6 ms·

Why Many Smart Folks End up going Nowhere

107 points by dedalus 17y ago

pw0ncakes 17y ago
This seems to equate "smart" with academic success. What about the smart people who are not academically successful? Some of them go somewhere; others go nowhere, but they'd have a different profile. One that I've seen all over the place: 10. A smart person with the misfortune of ending up in the average class is likely to be noticed by a teacher and put on the honors track. A smart person who ends up in a mediocre department of a mediocre company (lack of ambition, poor interviewing skills, geography, low self-esteem) is likely to fail out, and have a damaged resume after doing so. He's now competing against fresh 22-year-olds, and he's a 24-year-old who worked some unimpressive accounting job and got fired. School is designed to notice and nurture talent. Sometimes it fails, but it makes a solid and noble effort, and probably succeeds more often than it fails. By contrast, the corporate world is much less interested in, or capable with, this process, because business people are generally bad at telling apart the few who actually are talented from the many who think they are. Also, the corporate world is only interested in nurturing talent that satisfies an immediate need of the business.
- elblanco 17y ago
  I had lots of these "person I know is smart but sucks at <school/work/relationships/life/etc.>" chats with my father while growing up. My father always responded, "if they were so smart, why didn't they just use their intelligence to figure out how to succeed at those things?"
  - Psyonic 17y ago
    because it wasn't a priority? They feel their talents are better used elsewhere?
apitaru 17y ago
"you can’t work on luck directly. You can work on everything else and improve the chances of getting lucky." Well said, reminds me of a nice deconstruction of luck by Marc Andreessen: http://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur http://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur
lunaru 17y ago
I think it's also important to keep in mind that the topic in the article is heavily weighed towards financial success (and conversely, financial nowhere-ness). There are plenty of ways to "go somewhere, be someone, and do remarkable things" without using smarts and luck as a means to wealth. It just takes time to realize that the standard definition of success is mostly a rat race. Then again, this comes from someone who loves capitalism and is an entrepreneur wanna-be, so take my words for what they're worth.
- owyn 17y ago
  Yeah. I am tired of the get rich quick crowd. The best way to get rich on the internet is to sell 'how to get rich on the internet' advice to people who want to get rich on the internet. I've been a software developer at internet startups for 15 years and never made anything beyond my (frequently minimal) salary (me=bad negotiator), but it was usually fun, challenging and I've learned a lot. But I've never claimed to be smart. The most money I ever made was something that had nothing to do with the internet (real estate) that a friend of mine talked me into against my better judgement. And the only reason I made any money at all was because I'm such a pessimist that I sold right before everything crashed.
  - rajesh301 17y ago
    Owyn, the article was not focused on "richness" from a money perspective. Success simply meant you have an "increased capacity to contribute to the world around you."
    - owyn 17y ago
      If financial success isn't your goal in doing what you do then I'm wrong and I apologize. My career is about code. My life "beyond it" is not about "business" and it's quite happy, thank you very much. That's the last thing I care about and it's not my fucking problem. Most of the companies I've worked for have gone out of business. This is hacker news. I am comfortable being the angry pessimist in the cave who snipes at others. Nice sunglasses, btw.
    - 17y ago
Snark7 17y ago
Here is a fun trick: imagine Bernard Madoff, Kenneth Lay, or George Bush Jr. reading this. All of these people "went somewhere", but I certainly don't aspire to be any of them.
- rajesh301 17y ago
  Why not change the names in your fun trick and look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. They also went somewhere and left us inspired :) It is up to you to choose where you want to focus on, right?
- philk 17y ago
  "What if you become a really lousy President of the United States" doesn't strike me as a particularly compelling argument for not trying to go somewhere.
- rythie 17y ago
  Did George Bush go "somewhere"? Most people by going "somewhere", want to significantly grow from where their parents put them, which includes doing a lot better than their parents. George Bush's Dad was already president before him. Though I guess George Bush Jr. did manage 8 years rather than the 4 years is father did - this is only a modest improvement.
jister 17y ago
"Mediocre Life" is relative and you don't have the right to judge the lives of other people. If they are happy with their life then let them be.
- pw0ncakes 17y ago
  A life is mediocre or not based on the conditions and constraints within which someone lives. Someone who has to put off a vacation for 5 months because he only has 2 weeks' vacation each year, instead of going when he wants to, has a mediocre life. Someone who moves out of the city into a boring suburb because he can't afford a place in the city where he can raise kids is living a mediocre life. It's not about money per se. There are people making $500,000 per year who live mediocre, depressing, subordinate lives. And there are people making a small fraction of that who have great lives. It's about having the resources and access to live life on your own terms rather than someone else's.
  - neilk 17y ago
    Okay, so, I live in San Francisco, but in an unfashionable neighborhood. Please tell me if I'm living a mediocre life or not. Perhaps I have misunderstood you, but you're basically saying that if there's some constraint at all on my life, it's mediocre. Seriously, fuck that. There's always someone with more freedom. This is hardly more enlightened than keeping-up-with-the-neighbors. What it's really about is accepting constraints with grace. And a big part of that is knowing yourself well enough that you can make the right choices.
    - pw0ncakes 17y ago
      It's more complicated than that, obviously. If the constraints exist because they provide some absolute value, then they're not so bad. For example, neither of us can fly by our own power, but that's a constraint associated with being human instead of another animal, which has some obvious benefits. Everything worth doing imposes constraints-- working, raising a family. The question is whether those are constraints that add value for you or for someone else. For example, if you choose only to take 2 weeks of vacation per year because you're very interested in seeing the results of a project you're working on, the constraint is paid off by the benefit. If you can't take serious vacation because your company won't allow it, but you could easily do so otherwise with no serious compromise to your work, it's a constraint that is of no benefit to you-- only to someone else.
mojuba 17y ago
A psychologist once explained to me how powerful and destructive can the fear of success be. In fact most of the time it's latent. Many of those complaining about unluckiness may in reality be afraid of "heights": too much money or fame or both. Usually a result of "money and fame doesn't make you happy" but there may be other, more personal reasons, too. As a latent, subconscious force it may sometimes outweigh the other 9 factors mentioned in the article. One of the signs you have the fear of success is when you respond emotionally to negative stories about the reach and famous. "See, they are bastards", you say, or other times "they are pathetic". Well, it may be true most of the time, but it's not their problem, it's yours.
- hristov 17y ago
  I am not sure whether this is exactly fear of success. I think it may be fear of failure, or more specifically fear of discovering that one does not have talent. For example, take somebody that is smart, is a great conservationist in parties, makes great jokes and has read the entire literary cannons of several countries. All his friends say he should be a writer. He has always dreamed of being a writer. Yet he never starts writing. Is that fear of success? Or fear of trying and discovering that despite everything he did not have talent? Anyway, while we are on the subject linked below is a hilarious episode of Black Books that is about this. BTW I think the main character of that show is someone like the person in my example. http://www.hulu.com/watch/114471/black-books-elephants-and-hens#x-0,vepisode,1,0 http://www.hulu.com/watch/114471/black-books-elephants-and-h...
  - sree_nair 17y ago
    I am yet to meet anyone who is afraid of success, I think it more a case of the fear of Failure.
    - mojuba 17y ago
      In some particular cases - yes, you are afraid of going too high because the fall would be most painful. But still there may be, for example, some (latent or not) religious fears of too much wealth.
luckyland 17y ago
Family.
- rajesh301 17y ago
  Success and family need not be mutually exclusive but yes, family comes first :)
yason 17y ago
And what's wrong with going "nowhere in life", then? What the hell is this "mediocre life" and how could anyone define it for anyone but for himself only? If there were external standards who could define what's best for me and what should I become? Who could do that especially if I'm smart, smarter than most? On the other hand, if the author didn't only talk about smart people who he thinks live a mediocre life but also about smart people who themselves think they live a mediocre life, the article could just have been renamed as "Smart People Not Happy With Their Lives Either".
- teeja 17y ago
  When I was in my 20s, I ran across a man who'd been a 'successful' salesman for 15 years. He made a special point to tell me how he regretted all the time he'd spent away from home and not being around to see his kids grow up. We all have different ways of evaluating our satisfaction and what fulfills us. I'd rather fail at a difficult task than succeed at a simpler one... because the difficult one engages me, the simpler one bores me. I'd rather take a walk in the woods than drive a Lamborghini. Rather read a good book than take an expensive trip to see yet another pile of rocks. YMMV.
adrianwaj 17y ago
There are 3 golden triangles of success one can examine, whereby an increase in 1 factor puts pressure for an increase in another. These triangles are: project: scope, time, budget ego: fame, fortune, power wellbeing: health, family relations, work life For work, this means a happy work life, that is, doing the work one does best, doing it well, not overdoing it, and being paid appropriately: maximizing flow. So work in the wellbeing triangle is a reward, not a burden. Here are some rules: - within a triangle, if you increase 1 factor, it leads to an increase in another, but if you increase it too much it leads to cessation in another, or a decrease. EG: pump too much money into a project, and too many people may be hired and deadlines are missed. - too much pressure in a triangle will force a period of chaos until a new triangle can be formed with higher capacity. EG: your family relations may be so great that you can have more children but you are not making enough money to allow it, so family relations can have limits until work life improves. - there are connections between the triangles, but the links are uncertain. EG: one person may trash their family relations and work life in order to experience a benefit of fame. This may in turn lead to new relations more relevant to that fame, and then a better family life. My point: success is multi-factored. Success in one area doesn't necessarily mean success in other areas. Also, the road to success itself is a meta-success not to be overlooked.
yesbabyyes 17y ago
I really like your posts, Rajesh! When I first found your blog here on HN I just kept reading. With that said, I think a lot of people don't really understand what you mean, perhaps because they have their own pre-conceived notions of what success is, or they might think that you look kind of slick with that shirt and sunglasses on... ;) I think what Rajesh is after is that our world is a mess right now (at least this is what I feel) because lots of smart people/people with leadership qualities/creative people born in the 30s/40s/50s have spent their energy on things that are good for themselves, while not advancing the world. If many smart people do what they can to make the world a little bit better, we will get a huge payoff. And we need that.
- benkant 17y ago
  >> perhaps because they have their own pre-conceived notions of what success is There is no absolute definition of success.
rguzman 17y ago
Leaving aside the fact that it is really hard to judge and distinguish between "nowhere" and "somewhere", is there any evidence that a significant number smart folks go nowhere? More than 20%? More than 50%? 80%? 90%? In my experience (anecdotal), smart people tend to share two distinct features: they are lazy and they are effective. They are only as lazy as being effective allows them to be. By effective I mean that they attain their desired outcomes. In short, most smart people go where they want to go.
vital101 17y ago
The "somewhere" metric is different for everyone. Aspiring towards different things doesn't mean you went nowhere. For instance, I just released my first bit of open source code. I feel like I've finally reached a goal. Hence, I went somewhere.
- socratees 17y ago
  Can't agree more. It's all about following your heart.
  - wlievens 17y ago
    I think following your heart is the only meaning going somewhere can have.
    - rajesh301 17y ago
      Yes I agree that one should "follow their heart" to go somewhere. One thing to remember is that as the "awareness" of what is possible with their potential changes, their heart will start yearning for reaching that potential. So, who you are with and what conversations you have on a daily basis will have a huge influence on what your heart will say.
      - wlievens 17y ago
        Absolutely. Your dreams (figuratively) are shaped by your daily interactions as much as they are by your personality. For instance, reading HN has made it clear to me what I want more so than I could have ever found out on my own (I've yet to reach it; though).
        rajesh301 17y ago
        Thank you. For those that are ultra-curious about this, please make it a point to read "The Biology of Belief" by Bruce Lipton. Quick summary there is - "Garbage in; Garbage Out." :)
coreyrecvlohe 17y ago
I'll just say I agree with some of the points mentioned in the article, but here are some my additions: Always have segmented goals. For instance, I have a few for the next 6 months (learn a couple new programming languages, hit the gym 5 days a week, get a faster time on my 5000 meter run), and always focus on them; they will change, some times you'll pick up a new 6 month goal, or it may extend to another segment, but always have a short time span where you are improving yourself and your skills in some way, always. Then have focus on the 2 to 5 year goal span, where you are slowly acquiring a larger set of skills sets that work in tandem to meet a more complex goal set. For instance, getting a side project profitable and running. Doing this could include a series of 6 months goals that work together to reach that 2 year goal (getting more unix admin experience, finishing your nth business/marketing book, creating a network of partner and commercial relationships). Then you always have a set of goals that you want to reach 10 or 20 years from now, that are a solid mix of personal and professional ambitions that you know are attainable if you plan ahead. Everything takes time, and the worst thing you can do is wasting it by not focusing on what needs to be done now in order to move to the next stage in life. Not to mention doing all of this while maintaining a good spirit, sane mind, physical fitness, and personal fulfillment. It's all possible, but you have to keep your eye on the prize, watch out for pitfalls, and don't let minor setbacks derail your ultimate ambitions. It's all incremental. You can't do everything at once, otherwise you set yourself up for failure. You must work slowly, realizing those progressions, and building on them until you're living the dream.
makeramen 17y ago
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. That was the first thing I thought of when I read this. Although Gladwell doesn't specifically point out 9 points in his book, most of these points can be easily inferred from the anecdotes that Gladwell presents. Thought provoking stuff nonetheless.

107 points by dedalus 17y ago

This seems to equate "smart" with academic success. What about the smart people who are not academically successful? Some of them go somewhere; others go nowhere, but they'd have a different profile. One that I've seen all over the place: 10. A smart person with the misfortune of ending up in the average class is likely to be noticed by a teacher and put on the honors track. A smart person who ends up in a mediocre department of a mediocre company (lack of ambition, poor interviewing skills, geography, low self-esteem) is likely to fail out, and have a damaged resume after doing so. He's now competing against fresh 22-year-olds, and he's a 24-year-old who worked some unimpressive accounting job and got fired. School is designed to notice and nurture talent. Sometimes it fails, but it makes a solid and noble effort, and probably succeeds more often than it fails. By contrast, the corporate world is much less interested in, or capable with, this process, because business people are generally bad at telling apart the few who actually are talented from the many who think they are. Also, the corporate world is only interested in nurturing talent that satisfies an immediate need of the business.

elblanco 17y ago
I had lots of these "person I know is smart but sucks at <school/work/relationships/life/etc.>" chats with my father while growing up. My father always responded, "if they were so smart, why didn't they just use their intelligence to figure out how to succeed at those things?"
- Psyonic 17y ago
  because it wasn't a priority? They feel their talents are better used elsewhere?

apitaru 17y ago

"you can’t work on luck directly. You can work on everything else and improve the chances of getting lucky." Well said, reminds me of a nice deconstruction of luck by Marc Andreessen: http://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur http://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur

lunaru 17y ago

I think it's also important to keep in mind that the topic in the article is heavily weighed towards financial success (and conversely, financial nowhere-ness). There are plenty of ways to "go somewhere, be someone, and do remarkable things" without using smarts and luck as a means to wealth. It just takes time to realize that the standard definition of success is mostly a rat race. Then again, this comes from someone who loves capitalism and is an entrepreneur wanna-be, so take my words for what they're worth.

owyn 17y ago
Yeah. I am tired of the get rich quick crowd. The best way to get rich on the internet is to sell 'how to get rich on the internet' advice to people who want to get rich on the internet. I've been a software developer at internet startups for 15 years and never made anything beyond my (frequently minimal) salary (me=bad negotiator), but it was usually fun, challenging and I've learned a lot. But I've never claimed to be smart. The most money I ever made was something that had nothing to do with the internet (real estate) that a friend of mine talked me into against my better judgement. And the only reason I made any money at all was because I'm such a pessimist that I sold right before everything crashed.
- rajesh301 17y ago
  Owyn, the article was not focused on "richness" from a money perspective. Success simply meant you have an "increased capacity to contribute to the world around you."
  - owyn 17y ago
    If financial success isn't your goal in doing what you do then I'm wrong and I apologize. My career is about code. My life "beyond it" is not about "business" and it's quite happy, thank you very much. That's the last thing I care about and it's not my fucking problem. Most of the companies I've worked for have gone out of business. This is hacker news. I am comfortable being the angry pessimist in the cave who snipes at others. Nice sunglasses, btw.
  - 17y ago

Snark7 17y ago

Here is a fun trick: imagine Bernard Madoff, Kenneth Lay, or George Bush Jr. reading this. All of these people "went somewhere", but I certainly don't aspire to be any of them.

rajesh301 17y ago
Why not change the names in your fun trick and look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. They also went somewhere and left us inspired :) It is up to you to choose where you want to focus on, right?
philk 17y ago
"What if you become a really lousy President of the United States" doesn't strike me as a particularly compelling argument for not trying to go somewhere.
rythie 17y ago
Did George Bush go "somewhere"? Most people by going "somewhere", want to significantly grow from where their parents put them, which includes doing a lot better than their parents. George Bush's Dad was already president before him. Though I guess George Bush Jr. did manage 8 years rather than the 4 years is father did - this is only a modest improvement.

jister 17y ago

"Mediocre Life" is relative and you don't have the right to judge the lives of other people. If they are happy with their life then let them be.

pw0ncakes 17y ago
A life is mediocre or not based on the conditions and constraints within which someone lives. Someone who has to put off a vacation for 5 months because he only has 2 weeks' vacation each year, instead of going when he wants to, has a mediocre life. Someone who moves out of the city into a boring suburb because he can't afford a place in the city where he can raise kids is living a mediocre life. It's not about money per se. There are people making $500,000 per year who live mediocre, depressing, subordinate lives. And there are people making a small fraction of that who have great lives. It's about having the resources and access to live life on your own terms rather than someone else's.
- neilk 17y ago
  Okay, so, I live in San Francisco, but in an unfashionable neighborhood. Please tell me if I'm living a mediocre life or not. Perhaps I have misunderstood you, but you're basically saying that if there's some constraint at all on my life, it's mediocre. Seriously, fuck that. There's always someone with more freedom. This is hardly more enlightened than keeping-up-with-the-neighbors. What it's really about is accepting constraints with grace. And a big part of that is knowing yourself well enough that you can make the right choices.
  - pw0ncakes 17y ago
    It's more complicated than that, obviously. If the constraints exist because they provide some absolute value, then they're not so bad. For example, neither of us can fly by our own power, but that's a constraint associated with being human instead of another animal, which has some obvious benefits. Everything worth doing imposes constraints-- working, raising a family. The question is whether those are constraints that add value for you or for someone else. For example, if you choose only to take 2 weeks of vacation per year because you're very interested in seeing the results of a project you're working on, the constraint is paid off by the benefit. If you can't take serious vacation because your company won't allow it, but you could easily do so otherwise with no serious compromise to your work, it's a constraint that is of no benefit to you-- only to someone else.

mojuba 17y ago

A psychologist once explained to me how powerful and destructive can the fear of success be. In fact most of the time it's latent. Many of those complaining about unluckiness may in reality be afraid of "heights": too much money or fame or both. Usually a result of "money and fame doesn't make you happy" but there may be other, more personal reasons, too. As a latent, subconscious force it may sometimes outweigh the other 9 factors mentioned in the article. One of the signs you have the fear of success is when you respond emotionally to negative stories about the reach and famous. "See, they are bastards", you say, or other times "they are pathetic". Well, it may be true most of the time, but it's not their problem, it's yours.

hristov 17y ago
I am not sure whether this is exactly fear of success. I think it may be fear of failure, or more specifically fear of discovering that one does not have talent. For example, take somebody that is smart, is a great conservationist in parties, makes great jokes and has read the entire literary cannons of several countries. All his friends say he should be a writer. He has always dreamed of being a writer. Yet he never starts writing. Is that fear of success? Or fear of trying and discovering that despite everything he did not have talent? Anyway, while we are on the subject linked below is a hilarious episode of Black Books that is about this. BTW I think the main character of that show is someone like the person in my example. http://www.hulu.com/watch/114471/black-books-elephants-and-hens#x-0,vepisode,1,0 http://www.hulu.com/watch/114471/black-books-elephants-and-h...
- sree_nair 17y ago
  I am yet to meet anyone who is afraid of success, I think it more a case of the fear of Failure.
  - mojuba 17y ago
    In some particular cases - yes, you are afraid of going too high because the fall would be most painful. But still there may be, for example, some (latent or not) religious fears of too much wealth.

luckyland 17y ago

Family.

rajesh301 17y ago
Success and family need not be mutually exclusive but yes, family comes first :)

yason 17y ago

And what's wrong with going "nowhere in life", then? What the hell is this "mediocre life" and how could anyone define it for anyone but for himself only? If there were external standards who could define what's best for me and what should I become? Who could do that especially if I'm smart, smarter than most? On the other hand, if the author didn't only talk about smart people who he thinks live a mediocre life but also about smart people who themselves think they live a mediocre life, the article could just have been renamed as "Smart People Not Happy With Their Lives Either".

teeja 17y ago
When I was in my 20s, I ran across a man who'd been a 'successful' salesman for 15 years. He made a special point to tell me how he regretted all the time he'd spent away from home and not being around to see his kids grow up. We all have different ways of evaluating our satisfaction and what fulfills us. I'd rather fail at a difficult task than succeed at a simpler one... because the difficult one engages me, the simpler one bores me. I'd rather take a walk in the woods than drive a Lamborghini. Rather read a good book than take an expensive trip to see yet another pile of rocks. YMMV.

adrianwaj 17y ago

There are 3 golden triangles of success one can examine, whereby an increase in 1 factor puts pressure for an increase in another. These triangles are: project: scope, time, budget ego: fame, fortune, power wellbeing: health, family relations, work life For work, this means a happy work life, that is, doing the work one does best, doing it well, not overdoing it, and being paid appropriately: maximizing flow. So work in the wellbeing triangle is a reward, not a burden. Here are some rules: - within a triangle, if you increase 1 factor, it leads to an increase in another, but if you increase it too much it leads to cessation in another, or a decrease. EG: pump too much money into a project, and too many people may be hired and deadlines are missed. - too much pressure in a triangle will force a period of chaos until a new triangle can be formed with higher capacity. EG: your family relations may be so great that you can have more children but you are not making enough money to allow it, so family relations can have limits until work life improves. - there are connections between the triangles, but the links are uncertain. EG: one person may trash their family relations and work life in order to experience a benefit of fame. This may in turn lead to new relations more relevant to that fame, and then a better family life. My point: success is multi-factored. Success in one area doesn't necessarily mean success in other areas. Also, the road to success itself is a meta-success not to be overlooked.

yesbabyyes 17y ago

I really like your posts, Rajesh! When I first found your blog here on HN I just kept reading. With that said, I think a lot of people don't really understand what you mean, perhaps because they have their own pre-conceived notions of what success is, or they might think that you look kind of slick with that shirt and sunglasses on... ;) I think what Rajesh is after is that our world is a mess right now (at least this is what I feel) because lots of smart people/people with leadership qualities/creative people born in the 30s/40s/50s have spent their energy on things that are good for themselves, while not advancing the world. If many smart people do what they can to make the world a little bit better, we will get a huge payoff. And we need that.

benkant 17y ago
>> perhaps because they have their own pre-conceived notions of what success is There is no absolute definition of success.

rguzman 17y ago

Leaving aside the fact that it is really hard to judge and distinguish between "nowhere" and "somewhere", is there any evidence that a significant number smart folks go nowhere? More than 20%? More than 50%? 80%? 90%? In my experience (anecdotal), smart people tend to share two distinct features: they are lazy and they are effective. They are only as lazy as being effective allows them to be. By effective I mean that they attain their desired outcomes. In short, most smart people go where they want to go.

vital101 17y ago

The "somewhere" metric is different for everyone. Aspiring towards different things doesn't mean you went nowhere. For instance, I just released my first bit of open source code. I feel like I've finally reached a goal. Hence, I went somewhere.

socratees 17y ago
Can't agree more. It's all about following your heart.
- wlievens 17y ago
  I think following your heart is the only meaning going somewhere can have.
  - rajesh301 17y ago
    Yes I agree that one should "follow their heart" to go somewhere. One thing to remember is that as the "awareness" of what is possible with their potential changes, their heart will start yearning for reaching that potential. So, who you are with and what conversations you have on a daily basis will have a huge influence on what your heart will say.
    - wlievens 17y ago
      Absolutely. Your dreams (figuratively) are shaped by your daily interactions as much as they are by your personality. For instance, reading HN has made it clear to me what I want more so than I could have ever found out on my own (I've yet to reach it; though).
      - rajesh301 17y ago
        Thank you. For those that are ultra-curious about this, please make it a point to read "The Biology of Belief" by Bruce Lipton. Quick summary there is - "Garbage in; Garbage Out." :)

coreyrecvlohe 17y ago

I'll just say I agree with some of the points mentioned in the article, but here are some my additions: Always have segmented goals. For instance, I have a few for the next 6 months (learn a couple new programming languages, hit the gym 5 days a week, get a faster time on my 5000 meter run), and always focus on them; they will change, some times you'll pick up a new 6 month goal, or it may extend to another segment, but always have a short time span where you are improving yourself and your skills in some way, always. Then have focus on the 2 to 5 year goal span, where you are slowly acquiring a larger set of skills sets that work in tandem to meet a more complex goal set. For instance, getting a side project profitable and running. Doing this could include a series of 6 months goals that work together to reach that 2 year goal (getting more unix admin experience, finishing your nth business/marketing book, creating a network of partner and commercial relationships). Then you always have a set of goals that you want to reach 10 or 20 years from now, that are a solid mix of personal and professional ambitions that you know are attainable if you plan ahead. Everything takes time, and the worst thing you can do is wasting it by not focusing on what needs to be done now in order to move to the next stage in life. Not to mention doing all of this while maintaining a good spirit, sane mind, physical fitness, and personal fulfillment. It's all possible, but you have to keep your eye on the prize, watch out for pitfalls, and don't let minor setbacks derail your ultimate ambitions. It's all incremental. You can't do everything at once, otherwise you set yourself up for failure. You must work slowly, realizing those progressions, and building on them until you're living the dream.

makeramen 17y ago

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. That was the first thing I thought of when I read this. Although Gladwell doesn't specifically point out 9 points in his book, most of these points can be easily inferred from the anecdotes that Gladwell presents. Thought provoking stuff nonetheless.