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Same appeal as any other type of cargo-culting: it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success than it is to spot an extreme grow

Same appeal as any other type of cargo-culting: it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success than it is to spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
> spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct. Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  Bo Burnham on getting into showbiz: "Don't take advice from guys like me who've gotten very lucky. Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner saying 'Liquidize your assets! Buy Powerball tickets! It works!'" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JgG0ECp2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JgG0ECp2U)
  - UpshotKnothole 8y ago
    Ah Taylor Swift, she didn’t really win the lottery though, or if she did, she was able to start off buying a loooooot of tickets. Her father worked for Merril Lynch, from three generations of bank presidents. Her mother worked in finance. When she was 14 her father moved the family to Nashville and worked for Merril Lynch there, and invested in a record label called Big Machine to the tune of $120,000. This was the company that first signed her. She grew up rich, with the freedom to pursue her passion from the age of 10, when her mother would take her to karaoke contests. The ability to up stakes and move to Nashville, to have your father buy your way into a record label... well... it doesn’t overshadow her natural ability, but it helps to explain how she was able to leverage it so effectively.
    - phakding 8y ago
      You probably misunderstood the post you replied to.
    - tomnipotent 8y ago
      > She grew up rich Exactly - she won the lottery being born into a rich white family in the U.S.
      - UpshotKnothole 8y ago
        She won more lotteries than that. She won the lottery of being born rich, white, and connected. And in a country like the US. She won the lottery of being beautiful, of having an excellent voice and musical talent, of having parents willing to use their money and power to further her career of choice. She won the lottery of not having any crippling mental illnesses or learning disabilities, of not being sexually assaulted, and more lotteries besides. But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off. The truth is that many many lotteries typically need to be won before you can even enter that lottery. My point was that Taylor Swift didn’t just “take a chance” on music, she used all of her existing wins to stack the deck in her favor. If you look at a lot of CEO’s the same is true of them, and it’s not just the luck of their career taking off, but the luck of ever being in a position to have that happen.
        icebraining 8y ago
        of not being sexually assaulted Nitpick, but this isn't actually true (see lawsuit she won), and we don't really have any way to know if it was true even before she became famous. I agree with your general point, though.
        PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        > But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off. I think it was about both. Later in the clip he says to Conan O'Brien "We're tall white guys, we overcame nothing to get here."
    - manigandham 8y ago
      There is nothing wrong with leveraging your opportunities. Most people don't even do that and would be surprised at just how far they can get if they did.
    - andrewaylett 8y ago
      Even with all those advantages, success isn't guaranteed. I think you're reinforcing the parent's point, which I read that Taylor Swift was given the opportunity to follow her dreams and that worked out really well for her; that doesn't make it good advice for other people to follow, especially if they don't have the advantages she had.
- louprado 8y ago
  Nearly every self-help book mentions the importance of goal setting. It is important even for those with a pedigree and born into wealth (I recognize not every student in this study was born into wealth but the median Harvard family earns at least 3 times the national average). From https://sidsavara.com/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-as-much-as-the-other-97-combined/ https://sidsavara.com/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-a... “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” In 1979, interviewers asked new graduates from the Harvard’s MBA Program and found that : 84% had no specific goals at all 13% had goals but they were not committed to paper 3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them In 1989, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class. You can guess the results: The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. Even more staggering – the three percent who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together. Edit: I had often heard of this study and just pasted the first reference I found. I would delete this post, if I could, as its credibility is questionable. Thanks femto.
  - femto 8y ago
    Myth, as referred to in an update to the link you provided: https://sidsavara.com/fact-or-fiction-the-truth-about-the-harvard-written-goal-study/ https://sidsavara.com/fact-or-fiction-the-truth-about-the-ha... Though it's claimed that the myth did prompt an actual study (not peer reviewed?) https://sidsavara.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/researchsummary2.pdf https://sidsavara.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/researchsum... Which claims to support a fuzzier notion that writing things down helps achieve a goal.
- apatters 8y ago
  > spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct. > Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that. While there are undoubtedly success stories which resemble both of these caricatures, I think they're in the minority. I can't say I'm hobnobbing with the Forbes billionaires list but I have personal relationships with many people who built successful businesses. Betting on a unique opportunity is often an amplifier, so is starting in a good place in terms of money/family. But what they all have in common is they focused religiously on the top line, they didn't fuck up the bottom line, and they worked very hard.
  - taurath 8y ago
    I’ll add - “they had the privilege of being able to focus their attention and not be harmed for it”.
    - white-flame 8y ago
      In betting on opportunity, often times they have everything riding on it. Where does the "harm" you talk about come from? Usually it's because there are other responsibilities you're engaged with. If you literally give everything else up to focus on one thing, these barbs aren't in your life. I'm talking forgoing rent to crash with family/friends, eating ramen, selling/getting rid of your things, live on credit cards, etc, and have a 24/7 focus that keeps you going. You'd be surprised how much that frees you from the immediate "harm" you describe, but you also have nothing to fall back on, because you pretty much have nothing else anymore than your pursuit, and can be amassing enormous debt (financial and otherwise). It's a huge amortized, pushed-forward harm in the hopes that the gamble pays off. For many, it doesn't.
      - devdas 8y ago
        That sounds like a fairly large financial privilege to me. If you are working two jobs to just get enough food to survive, and your friends are in a similar situation, you don't have that opportunity or ability to take risks.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  I’m sure if you are born just right, things will start looking up for you soon.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
" it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success" Let's not be superfluous. Being a CEO is hard, even the 5 am rising and 'hand shaking' parts.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  >>Being a CEO is hard Not necessarily. It completely depends on the company and the industry.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    Yeah, some are harder than others but I can't think of a CEO job that isn't hard. It's always fraught with political risk, changing times, etc. etc.. From the 'inside' we might think it looks easy, we get a paycheque, it's all hunky-dory ... but from that top spot it's almost always hard.
    - tomgp 8y ago
      How hard is it really though? If someone said to me: "you can either work in an Amazon warehouse (either shift 7.00am-5.30pm or 5.45pm-4.15am) or be the CEO of Amazon but you're going to get paid the same whichever you choose" I know which I'd do.
      - larrywright 8y ago
        Whether a job is hard or not depends on more than just how many hours you work and the physical aspect. Which of those jobs is more stressful? CEO, hands down. The decisions you make as a warehouse worker don’t matter all that much - if you make a bad one, the impact of that decision won’t be felt far. If the CEO makes a bad decision, it could lead to his removal, the failure of the company, huge financial losses, people losing their jobs. Just because something isn’t physically demanding doesn’t mean it’s not demanding.
        tomgp 8y ago

toomuchtodo 8y ago

> spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct. Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago
Bo Burnham on getting into showbiz: "Don't take advice from guys like me who've gotten very lucky. Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner saying 'Liquidize your assets! Buy Powerball tickets! It works!'" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JgG0ECp2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JgG0ECp2U)
- UpshotKnothole 8y ago
  Ah Taylor Swift, she didn’t really win the lottery though, or if she did, she was able to start off buying a loooooot of tickets. Her father worked for Merril Lynch, from three generations of bank presidents. Her mother worked in finance. When she was 14 her father moved the family to Nashville and worked for Merril Lynch there, and invested in a record label called Big Machine to the tune of $120,000. This was the company that first signed her. She grew up rich, with the freedom to pursue her passion from the age of 10, when her mother would take her to karaoke contests. The ability to up stakes and move to Nashville, to have your father buy your way into a record label... well... it doesn’t overshadow her natural ability, but it helps to explain how she was able to leverage it so effectively.
  - phakding 8y ago
    You probably misunderstood the post you replied to.
  - tomnipotent 8y ago
    > She grew up rich Exactly - she won the lottery being born into a rich white family in the U.S.
    - UpshotKnothole 8y ago
      She won more lotteries than that. She won the lottery of being born rich, white, and connected. And in a country like the US. She won the lottery of being beautiful, of having an excellent voice and musical talent, of having parents willing to use their money and power to further her career of choice. She won the lottery of not having any crippling mental illnesses or learning disabilities, of not being sexually assaulted, and more lotteries besides. But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off. The truth is that many many lotteries typically need to be won before you can even enter that lottery. My point was that Taylor Swift didn’t just “take a chance” on music, she used all of her existing wins to stack the deck in her favor. If you look at a lot of CEO’s the same is true of them, and it’s not just the luck of their career taking off, but the luck of ever being in a position to have that happen.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        of not being sexually assaulted Nitpick, but this isn't actually true (see lawsuit she won), and we don't really have any way to know if it was true even before she became famous. I agree with your general point, though.
      - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        > But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off. I think it was about both. Later in the clip he says to Conan O'Brien "We're tall white guys, we overcame nothing to get here."
  - manigandham 8y ago
    There is nothing wrong with leveraging your opportunities. Most people don't even do that and would be surprised at just how far they can get if they did.
  - andrewaylett 8y ago
    Even with all those advantages, success isn't guaranteed. I think you're reinforcing the parent's point, which I read that Taylor Swift was given the opportunity to follow her dreams and that worked out really well for her; that doesn't make it good advice for other people to follow, especially if they don't have the advantages she had.
louprado 8y ago
Nearly every self-help book mentions the importance of goal setting. It is important even for those with a pedigree and born into wealth (I recognize not every student in this study was born into wealth but the median Harvard family earns at least 3 times the national average). From https://sidsavara.com/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-as-much-as-the-other-97-combined/ https://sidsavara.com/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-a... “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” In 1979, interviewers asked new graduates from the Harvard’s MBA Program and found that : 84% had no specific goals at all 13% had goals but they were not committed to paper 3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them In 1989, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class. You can guess the results: The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. Even more staggering – the three percent who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together. Edit: I had often heard of this study and just pasted the first reference I found. I would delete this post, if I could, as its credibility is questionable. Thanks femto.
- femto 8y ago
  Myth, as referred to in an update to the link you provided: https://sidsavara.com/fact-or-fiction-the-truth-about-the-harvard-written-goal-study/ https://sidsavara.com/fact-or-fiction-the-truth-about-the-ha... Though it's claimed that the myth did prompt an actual study (not peer reviewed?) https://sidsavara.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/researchsummary2.pdf https://sidsavara.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/researchsum... Which claims to support a fuzzier notion that writing things down helps achieve a goal.
apatters 8y ago
> spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct. > Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that. While there are undoubtedly success stories which resemble both of these caricatures, I think they're in the minority. I can't say I'm hobnobbing with the Forbes billionaires list but I have personal relationships with many people who built successful businesses. Betting on a unique opportunity is often an amplifier, so is starting in a good place in terms of money/family. But what they all have in common is they focused religiously on the top line, they didn't fuck up the bottom line, and they worked very hard.
- taurath 8y ago
  I’ll add - “they had the privilege of being able to focus their attention and not be harmed for it”.
  - white-flame 8y ago
    In betting on opportunity, often times they have everything riding on it. Where does the "harm" you talk about come from? Usually it's because there are other responsibilities you're engaged with. If you literally give everything else up to focus on one thing, these barbs aren't in your life. I'm talking forgoing rent to crash with family/friends, eating ramen, selling/getting rid of your things, live on credit cards, etc, and have a 24/7 focus that keeps you going. You'd be surprised how much that frees you from the immediate "harm" you describe, but you also have nothing to fall back on, because you pretty much have nothing else anymore than your pursuit, and can be amassing enormous debt (financial and otherwise). It's a huge amortized, pushed-forward harm in the hopes that the gamble pays off. For many, it doesn't.
    - devdas 8y ago
      That sounds like a fairly large financial privilege to me. If you are working two jobs to just get enough food to survive, and your friends are in a similar situation, you don't have that opportunity or ability to take risks.
Aeolun 8y ago
I’m sure if you are born just right, things will start looking up for you soon.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

" it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success" Let's not be superfluous. Being a CEO is hard, even the 5 am rising and 'hand shaking' parts.

enraged_camel 8y ago
>>Being a CEO is hard Not necessarily. It completely depends on the company and the industry.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  Yeah, some are harder than others but I can't think of a CEO job that isn't hard. It's always fraught with political risk, changing times, etc. etc.. From the 'inside' we might think it looks easy, we get a paycheque, it's all hunky-dory ... but from that top spot it's almost always hard.
  - tomgp 8y ago
    How hard is it really though? If someone said to me: "you can either work in an Amazon warehouse (either shift 7.00am-5.30pm or 5.45pm-4.15am) or be the CEO of Amazon but you're going to get paid the same whichever you choose" I know which I'd do.
    - larrywright 8y ago
      Whether a job is hard or not depends on more than just how many hours you work and the physical aspect. Which of those jobs is more stressful? CEO, hands down. The decisions you make as a warehouse worker don’t matter all that much - if you make a bad one, the impact of that decision won’t be felt far. If the CEO makes a bad decision, it could lead to his removal, the failure of the company, huge financial losses, people losing their jobs. Just because something isn’t physically demanding doesn’t mean it’s not demanding.
      - tomgp 8y ago