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ugh, I can't stand this. 1. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything t

by d--b 9y ago

ugh, I can't stand this. 1. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be a professional golfer. 2. When you spend 20 years of your life doing that one thing, you'd better succeed because if not, it means you failed everything. 3. You need to define success. Being awesome at one thing is not for everyone. Steve Jobs' last words were about how giving everything to being the best at business stripped him from a good chunk of enjoyable things life has to offer. 4. Some people are excellent at a lot of stuff - Leonardo da Vinci is a good example. 5. Everyone should learn not to expect to become someone exceptional. You'll live happier if you accept the fact that you may never be in the top 0.1% of anything. As a consolation, you'll be like the remaining 99.9% of humanity.

SyneRyder 9y ago
I think a citation is required for point #3. As I understand it, Steve Jobs' last words were "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow." The best-at-business quote is fake: http://www.snopes.com/steve-jobs-deathbed-speech/ http://www.snopes.com/steve-jobs-deathbed-speech/
- d--b 9y ago
  Ah good to know thanks! I still stand by point 3 though. I'm sure one can find a good quote by someone who worked on one thing for too long and managed to do it, and then was unhappy because of the time lost.
- techer 9y ago
  The same page also has this: “I wanted my kids to know me,” Mr Isaacson recalled Mr Jobs saying, in a posthumous tribute the biographer wrote for Time magazine. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.” “He was very human. He was so much more of a real person than most people know. That’s what made him so great,” he added. “Steve made choices. I asked him if he was glad that he had kids, and he said, ‘It’s 10,000 times better than anything I’ve ever done’.”
maxxxxx 9y ago
Point 1 is most important. There is no guarantee for success. You may be doing everything "right" but if you are not at the right place at the right time meeting the right people you can still fail. A lot of life is luck and life is not fair. Point 5 is also important. By definition we are all average. And things where you are maybe 0.1% may not be things that you have passion for.
- EADGBE 9y ago
  > And things where you are maybe 0.1% may not be things that you have passion for. That's a bitter pill to swallow.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    Very common though. I am very passionate about sports but my natural ability is probably bottom 10%. That means I have spent a lot of time pursuing something where I would never be "successful"in the usual sense. I also have met a lot of people who had the ability but didn't really like it. Sport has still benefited me a lot and was totally worth it to me but in terms of success it was a total waste of time.
zardo 9y ago
5. You're probably best at some combination of skills. There are far more combinations of skills than there are people, and any one person can only master a small subset of all skills.
athenot 9y ago
> 1. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be a professional golfer. That's a matter of ambition/risk. That guy will still be a very good golfer if he focuses on that. It's just that he many not be good enough to make a career of it. So yes he will look foolish but in the end, he will still be better than the rest. If we scale back the risk levels, then this is probably true. For instance, focus on a particular field of software where there is a decent demand and you will very likely be able to live off of it. Focus on being the founder of a successful company in a space that can only tolerate at most a handful of players (that's pretty much any business, once you properly define it) is a LOT harder and sheer willpower is not the only thing required to be successful.
- BeetleB 9y ago
  >That guy will still be a very good golfer if he focuses on that. Not true. Trust me. There is no guarantee. You've not met people who are singularly pursuing a goal, and it's clear they'll never improve past what they've already achieved (which can be no better than average)?
- dasil003 9y ago
  > Focus on being the founder of a successful company in a space that can only tolerate at most a handful of players (that's pretty much any business, once you properly define it) is a LOT harder and sheer willpower is not the only thing required to be successful. I agree with your whole post, but I urge caution at your parenthetical because it could easily play into the VC mentality of needing 9-10 figures to consider a company successful. Of course it's easy for them to take the risk with other people's money, but as a founder you need to ask yourself what your goal is. It's dangerous for two reasons: first, you may build something amazing that would easily have been sustainable but fails because unchecked greed demands that it be the biggest even if that is not it's fundamental value (ie. see Twitter). The other is that billion dollar companies are not built by dreaming of the perfect vision, but rather smart execution leveraging available resources and opportunities—the vision sounds good in Wired article, but there are millions of dreamers with visions that never accomplished anything; you need execution and relentless learning, and that is very hard if you are not focused on where you are now and where you want to be in a few weeks or months.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

by d--b 9y ago

SyneRyder 9y ago

I think a citation is required for point #3. As I understand it, Steve Jobs' last words were "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow." The best-at-business quote is fake: http://www.snopes.com/steve-jobs-deathbed-speech/ http://www.snopes.com/steve-jobs-deathbed-speech/

d--b 9y ago
Ah good to know thanks! I still stand by point 3 though. I'm sure one can find a good quote by someone who worked on one thing for too long and managed to do it, and then was unhappy because of the time lost.
techer 9y ago
The same page also has this: “I wanted my kids to know me,” Mr Isaacson recalled Mr Jobs saying, in a posthumous tribute the biographer wrote for Time magazine. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.” “He was very human. He was so much more of a real person than most people know. That’s what made him so great,” he added. “Steve made choices. I asked him if he was glad that he had kids, and he said, ‘It’s 10,000 times better than anything I’ve ever done’.”

maxxxxx 9y ago

Point 1 is most important. There is no guarantee for success. You may be doing everything "right" but if you are not at the right place at the right time meeting the right people you can still fail. A lot of life is luck and life is not fair. Point 5 is also important. By definition we are all average. And things where you are maybe 0.1% may not be things that you have passion for.

EADGBE 9y ago
> And things where you are maybe 0.1% may not be things that you have passion for. That's a bitter pill to swallow.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  Very common though. I am very passionate about sports but my natural ability is probably bottom 10%. That means I have spent a lot of time pursuing something where I would never be "successful"in the usual sense. I also have met a lot of people who had the ability but didn't really like it. Sport has still benefited me a lot and was totally worth it to me but in terms of success it was a total waste of time.

zardo 9y ago

5. You're probably best at some combination of skills. There are far more combinations of skills than there are people, and any one person can only master a small subset of all skills.

athenot 9y ago

> 1. No, it will not necessarily happen. You can focus on one thing and still fail. See the story about the guy who dropped everything to try and be a professional golfer. That's a matter of ambition/risk. That guy will still be a very good golfer if he focuses on that. It's just that he many not be good enough to make a career of it. So yes he will look foolish but in the end, he will still be better than the rest. If we scale back the risk levels, then this is probably true. For instance, focus on a particular field of software where there is a decent demand and you will very likely be able to live off of it. Focus on being the founder of a successful company in a space that can only tolerate at most a handful of players (that's pretty much any business, once you properly define it) is a LOT harder and sheer willpower is not the only thing required to be successful.

BeetleB 9y ago
>That guy will still be a very good golfer if he focuses on that. Not true. Trust me. There is no guarantee. You've not met people who are singularly pursuing a goal, and it's clear they'll never improve past what they've already achieved (which can be no better than average)?
dasil003 9y ago
> Focus on being the founder of a successful company in a space that can only tolerate at most a handful of players (that's pretty much any business, once you properly define it) is a LOT harder and sheer willpower is not the only thing required to be successful. I agree with your whole post, but I urge caution at your parenthetical because it could easily play into the VC mentality of needing 9-10 figures to consider a company successful. Of course it's easy for them to take the risk with other people's money, but as a founder you need to ask yourself what your goal is. It's dangerous for two reasons: first, you may build something amazing that would easily have been sustainable but fails because unchecked greed demands that it be the biggest even if that is not it's fundamental value (ie. see Twitter). The other is that billion dollar companies are not built by dreaming of the perfect vision, but rather smart execution leveraging available resources and opportunities—the vision sounds good in Wired article, but there are millions of dreamers with visions that never accomplished anything; you need execution and relentless learning, and that is very hard if you are not focused on where you are now and where you want to be in a few weeks or months.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]