29 ms·

How to Be Successful

894 points by sama 8y ago

apsec112 8y ago
IMO, this would be an order of magnitude more impactful if each point were illustrated with vivid examples, although I understand that would take more time to write. There's a vast gulf between saying, eg., "take more risks" in the abstract, and doing some specific thing that seems dangerous right now. Past risks that worked out always seem justified in retrospect, so it would be super cool to go into detail on eg. just how crazy SpaceX seemed back in 2002.
kowdermeister 8y ago
TLDR: Be good at sales, build a network and work hard.
- gautamnarula 8y ago
  I'd also add "And keep learning/avoid stagnating"
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
NicoJuicy 8y ago
Points I learned: - Work hard - Have your sales point ( why should they do business with you and not with someone else, who does the same. The sales point doesn't have to be related to the thing you are selling / consulting on. They have to improve your overall image. Nothing else). I seem to be able to sell better in person, than anyone i ever saw ( but the work takes time...). - Grow your network or know people who have the network - Filter your network. Don't spend time on people who will never be in your niche. I filter it to simple: business. ( doing computers in the past, they were the most understanding clients) and no websites ( personally, i only create them for friends) - Take risks - Spend money when you can outsource, because your time is expensive. - Have a long term plan, which niche are you growing into. If you have been "doing everything and nothing", than what has been the most profitable with the least amount of time spend. - Prioritize, because your time is expensive - A plan can take time to come together. Sometimes links ( helping someone out 2 years before, pay out later in the future). Don't be afraid to help them remember, when you helped them in the past. - Don't be scared to drop clients. Especially if they are extremely rich/have no good business, they will consume all of your time and question every invoice you send. - Don't partner up for doing a cloud application for "free"/"low-fee" in return of being a partner. Most cloud applications fail. - If you are a developer, your "online-business" will probably fail in online marketing ( the chance is big). Get a plan how you would grow the business, before you have clients. Don't count on online marketing for it. - Solve problems or iterate on solutions for existing problems - Money earns money, if you use it
ckluis 8y ago
12. You get rich by owning things.
- Latteland 8y ago
  so i should just own a lot of things and then I'll be rich. Works for rich people.
  - thomk 8y ago
    Well, what do you currently own? Or do rent/credit card/pay-as-you-go from a rich person?
csnewb 8y ago
#2: Have almost too much self-belief. Self-confidence has been something I've struggled with my entire life, to the point where its crippled my career growth as a developer. I've been told that I'm a good developer, but if I only believed in myself I could go a lot further and become truly great. However, it's hard for me to believe in myself when I don't have a lot of data points to prove that I AM competent and capable. Over the past 3 years of working full-time yes I've accomplished some things, but none of them were truly difficult or ground breaking. I'm always pushing myself harder to learn more and get better, but it never feels like its having enough impact on me actually growing. So if all I have are at best average/mediocre accomplishments, how do I convince myself that no, I AM great, that I CAN do this? I feel like if I start having a lot of self-belief it'll just become a lie that will blind me from my weaknesses and cause me to stop growing.
- curiousfiddler 8y ago
  I hear you. I've been trying to find solutions myself - I'm trying to use some strategies listed in this book: The inner game of tennis, by Timothy Galloway, and I'm seeing positive results so far. He talks about 2 versions of self: self1 - the doer and self2 - the judgemental self, which is constantly evaluating self1, and adversely affect self1's potential. He has some useful suggestions on how to limit the impact of self2, and I found those pretty helpful so far.
- xattt 8y ago
  If there's a common pattern of anxiety or lack of concentration in life, then it may be worth it to go to a family doctor or therapist to talk about it. This isn't an easy black-and-white decision to make either. It may take months or even years of self-reflection to come to terms with that, and even more time to work up the courage to seek help for something so ambivalent. It's hard to be your successful when you're not the best version of yourself.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  OMG, you've been working for 3 whole years and haven't done anything ground-breaking?! Seriously though, maybe you aren't 'great', whatever that means exactly, and I doubt it's necessary for you to believe that, whether it's true or not. You might find (books like) Albert Ellis' New Guide to Rational Living useful - I did! It's about observing and recording your recurring thoughts, particularly ones that make you feel bad, and replacing them with more accurate, helpful ones - stopping the self-sabotage. It's amazing how mean we can be to ourselves without noticing. We're trained to be nice to others, without including ourselves in that. I used to do a lot of extremely negative, paralyzing self-talk - saying nasty things to myself I'd never dream of laying on someone else; sounds like you do this too, maybe. This falls under "How to love yourself", something I had to learn to do. Louise Hay has a great 12-point list of things under that heading, stuff like "Treat yourself like you'd treat someone you really love." Then as you get older, you realize you aren't so terrible, and others aren't so great.. I think 'self-belief' comes naturally with untangling that stuff, and otherwise isn't always a good sign, e.g. "Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on; he believes in himself." ...I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical and superstitious belief.." - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130-images#id00026 http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130-images#id00026
bluedino 8y ago
>> It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US What does he mean by this?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- lrajlich 8y ago
  I assume he means something like the Moritz's article about China's "996" work hours expectation and its negative reception in silicon valley press.
- mcguire 8y ago
  Game developers, Amazon warehouse workers, UPS drivers...all those people who complain about working long hours?
- Axsuul 8y ago
  i.e. the work-life balance ideology touted by dhh
telesilla 8y ago
It's also very successful, if you have built a stable business and a way of supporting yourself and a few others around you. Being successful doesn't always mean having a 1BN valuation. But sure, it's nice to think that one day, it could happen. I'm just grateful every day that what I've got now - stability and plenty of resources - was a result of pretty much what Sam said. Believing in ourselves and not giving up, and building something meaningful to others that isn't easily duplicated. Sometimes I feel that's not enough, here on this site, but it is. The business I have right now: it just can't get that big, the wider market doesn't need what I make. But I love what I do and I have insane amounts of freedom and to my friends, I'm wildly successful. I'm reminded by that each time I know I'm doing well enough to live the life I wanted, and can support my family. That's success, too.
- avip 8y ago
  It's also very successful if you were a stay home parent and your kids were able to succeed thanks to your efforts.
  - core-questions 8y ago
    Absolutely. There are a range of definitions for successful, but I think in many ways it's best left as "in the eye of the beholder", in the sense that it's about achieving your own personal threshold. If you build a way of life that is sustainable for yourself and provides you with personal and psychological stability for you and your dependents, and if you feel at least reasonably fulfilled in this, you can call yourself successful. If you don't think you're doing what you should be, or think you could be doing So Much More, or that you have wasted potential, then maybe you're not successful yet, even if you're doing better on paper than some people who do view themselves as such.
    - swagasaurus-rex 8y ago
      I have a great many friends that do not have the kind of money and opportunities I have simply due to my choice in a software career path. Even a boring thankless job for me is where many of my peers dream they could be.
aphextron 8y ago
1. Be born to a wealthy middle class family and go to an elite school.
- drugme 8y ago
  A far from incidental detail. But is there sourced information available about his parents' actual income level? We do have this quote from the Esquire interview in 2014, which is rather telling: For my eighth birthday, my parents got me a Mac LC2. And, you know, it was like… It was, like, $2,200 in 1993 dollars. It was, like, this horrifically expensive thing, that was not that good. 40 MB hard drive. And then we put it in my bedroom, and I remember about it, it was this dividing line in my life: before I had a computer and after.
  - apsec112 8y ago
    The New Yorker interview said his mother was a dermatologist, so I would tentatively assume his background is upper-middle-class. That's obviously an advantage, but then, most children of such families don't become rich and famous either.
  - rb808 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman does list his high school, which is very expensive.
    - drugme 8y ago
      Yup - another corroborating factor.
- atom-morgan 8y ago
  People will never run out of excuses for their shortcomings in life.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
    I mean, being born poor is a serious shortcoming.
yingw787 8y ago
Great post Sam! My two cents is to try and compete against yourself: quantify your actions with some set of metrics and loop your measurements of those metrics into a feedback loop of improvement. That way, you never feel left behind and have your improvement cycles interrupted or lost, and you gain a good deal of self-introspection, which is invaluable in a world where people nudge/push you around. Your understanding of yourself has to be the ground truth where all other personality traits, habits, and higher-level tasks evolve from, and these combine to generate high-quality work and personal roadmaps.
- J253 8y ago
  > My two cents is to try and compete against yourself This. With social media so ubiquitous it's hard _not_ to compare yourself to others. I, personally, find internal motivation so much more of a driving force than external motivation. As long as I do better than I did last time, I'll be happy. For example, if I can improve my 1600 meter run time by 5 seconds, that's a great success for me. And if I'm able to consistently see improvement over time, I'm successful. On the other hand, If I compare my 7m5s 1600m time to my neighbor's 5m30s time I feel terrible. And depending on personality type, seeing such a stark difference between where you currently are and where someone else is, it might deter them from even trying to get better. "I'll never get down to 5m30s, so why should I bother running at all?" I'm not saying _all_ external comparisons are bad but I think it's important to know when to compare yourself to yourself (to ensure daily incremental progress is being achieved) and when to look up and see where you are relative to others (to see how your incremental progress is summing up in the big picture).
rw2 8y ago
Great article! I think sales is one of the most important tools to life, and it's one as a computer science major that was the hardest to cultivate. Those are all positives directions but I also think about what attributes are really important. I think working longer in a single industry is more important than working hard for a brief amount of time inside. Most of the opportunities comes later as you are deeper inside and just staying till that point is important.
mbrock 8y ago
Make sure to also check out Michael Cera’s video “Impossible is the Opposite of Possible”: https://youtu.be/nAV0sxwx9rY https://youtu.be/nAV0sxwx9rY
kempbellt 8y ago
1. Stop caring what other people think 2. Do what interests you
turc1656 8y ago
This is the most important point in the whole post: As your career progresses, each unit of work you do should generate more and more results. There are many ways to get this leverage, such as capital, technology, brand, network effects, and managing people That goes straight to the concept of scalability. Usually we talk about it in terms of businesses scaling or benefiting from economies of scale, but this is talking about scalability on a personal level. Not to be understated.
throwaway000021 8y ago
I'm not successful, but my strategy for getting there is specific.... -- never put yourself in the position to go bankrupt -- stay in the game - keep your overheads down to the minimum practical for you -- learn to program so you can implement your own ideas without need for a cofounder or need to pay for anything more than hosting and a domain -- just keep banging out your ideas into products until one catches on. -- try to bootstrap and if possible avoid raising capital - it's too distracting and costly and dilutes your time massively -- do your very best to avoid employing anyone until you really can't avoid it -- don't get a cofounder if you can possibly avoid it - it can lead to arguments and business failure... if you really need help, bootstrap till you can employ someone -- repeat until success or giving up, not because you're forced to stop
- agumonkey 8y ago
  Forgot where I read this but the article said that you'd better pick the options that have the most probability of high returns. A way to save energy. I'm naturally drawn to hard and long and get stuck and exhausted.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  By and large, this is the same algorithm I use. I've really only deviated on one point. That said, I'd add to this the idea of thinking in terms of "Return on Capital Invested" where your time and effort are a from of Capital. IOW, it's important (IMO) to figure out how to direct your attention towards the efforts that are most likely to yield the outcomes (whether financial or otherwise) that you seek. The problem, of course, is that you don't know in advance how things will play out. So you have to experiment, but once you begin an experiment the big question becomes "do I keep going on this, or redirect my effort to something else which has a higher probability of success?" (for however you define "success").
  - fyfy18 8y ago
    One thing worth bearing in mind when bootstrapping a company is that to be successful you just need to earn enough to cover costs and pay yourself something at the end of the day. Which is completely different to 95% of the companies you read about on here. If you are building it on the side even just making a few hundred dollars per month is going to completely change things for you, and give you the freedom to explore more risky ideas. We may not have a universal income, but with hard work and dedication ("showing up is half the battle"), I believe anybody here could build a side business to supplement their income in a meaningful way.
davebryand 8y ago
A more accurate title for this is "How to Be Financially Successful". I'd love for Sam to write a post called "How to Be a Successful Human" or "How to Live a Successful Life". This more important topic has little-to-nothing to do with financial success.
- avip 8y ago
  "A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do."
  - _Schizotypy 8y ago
    Finally, a sane judgement free comment. Thank you.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    "On every bookstall, in every magazine, you may find works telling people how to succeed. They are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books. To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful. That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey. Any live man has succeeded in living; any dead man may have succeeded in committing suicide. But, passing over the bad logic and bad philosophy in the phrase, we may take it, as these writers do, in the ordinary sense of success in obtaining money or worldly position. ..." - G.K. Chesterton, The Fallacy of Success Read more - it's extremely funny and wise: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11505/11505-h/11505-h.htm#THE_FALLACY_OF_SUCCESS http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11505/11505-h/11505-h.htm#THE...
    - qquark 8y ago
      To be honest it just seems a bit like playing with words. Of course you can use "success" in sentences where it loses the meaning intended in the current context, but it seems clear to me that when someone writes "to be successful" there are implications that it means being successful on some measure that the author finds valuable or intends the reader to think valuable (in order to sell a book or something). And of course people can argue all day about what is "being successful", since you could mostly put it as a matter of taste depending on what one finds satisfaction in, in life. It is indeed true that someone who doesn't have the same frame of reference for success as the author will have a harder time finding useful information in such a book/article, but that doesn't mean that because the measure of success can vary from person to person, it doesn't exist at all. When such an article or book talks about that, there is a meaning behind those words that is conditioned by the cultural context in which it is used (as materialistic as it can be) and obviously this is pretty much never meant to be understood as "how to act as to be able to formulate statements that match 'I successfully did .*'", which is how this quote feels like to me...
ThomPete 8y ago
Lucky beats smart :)
avip 8y ago
This post embodies everything I dislike about success fluff. I look up to people I admire - Tesla, Nick Drake, Mingus, My highschool Chemistry teacher - they meet maybe 0-3 of the list. Creation of value is such a delicate thing, we should not flatten it that way. As a side effect, if we widen our view of success, there will be more place up in the 99.9%...
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  I don't know much about Nick Drake, why do you admire him?
- sgarman 8y ago
  I think one of the problems with trying to understand how to achieve success is that by referencing the successful we often are dealing with outliers and not rules. I think this is why a lot of people here like seeing startup failure blogs instead of startup success blogs. So much survivorship bias.
  - seizethecheese 8y ago
    I hear this a lot, but I’m not convinced there aren’t enough successful people to learn from. There are probably tens of thousands of “self made” multimillionaires. Surely there are patterns.
- qrybam 8y ago
  FWIW, here’s a success/failure/success sandwich... My dad is extremely successful in his field of expertise, one of the top experts in the world, but he hasn’t been able to turn that into financial success for his family. At the same time, he’s an incredible husband and father. In many ways he’s inspirational, a great source of wisdom and a role model for me. If he was able to turn his talents into wealth it would have acted as a multiplier for him, his family and those around him. Looking at his bank balance, he’s a total failure. But knowing him, and the person he is, how dependable, persistent and stoic he is, he embodies a lot of what I think leads to success in the broader sense. [edit] a word
syn0byte 8y ago
Randall put it pretty well https://xkcd.com/1827/ https://xkcd.com/1827/
okl 8y ago
0. To compare is to despair(?)
staunch 8y ago
It's very common to over-analyze and generalize the specific behaviors of successful people, rather than acknowledge the stark reality of what truly separates them from others. There's a tendency to focus on the "symptoms" of their success rather than the root cause. An accurate description of reality is both less flattering and seemingly less useful to others. But it does at least have the virtue of being real. IMHO there are three major factors in changing the world: #1 High general intelligence and ambition (genetics) #2 Highly educated well-off parents (environment) #3 Support of powerful people (opportunity) You probably can't do much without at least one of these factors. Most people that do big things have all three working in their favor.
simonsaidit 8y ago
Reminds me of earl nightingale the strangest secret
harshulpandav 8y ago
1. Be Healthy Regularly get your vitamin levels checked and make sure to get adequate Vitamin D3 Regularly get your hormone levels checked for any imbalance. Exercise, breathe, sleep well, and eat healthy.
coldtea 8y ago
This is so trite as to be insulting.
throwaway5752 8y ago
I can't speak for the author, but in my opinion if you treat this as a checklist to follow instead of a set of observations, you will probably be intolerable to most people and will probably fail at your goal of being successful.
- sidcool 8y ago
  I think this is like a checklist for people to follow on their on volition. There cannot be a single recipe for success that applies to everyone. Hence the "Independent Thought" point in the post.
beatpanda 8y ago
> It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US Most people don't have any real access to capital, and most people's labor is totally alienated from its actual value. For most people, advice to "Work Hard" amounts to "Sacrifice More So Your Boss Can Get Richer". Also, as far as "working hard", Americans are an extreme outlier: https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-vacation/ https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-product.... Maybe if Sam is hearing pushback against "Work Hard" as good advice, it's because Americans already work harder than other people in advanced economies for a lower quality of life (meaning less access to healthcare, less paid vacation, less self-reported happiness, etc). Sam's a smart guy and knows all of this already, so it's baffling why he would include such a stupid throwaway line in this essay.
- lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
  Because he'd love for more fools to work hard and make him richer.
  - fastbmk 8y ago
    Yes, it's true. 1. Write articles about huge success. 2. Inspire people to loose their lives trying to get rich. 3. If some of them start getting lucky by pure chance, convince them to share a large part of their business for small amount of money. ... 5. PROFIT!
codingdave 8y ago
> almost no one in the history of the Forbes list has gotten there with a salary. Being "rich" and being on "the Forbes list" are two very different standards to aim for. (Neither of which has much to do with being a good/happy person or living a good/happy life.)
SandersAK 8y ago
How you measure success is how many people you bless - rick ross
distant_hat 8y ago
All such articles should be preceded by huge blink tags with 'Warning: survivorship bias ahead'.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ngngngng 8y ago
  I think 99% of the time bringing up survivorship bias adds nothing to the conversation. If I tell you how I ran a marathon, you could shout "survivorship bias!" But that fact still stands that I hadn't successfully run a marathon before I did those things.
  - hoaw 8y ago
    It would be warranted if you explained how to run a marathon the same way people explain how to be successful. Which you probably wouldn't.
  - bqe 8y ago
    The thing is running a marathon isn't that hard and there's little to no luck involved. By following a rigid plan most people can do it in about a year. Millions of people do it every year. However if you followed all of Sam's advice to the letter you could remain relatively unsuccessful despite all that advice. That's what survivorship bias is about: there's a significant luck component to success.
  - exolymph 8y ago
    > If I tell you how I ran a marathon, you could shout "survivorship bias!" But that fact still stands that I hadn't successfully run a marathon before I did those things. Well, yeah, the whole point is that we don't know how many people did those same things and then failed to complete a marathon.
  - thisisweirdok 8y ago
    It's not meant to add to the conversation, it's meant to get people to shut up about giving advice on becoming successful. There's no trick to it, you need to work and get lucky. Emphasis on the getting lucky. We don't need 1,000 thinkpieces from people who are already successful. Give me an article from a person who can reflect on why they're not successful. That will be more interesting any day of the week.
MetalGuru 8y ago
You don't want to be in a career where people who have been doing it for two years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty—your rate of learning should always be high. I'm having trouble reconciling this point. How can you continuously increase your effectiveness exponentially in a particular role? Take being a developer for example. Seems like the progression of skill is usually linear (with some variability). Is Sam saying that investing in becoming a great engineer ins't effective if your ultimate goal is to be extremely successful? I feel like this is overly reductionist. Maybe being an engineer for your entire career isn't going to lead to that massive success, but spending part of your career cultivating that skill does provide indirect benefits that can help you become super successful. For example, being able to rapidly prototype an MVP when you are testing product ideas. Building a business is the high-leverage action that could lead to massive success, but the years you spent cultivating your technical ability could be what enabled you to be able to build the MVP in the first place. Or maybe it allowed you to recognize good technical talent if your first engineering hires. I think exclusively focusing on tasks that provide orders of magnitude improvement is too direct and superficial of an answer. I'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts.
- tonyarkles 8y ago
  I'd probably argue that in the majority of cases, technical abilities tend to grow exponentially at the start, and sub-linearly after a point. I've worked with a whole lot of people who have been software developers for a long time, but a given a fresh grad and a couple years experience, the fresh grad would be caught up. For me, I've put a lot of effort into both breadth and depth, and that's where, for me, a (maybe not exponential but) super-linear growth comes from. When you dive deep on a broad set of topics, you start seeing relationships between them that others don't see. But that takes a lot of dedication to diving into a diverse set of things, and go deep on it.
- robfitz 8y ago
  I think the "career" you're talking about is entrepreneur, built upon the "skill" of programmer. On the other hand, if your "career" is programmer, you're limited by salary, and competing (largely) on skill, which a talented recent graduate could beat you at. If your "career" is entrepreneur, then you get a bunch of multipliers (as Sam calls them) which make your core skills more valuable. For example, 10 years into your career as an entrepreneur, you'll have a network (and possibly financial assets, and possibly an existing successful business, plus vague intangibles like 'wisdom' and industry insight) which all lets you be vastly more effective than someone who is equally skilled but still in their first couple years. I don't think Sam is telling you not to build any particular skill, but rather to put yourself on a path where, 10 years down the line, you'll be able to use those skills in a way that other folks can't compete with, thanks to the other assets/resources/multipliers you've built up for yourself, and the fact that you're playing in an area where there is a) the potential for scale and b) you own the upside if it works. Caveat: I have no idea, just my interpretation of the article.
nijynot 8y ago
One thing that came to mind is that some of these "13 thoughts" are kind of dependent on each other. For example, you might not want to be bold and have too much self-belief without being able to work hard, think independently or making it easy for yourself to take risks. If anything, try to do all of them, or be wary of how you pick and choose from the list.
xiaodai 8y ago
Successful is a subjective term. Define successful your way is the best way to be successful.
liminal_wizard 8y ago
Sam, how does "consistency" play a role? I'm all over the place in my work over the past 10 years. I've worked on projects in several different disciplines (biotech, accelerators, consulting, environment). I tend to make forceful starts, but then drive myself off course either running out of money and getting a job or lack of a long term vision. How do I resolve this?
xiphias2 8y ago
Own things: I agree with this. The best way to own things is to leave Google/Facebook: What??? I know this is an entrepreneur blog, but what happened to the sentence ,,If you want to be rich don't start a startup''? Most of my friends who are rich are working (or worked) at Google/Facebook and just accumulated assets over time (until they had enough money to stop working). All you need is start accumulating assets as early as possible and get to 15-20x of your salary (at most 10 years if you're really frugal, more if not that frugal). Don't be afraid of not having much cash left if you have a stable job.
bytemut 8y ago
It's reading like a recipe for success when really it's simply observation on factors that helped the author have a successful career.
- okl 8y ago
  Or factors of which the author thinks that they have helped him.
porpoisely 8y ago
I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes. Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens of failures and only 1 success. If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all get into harvard, we can't all be wealthy, we can't all be movies stars. We can't all win the game of musical chairs. It's like the "how to become a millionaire" books. If we all followed their advice, nothing would change because the market has only room for X number of millionaires. And if it worked and we all became millionaires, being a millionaire would become meaningless. At the end of the day, hard work, contacts and luck leads to success. The older I get, the more I realize that the latter two is far more important than the first criteria.
- apsec112 8y ago
  A presidential election is zero-sum, since there can only be one winner. There is no fixed number of millionaires; every middle-class American is very rich compared to what Romans or Persians or Carolingians expected.
  - el_benhameen 8y ago
    Given the means by which they obtain and protect their wealth, I suspect that the people and companies at the top do view wealth as a zero-sum game.
  - playing_colours 8y ago
    It is very unrealistic that technological level and political organisation of Ancient Rome or Persia could create the conditions that could produce and sustain a significant part of population with the level of life somehow comparable with current Western countries.
  - tsunamifury 8y ago
    Just because the pie is growing at f(x) doesn't mean at any given moment the pie isn't limited by x. This is why I think the zero sum vs growing pie arguments are silly, both are true.
henning 8y ago
1. Let me have >= 5-10% of your billion dollar company for a song. 2. Be born into a successful family so that you will actually have the ability and inclination to take risks the way I say you need to.
perfmode 8y ago
“Things to consider if you’re trying to avoid being financially unsuccessful”
mythrwy 8y ago
Good article. A lot of this stuff seems to come down to will (or maybe desire). The power of sheer will is underrated imo. A long time ago, before technology (beyond sticks and stones) people did some incredible things to survive. They must have because we are here. I mean, chasing down deer for days, surviving in extremely harsh conditions, undergoing hunger and pain and injury and coming out the other side alive. We still have that capacity to some extent but most people don't believe this and stop at first discomfort. Will seems almost magic sometimes, at least in my limited life experience. We do have incredible capacity to bend the world to our vision but it usually goes unfulfilled. I wish I could will great success for myself but alas, although I think I'd enjoy being FU wealthy, it really seems like more trouble than it's worth. I don't want to deal with managing a bunch of resources and people. Don't want that sucking down my life. Don't want the responsibility, it seems a bit like a prison. So I do what interest me in places I feel good about until it doesn't anymore and usually skate by in relative comfort. I'd like to change this and reprogram my approach, but not sure how to go about it. I don't know if it's nature or nurture or what the situation is but I've noticed some people have incredible drive to materially succeed and best everyone else around them. However I like smelling the roses and casually enjoying my time on the planet. Maybe there's a pill I can get for this?
jshowa3 8y ago
Is it odd that every time I see "How to be successful" posts, all of them are subjective opinion that's repeated from several hundred other "How to be successful" posts? It's almost like there's no road map to success. Here's my list, and its only one item. "Be able to sustain yourself. To do that, find any profession where the income > expenses." I learned that's the single, most important thing to being successful. If you can keep that up, everything else is just icing on the cake.
CPLX 8y ago
I clicked on this expecting to hate-read it and then post something snarky, but it's actually pretty reasonable, assuming you read the title as "How To Be Sucessful In Business" With that said I think it's missing a hugely important area -- which is mental and emotional health. One of the things I've noticed in friends who have incredible business success, and have noticed in myself during periods of greatest productivity, is that successful people are able to keep their emotional state in check. They don't get rolled easily by criticism or praise, they don't get dragged into short term thinking or fake crisis, and they don't let an emotional state push them into saying or doing something that they'll regret, or will blow up a relationship, or give away info in a negotiation. I think it's up in the top 3-4 attributes of those who are able to fit the description described in the article.
- kochikame 8y ago
  I think you're right. The first big step in Emotional Intelligence is being able to understand and regulate your own emotions, and it's the first step for a reason. Kids who passed the famous marshmallow test (were able to resist the impulse to eat the marshmallow when unsupervised) were far more successful in later life I have two brothers who occasionally get very angry, cut off relationships on whims and sabotage themselves through acts of defiance and misplaced protest, and neither of them is very 'successful' (however you define it). There is definitely a link.
  - bhntr3 8y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/01/famed-impulse-control-marshmallow-test-fails-in-new-research https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/01/famed-impu... Unfortunately the marshmallow test as a predictor of later success is debunked. It's part of the replication crisis in psychology. Half of the psychology we learned may be wrong. People just aren't that straightforward. https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576223 https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576223
    - haihaibye 8y ago
      The 'replicators' here are assuming humans are blank slates even though the best evidence is concienciousness is 40-60% heritable. We also know people with high time preference/ delayed gratification are wealthier. So now - what is controlling for parental wealth doing? It's removing this genetic component. Social science is confounded by genetics all the time, once you start to look for it.
plainOldText 8y ago
I have no idea what it takes to be successful – whatever success even means, although a reasonable definition would run along the lines of good finances + family/friends + health + sense of purpose + luck – but I'm willing to wager you could significantly increase your chances of being successful by: 0. Being curious 1. Thinking for yourself 2. Thinking about your thinking 3. Tweaking your thinking in the light of new discoveries 4. Associating yourself, as much as you can, with people who they themselves follow 0,1,2,3 The world is very complex. No one truly knows what they're doing. Our models of the world are just local approximations
wpmoradi 8y ago
this is a great article
uncheckederror 8y ago
373 KB and a 2.66 second page load for what is literally text on a page with no images. Better yet the content of the post is 20,000 chars on a single line inside of a 558 line HTML doc. :/
sangd 8y ago
These are very uninteresting to read. The first 3 points don't really explain how to successfully achieve them. They all come to 1 single point, you must be very skillful at multiple things to achieve them. And I think you're defining money/finance success, and not other kinds of successes.
adetrest 8y ago
I agree with you. All these books and essays ultimately boil down to "what worked for me, plus a million other things I'm not mentioning because they're not as glamorous, and a ton of luck: it could happen to you too!" Yes there is hard work in becoming successful but a ton of it is luck: being in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing, with the right people... This talk, peddling luck, expresses what I mean: https://vimeo.com/53494258 https://vimeo.com/53494258
ah765 8y ago
I think most of these are true. Here are two of my own that I generally don't see emphasized as much. 1. Do something wrong Remember that you have to be exceptional to reach outlier success. You won't be unusual if you do what everyone thinks is the correct path. When you feel strongly about something, be unwilling to change or compromise. If you're not doing anything that's considered "wrong", you won't be exceptional, and you probably won't succeed. 2. Have many advantages Have a high IQ. Have the ability to easily work hard. Have at least reasonably favorable social conditions (no debt, some money from family). To be exceptional, you need every advantage you can get. If you don't have many advantages, then you should really consider whether you can compete with people that have them. I don't think it's right to encourage everyone to try for outlier success. By definition, you need to be an outlier to reach it. On the other hand, if you have reason to believe you are an outlier, then the odds are better than you might think.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
code_coyote 8y ago
Advice in this article seems to only marginally apply to someone whose measure of success is in an artistic field. You can't get the same marginal returns as the article talks about. Also you're both competing with others for reader's attention, but not competing with anyone, as your stories can only be made by you.
jaredtn 8y ago
Really well-written. I especially agree with two points - "focus" and "learn to work hard without burning out". Those two skills will take you far, no matter your field.
companyhen 8y ago
"You get truly rich by owning things that increase rapidly in value." buys more Bitcoin
mbrodersen 8y ago
The idea that there is only one way to be successful, and that we are all in some grand competition to make as much money as possible, is beyond stupid. Financial success does not in any way shape or form have anything to do with achieving happiness.
bookofjoe 8y ago
"The secret of success is knowing something no one else knows."—Aristotle Onassis. AKA insider trading.
sdinsn 8y ago
Everyone has a different definition of what success is- and I sure have a different one than the OP.
RickJWagner 8y ago
I like legendary basketball coach John Wooden's definition of success better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MM-psvqiG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MM-psvqiG8
voiceclonr 8y ago
This is a well written piece. However IMHO, one cannot lay down a path for success. Moderate success, yes - but huge success no (which is what this alludes to). Success doesn't refer to a rule book before manifesting. There are lot of great nuggets one could take from the article and apply - but I see them as little breadcrumbs that might lead to success. Even if it did, we have no way to prove or disprove success factors. Best thing is to take the learnings, enjoy the journey towards potential success and try not to become emotionally invested into the end goal. It's super hard I know.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
thisisweirdok 8y ago
I'm successful and I'm lazy as shit. These lists are always coming from survivor bias.
saberience 8y ago
Thanks for the list of trivial banalities Sam. Next time give us advice on how to be born into a well-off family that gives you the best education money can buy.
maxwin 8y ago
An incredibly great post. Thank you for sharing. I have always wanted to take risk to found a startup, but since I am in Myanmar, I will need to claw my way up for a while to build up safety nets before I can take big risks. It is a great reminder that I cannot lose myself in a comfortable & stable career/lifestyle. Focusing too much on short term gains will blind me for long term achievement. But the risk is real especially for people in developing country so I will need to proceed carefully.
- sidcool 8y ago
  Wish you luck. I totally understand that not all places on the Earth are conducive to entrepreneurial ambitions. Some places are downright hostile. I wish we had some mechanism to help those from such places.
neilk 8y ago
90% of the advice here is solid, and if you are certain that high-risk high-reward businesses are what you are built for, and you have a safety net, then by all means join sama and the crew. But there are other good ways to be an outlier success than just being a businessperson. I was reminded of Hamming's "You and Your Research" which offered similar advice for academics. (Ironically, a copy is also hosted by paulg. http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html) There are many points of similarity, so many that I start to wonder if sama was intentionally recasting its advice for businesspeople. - be an independent thinker - be courageous - work is like compound interest, you need both hard work and talent - work on small things that could grow to be big things and where you have some angle of attack - have a network of people. - be connected to what your colleagues do, but not a trend-seeker - be emotionally committed - be a good salesperson - know your strengths and weaknesses ==== But there are some points of difference, like - you'll do better work in spartan surroundings - tolerate ambiguity. Believe in your idea enough to go forward, doubt it enough to consider alternatives - make your work something that can lift others up to do more than you did - Use the resources of the organization, don't fight it - Don't be too rebellious or outwardly nonconformist
cataractum 8y ago
What sort of careers can be considered "compounding" in the way Altman describes it? Economist? Engineer? Lawyer? Doctor? Dentist? I'm an economist, and i've always wondered if people with 2 years of experience can be better than those with 20+ years - if they're smart enough.
- sedeki 8y ago
  I might be wrong (too lazy to check; on mobile), but I don’t think he is talking about compounding careers per se, but rather advices to look for opportunities that compound.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
WannaB 8y ago
Dumb question...How does one build a network and become connected?
WannaB 8y ago
Hello...article had good advice. How does one build a network from scratch and become well connected? Thanks!
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Lists like this implicitly assume some baseline good health, an assumption that really is baseless. My health issues are a huge factor in my lack of financial success and public recognition. I'm very good at some things, but my health issues take a lot of my time. It's a huge barrier to accomplishing things, compounded by the poverty it fosters and other factors.
sidcool 8y ago
My biggest takeaway from the article: "Most people are primarily externally driven; they do what they do because they want to impress other people. This is bad for many reasons, but here are two important ones. First, you will work on consensus ideas and on consensus career tracks. You will care a lot—much more than you realize—if other people think you’re doing the right thing. This will probably prevent you from doing truly interesting work, and even if you do, someone else would have done it anyway."
- dmh2000 8y ago
  I'd phrase this a little differently. I'd say "they do what they do because they are motivated by other peoples expectations".
sidcool 8y ago
0. Take care of your physical and mental health. ... 14. Take care of your family.
ruang 8y ago
Why don't more employees from Google and Facebook start successful companies? They seem to exhibit all of these traits.
- cypherpunks01 8y ago
  Did you read the full article, including the para "At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook."?
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    The prognosis from the article is: When people get used to a comfortable life, a predictable job, and a reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, it gets very hard to leave that behind I think that there's a sampling bias here; in fact, that bias is even pointed out in the paragraph: > At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders.... I.e., this is an observation about FAANG employees who become YC founders. But the fact is, very few of those drive/motivated Google/Facebook employees leave and become YC founders. So this observation is an observation about a very small subset of the people who choose to stay at GoogleFacebook. I know a lot of people at the FAANGs who are there because they are primarily motivated by technical and scientific problems. The FAANGs -- and esp their research divisions -- are exceptionally good places to work for people who get meaning and fulfillment from technical excellence.
- lazyjones 8y ago
  Do they exhibit the risk-taking trait? Also, such companies offer alternative roads to personal success, like climbing up the corporate ladder and getting wealthy with stock options. Probably not all bad, especially if you can identify with the corporation's vision and feel you're doing something useful.
twakefield 8y ago
“Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles. (This is the most important thing I have learned about management, and I haven’t read much about it.)” Finding and accentuating strengths was a big focus of my previous employer, Rackspace. They used a program based on Strengths Finder [1] to determine your “strengths” and even had them displayed on your corporate ID badge. Their management philosophy was based on putting people in positions based on their strengths. It seemed a bit hokey at first and it had its problems but it was pretty refreshing compared to the typical corporate environment that espouses working harder to overcome your weaknesses. [1] https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/ https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/
ekl9sjsdf3 8y ago
Heard the saying: http://paykstrt.com/6581/22671 http://paykstrt.com/6581/22671 "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime". https://bit.ly/bestecomplatform https://bit.ly/bestecomplatform
ruang 8y ago
A negative article "How Not to Be Successful" would be interesting, with unobvious observations. It could also include the top reasons why people get rejected from YC.
lucas_membrane 8y ago
Three ways to be successful: 1. by capitalizing on your strengths, and 2. by capitalizing on the weaknesses of others, and 3. by knowing which way is easier.
benohear 8y ago
The bit I struggle with is the contradiction between "try ideas out cheaply and fail many times until you hit on the right one" and "believe in what you do and keep going come what may". How do you pick between the two?
- jjn2009 8y ago
  Measuable growth. If something is working it will be self evident if youre looking in the right places. The airbnb way is probably nonoptimal.
johan_larson 8y ago
I have to wonder who the target audience for this article is. The advice just doesn't seem particularly actionable. A statement like, "I think the biggest competitive advantage in business—either for a company or for an individual’s career—is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together," sounds great in a TED talk, but what the heck is anyone supposed to do about it? It's shallow. I think the article could be improved by considering more carefully who the advice is intended for, and tailoring the advice to them. The advice for a bright young college graduate should be different from the advice for a five-time failed entrepreneur or someone who has plateaued in middle management at 50.
rwz 8y ago
I find it hard to read those kind of posts because they all boil down to "have a bunch of variables you have very little control over in the correct state and you're pretty much set" If you're lucky enough to be born with a good wetware and an advantageous set of mental characteristics, you can tweak something here and there, build on top of it and become "successful". If you're nowhere near, there's very little you can do to change it. Take "be internally driven" for example. This shit is almost impossible to intentionally cultivate unless you're just lucky enough to be born this way. You can call it "loser mentality", but even that is ultimately defined by your genes.
locklock 8y ago
I oftentimes find it difficult to balance actually attempting to be successful with finding time for the backlog of Medium posts and other blog articles about "How To Be Successful" that I assume I have to read in order to be successful in the first place
rawoke083600 8y ago
Success for most people (yes there are outliers but you probably are not one of them) is like a "good marriage" - you have to work at it every day!! *disclaimer: neither married nor really that successful
abalone 8y ago
> It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US What is this a reference to? What parts of the US? It's not backed up by a citation. This is not the first time Altman has dropped a not so subtle cultural/political jab without any data to back it up.[1] [1] "It seems easier to accidentally speak heresies in San Francisco every year." http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove
polony 8y ago
"You don't want to be in a career where people who have been doing it for two years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty" Do you think programming is like this?
- zeroname 8y ago
  Doesn't matter, once you're past a certain age, almost nobody will hire you as a programmer. Don't build your entire career on it.
bb101 8y ago
Having read the title of the post, and browsed its contents, I went and ordered an autobiography of Gandhi with the hope of reminding myself what real success is.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
If 'everyone' is out there 'bending the universe' to their will, well, will the universe be bent? Or just scrambled? I can't help but feel this advice runs contrary to communitarian ideals, to the point that were we all to follow it, not much would get done. The best Engineers I have encountered surely have 'always been learning' but it had little to do with careerism, or 'trying to shape the world', rather just plain curiosity. Outside of that they'll have had 'normal' careers, more or less satisfied with the work to be done ahead of them. Why? Because it makes them happy to be contributors, doing their jobs well, getting a decent income, possibly raising their families etc.. There is a lot of mundane work be done even in the most creative of environments. When Steve Jobs said 'you should try to nudge the Universe forward' my first thought was 'which way is forward?' - meaning that lack of at least some kind of moral impetus (of course a very difficult, grey thing) it's hard to know. It's a very self oriented treatise, specific to the accumulation of power and influence of the individual, while effectively externalizing the 'other', and of course, all those aspects of life which are not very well described in terms of 'career' , 'money' , 'power' etc.. I'm trying to find an example of someone doing something 'purposeful' but who also had such 'compounding' effects: Ingvar Kamprad. Founder of IKEA. He wanted to make reasonable design, available to the masses for a reasonable price, and his 'small compound rate' spread over a life seems to have built something that I think will outlast most of the FAANGs. And maybe there's some 'good' in there as well. Thanks Sam, fine words for young entrepreneurs maybe, but let's try to keep this in context. The world is very big, diverse, full of all types - if the Valley wants to 'win' in the next phase of evolution, it's going to have to figure out how to promote ideals that aren't just suited to the 1%, but everyone else as well. Trying to do this while maintaining that creative/exceptionalism will be hard, but there's no way around it. You can't be 'irreverent feisty antagonists upstarts' and 'managing major parts of the economy and influencing global affairs' at the same time.
lesingerouge 8y ago
I am sorry, but this list does the exact same thing that a thousand Vogue or similar magazines do for whatever topic is trending. Substitute "successful" with "sexy" or "slim" or whatever and you get the same packaging. It does feel like shoehorning people into fitting some particular "pattern" that the author believes to be the "secret" to obtain said goal. I always find it surprising that such short (relatively) articles, choke full of relatively difficult to apply advice gain a mass following and plenty of readers. It does remind me of the rather stupid advice that depressed people get every day: "pull yourself up!" Amazing how we do seem to forget the complexity that riddles our minds.
fastbmk 8y ago
1. Write articles about huge success. 2. Inspire people to loose their lives trying to get rich. 3. If some of them start getting lucky by pure chance, convince them to share a large part of their business for small amount of money. ... 5. PROFIT!
crisstringfello 8y ago
I embody all of these traits. I don't have a prototype or traction, I'm by myself, working the same idea for many years. I've applied to YC 8 times. never got any feedback. I'm sure this is to my benefit. If suffering comes, I chose to use it to make myself stronger, more determined and focused. i close to learn. and instead of rushing to optimize for their objectives, I get to really create my vision. Everytime they reject me, I like to think about how I will make a point of how much of a broken system I think it is, when I eventually get successful.
ca98am79 8y ago
> "You also want to be an exponential curve yourself—you should aim for your life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory" ugh.. I guess this comes down to what you define as "successful" but another option is to be content in the present, and not anxious and desperately wanting the future, when you imagine everything will be better than it is now. When you treat life this way, it becomes just a means to an end, instead of an end in itself.
haaen 8y ago
Most surprising thing about this article: Diane von Furstenberg, fashion designer and wife of billionaire media entrepreneur Barry Diller, was a proofreader.
dennis_jeeves 8y ago
Sam, Philosophical question, why did you write such an article? What do you hope to accomplish? Now the criticism: Surely it must have occurred to you that at least some people out there are trying hard doing most things that you listed, and still not making it? What are you doing about it? The last I looked at YC funding, I saw that the figure is simply too low ( under $3000 a month) an incentive for a person with a stable salary to get into any venture. Most of what you have written is indeed good - but statements like: "Be hard to compete with" - are laughable. Stop making an ass of yourself with such articles, you can do better ( I mean it). Have it proof read by someone smart, before you put it out. To others: Users throwaway000021, saberience, neilk, voiceclonr, distant_hat, ah765, mcilai, beatpanda and johan_larson have all made astute observations.
hema_n 8y ago
nice one.!
thorn 8y ago
Oh really. This article has click baity title. All these motivational posts get repetitive. They have very little actionable content in them. Rather than reading advices from the privileged ivory tower of survivors, I better go and read "The dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin.

894 points by sama 8y ago

IMO, this would be an order of magnitude more impactful if each point were illustrated with vivid examples, although I understand that would take more time to write. There's a vast gulf between saying, eg., "take more risks" in the abstract, and doing some specific thing that seems dangerous right now. Past risks that worked out always seem justified in retrospect, so it would be super cool to go into detail on eg. just how crazy SpaceX seemed back in 2002.

kowdermeister 8y ago

TLDR: Be good at sales, build a network and work hard.

gautamnarula 8y ago
I'd also add "And keep learning/avoid stagnating"

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

NicoJuicy 8y ago

Points I learned: - Work hard - Have your sales point ( why should they do business with you and not with someone else, who does the same. The sales point doesn't have to be related to the thing you are selling / consulting on. They have to improve your overall image. Nothing else). I seem to be able to sell better in person, than anyone i ever saw ( but the work takes time...). - Grow your network or know people who have the network - Filter your network. Don't spend time on people who will never be in your niche. I filter it to simple: business. ( doing computers in the past, they were the most understanding clients) and no websites ( personally, i only create them for friends) - Take risks - Spend money when you can outsource, because your time is expensive. - Have a long term plan, which niche are you growing into. If you have been "doing everything and nothing", than what has been the most profitable with the least amount of time spend. - Prioritize, because your time is expensive - A plan can take time to come together. Sometimes links ( helping someone out 2 years before, pay out later in the future). Don't be afraid to help them remember, when you helped them in the past. - Don't be scared to drop clients. Especially if they are extremely rich/have no good business, they will consume all of your time and question every invoice you send. - Don't partner up for doing a cloud application for "free"/"low-fee" in return of being a partner. Most cloud applications fail. - If you are a developer, your "online-business" will probably fail in online marketing ( the chance is big). Get a plan how you would grow the business, before you have clients. Don't count on online marketing for it. - Solve problems or iterate on solutions for existing problems - Money earns money, if you use it

ckluis 8y ago

12. You get rich by owning things.

Latteland 8y ago
so i should just own a lot of things and then I'll be rich. Works for rich people.
- thomk 8y ago
  Well, what do you currently own? Or do rent/credit card/pay-as-you-go from a rich person?

csnewb 8y ago

#2: Have almost too much self-belief. Self-confidence has been something I've struggled with my entire life, to the point where its crippled my career growth as a developer. I've been told that I'm a good developer, but if I only believed in myself I could go a lot further and become truly great. However, it's hard for me to believe in myself when I don't have a lot of data points to prove that I AM competent and capable. Over the past 3 years of working full-time yes I've accomplished some things, but none of them were truly difficult or ground breaking. I'm always pushing myself harder to learn more and get better, but it never feels like its having enough impact on me actually growing. So if all I have are at best average/mediocre accomplishments, how do I convince myself that no, I AM great, that I CAN do this? I feel like if I start having a lot of self-belief it'll just become a lie that will blind me from my weaknesses and cause me to stop growing.

curiousfiddler 8y ago
I hear you. I've been trying to find solutions myself - I'm trying to use some strategies listed in this book: The inner game of tennis, by Timothy Galloway, and I'm seeing positive results so far. He talks about 2 versions of self: self1 - the doer and self2 - the judgemental self, which is constantly evaluating self1, and adversely affect self1's potential. He has some useful suggestions on how to limit the impact of self2, and I found those pretty helpful so far.
xattt 8y ago
If there's a common pattern of anxiety or lack of concentration in life, then it may be worth it to go to a family doctor or therapist to talk about it. This isn't an easy black-and-white decision to make either. It may take months or even years of self-reflection to come to terms with that, and even more time to work up the courage to seek help for something so ambivalent. It's hard to be your successful when you're not the best version of yourself.
yesenadam 8y ago
OMG, you've been working for 3 whole years and haven't done anything ground-breaking?! Seriously though, maybe you aren't 'great', whatever that means exactly, and I doubt it's necessary for you to believe that, whether it's true or not. You might find (books like) Albert Ellis' New Guide to Rational Living useful - I did! It's about observing and recording your recurring thoughts, particularly ones that make you feel bad, and replacing them with more accurate, helpful ones - stopping the self-sabotage. It's amazing how mean we can be to ourselves without noticing. We're trained to be nice to others, without including ourselves in that. I used to do a lot of extremely negative, paralyzing self-talk - saying nasty things to myself I'd never dream of laying on someone else; sounds like you do this too, maybe. This falls under "How to love yourself", something I had to learn to do. Louise Hay has a great 12-point list of things under that heading, stuff like "Treat yourself like you'd treat someone you really love." Then as you get older, you realize you aren't so terrible, and others aren't so great.. I think 'self-belief' comes naturally with untangling that stuff, and otherwise isn't always a good sign, e.g. "Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on; he believes in himself." ...I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical and superstitious belief.." - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130-images#id00026 http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130-images#id00026

bluedino 8y ago

>> It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US What does he mean by this?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
lrajlich 8y ago
I assume he means something like the Moritz's article about China's "996" work hours expectation and its negative reception in silicon valley press.
mcguire 8y ago
Game developers, Amazon warehouse workers, UPS drivers...all those people who complain about working long hours?
Axsuul 8y ago
i.e. the work-life balance ideology touted by dhh

telesilla 8y ago

It's also very successful, if you have built a stable business and a way of supporting yourself and a few others around you. Being successful doesn't always mean having a 1BN valuation. But sure, it's nice to think that one day, it could happen. I'm just grateful every day that what I've got now - stability and plenty of resources - was a result of pretty much what Sam said. Believing in ourselves and not giving up, and building something meaningful to others that isn't easily duplicated. Sometimes I feel that's not enough, here on this site, but it is. The business I have right now: it just can't get that big, the wider market doesn't need what I make. But I love what I do and I have insane amounts of freedom and to my friends, I'm wildly successful. I'm reminded by that each time I know I'm doing well enough to live the life I wanted, and can support my family. That's success, too.

avip 8y ago
It's also very successful if you were a stay home parent and your kids were able to succeed thanks to your efforts.
- core-questions 8y ago
  Absolutely. There are a range of definitions for successful, but I think in many ways it's best left as "in the eye of the beholder", in the sense that it's about achieving your own personal threshold. If you build a way of life that is sustainable for yourself and provides you with personal and psychological stability for you and your dependents, and if you feel at least reasonably fulfilled in this, you can call yourself successful. If you don't think you're doing what you should be, or think you could be doing So Much More, or that you have wasted potential, then maybe you're not successful yet, even if you're doing better on paper than some people who do view themselves as such.
  - swagasaurus-rex 8y ago
    I have a great many friends that do not have the kind of money and opportunities I have simply due to my choice in a software career path. Even a boring thankless job for me is where many of my peers dream they could be.

aphextron 8y ago

1. Be born to a wealthy middle class family and go to an elite school.

drugme 8y ago
A far from incidental detail. But is there sourced information available about his parents' actual income level? We do have this quote from the Esquire interview in 2014, which is rather telling: For my eighth birthday, my parents got me a Mac LC2. And, you know, it was like… It was, like, $2,200 in 1993 dollars. It was, like, this horrifically expensive thing, that was not that good. 40 MB hard drive. And then we put it in my bedroom, and I remember about it, it was this dividing line in my life: before I had a computer and after.
- apsec112 8y ago
  The New Yorker interview said his mother was a dermatologist, so I would tentatively assume his background is upper-middle-class. That's obviously an advantage, but then, most children of such families don't become rich and famous either.
- rb808 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman does list his high school, which is very expensive.
  - drugme 8y ago
    Yup - another corroborating factor.
atom-morgan 8y ago
People will never run out of excuses for their shortcomings in life.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
  I mean, being born poor is a serious shortcoming.

yingw787 8y ago

Great post Sam! My two cents is to try and compete against yourself: quantify your actions with some set of metrics and loop your measurements of those metrics into a feedback loop of improvement. That way, you never feel left behind and have your improvement cycles interrupted or lost, and you gain a good deal of self-introspection, which is invaluable in a world where people nudge/push you around. Your understanding of yourself has to be the ground truth where all other personality traits, habits, and higher-level tasks evolve from, and these combine to generate high-quality work and personal roadmaps.

J253 8y ago
> My two cents is to try and compete against yourself This. With social media so ubiquitous it's hard _not_ to compare yourself to others. I, personally, find internal motivation so much more of a driving force than external motivation. As long as I do better than I did last time, I'll be happy. For example, if I can improve my 1600 meter run time by 5 seconds, that's a great success for me. And if I'm able to consistently see improvement over time, I'm successful. On the other hand, If I compare my 7m5s 1600m time to my neighbor's 5m30s time I feel terrible. And depending on personality type, seeing such a stark difference between where you currently are and where someone else is, it might deter them from even trying to get better. "I'll never get down to 5m30s, so why should I bother running at all?" I'm not saying _all_ external comparisons are bad but I think it's important to know when to compare yourself to yourself (to ensure daily incremental progress is being achieved) and when to look up and see where you are relative to others (to see how your incremental progress is summing up in the big picture).

rw2 8y ago

Great article! I think sales is one of the most important tools to life, and it's one as a computer science major that was the hardest to cultivate. Those are all positives directions but I also think about what attributes are really important. I think working longer in a single industry is more important than working hard for a brief amount of time inside. Most of the opportunities comes later as you are deeper inside and just staying till that point is important.

mbrock 8y ago

Make sure to also check out Michael Cera’s video “Impossible is the Opposite of Possible”: https://youtu.be/nAV0sxwx9rY https://youtu.be/nAV0sxwx9rY

kempbellt 8y ago

1. Stop caring what other people think 2. Do what interests you

turc1656 8y ago

This is the most important point in the whole post: As your career progresses, each unit of work you do should generate more and more results. There are many ways to get this leverage, such as capital, technology, brand, network effects, and managing people That goes straight to the concept of scalability. Usually we talk about it in terms of businesses scaling or benefiting from economies of scale, but this is talking about scalability on a personal level. Not to be understated.

throwaway000021 8y ago

I'm not successful, but my strategy for getting there is specific.... -- never put yourself in the position to go bankrupt -- stay in the game - keep your overheads down to the minimum practical for you -- learn to program so you can implement your own ideas without need for a cofounder or need to pay for anything more than hosting and a domain -- just keep banging out your ideas into products until one catches on. -- try to bootstrap and if possible avoid raising capital - it's too distracting and costly and dilutes your time massively -- do your very best to avoid employing anyone until you really can't avoid it -- don't get a cofounder if you can possibly avoid it - it can lead to arguments and business failure... if you really need help, bootstrap till you can employ someone -- repeat until success or giving up, not because you're forced to stop

agumonkey 8y ago
Forgot where I read this but the article said that you'd better pick the options that have the most probability of high returns. A way to save energy. I'm naturally drawn to hard and long and get stuck and exhausted.
mindcrime 8y ago
By and large, this is the same algorithm I use. I've really only deviated on one point. That said, I'd add to this the idea of thinking in terms of "Return on Capital Invested" where your time and effort are a from of Capital. IOW, it's important (IMO) to figure out how to direct your attention towards the efforts that are most likely to yield the outcomes (whether financial or otherwise) that you seek. The problem, of course, is that you don't know in advance how things will play out. So you have to experiment, but once you begin an experiment the big question becomes "do I keep going on this, or redirect my effort to something else which has a higher probability of success?" (for however you define "success").
- fyfy18 8y ago
  One thing worth bearing in mind when bootstrapping a company is that to be successful you just need to earn enough to cover costs and pay yourself something at the end of the day. Which is completely different to 95% of the companies you read about on here. If you are building it on the side even just making a few hundred dollars per month is going to completely change things for you, and give you the freedom to explore more risky ideas. We may not have a universal income, but with hard work and dedication ("showing up is half the battle"), I believe anybody here could build a side business to supplement their income in a meaningful way.

davebryand 8y ago

A more accurate title for this is "How to Be Financially Successful". I'd love for Sam to write a post called "How to Be a Successful Human" or "How to Live a Successful Life". This more important topic has little-to-nothing to do with financial success.

avip 8y ago
"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do."
- _Schizotypy 8y ago
  Finally, a sane judgement free comment. Thank you.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  "On every bookstall, in every magazine, you may find works telling people how to succeed. They are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books. To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful. That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey. Any live man has succeeded in living; any dead man may have succeeded in committing suicide. But, passing over the bad logic and bad philosophy in the phrase, we may take it, as these writers do, in the ordinary sense of success in obtaining money or worldly position. ..." - G.K. Chesterton, The Fallacy of Success Read more - it's extremely funny and wise: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11505/11505-h/11505-h.htm#THE_FALLACY_OF_SUCCESS http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11505/11505-h/11505-h.htm#THE...
  - qquark 8y ago
    To be honest it just seems a bit like playing with words. Of course you can use "success" in sentences where it loses the meaning intended in the current context, but it seems clear to me that when someone writes "to be successful" there are implications that it means being successful on some measure that the author finds valuable or intends the reader to think valuable (in order to sell a book or something). And of course people can argue all day about what is "being successful", since you could mostly put it as a matter of taste depending on what one finds satisfaction in, in life. It is indeed true that someone who doesn't have the same frame of reference for success as the author will have a harder time finding useful information in such a book/article, but that doesn't mean that because the measure of success can vary from person to person, it doesn't exist at all. When such an article or book talks about that, there is a meaning behind those words that is conditioned by the cultural context in which it is used (as materialistic as it can be) and obviously this is pretty much never meant to be understood as "how to act as to be able to formulate statements that match 'I successfully did .*'", which is how this quote feels like to me...

ThomPete 8y ago

Lucky beats smart :)

avip 8y ago

This post embodies everything I dislike about success fluff. I look up to people I admire - Tesla, Nick Drake, Mingus, My highschool Chemistry teacher - they meet maybe 0-3 of the list. Creation of value is such a delicate thing, we should not flatten it that way. As a side effect, if we widen our view of success, there will be more place up in the 99.9%...

WhompingWindows 8y ago
I don't know much about Nick Drake, why do you admire him?
sgarman 8y ago
I think one of the problems with trying to understand how to achieve success is that by referencing the successful we often are dealing with outliers and not rules. I think this is why a lot of people here like seeing startup failure blogs instead of startup success blogs. So much survivorship bias.
- seizethecheese 8y ago
  I hear this a lot, but I’m not convinced there aren’t enough successful people to learn from. There are probably tens of thousands of “self made” multimillionaires. Surely there are patterns.
qrybam 8y ago
FWIW, here’s a success/failure/success sandwich... My dad is extremely successful in his field of expertise, one of the top experts in the world, but he hasn’t been able to turn that into financial success for his family. At the same time, he’s an incredible husband and father. In many ways he’s inspirational, a great source of wisdom and a role model for me. If he was able to turn his talents into wealth it would have acted as a multiplier for him, his family and those around him. Looking at his bank balance, he’s a total failure. But knowing him, and the person he is, how dependable, persistent and stoic he is, he embodies a lot of what I think leads to success in the broader sense. [edit] a word

syn0byte 8y ago

Randall put it pretty well https://xkcd.com/1827/ https://xkcd.com/1827/

okl 8y ago

0. To compare is to despair(?)

staunch 8y ago

It's very common to over-analyze and generalize the specific behaviors of successful people, rather than acknowledge the stark reality of what truly separates them from others. There's a tendency to focus on the "symptoms" of their success rather than the root cause. An accurate description of reality is both less flattering and seemingly less useful to others. But it does at least have the virtue of being real. IMHO there are three major factors in changing the world: #1 High general intelligence and ambition (genetics) #2 Highly educated well-off parents (environment) #3 Support of powerful people (opportunity) You probably can't do much without at least one of these factors. Most people that do big things have all three working in their favor.

simonsaidit 8y ago

Reminds me of earl nightingale the strangest secret

harshulpandav 8y ago

1. Be Healthy Regularly get your vitamin levels checked and make sure to get adequate Vitamin D3 Regularly get your hormone levels checked for any imbalance. Exercise, breathe, sleep well, and eat healthy.

coldtea 8y ago

This is so trite as to be insulting.

throwaway5752 8y ago

I can't speak for the author, but in my opinion if you treat this as a checklist to follow instead of a set of observations, you will probably be intolerable to most people and will probably fail at your goal of being successful.

sidcool 8y ago
I think this is like a checklist for people to follow on their on volition. There cannot be a single recipe for success that applies to everyone. Hence the "Independent Thought" point in the post.

beatpanda 8y ago

> It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US Most people don't have any real access to capital, and most people's labor is totally alienated from its actual value. For most people, advice to "Work Hard" amounts to "Sacrifice More So Your Boss Can Get Richer". Also, as far as "working hard", Americans are an extreme outlier: https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-vacation/ https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-product.... Maybe if Sam is hearing pushback against "Work Hard" as good advice, it's because Americans already work harder than other people in advanced economies for a lower quality of life (meaning less access to healthcare, less paid vacation, less self-reported happiness, etc). Sam's a smart guy and knows all of this already, so it's baffling why he would include such a stupid throwaway line in this essay.

lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
Because he'd love for more fools to work hard and make him richer.
- fastbmk 8y ago
  Yes, it's true. 1. Write articles about huge success. 2. Inspire people to loose their lives trying to get rich. 3. If some of them start getting lucky by pure chance, convince them to share a large part of their business for small amount of money. ... 5. PROFIT!

codingdave 8y ago

> almost no one in the history of the Forbes list has gotten there with a salary. Being "rich" and being on "the Forbes list" are two very different standards to aim for. (Neither of which has much to do with being a good/happy person or living a good/happy life.)

SandersAK 8y ago

How you measure success is how many people you bless - rick ross

distant_hat 8y ago

All such articles should be preceded by huge blink tags with 'Warning: survivorship bias ahead'.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ngngngng 8y ago
I think 99% of the time bringing up survivorship bias adds nothing to the conversation. If I tell you how I ran a marathon, you could shout "survivorship bias!" But that fact still stands that I hadn't successfully run a marathon before I did those things.
- hoaw 8y ago
  It would be warranted if you explained how to run a marathon the same way people explain how to be successful. Which you probably wouldn't.
- bqe 8y ago
  The thing is running a marathon isn't that hard and there's little to no luck involved. By following a rigid plan most people can do it in about a year. Millions of people do it every year. However if you followed all of Sam's advice to the letter you could remain relatively unsuccessful despite all that advice. That's what survivorship bias is about: there's a significant luck component to success.
- exolymph 8y ago
  > If I tell you how I ran a marathon, you could shout "survivorship bias!" But that fact still stands that I hadn't successfully run a marathon before I did those things. Well, yeah, the whole point is that we don't know how many people did those same things and then failed to complete a marathon.
- thisisweirdok 8y ago
  It's not meant to add to the conversation, it's meant to get people to shut up about giving advice on becoming successful. There's no trick to it, you need to work and get lucky. Emphasis on the getting lucky. We don't need 1,000 thinkpieces from people who are already successful. Give me an article from a person who can reflect on why they're not successful. That will be more interesting any day of the week.

MetalGuru 8y ago

You don't want to be in a career where people who have been doing it for two years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty—your rate of learning should always be high. I'm having trouble reconciling this point. How can you continuously increase your effectiveness exponentially in a particular role? Take being a developer for example. Seems like the progression of skill is usually linear (with some variability). Is Sam saying that investing in becoming a great engineer ins't effective if your ultimate goal is to be extremely successful? I feel like this is overly reductionist. Maybe being an engineer for your entire career isn't going to lead to that massive success, but spending part of your career cultivating that skill does provide indirect benefits that can help you become super successful. For example, being able to rapidly prototype an MVP when you are testing product ideas. Building a business is the high-leverage action that could lead to massive success, but the years you spent cultivating your technical ability could be what enabled you to be able to build the MVP in the first place. Or maybe it allowed you to recognize good technical talent if your first engineering hires. I think exclusively focusing on tasks that provide orders of magnitude improvement is too direct and superficial of an answer. I'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts.

tonyarkles 8y ago
I'd probably argue that in the majority of cases, technical abilities tend to grow exponentially at the start, and sub-linearly after a point. I've worked with a whole lot of people who have been software developers for a long time, but a given a fresh grad and a couple years experience, the fresh grad would be caught up. For me, I've put a lot of effort into both breadth and depth, and that's where, for me, a (maybe not exponential but) super-linear growth comes from. When you dive deep on a broad set of topics, you start seeing relationships between them that others don't see. But that takes a lot of dedication to diving into a diverse set of things, and go deep on it.
robfitz 8y ago
I think the "career" you're talking about is entrepreneur, built upon the "skill" of programmer. On the other hand, if your "career" is programmer, you're limited by salary, and competing (largely) on skill, which a talented recent graduate could beat you at. If your "career" is entrepreneur, then you get a bunch of multipliers (as Sam calls them) which make your core skills more valuable. For example, 10 years into your career as an entrepreneur, you'll have a network (and possibly financial assets, and possibly an existing successful business, plus vague intangibles like 'wisdom' and industry insight) which all lets you be vastly more effective than someone who is equally skilled but still in their first couple years. I don't think Sam is telling you not to build any particular skill, but rather to put yourself on a path where, 10 years down the line, you'll be able to use those skills in a way that other folks can't compete with, thanks to the other assets/resources/multipliers you've built up for yourself, and the fact that you're playing in an area where there is a) the potential for scale and b) you own the upside if it works. Caveat: I have no idea, just my interpretation of the article.

nijynot 8y ago

One thing that came to mind is that some of these "13 thoughts" are kind of dependent on each other. For example, you might not want to be bold and have too much self-belief without being able to work hard, think independently or making it easy for yourself to take risks. If anything, try to do all of them, or be wary of how you pick and choose from the list.

xiaodai 8y ago

Successful is a subjective term. Define successful your way is the best way to be successful.

liminal_wizard 8y ago

Sam, how does "consistency" play a role? I'm all over the place in my work over the past 10 years. I've worked on projects in several different disciplines (biotech, accelerators, consulting, environment). I tend to make forceful starts, but then drive myself off course either running out of money and getting a job or lack of a long term vision. How do I resolve this?

xiphias2 8y ago

Own things: I agree with this. The best way to own things is to leave Google/Facebook: What??? I know this is an entrepreneur blog, but what happened to the sentence ,,If you want to be rich don't start a startup''? Most of my friends who are rich are working (or worked) at Google/Facebook and just accumulated assets over time (until they had enough money to stop working). All you need is start accumulating assets as early as possible and get to 15-20x of your salary (at most 10 years if you're really frugal, more if not that frugal). Don't be afraid of not having much cash left if you have a stable job.

bytemut 8y ago

It's reading like a recipe for success when really it's simply observation on factors that helped the author have a successful career.

okl 8y ago
Or factors of which the author thinks that they have helped him.

porpoisely 8y ago

I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes. Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens of failures and only 1 success. If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all get into harvard, we can't all be wealthy, we can't all be movies stars. We can't all win the game of musical chairs. It's like the "how to become a millionaire" books. If we all followed their advice, nothing would change because the market has only room for X number of millionaires. And if it worked and we all became millionaires, being a millionaire would become meaningless. At the end of the day, hard work, contacts and luck leads to success. The older I get, the more I realize that the latter two is far more important than the first criteria.

apsec112 8y ago
A presidential election is zero-sum, since there can only be one winner. There is no fixed number of millionaires; every middle-class American is very rich compared to what Romans or Persians or Carolingians expected.
- el_benhameen 8y ago
  Given the means by which they obtain and protect their wealth, I suspect that the people and companies at the top do view wealth as a zero-sum game.
- playing_colours 8y ago
  It is very unrealistic that technological level and political organisation of Ancient Rome or Persia could create the conditions that could produce and sustain a significant part of population with the level of life somehow comparable with current Western countries.
- tsunamifury 8y ago
  Just because the pie is growing at f(x) doesn't mean at any given moment the pie isn't limited by x. This is why I think the zero sum vs growing pie arguments are silly, both are true.

henning 8y ago

1. Let me have >= 5-10% of your billion dollar company for a song. 2. Be born into a successful family so that you will actually have the ability and inclination to take risks the way I say you need to.

perfmode 8y ago

“Things to consider if you’re trying to avoid being financially unsuccessful”

mythrwy 8y ago

Good article. A lot of this stuff seems to come down to will (or maybe desire). The power of sheer will is underrated imo. A long time ago, before technology (beyond sticks and stones) people did some incredible things to survive. They must have because we are here. I mean, chasing down deer for days, surviving in extremely harsh conditions, undergoing hunger and pain and injury and coming out the other side alive. We still have that capacity to some extent but most people don't believe this and stop at first discomfort. Will seems almost magic sometimes, at least in my limited life experience. We do have incredible capacity to bend the world to our vision but it usually goes unfulfilled. I wish I could will great success for myself but alas, although I think I'd enjoy being FU wealthy, it really seems like more trouble than it's worth. I don't want to deal with managing a bunch of resources and people. Don't want that sucking down my life. Don't want the responsibility, it seems a bit like a prison. So I do what interest me in places I feel good about until it doesn't anymore and usually skate by in relative comfort. I'd like to change this and reprogram my approach, but not sure how to go about it. I don't know if it's nature or nurture or what the situation is but I've noticed some people have incredible drive to materially succeed and best everyone else around them. However I like smelling the roses and casually enjoying my time on the planet. Maybe there's a pill I can get for this?

jshowa3 8y ago

Is it odd that every time I see "How to be successful" posts, all of them are subjective opinion that's repeated from several hundred other "How to be successful" posts? It's almost like there's no road map to success. Here's my list, and its only one item. "Be able to sustain yourself. To do that, find any profession where the income > expenses." I learned that's the single, most important thing to being successful. If you can keep that up, everything else is just icing on the cake.

CPLX 8y ago

I clicked on this expecting to hate-read it and then post something snarky, but it's actually pretty reasonable, assuming you read the title as "How To Be Sucessful In Business" With that said I think it's missing a hugely important area -- which is mental and emotional health. One of the things I've noticed in friends who have incredible business success, and have noticed in myself during periods of greatest productivity, is that successful people are able to keep their emotional state in check. They don't get rolled easily by criticism or praise, they don't get dragged into short term thinking or fake crisis, and they don't let an emotional state push them into saying or doing something that they'll regret, or will blow up a relationship, or give away info in a negotiation. I think it's up in the top 3-4 attributes of those who are able to fit the description described in the article.

kochikame 8y ago
I think you're right. The first big step in Emotional Intelligence is being able to understand and regulate your own emotions, and it's the first step for a reason. Kids who passed the famous marshmallow test (were able to resist the impulse to eat the marshmallow when unsupervised) were far more successful in later life I have two brothers who occasionally get very angry, cut off relationships on whims and sabotage themselves through acts of defiance and misplaced protest, and neither of them is very 'successful' (however you define it). There is definitely a link.
- bhntr3 8y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/01/famed-impulse-control-marshmallow-test-fails-in-new-research https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/01/famed-impu... Unfortunately the marshmallow test as a predictor of later success is debunked. It's part of the replication crisis in psychology. Half of the psychology we learned may be wrong. People just aren't that straightforward. https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576223 https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576223
  - haihaibye 8y ago
    The 'replicators' here are assuming humans are blank slates even though the best evidence is concienciousness is 40-60% heritable. We also know people with high time preference/ delayed gratification are wealthier. So now - what is controlling for parental wealth doing? It's removing this genetic component. Social science is confounded by genetics all the time, once you start to look for it.

plainOldText 8y ago

I have no idea what it takes to be successful – whatever success even means, although a reasonable definition would run along the lines of good finances + family/friends + health + sense of purpose + luck – but I'm willing to wager you could significantly increase your chances of being successful by: 0. Being curious 1. Thinking for yourself 2. Thinking about your thinking 3. Tweaking your thinking in the light of new discoveries 4. Associating yourself, as much as you can, with people who they themselves follow 0,1,2,3 The world is very complex. No one truly knows what they're doing. Our models of the world are just local approximations

wpmoradi 8y ago

this is a great article

uncheckederror 8y ago

373 KB and a 2.66 second page load for what is literally text on a page with no images. Better yet the content of the post is 20,000 chars on a single line inside of a 558 line HTML doc. :/

sangd 8y ago

These are very uninteresting to read. The first 3 points don't really explain how to successfully achieve them. They all come to 1 single point, you must be very skillful at multiple things to achieve them. And I think you're defining money/finance success, and not other kinds of successes.

adetrest 8y ago

I agree with you. All these books and essays ultimately boil down to "what worked for me, plus a million other things I'm not mentioning because they're not as glamorous, and a ton of luck: it could happen to you too!" Yes there is hard work in becoming successful but a ton of it is luck: being in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing, with the right people... This talk, peddling luck, expresses what I mean: https://vimeo.com/53494258 https://vimeo.com/53494258

ah765 8y ago

I think most of these are true. Here are two of my own that I generally don't see emphasized as much. 1. Do something wrong Remember that you have to be exceptional to reach outlier success. You won't be unusual if you do what everyone thinks is the correct path. When you feel strongly about something, be unwilling to change or compromise. If you're not doing anything that's considered "wrong", you won't be exceptional, and you probably won't succeed. 2. Have many advantages Have a high IQ. Have the ability to easily work hard. Have at least reasonably favorable social conditions (no debt, some money from family). To be exceptional, you need every advantage you can get. If you don't have many advantages, then you should really consider whether you can compete with people that have them. I don't think it's right to encourage everyone to try for outlier success. By definition, you need to be an outlier to reach it. On the other hand, if you have reason to believe you are an outlier, then the odds are better than you might think.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

code_coyote 8y ago

Advice in this article seems to only marginally apply to someone whose measure of success is in an artistic field. You can't get the same marginal returns as the article talks about. Also you're both competing with others for reader's attention, but not competing with anyone, as your stories can only be made by you.

jaredtn 8y ago

Really well-written. I especially agree with two points - "focus" and "learn to work hard without burning out". Those two skills will take you far, no matter your field.

companyhen 8y ago

"You get truly rich by owning things that increase rapidly in value." buys more Bitcoin

mbrodersen 8y ago

The idea that there is only one way to be successful, and that we are all in some grand competition to make as much money as possible, is beyond stupid. Financial success does not in any way shape or form have anything to do with achieving happiness.

bookofjoe 8y ago

"The secret of success is knowing something no one else knows."—Aristotle Onassis. AKA insider trading.

sdinsn 8y ago

Everyone has a different definition of what success is- and I sure have a different one than the OP.

RickJWagner 8y ago

I like legendary basketball coach John Wooden's definition of success better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MM-psvqiG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MM-psvqiG8

voiceclonr 8y ago

This is a well written piece. However IMHO, one cannot lay down a path for success. Moderate success, yes - but huge success no (which is what this alludes to). Success doesn't refer to a rule book before manifesting. There are lot of great nuggets one could take from the article and apply - but I see them as little breadcrumbs that might lead to success. Even if it did, we have no way to prove or disprove success factors. Best thing is to take the learnings, enjoy the journey towards potential success and try not to become emotionally invested into the end goal. It's super hard I know.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

thisisweirdok 8y ago

I'm successful and I'm lazy as shit. These lists are always coming from survivor bias.

saberience 8y ago

Thanks for the list of trivial banalities Sam. Next time give us advice on how to be born into a well-off family that gives you the best education money can buy.

maxwin 8y ago

An incredibly great post. Thank you for sharing. I have always wanted to take risk to found a startup, but since I am in Myanmar, I will need to claw my way up for a while to build up safety nets before I can take big risks. It is a great reminder that I cannot lose myself in a comfortable & stable career/lifestyle. Focusing too much on short term gains will blind me for long term achievement. But the risk is real especially for people in developing country so I will need to proceed carefully.

sidcool 8y ago
Wish you luck. I totally understand that not all places on the Earth are conducive to entrepreneurial ambitions. Some places are downright hostile. I wish we had some mechanism to help those from such places.

neilk 8y ago

90% of the advice here is solid, and if you are certain that high-risk high-reward businesses are what you are built for, and you have a safety net, then by all means join sama and the crew. But there are other good ways to be an outlier success than just being a businessperson. I was reminded of Hamming's "You and Your Research" which offered similar advice for academics. (Ironically, a copy is also hosted by paulg. http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html) There are many points of similarity, so many that I start to wonder if sama was intentionally recasting its advice for businesspeople. - be an independent thinker - be courageous - work is like compound interest, you need both hard work and talent - work on small things that could grow to be big things and where you have some angle of attack - have a network of people. - be connected to what your colleagues do, but not a trend-seeker - be emotionally committed - be a good salesperson - know your strengths and weaknesses ==== But there are some points of difference, like - you'll do better work in spartan surroundings - tolerate ambiguity. Believe in your idea enough to go forward, doubt it enough to consider alternatives - make your work something that can lift others up to do more than you did - Use the resources of the organization, don't fight it - Don't be too rebellious or outwardly nonconformist

cataractum 8y ago

What sort of careers can be considered "compounding" in the way Altman describes it? Economist? Engineer? Lawyer? Doctor? Dentist? I'm an economist, and i've always wondered if people with 2 years of experience can be better than those with 20+ years - if they're smart enough.

sedeki 8y ago
I might be wrong (too lazy to check; on mobile), but I don’t think he is talking about compounding careers per se, but rather advices to look for opportunities that compound.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

WannaB 8y ago

Dumb question...How does one build a network and become connected?

WannaB 8y ago

Hello...article had good advice. How does one build a network from scratch and become well connected? Thanks!

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Lists like this implicitly assume some baseline good health, an assumption that really is baseless. My health issues are a huge factor in my lack of financial success and public recognition. I'm very good at some things, but my health issues take a lot of my time. It's a huge barrier to accomplishing things, compounded by the poverty it fosters and other factors.

sidcool 8y ago

My biggest takeaway from the article: "Most people are primarily externally driven; they do what they do because they want to impress other people. This is bad for many reasons, but here are two important ones. First, you will work on consensus ideas and on consensus career tracks. You will care a lot—much more than you realize—if other people think you’re doing the right thing. This will probably prevent you from doing truly interesting work, and even if you do, someone else would have done it anyway."

dmh2000 8y ago
I'd phrase this a little differently. I'd say "they do what they do because they are motivated by other peoples expectations".

sidcool 8y ago

0. Take care of your physical and mental health. ... 14. Take care of your family.

ruang 8y ago

Why don't more employees from Google and Facebook start successful companies? They seem to exhibit all of these traits.

cypherpunks01 8y ago
Did you read the full article, including the para "At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook."?
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  The prognosis from the article is: When people get used to a comfortable life, a predictable job, and a reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, it gets very hard to leave that behind I think that there's a sampling bias here; in fact, that bias is even pointed out in the paragraph: > At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders.... I.e., this is an observation about FAANG employees who become YC founders. But the fact is, very few of those drive/motivated Google/Facebook employees leave and become YC founders. So this observation is an observation about a very small subset of the people who choose to stay at GoogleFacebook. I know a lot of people at the FAANGs who are there because they are primarily motivated by technical and scientific problems. The FAANGs -- and esp their research divisions -- are exceptionally good places to work for people who get meaning and fulfillment from technical excellence.
lazyjones 8y ago
Do they exhibit the risk-taking trait? Also, such companies offer alternative roads to personal success, like climbing up the corporate ladder and getting wealthy with stock options. Probably not all bad, especially if you can identify with the corporation's vision and feel you're doing something useful.

twakefield 8y ago

“Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles. (This is the most important thing I have learned about management, and I haven’t read much about it.)” Finding and accentuating strengths was a big focus of my previous employer, Rackspace. They used a program based on Strengths Finder [1] to determine your “strengths” and even had them displayed on your corporate ID badge. Their management philosophy was based on putting people in positions based on their strengths. It seemed a bit hokey at first and it had its problems but it was pretty refreshing compared to the typical corporate environment that espouses working harder to overcome your weaknesses. [1] https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/ https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/

ekl9sjsdf3 8y ago

Heard the saying: http://paykstrt.com/6581/22671 http://paykstrt.com/6581/22671 "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime". https://bit.ly/bestecomplatform https://bit.ly/bestecomplatform

ruang 8y ago

A negative article "How Not to Be Successful" would be interesting, with unobvious observations. It could also include the top reasons why people get rejected from YC.

lucas_membrane 8y ago

Three ways to be successful: 1. by capitalizing on your strengths, and 2. by capitalizing on the weaknesses of others, and 3. by knowing which way is easier.

benohear 8y ago

The bit I struggle with is the contradiction between "try ideas out cheaply and fail many times until you hit on the right one" and "believe in what you do and keep going come what may". How do you pick between the two?

jjn2009 8y ago
Measuable growth. If something is working it will be self evident if youre looking in the right places. The airbnb way is probably nonoptimal.

johan_larson 8y ago

I have to wonder who the target audience for this article is. The advice just doesn't seem particularly actionable. A statement like, "I think the biggest competitive advantage in business—either for a company or for an individual’s career—is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together," sounds great in a TED talk, but what the heck is anyone supposed to do about it? It's shallow. I think the article could be improved by considering more carefully who the advice is intended for, and tailoring the advice to them. The advice for a bright young college graduate should be different from the advice for a five-time failed entrepreneur or someone who has plateaued in middle management at 50.

rwz 8y ago

I find it hard to read those kind of posts because they all boil down to "have a bunch of variables you have very little control over in the correct state and you're pretty much set" If you're lucky enough to be born with a good wetware and an advantageous set of mental characteristics, you can tweak something here and there, build on top of it and become "successful". If you're nowhere near, there's very little you can do to change it. Take "be internally driven" for example. This shit is almost impossible to intentionally cultivate unless you're just lucky enough to be born this way. You can call it "loser mentality", but even that is ultimately defined by your genes.

locklock 8y ago

I oftentimes find it difficult to balance actually attempting to be successful with finding time for the backlog of Medium posts and other blog articles about "How To Be Successful" that I assume I have to read in order to be successful in the first place

rawoke083600 8y ago

Success for most people (yes there are outliers but you probably are not one of them) is like a "good marriage" - you have to work at it every day!! *disclaimer: neither married nor really that successful

abalone 8y ago

> It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US What is this a reference to? What parts of the US? It's not backed up by a citation. This is not the first time Altman has dropped a not so subtle cultural/political jab without any data to back it up.[1] [1] "It seems easier to accidentally speak heresies in San Francisco every year." http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove

polony 8y ago

"You don't want to be in a career where people who have been doing it for two years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty" Do you think programming is like this?

zeroname 8y ago
Doesn't matter, once you're past a certain age, almost nobody will hire you as a programmer. Don't build your entire career on it.

bb101 8y ago

Having read the title of the post, and browsed its contents, I went and ordered an autobiography of Gandhi with the hope of reminding myself what real success is.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

If 'everyone' is out there 'bending the universe' to their will, well, will the universe be bent? Or just scrambled? I can't help but feel this advice runs contrary to communitarian ideals, to the point that were we all to follow it, not much would get done. The best Engineers I have encountered surely have 'always been learning' but it had little to do with careerism, or 'trying to shape the world', rather just plain curiosity. Outside of that they'll have had 'normal' careers, more or less satisfied with the work to be done ahead of them. Why? Because it makes them happy to be contributors, doing their jobs well, getting a decent income, possibly raising their families etc.. There is a lot of mundane work be done even in the most creative of environments. When Steve Jobs said 'you should try to nudge the Universe forward' my first thought was 'which way is forward?' - meaning that lack of at least some kind of moral impetus (of course a very difficult, grey thing) it's hard to know. It's a very self oriented treatise, specific to the accumulation of power and influence of the individual, while effectively externalizing the 'other', and of course, all those aspects of life which are not very well described in terms of 'career' , 'money' , 'power' etc.. I'm trying to find an example of someone doing something 'purposeful' but who also had such 'compounding' effects: Ingvar Kamprad. Founder of IKEA. He wanted to make reasonable design, available to the masses for a reasonable price, and his 'small compound rate' spread over a life seems to have built something that I think will outlast most of the FAANGs. And maybe there's some 'good' in there as well. Thanks Sam, fine words for young entrepreneurs maybe, but let's try to keep this in context. The world is very big, diverse, full of all types - if the Valley wants to 'win' in the next phase of evolution, it's going to have to figure out how to promote ideals that aren't just suited to the 1%, but everyone else as well. Trying to do this while maintaining that creative/exceptionalism will be hard, but there's no way around it. You can't be 'irreverent feisty antagonists upstarts' and 'managing major parts of the economy and influencing global affairs' at the same time.

lesingerouge 8y ago

I am sorry, but this list does the exact same thing that a thousand Vogue or similar magazines do for whatever topic is trending. Substitute "successful" with "sexy" or "slim" or whatever and you get the same packaging. It does feel like shoehorning people into fitting some particular "pattern" that the author believes to be the "secret" to obtain said goal. I always find it surprising that such short (relatively) articles, choke full of relatively difficult to apply advice gain a mass following and plenty of readers. It does remind me of the rather stupid advice that depressed people get every day: "pull yourself up!" Amazing how we do seem to forget the complexity that riddles our minds.

fastbmk 8y ago

1. Write articles about huge success. 2. Inspire people to loose their lives trying to get rich. 3. If some of them start getting lucky by pure chance, convince them to share a large part of their business for small amount of money. ... 5. PROFIT!

crisstringfello 8y ago

I embody all of these traits. I don't have a prototype or traction, I'm by myself, working the same idea for many years. I've applied to YC 8 times. never got any feedback. I'm sure this is to my benefit. If suffering comes, I chose to use it to make myself stronger, more determined and focused. i close to learn. and instead of rushing to optimize for their objectives, I get to really create my vision. Everytime they reject me, I like to think about how I will make a point of how much of a broken system I think it is, when I eventually get successful.

ca98am79 8y ago

> "You also want to be an exponential curve yourself—you should aim for your life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory" ugh.. I guess this comes down to what you define as "successful" but another option is to be content in the present, and not anxious and desperately wanting the future, when you imagine everything will be better than it is now. When you treat life this way, it becomes just a means to an end, instead of an end in itself.

haaen 8y ago

Most surprising thing about this article: Diane von Furstenberg, fashion designer and wife of billionaire media entrepreneur Barry Diller, was a proofreader.

dennis_jeeves 8y ago

Sam, Philosophical question, why did you write such an article? What do you hope to accomplish? Now the criticism: Surely it must have occurred to you that at least some people out there are trying hard doing most things that you listed, and still not making it? What are you doing about it? The last I looked at YC funding, I saw that the figure is simply too low ( under $3000 a month) an incentive for a person with a stable salary to get into any venture. Most of what you have written is indeed good - but statements like: "Be hard to compete with" - are laughable. Stop making an ass of yourself with such articles, you can do better ( I mean it). Have it proof read by someone smart, before you put it out. To others: Users throwaway000021, saberience, neilk, voiceclonr, distant_hat, ah765, mcilai, beatpanda and johan_larson have all made astute observations.

hema_n 8y ago

nice one.!

thorn 8y ago

Oh really. This article has click baity title. All these motivational posts get repetitive. They have very little actionable content in them. Rather than reading advices from the privileged ivory tower of survivors, I better go and read "The dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin.