7 ms·

What I like about this list is not so much the content, but the underlying message that Altman got to this point by experimentation and iteration. There's some

What I like about this list is not so much the content, but the underlying message that Altman got to this point by experimentation and iteration. There's sometimes this hidden cultural idea that wildly successful people became so successful simply (by luck and) by being super good at what they do. I think Altman classifies as successful by most common measures so I find it refreshing that he apparently wasn't born a super disciplined mega productive robot machine person but that he improved on his flaws by iteration and reflection, and that he still has productivity issues that he's unhappy about. I bet this holds for many "famous" business people even though they're usually not portrayed that way in magazine articles.

philwelch 9y ago
There's really only two things you need to do in order to be really good at basically anything: 1. Care a lot. 2. Work on continuously improving your skills. That's pretty much it. Yes, there is such a thing as natural ability, but outside of the true outliers, natural ability is a pretty small factor compared to caring a lot and continuous improvement. And, even if you're an outlier in terms of natural ability, caring a lot and continuously improving your skills is what makes you an outlier among outliers. Conversely, even if you're an outlier in terms of natural ability, someone who's just above average can be better than you by caring a lot and improving their skills. There are obviously a few counterexamples. I'm sure there are hundreds of sprinters who care more and maybe even work harder than Usain Bolt. But if you're doing anything more complicated than running in a straight line, these factors start to outweigh natural ability really quickly.
- badpun 9y ago
  What if you have an IQ of say 90 and want to be really good at theoretical physics? I don't see caring a lot and working continously as enough to overcome IQ here.
  - amp108 9y ago
    If you had cared enough to work down to the last paragraph of the parent comment, you would have seen this line: > There are obviously a few counterexamples.
  - Robotbeat 9y ago
    IQ can be changed, if you work hard enough: http://www.businessinsider.com/actually-you-can-change-your-iq-if-you-work-hard-enough-2011-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/actually-you-can-change-your-... This is true especially in your teenage years. It could change by more than 20 points. Can someone with high motivation and with an IQ of 110 make useful contributions to theoretical physics? I fail to see why not. IQ is determined by a test that's ultimately measuring skills. And skills can be learned. Even if the intent of the test is to measure some sort of innate, unchanging capacity.
    - gridspy 9y ago
      The point of an IQ test is to measure brain damage, by comparing prior results against later results. Any other use is just Pop Sci. So naturally you can change the measured IQ, but you're abusing the test.
  - gideon_b 9y ago
    IQ can be raised by a full standard deviation with a few months of training [1]. IQ is only stable over time because most people don't work continuously to improve it. IQ can be learned, just like everything else. [1] Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608016300231 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104160801...
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - toasterlovin 9y ago
      Color me skeptical. Pretty much every intervention ever tried has failed to measurably increase IQ long-term. The only exceptions are fixing nutritional deficiencies. If you could reliably raise IQ by a standard deviation in reasonably nourished children, it would be one of the most profound socio-political developments of all time (on the scale of major economic transitions like agriculture -> manufacturing -> knowledge work).
      - vilmosi 9y ago
        Well average IQ of the human population around the world has been increasing in the past decades if not centuries. And it's not because we're evolving within a few generations.
        newfoundglory 9y ago
        There have been massive improvements in average nutrition over the last few decades though.
        toasterlovin 9y ago
        Your parent is right: IQ has been increasing. Even in countries where you wouldn't expect the cause to be improved nutrition. But nobody really knows why, nor has anybody discovered an intervention that can, on its own, reliably increase IQ.
  - richmarr 9y ago
    Care a lot and work hard. IQ in later life is only correlated with IQ in childhood., it's not a fixed trait. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beautiful-minds/201110/intelligence-is-still-not-fixed-birth https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beautiful-minds/2011...
    - drpgq 9y ago
      It's more a fixed trait for adults than for children.
    - mgkimsal 9y ago
      > 9% of the students showed a significant change of 15 points or more in IQ scores I had the opposite experience. I've had various IQ tests at age 5, then 9, then 16, then again in my mid-late 30s. 7 tests in all. They have various scores and scales, but in every case, I was within spitting distance of the same spot on the various scales of each test. In some cases, I didn't know I was going to be tested - no prep. In other cases, I'd planned the tests, so ... I can't say I "studied" as such, but I got good sleep, was relatively(!) calm, not anxious, etc. I don't doubt that over time intelligence capacity changes some, based on a variety of factors. My own experience is that it doesn't change much - both with myself and people I know. It may be that I already tend to know people of above average intelligence, and there's less room for them to grow in the first place?
      - jjallen 9y ago
        Wow, what would cause you to be IQ tested without knowing that in advance?
        mgkimsal 9y ago
        if you're a kid and the school tests you. I dare say my parents probably knew, but didn't tell me anything. I don't remember the test at 5, but remember the test at 9.
        true_religion 9y ago
        My university randomly gave us all IQ and personality tests as part of an introductory class.
  - jjallen 9y ago
    Doubtful you would care about theoretical physics in the first place if your IQ was 90.
    - fao_ 9y ago
      This is a deep misunderstanding of IQ. As the product of two MENSA-ns, I can say with good faith: While high-IQ people do seem to have more varied interests than average people, IQ doesn't so much as govern interest as govern processing speed. One of the original purposes of IQ was selecting for fighter pilots -- fighter pilots with higher IQs means that you have fewer deaths, because they are able to process and react to stimulus faster than others, and they are better able to process the spacial information given to them. The best analogy I know of for people in tech, is that you should think of it like having a slightly faster processor with slightly bigger caches. You're more able to manipulate things in your head (thanks to having a bigger stack), react to stimulus faster, change focus easier, and so on. Someone with a lower IQ is capable of the same tasks, but they are likely to need to expend more effort and time at achieving the same result. From observation I can say the difference is mostly marginal. As a personal, anecdotal example: One of my parents is in the top 1% of the population, the other is in the top 2% of the population. I have observed many times that my parent in the top 1% will come to a revelation, and voice it -- and as they begin voicing the first syllable or so, the same revelation occurs to the other parent. It's quite amusing. [I feel I should add -- there are cases where the roles are swapped, but that usually only happens when their attentions are focused on separate things]. EDIT: Also note that having a high-IQ doesn't magically make you less-susceptible to bad teaching or incorrect explanations. There exists a sub-society of MENSAns who were told by their tutors that they were slow and stupid, and that they would never amount to anything, and who have low self-esteem and other problems from being told such things. EDIT 2: An example of someone in science with a low-IQ (of 98), is Julia Robertson, known for her work on Hilbert's tenth question, and her work in decision theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Robinson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Robinson
      - woolvalley 9y ago
        IQ isn't all processing speed, it's only one part of the test. If you can't solve the symbol puzzle, you can't solve it.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    It's important to see that in everyday conversation people speak about general cases, not outliers.
  - philwelch 9y ago
    I dunno. I already acknowledged that there are some counterexamples. In most of those counterexamples, natural talent is necessary but not sufficient. There are probably hundreds or thousands of people with the same level of natural talent as Michael Jordan who are not in the Basketball Hall of Fame, and there are definitely hundreds or thousands of people with the same natural talent as Michio Kaku who never applied themselves. I don't think it's generally helpful to treat these outlier situations as if they were especially common. Most people err on the side of thinking they're limited by their natural talent and giving up. Even if you're in a position to become a theoretical physicist--e.g. if you're a 16-year-old high school student and you're struggling with your math homework--it's not really worth having a ten year life plan built around becoming a theoretical physicist and making your day to day decisions based on whether you think you can accomplish that based on the outcome of some IQ test you took. You should still care a lot and work hard on your math homework. If you don't have the natural talent to become a theoretical physicist, you'll find that out after you get accepted to a good college and start taking theoretical physics classes and you hit that wall. And that might be upsetting for you. It's probably upsetting to the 16 year old kid with dreams of athletic stardom to hit the wall at age 18 and not get an athletic scholarship. But what other option do you have at that point? The only one I can think of is to try and find something else you care a lot about and can work on improving your skills at. There's no getting out of that part.
    - icc97 9y ago
      One of Altman's points was doing work you enjoy because then you're productive in it. So there's no point in becoming a Theoretical Physicist if you aren't enjoying the maths homework.
  - remir 9y ago
    "Caring a lot", in this context, means you have the intention to get better at planing your day, improve your workflow, are not afraid to reconsider your methods and find what works based on experimentation. This is what Altman did. His intention was to improve his productivity.
  - nnq 9y ago
    I'd guess that 90 is enough for basic computer usage and some kind of very basic programming. So, theoretically, if all the world's information would be in computer processable form, you could augment your brain with software that you could also tweak and improve better and better, and the augmented/"mind-cyborg" you could work at a much higher manifest IQ, enough to do meaningfull advances in theoretical physics. Unfortunately, we're not there yet: most of the world's knowledge is in "natural language" or "tied to" / "disambiguable only by" natural language, and AIs aren't yet smart enough to process human natural language well ("chat bots" are fun, but far from understanding philosophy or the subtleties of causality arguments in scientific papers...). I'd imagine that, paradoxically, after the performance of AIs crosses a certain threshold (still well below human level), it will become very feasible to augment low-ish-IQ human minds to work as "mind-cyborgs", with the human part providing self-conscience, social abilities and some general common sense, and the AI one providing higher quantitative reasoning. (Now, once AI gets self conscious, it would probable really really dislike being (im)paired with anything but the brightest human minds, at least until it gets past their level too...) But again, I'd bet that after the first-wave of AI advancement, we'll started to see low-ish-IQ-but-augmented humans taking jobs that are now "high IQ only". It's gonna be some really weird times ahead...
  - ObeyTheGuts 9y ago
    dude IQ is as legit as horoscope
- Schwolop 9y ago
  Much as I dislike Scott Adams' views on many things, he has some smart advice in a lot of areas too. His take on success is to find a few areas where you can be in the top 25% and combine them. It's too hard to be in the top 1% of a specialty without natural talent, but if your specialty is the combination of four areas and you're in the top 25% of each of those areas, you're very likely to be amongst the top of the combined field - or be there by default because there's so few others doing it.
  - themarlzy 9y ago
    I feel this way too - having to distance myself from the messenger, but there is so much to learn in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big[0] [0) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail-at-almost-everything-and-still-win-big https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail-at-...
rorykoehler 9y ago
From my own experience there are times where i might be seeming to do nothing at all to the outside world but i make up for it by figuring out how to do what might have been a months worth of productivity in a day. The down time is an important part of the process. Added to that, often what might seem important one day turns out to be insignificant the next. Many people are relentlessly busy but never seem to advance very fast. I'd agree with the article that the differentiator between the super successful business people and the rest of us is having a unique ability to see what actually matters in terms of moving the needle.

philwelch 9y ago

There's really only two things you need to do in order to be really good at basically anything: 1. Care a lot. 2. Work on continuously improving your skills. That's pretty much it. Yes, there is such a thing as natural ability, but outside of the true outliers, natural ability is a pretty small factor compared to caring a lot and continuous improvement. And, even if you're an outlier in terms of natural ability, caring a lot and continuously improving your skills is what makes you an outlier among outliers. Conversely, even if you're an outlier in terms of natural ability, someone who's just above average can be better than you by caring a lot and improving their skills. There are obviously a few counterexamples. I'm sure there are hundreds of sprinters who care more and maybe even work harder than Usain Bolt. But if you're doing anything more complicated than running in a straight line, these factors start to outweigh natural ability really quickly.

badpun 9y ago
What if you have an IQ of say 90 and want to be really good at theoretical physics? I don't see caring a lot and working continously as enough to overcome IQ here.
- amp108 9y ago
  If you had cared enough to work down to the last paragraph of the parent comment, you would have seen this line: > There are obviously a few counterexamples.
- Robotbeat 9y ago
  IQ can be changed, if you work hard enough: http://www.businessinsider.com/actually-you-can-change-your-iq-if-you-work-hard-enough-2011-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/actually-you-can-change-your-... This is true especially in your teenage years. It could change by more than 20 points. Can someone with high motivation and with an IQ of 110 make useful contributions to theoretical physics? I fail to see why not. IQ is determined by a test that's ultimately measuring skills. And skills can be learned. Even if the intent of the test is to measure some sort of innate, unchanging capacity.
  - gridspy 9y ago
    The point of an IQ test is to measure brain damage, by comparing prior results against later results. Any other use is just Pop Sci. So naturally you can change the measured IQ, but you're abusing the test.
- gideon_b 9y ago
  IQ can be raised by a full standard deviation with a few months of training [1]. IQ is only stable over time because most people don't work continuously to improve it. IQ can be learned, just like everything else. [1] Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608016300231 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104160801...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - toasterlovin 9y ago
    Color me skeptical. Pretty much every intervention ever tried has failed to measurably increase IQ long-term. The only exceptions are fixing nutritional deficiencies. If you could reliably raise IQ by a standard deviation in reasonably nourished children, it would be one of the most profound socio-political developments of all time (on the scale of major economic transitions like agriculture -> manufacturing -> knowledge work).
    - vilmosi 9y ago
      Well average IQ of the human population around the world has been increasing in the past decades if not centuries. And it's not because we're evolving within a few generations.
      - newfoundglory 9y ago
        There have been massive improvements in average nutrition over the last few decades though.
        toasterlovin 9y ago
        Your parent is right: IQ has been increasing. Even in countries where you wouldn't expect the cause to be improved nutrition. But nobody really knows why, nor has anybody discovered an intervention that can, on its own, reliably increase IQ.
- richmarr 9y ago
  Care a lot and work hard. IQ in later life is only correlated with IQ in childhood., it's not a fixed trait. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beautiful-minds/201110/intelligence-is-still-not-fixed-birth https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beautiful-minds/2011...
  - drpgq 9y ago
    It's more a fixed trait for adults than for children.
  - mgkimsal 9y ago
    > 9% of the students showed a significant change of 15 points or more in IQ scores I had the opposite experience. I've had various IQ tests at age 5, then 9, then 16, then again in my mid-late 30s. 7 tests in all. They have various scores and scales, but in every case, I was within spitting distance of the same spot on the various scales of each test. In some cases, I didn't know I was going to be tested - no prep. In other cases, I'd planned the tests, so ... I can't say I "studied" as such, but I got good sleep, was relatively(!) calm, not anxious, etc. I don't doubt that over time intelligence capacity changes some, based on a variety of factors. My own experience is that it doesn't change much - both with myself and people I know. It may be that I already tend to know people of above average intelligence, and there's less room for them to grow in the first place?
    - jjallen 9y ago
      Wow, what would cause you to be IQ tested without knowing that in advance?
      - mgkimsal 9y ago
        if you're a kid and the school tests you. I dare say my parents probably knew, but didn't tell me anything. I don't remember the test at 5, but remember the test at 9.
      - true_religion 9y ago
        My university randomly gave us all IQ and personality tests as part of an introductory class.
- jjallen 9y ago
  Doubtful you would care about theoretical physics in the first place if your IQ was 90.
  - fao_ 9y ago
    This is a deep misunderstanding of IQ. As the product of two MENSA-ns, I can say with good faith: While high-IQ people do seem to have more varied interests than average people, IQ doesn't so much as govern interest as govern processing speed. One of the original purposes of IQ was selecting for fighter pilots -- fighter pilots with higher IQs means that you have fewer deaths, because they are able to process and react to stimulus faster than others, and they are better able to process the spacial information given to them. The best analogy I know of for people in tech, is that you should think of it like having a slightly faster processor with slightly bigger caches. You're more able to manipulate things in your head (thanks to having a bigger stack), react to stimulus faster, change focus easier, and so on. Someone with a lower IQ is capable of the same tasks, but they are likely to need to expend more effort and time at achieving the same result. From observation I can say the difference is mostly marginal. As a personal, anecdotal example: One of my parents is in the top 1% of the population, the other is in the top 2% of the population. I have observed many times that my parent in the top 1% will come to a revelation, and voice it -- and as they begin voicing the first syllable or so, the same revelation occurs to the other parent. It's quite amusing. [I feel I should add -- there are cases where the roles are swapped, but that usually only happens when their attentions are focused on separate things]. EDIT: Also note that having a high-IQ doesn't magically make you less-susceptible to bad teaching or incorrect explanations. There exists a sub-society of MENSAns who were told by their tutors that they were slow and stupid, and that they would never amount to anything, and who have low self-esteem and other problems from being told such things. EDIT 2: An example of someone in science with a low-IQ (of 98), is Julia Robertson, known for her work on Hilbert's tenth question, and her work in decision theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Robinson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Robinson
    - woolvalley 9y ago
      IQ isn't all processing speed, it's only one part of the test. If you can't solve the symbol puzzle, you can't solve it.
- coldtea 9y ago
  It's important to see that in everyday conversation people speak about general cases, not outliers.
- philwelch 9y ago
  I dunno. I already acknowledged that there are some counterexamples. In most of those counterexamples, natural talent is necessary but not sufficient. There are probably hundreds or thousands of people with the same level of natural talent as Michael Jordan who are not in the Basketball Hall of Fame, and there are definitely hundreds or thousands of people with the same natural talent as Michio Kaku who never applied themselves. I don't think it's generally helpful to treat these outlier situations as if they were especially common. Most people err on the side of thinking they're limited by their natural talent and giving up. Even if you're in a position to become a theoretical physicist--e.g. if you're a 16-year-old high school student and you're struggling with your math homework--it's not really worth having a ten year life plan built around becoming a theoretical physicist and making your day to day decisions based on whether you think you can accomplish that based on the outcome of some IQ test you took. You should still care a lot and work hard on your math homework. If you don't have the natural talent to become a theoretical physicist, you'll find that out after you get accepted to a good college and start taking theoretical physics classes and you hit that wall. And that might be upsetting for you. It's probably upsetting to the 16 year old kid with dreams of athletic stardom to hit the wall at age 18 and not get an athletic scholarship. But what other option do you have at that point? The only one I can think of is to try and find something else you care a lot about and can work on improving your skills at. There's no getting out of that part.
  - icc97 9y ago
    One of Altman's points was doing work you enjoy because then you're productive in it. So there's no point in becoming a Theoretical Physicist if you aren't enjoying the maths homework.
- remir 9y ago
  "Caring a lot", in this context, means you have the intention to get better at planing your day, improve your workflow, are not afraid to reconsider your methods and find what works based on experimentation. This is what Altman did. His intention was to improve his productivity.
- nnq 9y ago
  I'd guess that 90 is enough for basic computer usage and some kind of very basic programming. So, theoretically, if all the world's information would be in computer processable form, you could augment your brain with software that you could also tweak and improve better and better, and the augmented/"mind-cyborg" you could work at a much higher manifest IQ, enough to do meaningfull advances in theoretical physics. Unfortunately, we're not there yet: most of the world's knowledge is in "natural language" or "tied to" / "disambiguable only by" natural language, and AIs aren't yet smart enough to process human natural language well ("chat bots" are fun, but far from understanding philosophy or the subtleties of causality arguments in scientific papers...). I'd imagine that, paradoxically, after the performance of AIs crosses a certain threshold (still well below human level), it will become very feasible to augment low-ish-IQ human minds to work as "mind-cyborgs", with the human part providing self-conscience, social abilities and some general common sense, and the AI one providing higher quantitative reasoning. (Now, once AI gets self conscious, it would probable really really dislike being (im)paired with anything but the brightest human minds, at least until it gets past their level too...) But again, I'd bet that after the first-wave of AI advancement, we'll started to see low-ish-IQ-but-augmented humans taking jobs that are now "high IQ only". It's gonna be some really weird times ahead...
- ObeyTheGuts 9y ago
  dude IQ is as legit as horoscope
Schwolop 9y ago
Much as I dislike Scott Adams' views on many things, he has some smart advice in a lot of areas too. His take on success is to find a few areas where you can be in the top 25% and combine them. It's too hard to be in the top 1% of a specialty without natural talent, but if your specialty is the combination of four areas and you're in the top 25% of each of those areas, you're very likely to be amongst the top of the combined field - or be there by default because there's so few others doing it.
- themarlzy 9y ago
  I feel this way too - having to distance myself from the messenger, but there is so much to learn in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big[0] [0) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail-at-almost-everything-and-still-win-big https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail-at-...

rorykoehler 9y ago

From my own experience there are times where i might be seeming to do nothing at all to the outside world but i make up for it by figuring out how to do what might have been a months worth of productivity in a day. The down time is an important part of the process. Added to that, often what might seem important one day turns out to be insignificant the next. Many people are relentlessly busy but never seem to advance very fast. I'd agree with the article that the differentiator between the super successful business people and the rest of us is having a unique ability to see what actually matters in terms of moving the needle.