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Agreed. The older I get the more I’ve learned to listen to other people and to question my own ideas. I’ve gotten to the point where I actually view people who
by dkrich 8y ago
Agreed. The older I get the more I’ve learned to listen to other people and to question my own ideas. I’ve gotten to the point where I actually view people who listen to others and are open to changing their opinions when confronted with good advice as being much more intelligent than those who are sure they are right about everything all the time.
As the Bob Dylan song goes, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
- mcguire 8y agoAre you the co-founder and CEO of Stripe? Were you a millionaire at 19 and now, at 29, worth north of a billion dollars? Why would anyone want to listen to your advice? (/s Be careful about listening to people who are obviously statistical outliers, who are young and apparently have succeeded at everything they've touched.)
- eldavido 8y agoI find it interesting that it's accepted in our culture, that "Having money" means "Someone worth listening to". I see this all the time and just wanted to point it out.
- dkrich 8y agoBecause advice comes in many forms and is almost never universally applicable. Something that sounds great when applied to one case can usually be flipped on its head with a thousand counterexamples. I'd rather listen to someone who was an expert in whatever problem domain I was seeking advice in than someone who demonstrated massive success in a completely different area, yet I see people do this all the time. Mark Cuban is regularly on CNBC discussing his stock picks while he has actually underperformed the markets for many years. Yet his opinions and advice on stock-picking are highly respected because he top-ticked the sale of a startup that no longer exists and hasn't really created anything lasting since. The Stripe founders I'm sure have incredible expertise in the payment and startup space and are clearly brilliant. Yet from reading this piece I can sense in a way that he himself probably can't, a sort of ignorance that comes from a lack of life experience. I wouldn't really be too interested in their ideas on most other subjects whereas I would be very interested in reading someone who (gasp!) hadn't created a 10-figure net worth before 30 if they had experience in that area. What a concept. I can't recall how many times I've looked back on a time I dismissed someone else's opinion only later to realize I was completely wrong. The realization that your opinions very often will prove incorrect and the associated behavioral change is what makes you wise, not the refusal to admit you are wrong and the dismissal of everyone who disagrees with you.
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- drjesusphd 8y ago> I’ve gotten to the point where I actually view people who listen to others and are open to changing their opinions when confronted with good advice as being much more intelligent than those who are sure they are right about everything all the time. I also find this to be a useful heuristic. Particularly "How seriously does this person take my ideas? When I'm wrong, do they make an effort to explain why? Are the open to me being right?" This works best when you're a student or otherwise new to something Obviously, it won't work when you have status over the person; they'll listen to you anyway.