two parties compromising their standards, lowering them to be able to satisfy all parties involved. If I'm able to solve mt peoblems, at less cost than I would "together," what incentive do I have to work "together?"
Would I not be a moron, perhaps even more insane and detached from reality, were I to choose this path?
You can became wealthy holding yourself to a much higher standard than the majority of the world's population -- but why would you? I don't gain anything besides popularity among the less fortunate than I, which at best is worth nothing, but at worst is a hindrance in my life.
There is virtually no downside I can see here, but I am open to being proven wrong, with a more well-crafted, and deep argument.
It all depends on how you quantify the cost of solving societal problems. If it is based on "do I have more money than yesterday", then yes sure, no one will ever be able to prove you wrong. Acting like a megalomaniac pos is a sure way to get hated by the majority without ensuring wealth, that's all I know.
You seem dead set on acting like the people/system you despise, I don't see how that solves anything.
Mah man, creating a throwaway account to write that kind of crap tells a lot about you. I wish you'll open your eyes soon enough and get out of that mentality, that's not a path for happiness.
I don't frequent this website often. I like to drop in whenever I have time, and peruse anything that might be ultra-high brow or related to financing. If I can offer my own insight on a matter, I create an account, and put my thoughts to RAM.
When I was in my late 20s I won the bitcoin goldrush. I had more money than I knew what to do with and from that I fell into depression.
It took me a while to come to the realization that I love doing things, eg I love programming, but I don't always have projects I want to be doing. Thankfully, I love just doing fun things, so turns out companies are perfect for giving me things to do.
I'm not a workaholic, quite the opposite. I have hobbies and what not, but I enjoy working.
Maybe I never learned how to enjoy the fruits of my labor, or maybe I have, being lucky enough to go through psychological growth bumping into these challenges and prospering from them.
A lot of people want to be rich and do 'nothing'- eg. sit on a beach all day or travel all the time.
Most people will experience the same thing as you did, but don't know it before hand. People want to be useful and do something, what they don't want is crap bosses and poor work conditions. From what I've observed, people with good bosses & work conditions (including adequate salary to cover their needs and save some) tend to desire less to be rich as all their needs are covered. More often people under poor working conditions & pay desire to be rich as means to get away from their situation thinking it would solve their problems.
Not only that, you also surely close old doors for the mere possibility of success.
The article opens with a story about an old lady which went to the US during one of the most immigrant-friendly times and then started a furniture store during the peak house construction boom time when land was still cheap.
I'm pretty sure that a similar immigrant entering the US nowadays will not only receive a less warm welcome, but also struggle like the rest of us during the recession.
But no matter her financial fate in the US, she'll probably have to sacrifice family relationships back home either way.
The point isn't how much factors she had in her favour. The point is, she had objectively worse starting point that millions of other people, yet she overcame them and flourished. Luck? Maybe (even "certainly" to some extent). But how many of her richer, more educated peers didn't even try (because of excuses)?
I am somewhat surprised and taken aback by the level of negative comments in the thread...
However, I suspect that the article “touched a nerve”.
In my experience, the “stronger the reaction” the more likely something is there (think Lean Startup). The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
That said, I will echo/slightly modify some of the positive comments I read: it isn’t about being “abnormal” in working 20 hour days. It is being abnormal on where you spend the time you have.
Most of the extremely successful people I know personally dont accept “reasons” for why “x didn’t occur”. I think one of the famous quotes from Steve Jobs at Apple was that once you reached a certain level (VP?), no reason is good enough, it all lands on you.
Or to paraphrase my advisor: “How do you know someone wanted something (past tense)? They got it.”
Not everyone can be abnormal. By definition, 95% of folks can’t be. The question is: What do YOU want for yourself. What is important to you that you will fight for?
For me personally, it has meant to have a meaningful family life AND a meaningful career. It hadn’t been easy. It took many short term sacrifices and focus on the long game. But in general, I have what I wanted.
Examples of sacrifice: taking a “lower paying job” so I would have more freedom to pursue what I thought was important. Going “part time”/passing up opportunities so I can be with my kids while they are super young. Taking “risks” in jobs that weren’t really “sexy” on the face of it, but had the potential for long term impact.
I mention the above to say it can work (but even now my life is far from perfect). The key however (Per the original article) is to adopt a mindset where you are in the driver seat and conversely are responsible.
By focusing on what you can control, and not wasting energy on what you can’t, you free up resources that compound over time.
To make this concrete for folks: let’s say you spend 10 mins a day on thinking how “awful” <insert pain point> is. In the course of a week, you would have spent an over an hour unproductively. Over the course of a year, over a full work week. What could you have done with an extra “week”?
It doesn’t take much, done repeatedly to make a profound difference on your life in the long term. The question is whether you are willing to.
>In my experience, the “stronger the reaction” the more likely something is there (think Lean Startup). The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
Arguing that people have the power to significantly change their lives is a challenge to many people's egos. If they believe something like "I haven't achieved X, which I'd like to, but that's fine because it's out of my control", and somebody else comes along and says "actually it is in people's control", then their ego doesn't hear that as an uplifting statement of empowerment, instead it hears it as something negative, because acknowledging that X was achievable would require acknowledging that they had failed to achieve X.
I think "touched a nerve" should be a last assumption. If you can't point to any obvious things wrong with the article maybe people are reacting to it negatively for emotional reasons. But I think it's uncharitable to just jump to that straight away. So let me lay out for you a reasonable alternative that we can prefer as an explanation for why people are responding negatively: Because it's a fundamentally bad article. I'll make that case.
The first point that the article tries to push is "Don't make reasonable excuses". To justify that point he tells a story about a woman that was successful despite facing incredible challenges. Here's the problem with that though: She succeeded, but that's got nothing to do with reasonable excuses. Did she make reasonable excuses? I don't know. Why are we taking the message from her story that we should not accept reasonable excuses? Surely a story to justify not making reasonable excuses should actually involve someone succeeding because they didn't make reasonable excuses. And this underlines a fundamental issue with the article - it's true that by definition the most successful people are abnormal. But it's not useful. The least successful people are abnormal. The important bit is how you're abnormal.
This is exacerbated by the fact the article is so basic and formulaic in its structure. It's the old 7 habits of highly effective people. You make a pithy statement, you write a little bit explaining the claim that doesn't really justify the statement - it justifies a very specific reading of the statement to the point of the pithy statement being meaningless, and then it tells you an anecdote. The anecdote doesn't justify the claim whilst simultaneously wildly over-stating the importance of the claim. John Wooden won basketball games because he stopped worrying about things he couldn't control! Great! Firstly, that's not abnormal, and secondly I'm fairly certain practicing basketball had more to do with his success.
All I'm saying is that the structure and style of this article is bad. You can argue about the merits of the things he's proposing, but they're proposed in such a 1990s self-help way of presenting these things, and it's not even well executed. As a result it's really easy to bash.
I lived by most of these mantras for 20 years and when I turned 40 I decided it wasn't worth it. Literally on my birthday I said, "I'm going to stop acting like a jerk just to get things done, practice deeper empathy, smile more, and stop working 15 hours a day.
I can (and have) build a successful company without acting like there must be some maniacal focus that makes me abnormal.
statistics are the most misunderstood of all the soft sciences
Normal literally means dead average and a lot of people use a lot of stereotypical behaviours to escape from that fat part of the 'normal' curve to varying degrees of success
Some are short term, some are longer term, some are violent some are empathetic -- it sounds like you broke away from normal even though you still see yourself as such but believe me there is no such thing as normal it's the worst of all worlds
No, at a certain point, basketball resembles building and selling ecommerce products very little, and I don't know if it's doing you a favor for anyone to listen to you torture the analogy this way. This is a poor concept for a post. I think you would need to answer the question "Which sport, if any, involves an environment closest to ecommerce marketing."
In my opinion, a more suitable sport to draw comparisons from would be jai alai:
- Balls are flying dangerously fast (204 mph)
- Game has been known to cause fatalities when it hits players
- Unpredictable, colorful, sketchy and associated with gambling markets based on match results
Can you guess why I think this sport is more similar to e-commerce marketing than basketball?
These posts miss the point of life, to me. They read as propaganda distributed by sociopaths or something.
It's intuitively obvious that if you're a relatively healthy person, and grind at a goal exclusively with no other desire, you'll eventually be at least good at it if not spectacular.
Applying that to something that you're personally interested in makes sense - but the idea that you want to be a "top performer" in some wanky capitalist game so that you can have a load of numbers and buy some fancy toys at the cost of deleting your empathy is totally absurd to most people.
That's _why_ it's abnormal, because it's a shit way to live and most people don't want it. Hell, I thought I wanted it for the longest time, eventually I grew out of it and I'm glad I did and that I'm still able to make up for lost time.
As long as you can convince yourself that you know it's possible - you don't need to like, actually do it. Go and enjoy yourself and those around you, we're only here once.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadI'll pass.
You can't just use tangential examples of the most successful people. This feels like pop-(pseudo) science.
I'm sorry I can't find it, but there was an article on here a month or so ago called something like "to get ahead, focus on the metagame." The idea is to work on things that will help you get actual benefits in life. For example, spend your energy at work making sure your boss knows you do a good job, and forget about actually doing a good job. While some folks find that hard to swallow, it's how you get a high salary and promotions.
A programmer who obsessively programms random side projects in his spare time is completely engaged with them and likes to do that because he enjoys it on some level.
So if you think that this is worse than watching netflix or wasting time with mundant social interactions...well...I guess that doesn't make you bad.
You're just average.
Additionally, one could argue that fixating on the "abnormal" language is a surface level reading of this and an unfair criticism, which I think is partially true. But if I were to rephrase "be abnormal" based on this article, it would just end up at "be unusually good", which isn't very insightful.
I actually like this language. It’s a different way of asking “what makes you different, and how can you leverage instead of fighting that?”
Do you really think those are the only two options? You've made a strawman out of his (admittedly short) response.
I can imagine someone who pushes themselves outside of work, and also makes time for sports, loved ones, and other intellectual pursuits. Perhaps by cutting down on some of that mundane time wasting you mentioned.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
*
Long-run Effects of Lottery Wealth on Psychological Well-being
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24667
We surveyed a large sample of Swedish lottery players about their psychological well-being and analyzed the data following pre-registered procedures. Relative to matched controls, large-prize winners experience sustained increases in overall life satisfaction that persist for over a decade and show no evidence of dissipating with time. The estimated treatment effects on happiness and mental health are significantly smaller, suggesting that wealth has greater long-run effects on evaluative measures of well-being than on affective ones. Follow-up analyses of domain-specific aspects of life satisfaction clearly implicate financial life satisfaction as an important mediator for the long-run increase in overall life satisfaction.
Does Money Buy Happiness? A Longitudinal Study Using Data on Windfalls
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/ajoswald/march...
The most fundamental idea in economics is that money makes people happy. This paper constructs a test. It studies longitudinal information on the psychological health and reported happiness of approximately 9,000 randomly chosen people. In the spirit of a natural experiment, the paper shows that those in the panel who receive windfalls -- by winning lottery money or receiving an inheritance -- have higher mental wellbeing in the following year. A windfall of 50,000 pounds (approximately 75,000 US dollars) is associated with a rise in wellbeing of between 0.1 and 0.3 standard deviations. Approximately one million pounds (1.5 million dollars), therefore, would be needed to move someone from close to the bottom of a happiness frequency distribution to close to the top. Whether these happiness gains wear off over time remains an open question
Worth pointing out that the second link addresses year 0-1, which most proponents of the happiness set-point agree is changed. IIRC, the original research looked at satisfaction and happiness around the 2 year mark.
There is also the concept of the hedonistic treadmill, which may not be provably true, but has certainly been present in my own life (and a useful lens to examine my life through).
I sort of think people will find something abnormal about any super successful person, a great success implies greatness and strangeness beyond the success.
Many normal people are super racist, so, Henry Ford does indeed qualify as a super-successful normal person.
My meta-point, of course, is that while excellence and the desire to achieve it (along with a bit of glory) can be admirable, success in life - in living your life, a good life - is wildly different from the famous people - any of them - whom society presents as a "success."
I'd rather be healthy and have meaningful, healthy relationships and "unsuccessful" than unhealthy and "successful" - and, I think that's _real_ success!
I spend hours every day dedicated to doing things to improve my skills to become more valuable in IT. People think I'm crazy, but in the time frame I have begun to do this (since my daughter was born) I can now probably run circles around anyone else who would have started at the same time.
Hours of dedication, every day, is not normal. It's probably not healthy either, but I got a late start and I need to catch up.
Not speaking from experience - I just have three kids, do what I can to take care of them despite being the primary breadwinner, and can't imagine the resentment that must stack up if you just drop all the sleepless nights and weekends of kid-juggling on your partner.
Never mind that you'll lose 7/8ths of the whole point of having kids with this approach, too.
That level of dedication came to me because I was not very disciplined when I was younger and hadn't developed any marketable skills. I grew up poor and I didn't want her to grow up poor. So I threw myself into something I had an aptitude for and I started working my ass off at getting better at it. Though, one could say that any effort is considerably more than I had put in before.
I really want what is best for my daughter. I have to give her a better life. So because it has become so important, that's why I work so hard. She interferes sometimes, but I'm not going to let that stop me from giving her a better life.
I've found this mindset has led to some of my least healthy and least-disciplined decisions.
Then again, I think of "discipline" as doing the work to tend to the garden that feeds you. Maybe in your life-situation, you need to pass up the opportunity to play with a child.
What has been my personal compounding interest kinda thing has been architectural design, data modeling and databases (SQL), loads of things that are not exclusive to one language or environment.
But the biggest thing I did was get a job in IT. Then I went back to college. In college I think I work harder than most of my peers, who seem to struggle with something as simple as appending to a list in Python, or understanding a while loop in Java.
Meanwhile I am working on a portfolio so I can get a job as a programmer. Here's one of the sites I made recently: http://pichart.com It's not much, but it's a start.
Additive like: Let's say you shovel sand into a pit and you shovel 1% more than your peers every day for a year. By end of year, you will have shoveled 1% more.
Compounding like: You're a derivatives trader and make 1% more returns every day for a year than your peers. By end of year you will have made 3780% more.
Knowledge isn't perfectly compounding, but it must necessarily build upon previous knowledge. Abnormal levels of investment and dedication in learning definitely pay off in the long run and compound faster than you would think.
If you want to solidify your knowledge, make a 30-min talk for your peers about the topic. Commit to make it perfect and be prepared for their questions.
And remember that friendship must be actively maintained.
You have to be comfortable with making mistakes and being bad at things, because it happens a lot when you're just getting started.
Beyond just sticking with it, you also need to continually challenge yourself. Avoid staying into the comfort zones that fear and ego will shunt you into.
These are very difficult to do as a beginner because you're going to encounter so many demoralizing roadblocks. I still remember when I first started writing code. It was incredibly painful. Things that now take me minutes would take days.
The real key here isn't some technique that will make the learning easier, it's in getting the emotional fortitude to push through these struggles. Your struggles will be unique and it's impossible for me to prepare you with solutions for every novel challenge you face. "Ask not for lighter burdens, ask for stronger backs" and all that jazz. There's a lot of resources online, esp. on Youtube, about increasing mental discipline. Cold showers, fasting, mental discipline, stoicism, etc. I recommend investing some time into trying these techniques for improving pain tolerance.
If you fix enough things, you build a collection of tools and techniques that let you fix just about anything. You also build a lot of confidence in your own repair skills.
Two years ago, I bought my first motorcycle. I was afraid to change the oil on it. I'm currently rebuilding a motorcycle engine. A lot of that knowledge carries to bicycles and cars, so in a sense, it compounds.
It's not the average but perfectly fine.
They're always vague, unfalsifiable, borderline platitudes. They "work" for the same reasons horoscopes work, and I think a sizable minority, if not majority, of people publishing such work are just sociopathic profiteers.
This post is an advertisement, but sadly that seems to be the origin of most content on the internet now - at least the SEO optimized results that fill the first (1-10?) pages.
It’s not telling you to wake up at 4am because that’s what [unicorn startup ceo] does. The advice given here is how to step back and find solutions, which is great for people who have difficulty arriving at those points.
Likening it to horoscopes because it doesn’t work for you is like me dismissing books on dieting because I’m already slim.
Lots of people don’t have positive role models, good teachers, mentors, or even stable parents. So even things as simple as “don’t be quick to anger, step back and think about the long term consequences” are lessons that many people have never been taught.
I only check the HN comments for posts like this. That's where the real meaty content is where actual programmers/engineers talk about what may or may not have worked for them.
Successful people have the right combination of personal traits for the circumstances they find themselves in. In other words, they got lucky, and that luck will NOT translate to anyone else. And that's really about all you can say about it. Sure, learn some time management and people skills, but the rest is beyond your control, so stop worrying about it and be comfortable in your own skin. You're not going to be wildly successful, but you'll have a far better time being happy. And time is the only thing given in about equal measure.
Personality traits aren't set in stone: people can and do change their personalities. Just not when they believe such things can't be changed, because somebody who believes something cannot be changed is not going to find a way to change it.
This reads _very_ American. By that I mean both a good and, more so than ever in 2020, a bad thing.
The good is obviously the undying optimism, self belief resilience and competitiveness I see displayed in the American way of life so often.
The bad is how it lays the responsibility for outcomes solely at the individual’s feet. “Not terribly successful? Stop blaming your kids, your marriage, it’s YOUR fault, you’re the one not doing enough”.
When does society get a share of the blame? When do you stop playing a game that’s rigged against you? Do you forever keep doing _more_ reducing yourself to a life of penitence and toil to be “exceptional”? This black or white, if I’m not a winner I’m a loser mentality is terribly unhealthy to the individual, society and frankly, to other nations.
One type of leader I've encountered in my career is the one who won't accept accept excuses. "If you can't do it, I'll get someone who can." It's not personal, it's a business.
Another type of leader I've encountered is one who builds the team up and accepts the occasional failure, knowing that in the long run there may be more wins because the team will grow professionally.
Personally, as a leader I find myself more in the second group. However, both are really equally valid, in the long run--in that they have an equal chance to achieve business goals.
How are the other two points (Don't languish in what you can't change, look for a solution in every failure) an "American" viewpoint?
> The bad is how it lays the responsibility for outcomes solely at the individual’s feet.
I’m curious: shouldn’t a manual for self improvement emphasize individual responsibility? Granted, it would be a terrible way to evaluate outcomes. But that’s not the goal here. The goal is to be individually exceptional.
> Do you forever keep doing _more_ reducing yourself to a life of penitence and toil to be “exceptional”?
This seems like a bit of an exaggeration. The article doesn’t advocate a narrow, singular focus on these 3 traits. That would be terrible advice (even if the goal is to emulate Ms. Buffet, for example). Of course there are reasonable limits. Who said otherwise?
> When do you stop playing a game that’s rigged against you?
“Relentlessly solution driven” in fact requires this, no? If you can’t win because it’s rigged, change the game.
The bit that bothers me, I guess, is that it seems so easy to give up on hard things if you don’t believe the bits the article states. I know many smart people who can’t ignore things they can’t control - and it makes them unhappy. I know others who struggle to focus on solutions rather than blame - and it makes them unhappy too. Why do these traits, in moderation, make Society worse?
I don’t advocate that the individual shouldn’t bear the brunt of the responsibility. I’m trying to say that the responsibility should be _shared_ by society.
I see how the main goal of the book is indeed to focus on the individual and their drive to being “exceptional”. So for people who find themselves dissatisfied with their comfortable mediocrity, so to say, I can imagine there is some value here in solving problems and removing obstacles.
Finally, what I’m trying to say is: I think this concept can and is applied very generally to a large population that find themselves, at the individual level, at drastically different positions in the hierarchy of needs. What roadblocks are you powering through when you might not have shelter or food? When you feel unsafe? Should we dismiss those individuals’ “excuses”.
That’s what I meant by very American. The example of Ms B. Who is clearly a one in a million type success story. Should we really bother dismissing every other pressure around us because someone was somehow able to do it? We’re her children happy and healthy? Did her marriage survive? Should we all strive to be Ms B, costs what it costs, regardless of food, shelter, security, health etc.
First, you have to have your own definition of success. Not everyone wants to be a rich entrepreneur with a million side hustles. Don't fall for the implicit message writers like this promote that you are a loser if you haven't built a multi-million dollar business from scratch. Identify your own goals and what makes you happy and work towards that even if its not in line with what pop leadership articles like this promote.
Second, forgive me for re-stating what this post already said, but focus on what you can control. This is where individual responsibility is important. Not only will you be more effective, but you'll be happier.
Third, you should make efforts that are within your control to improve structures and institutions that are making it easier for some people and harder for others. I would argue there is a moral imperative on those of us who are the beneficiaries of these systems to put extra focus here. Vote every chance you get. Donate time and money to organizations pushing for systemic change. Find opportunities to make the world a more equal place and act on them.
Blaming society and sitting back is counterproductive. Blaming society and taking agency with respect to that injustice is a productive, performing response. (As is trying to “tough through” the adversity, as unlikely as that is to succeed.)
At the individual level, focussing on elements one has control over is a sensible strategy. At the society-wide level, the discussion must be more complex.
> At the individual level, focussing on elements one has control over is a sensible strategy. At the society-wide level, the discussion must be more complex.
It's a recipe for beating-oneself-up misery for most people, though.
It's all a bit zero-sum, right? Anything "exceptional" stops being exceptional when everyone thinks the secret to doing better than others is to do those things.
You'll never have a world where any individual can simply "go make themselves exceptional" because exceptional is by definition the exception.
This works out ok for the people who happen to have the right conjunction of exceptional ability and market demand for that sort of skill.
But the people preaching this stuff are much more commonly the ones sitting where they are by fortuitousness or historical accident, who greatly benefit if the "other people" believe it's their own fault they're stuck in a constantly-intensifying rat-race (over the last 5 decades or so).
As for the anecdotes and success stories, I also agree they are not convincing. In business they can be very useful though, since starting a new venture requires a lot of leaps of faith and uneducated decisions, something paralyzing to most people. Having a model for how others proceeded is very valuable.
Also, if you are easily offended, I'd skip the rest of this, I do not want to offend anyone, these are my opinions alone.
If you worship any God, then you can never be as good as your God. You can never be #1 even after you die. The whole framework sets you up for a life of the inability to win. You are at BEST going to be #2 because you can never ever be #1. Every religious person who worships a God is going to feel like they are a loser; because they are not and never will be #1 a 'winner'. It is exhausting.
I have not had a good experience with Christians in my everyday life. I'm sorry to say that, but when I meet someone and they tell me they are Christian; I immediately become suspicious of them. I have learned this from many, many interactions.
I think it has something to do with comparing yourself to God. "I am not #1. Sometimes I am close to #1 and sometimes I am very far from #1. When I am far from #1, maybe I steal a little or lie a little. I know I can get closer to #1 later and be forgiven (by the true #1)."
It's a sliding scale. There's no permanence.
They only way to win that game is to not play. Once you realize that not only are you already #1 there is no #2. You are responsible for you. That means you live exactly by your own personal values. For me it means I never lie or steal and that decision is not based on how I feel about myself!
I have a friend who is a Buddhist monk. We were talking about emotions recently and she said something I now think about every day: "You can't control your emotions. Don't even try, they are far too powerful. You can only control your BEHAVIOR."
I am in control of me. Nothing else is in control of me, not even my own emotions. And since I am in control of me, who else is to blame if my life is not working out?
That's not American my friend, that wisdom is ancient.
It's a strange way of looking at things, because you cannot really measure being the worlds most honest person, unless you meet and test all the 7 billion people alive today, and how exactly will that test be conducted? And since we're not restricting being #1 to human beings (God is not human), how about ants? I'd say an ant is more hardworking than any human being alive, so none of us will ever be #1 at hard work. Whats so wrong with being #2 at hard work? Or even #8888,888,888,000 at hard work? I doubt I am #1 in anything I value (independence, knowledge etc) but it does not matter at all. The opposite infact, seeing people better than me in things I value only inspires me to greater heights.
As a counter thought, would a 'hole' in the argument be that religion doesn't ask, require, or expect you to be #1. It just asks you to try to improve and to become a better person. How could Gd expect you to be as good as "he/she/it/they"? Gd would have created you, and designed your limitations.
Why not separate G*d's expectations of you from your interpretations of it? Just say "i'm falliable, always will be; always improving, always will be"
So what you are saying is God built failure into me intentionally. Therefore I could just point to that and say "Well I failed because I was prebuilt knowing I was going to fail". I don't accept that. I say "I failed because of something I, personally did not or could not do yet. I will correct that. It's not divine, it's just work and it's on me."
I'd be wary of american churches too, given the role religion plays in american culture.
I'm often critical of religion myself, and find it all a bit baffling to be honest, but I feel like you've really misread believers here.
Surely the point of religion is not to compete with the divine, but to humble yourself in obeisance to it?
One example: "Islam means submission".
OK, so there are televangelists and muscular Christianity and so on, but they make up a small part, don't they?
Its just a constant hamster wheel where we are desperate just to survive. Every year benefits cost more and provide for less. Every dollar you earn buys a little bit less. Houses cost a little bit more. Economically every 10 years now there is a massive event that spurs massive layoffs where everyone that was just doing their job is let go and only the elite remain. Those that are let go are forced to step down the totem pole and take jobs that provide a salary that leads to a reduction in security.
Life now seems to just be about work and work just seems to be about squeezing every hour and dollar out of you until someone younger and hungrier comes along to take your place and be bled by the system. I don't think that this is the way its supposed to be.
Surely radical individualism results in the individual blaming society at their whim. You stop playing a game that's rigged against you as soon as you can afford a plane ticket.
Where are these countries that will just lift the road up to meet your feet as you walk forward?
But I do have to say, as for blame, society gets eviscerated 24/7 on every public forum and other platform. Stories like this are more the exception, even here. For every professor publishing on "individual success" there may be 100 researching "group studies" of one kind or another.
In short, just because one can, doesn't mean one should. Understand that you are closing off doors as much as opening new ones - make sure that you don't forget which ones you deep down don't want to close off.
In this case, I would worry more about those who were harmed in the process. Whether colleges or family or friends.
You can't have everything. You must sacrifice family if you want success and if you want family you must sacrifice success. Some people aren't even aware of that and blame the former for their lack of success.
Success is also a subjective term, success here is (I think) implicitly being defined as wealth, both Gates and Buffett are hyper-successful, and I know plenty of more-ordinarily successful people with families too. Actually, I'm almost certain I know more successful people with families than I know successful loners.
So the richest (for most part of time) and second richest man have privilege to spend time with family? What a surprise
>Success is also a subjective term
Let's not play the word game, if you made a billion dollar last year. You are successful, this is pretty much the normal definition of it. Don't change it to fit something like family matters, community matters or noble purposes imho
You cannot amass this much wealth in a reasonable -- 40-50 y.os need not apply -- timeframe if you have a family commitment. Even significant others may become detrimental to that end, if they cannot accept that they're #2 now. Close relationships take time. An absolute fuckload of time.
In order to gain that amount of wealth, it takes years of 70+ hour work weeks. You will neither have the time nor inclination to spend time with tour loved ones if you're truly operating on all cylinders. If you're not, that's fine. That's your choice, but there's many more out there that don't have those kinds of personal hangups and will dedicate more time to winning.
You would not be able to understand unless you've been there.
Oh and Warren Buffett is not a paragon of family values. He has had falling outs with and disowned one of his children -- the rest is washed away by PR firms.
Gates too. Melinda would barely see him in the early days of MSFT. Neither would his first newborn child, while Gates was wrapped up in the antitrust suits.
These people were businessman first and foremost. They did not get to the top of the food chain by spending quality time with their children. Theire businesses (or passions) will always be #1 to them.
Invariably, these men have spent less time with their children and wives than any poor south americans -- who happen to have higher emotional wellness than their American counterparts.
This isn't about not having a family. Many high perfomance men have families, but they always take a back seat to their missions. Perhaps in later life when they're more established, that changes; I've seen it happen.
It was just a game at the end of the day. Make the right moves, win the right prizes. But like any game, you lose the magic after a while. And unlike video games, you can't just step back and take a break from doing it, it's an unavoidable part of being human.
But you're not off-base. At this level you definitely lose touch with everything people find "normal." I've found myself not caring about other people or their problems. Why would I?
Group dynamics are emergent behavior that's coded into our DNA to increase survival, prisoner's dillema style. If someone does nothing for me or adds nothing to my life, why would I give them any of my empathy? Can't they fix their own problems? Do they wish some knight in shining armor would ride in and save them? Do they want a handout? My empathy, for free? How selfish is that.
Every problem has a solution, endless complaining gets one nowhere. When I was broke and homeless, I'd get my own hands dirty. Now that I'm comfortably wealthy, I can throw money at whatever problem pops up.
Whatever problems, emotional, physical, mental, sociological, economical, yada yada yada, that you have are your own responsibility. No one really gives a shit about anyone else; all relationships are transactional, and if you're not offering me gold beads, you're not getting my muskets.
Ranting aside, that's a brief intro to my experience and worldview. If any particular piece resonated with you strongly, please leave a reply. I'm always interested in seeing original ideas, how infrequent it may be.
> If someone does nothing for me or adds nothing to my life, why would I give them any of my empathy?
> Whatever problems, emotional, physical, mental, sociological, economical, yada yada yada, that you have are your own responsibility. No one really gives a shit about anyone else; all relationships are transactional, and if you're not offering me gold beads, you're not getting my muskets
Let me guess, you're American or living the US ?
We're not hunter gatherers anymore, we don't have to act like cavemen whose sole purpose is to to accumulate as many shiny stones as possible even if it means destroying other people's life. Sure if you decide to see the world as full of people trying to take advantage of you that's exactly what you'll see everywhere,.
What's the point of living in societies if it's to live like everyone is out there to get you and not solve problems together. You can become wealthy enough to not worry about money without acting like a 6 years old kid trying to get as many pokemon cards as possible.
I wasn't given a choice in this matter. I was dragged into this world without being consulted first. Now I am forced to align myself and my interests to countries that don't give a shit about me, and towards people that had never and would never reach out their hand, to help another's, as dirty as it might be. Why should I participate in any of this? That is exactly the point; there is no point in my participation for me, because I gain nothing, but others do gain -- at my exepense.
Few are truly out to get me, but none are truly out for me. I can say the same for just about all people in this country, even if that fact hasn't had an oppurtunity to be tested yet. We can solve problems together, but that requires two parties compromising their standards, lowering them to be able to satisfy all parties involved. If I'm able to solve mt peoblems, at less cost than I would "together," what incentive do I have to work "together?"
Would I not be a moron, perhaps even more insane and detached from reality, were I to choose this path?
You can became wealthy holding yourself to a much higher standard than the majority of the world's population -- but why would you? I don't gain anything besides popularity among the less fortunate than I, which at best is worth nothing, but at worst is a hindrance in my life.
There is virtually no downside I can see here, but I am open to being proven wrong, with a more well-crafted, and deep argument.
It all depends on how you quantify the cost of solving societal problems. If it is based on "do I have more money than yesterday", then yes sure, no one will ever be able to prove you wrong. Acting like a megalomaniac pos is a sure way to get hated by the majority without ensuring wealth, that's all I know.
You seem dead set on acting like the people/system you despise, I don't see how that solves anything.
It took me a while to come to the realization that I love doing things, eg I love programming, but I don't always have projects I want to be doing. Thankfully, I love just doing fun things, so turns out companies are perfect for giving me things to do.
I'm not a workaholic, quite the opposite. I have hobbies and what not, but I enjoy working.
Maybe I never learned how to enjoy the fruits of my labor, or maybe I have, being lucky enough to go through psychological growth bumping into these challenges and prospering from them.
The human condition is odd, isn't it?
The article opens with a story about an old lady which went to the US during one of the most immigrant-friendly times and then started a furniture store during the peak house construction boom time when land was still cheap.
I'm pretty sure that a similar immigrant entering the US nowadays will not only receive a less warm welcome, but also struggle like the rest of us during the recession.
But no matter her financial fate in the US, she'll probably have to sacrifice family relationships back home either way.
However, I suspect that the article “touched a nerve”.
In my experience, the “stronger the reaction” the more likely something is there (think Lean Startup). The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
That said, I will echo/slightly modify some of the positive comments I read: it isn’t about being “abnormal” in working 20 hour days. It is being abnormal on where you spend the time you have.
Most of the extremely successful people I know personally dont accept “reasons” for why “x didn’t occur”. I think one of the famous quotes from Steve Jobs at Apple was that once you reached a certain level (VP?), no reason is good enough, it all lands on you.
Or to paraphrase my advisor: “How do you know someone wanted something (past tense)? They got it.”
Not everyone can be abnormal. By definition, 95% of folks can’t be. The question is: What do YOU want for yourself. What is important to you that you will fight for? For me personally, it has meant to have a meaningful family life AND a meaningful career. It hadn’t been easy. It took many short term sacrifices and focus on the long game. But in general, I have what I wanted.
Examples of sacrifice: taking a “lower paying job” so I would have more freedom to pursue what I thought was important. Going “part time”/passing up opportunities so I can be with my kids while they are super young. Taking “risks” in jobs that weren’t really “sexy” on the face of it, but had the potential for long term impact.
I mention the above to say it can work (but even now my life is far from perfect). The key however (Per the original article) is to adopt a mindset where you are in the driver seat and conversely are responsible.
By focusing on what you can control, and not wasting energy on what you can’t, you free up resources that compound over time. To make this concrete for folks: let’s say you spend 10 mins a day on thinking how “awful” <insert pain point> is. In the course of a week, you would have spent an over an hour unproductively. Over the course of a year, over a full work week. What could you have done with an extra “week”?
It doesn’t take much, done repeatedly to make a profound difference on your life in the long term. The question is whether you are willing to.
Edited for clarity/succinctness
Arguing that people have the power to significantly change their lives is a challenge to many people's egos. If they believe something like "I haven't achieved X, which I'd like to, but that's fine because it's out of my control", and somebody else comes along and says "actually it is in people's control", then their ego doesn't hear that as an uplifting statement of empowerment, instead it hears it as something negative, because acknowledging that X was achievable would require acknowledging that they had failed to achieve X.
The first point that the article tries to push is "Don't make reasonable excuses". To justify that point he tells a story about a woman that was successful despite facing incredible challenges. Here's the problem with that though: She succeeded, but that's got nothing to do with reasonable excuses. Did she make reasonable excuses? I don't know. Why are we taking the message from her story that we should not accept reasonable excuses? Surely a story to justify not making reasonable excuses should actually involve someone succeeding because they didn't make reasonable excuses. And this underlines a fundamental issue with the article - it's true that by definition the most successful people are abnormal. But it's not useful. The least successful people are abnormal. The important bit is how you're abnormal.
This is exacerbated by the fact the article is so basic and formulaic in its structure. It's the old 7 habits of highly effective people. You make a pithy statement, you write a little bit explaining the claim that doesn't really justify the statement - it justifies a very specific reading of the statement to the point of the pithy statement being meaningless, and then it tells you an anecdote. The anecdote doesn't justify the claim whilst simultaneously wildly over-stating the importance of the claim. John Wooden won basketball games because he stopped worrying about things he couldn't control! Great! Firstly, that's not abnormal, and secondly I'm fairly certain practicing basketball had more to do with his success.
All I'm saying is that the structure and style of this article is bad. You can argue about the merits of the things he's proposing, but they're proposed in such a 1990s self-help way of presenting these things, and it's not even well executed. As a result it's really easy to bash.
I can (and have) build a successful company without acting like there must be some maniacal focus that makes me abnormal.
Normal literally means dead average and a lot of people use a lot of stereotypical behaviours to escape from that fat part of the 'normal' curve to varying degrees of success
Some are short term, some are longer term, some are violent some are empathetic -- it sounds like you broke away from normal even though you still see yourself as such but believe me there is no such thing as normal it's the worst of all worlds
In my opinion, a more suitable sport to draw comparisons from would be jai alai:
- Balls are flying dangerously fast (204 mph)
- Game has been known to cause fatalities when it hits players
- Unpredictable, colorful, sketchy and associated with gambling markets based on match results
Can you guess why I think this sport is more similar to e-commerce marketing than basketball?
It's intuitively obvious that if you're a relatively healthy person, and grind at a goal exclusively with no other desire, you'll eventually be at least good at it if not spectacular.
Applying that to something that you're personally interested in makes sense - but the idea that you want to be a "top performer" in some wanky capitalist game so that you can have a load of numbers and buy some fancy toys at the cost of deleting your empathy is totally absurd to most people.
That's _why_ it's abnormal, because it's a shit way to live and most people don't want it. Hell, I thought I wanted it for the longest time, eventually I grew out of it and I'm glad I did and that I'm still able to make up for lost time.
As long as you can convince yourself that you know it's possible - you don't need to like, actually do it. Go and enjoy yourself and those around you, we're only here once.