12 ms·

Winning Isn't Normal

261 points by jasonshen 16y ago

sharms 16y ago
I enjoyed reading the post, and agree with it. It would be nice to read a follow-up post on balancing life -- does being a winner mean not having a family, watching a movie with friends etc?
- jasonshen 16y ago
  I'll see what I can do there! Certainly the post comes off as a little extreme but I was trying to make a point about what it takes to be successful. It's important to have down time and rejuvenation periods as well.
Periodic 16y ago
I like the point that "winning" requires abnormal behavior, but I don't like the phrasing as "winning". Winning implies a competition, when many worth-while things in life aren't a competition and often simply passing a personal bar will suffice. It is a good point that doing extraordinary things requires extraordinary devotion, but the focus on overworking and beating an opposition bothers me. I'd like to think that accomplishing extraordinary things requires an extraordinary goals and extraordinary passion. You need to have a goal to direct your energy towards, and you need the passion to pursue that goal even when it feels like it might be out of reach. I think the real message of this article is just that accomplishing extraordinary things requires a lot of hard work, persistence, and patience. I think it misses the love and passion that is required to do that long-term.
- kiba 16y ago
  To do extraordinary thing also require you to believe in something that's accurate and correct but not many people believe to be true.
- jasonshen 16y ago
  You're totally right Periodic. I didn't talk about passion but that's definitely one of the main drivers of my efforts (the others being parental pressure and personal ambition). I think competition is healthy and good as long as it doesn't consume your life. Whenever you engage in an activity where you can compare your performance to others, there will be competition. So why not try and be better? More broadly speaking, winning can also more a general term for "being successful" or "achieving your goals".
- potatolicious 16y ago
  I think the missing (but important) point from the post is that life really is a zero sum game. I've "won" at a large number of things throughout my life, some of which I wholeheartedly value, others I consider to have been an unwise waste of time. To win at something you must sacrifice another, and the bigger the win the bigger the loss on the other end. When you see a huge win but no downside, check your surroundings and tread carefully. Unless you've invented ways to artifically extend your lifespan, or have tripped into a time warp, time is the ultimate limiting factor in everything. The author mentions that he often wished to have a "normal" childhood, but then dismisses that (all too quickly, IMHO) given the scope of his accomplishments. This is not to denigrate his achievements in the least, but rather that in hindsight many of the things that I sacrificed and fought for had hidden costs that didn't make themselves evident until much later on. The advantage of leading at least a marginally "normal" childhood is your ability to identify, internalize, and connect - something I dismissed in my youth as being either irrelevant, or fixable later. It is definitely not the former, and the latter gets exponentially harder as you get older. All in all, this is not a discouragement from going nuts and working hard, but rather a strong warning that one's time resources are severely limited even if you push your body to the limit, and that the price you pay for these achievements is non-zero and often hidden.
  - robrenaud 16y ago
    I am sorry if this is an overly literal interpretation of your post, but it doesn't seem to me like you are applying the correct meaning of zero sum game. In a zero sum game, every win for you is an equal and opposite loss for your opponent. Who is your opponent in life? Now I'll certainly agree that every decision made rules out other possible options, and hence there is an ever present opportunity cost for all decisions.
    - potatolicious 16y ago
      > "Who is your opponent in life?" Yourself, I imagine. My meaning with the term is that every win (measured by some metric) for you is also an equal and opposite loss for yourself (measured in some other metric). > "and hence there is an ever present opportunity cost for all decisions." Well said. My point of my post was that often we are dismissive about these opportunity costs (I know I was, along with my other overachieving peers), and often not fully aware of their scope. To bring some specificity to vague concepts: I didn't put the time in to really socialize, connect, and date during high school. I did better at it during college, but to be perfectly honest I still put too much time towards achievements that don't in the end make me happier. I'm still recovering from the effects of that now; IMHO it's easy for high-performers (in the scholastic sense) to be blindsided by this later on. I've had more than one depressing/uncomfortable conversation where the true cost of this sacrifice dawns upon a high-performer. I've had this realization myself.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  You're taking it too literally. It's not saying everyone who is not winning is a looser; I think you could replace every instance of "winning" in that article with "doing extraordinary things" and retain exactly the same meaning.
lwhi 16y ago
I like this article. Our society places too much emphasis on superlatives. This emphasis creates a world that idolises extremes and pushes us further towards (ab)normal ideals. The journey we take towards our goals is where lessons are learnt.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  I agree,about our society, being too full of extremes, but the article doesn't change this at all. It's just more honest about what it takes to make it all the way to be a winner in - a lot of hard work and persistence and a willingness to ignore what everybody else tells you to do. It's not a new view of the way to success, but it is a great message which we have to be reminded of from time to time lest we forget it.
  - lwhi 16y ago
    Hmm.. well, maybe it challenges the notion slightly, by highlighting the fact that winning is abnormal. But then again, 'normal' is such a loaded term.
InfinityX0 16y ago
Like it, but wish the author had done this without so much braggadocio. It could have been done the same way without so much self-reference and would have come off better, IMO.
- wazoox 16y ago
  Poor boy, he doesn't have a life, never plays a video game, never go to the movies, doesn't have a girlfriend, all he has is the satisfaction to be a winner, let him brag :) I am a winner because I do almost whatever I want, most of the time. I don't leave for the office until 10:30; I keep time to read books, work on Beethoven's sonatas, and run outdoors. I don't give a f*ck about money, rewards and other people opinion. Find your inner winner!
  - alexgartrell 16y ago
    Why do people always assume that being impressive and having a life are mutually exclusive? I kind of consider myself something of a winner (top school, top job, blah blah blah), and I've certainly busted my ass to get here, but I've also had a lot of beers, seen movies, dated girls, played [American] football, etc. At the end of the day, I'm unconvinced that you can be a "winner" without doing all of it. I'm not completely convinced that the author is the huge virginal dork you made him out to be, but if it makes you feel better about your inner winner, more power to you, I guess.
    - nostrademons 16y ago
      I found the "bragging" interesting, because I scored higher than him on the SATs with zero test prep, and made All-State orchestra despite having quit violin lessons three years before and barely practiced in the last year. We all have things that we're good at. Mine just happened to be the stuff that looks great on a college app at age 19. Luck has a way of balancing itself out, though. I struggled mightily at fitting in with peers when I was in school, and I've struggled hard to do high-quality original creative work since. Haven't quite gotten the hang of either, while meanwhile there're people who create world-changing products like FaceBook and GMail and Google Maps within a couple years of getting out of college.
forgotAgain 16y ago
Winning is normal. If it wasn't we would have been extinct as a species a long time ago. What isn't normal is devoting your life to something not related to survival. At the individual level winning is important if it provides a benefit to the species as a whole. Otherwise it is transitory and unimportant.
Alex3917 16y ago
"The Olympian stands alone." --John Biglow
matwood 16y ago
Good post, and exactly right. Look at anyone who 'wins' and you'll often see extreme habits. Athletes are easy examples to look at because they compete so directly and much is written about them. If you look at a Michael Jordan or a Tiger Woods you'll of course find talent, but also an unrelenting competitive drive that made them practice for hours and hours a day. Their practice schedules were/are not normal even for the professional athlete level. There is a good quote from a forgettable rap song: Losers make excuses, winners make it happen The author of the blog post made it happen even if he wasn't aware of doing it at the time.
- snikolov 16y ago
  As much as I support making it happen over making excuses, I sometimes find it a difficult distinction to make. Jason's story hits home for me in many ways. I was also an overachiever in high school who came home at 10pm from gymnastics, did homework, slept 4 hours and did it all over again. I went to a super-competitive high school, stressed over my GPA to two decimal places, got into the top schools etc. Looking back, I did it out of something that I can only describe as pure competitive drive. I did it because I had to do well. I was concerned far more often about being a winner than about identifying and achieving a particular thing that I really care about. But winning felt good! I seem to have forgotten that since I came to college. My mindset for the past three or so years has been "I don't compete with others. I'll figure out what's really important to me and I'll work hard to achieve that." The result? I haven't figured out what's important to me. I don't feel like I've been a winner in many things because I've allowed myself to think I don't care about winning at those things. For example, I have allowed myself to say "I don't really care about algorithms" and gotten Bs and Cs in algorithms. I tell myself that blindly winning at the wrong thing for the sake of winning could make me unhappy in the long run, that I should slow down and explore and figure out some real goals first. Yet it sounds a lot like a lame excuse, and it's even more difficult to do when one feels that one is "falling behind" compared to one's peers. My conclusion is still that simply making it happen may be too superficial. It was for me. A substantial question is what you want to make happen and why.
  - jasonshen 16y ago
adovenmuehle 16y ago
I think the word "successful" makes more sense to me in this context. He was successful at prioritizing activities to achieve goals he wanted to accomplish, but what was won? I congratulate the author on having the discipline to accomplish these things. Either way, I think it's a good example of using discipline to accomplish ones goals.
- timwiseman 16y ago
  What was won? The goals he set are achieved. Now, you may question whether he set the right goals, but that is a different question.
Seth_Kriticos 16y ago
In my personal opinion, winning is getting the feeling at the end of the day that it was spent well. Most of us of course define this as achieving something, like completing some new program module or getting a good contract. The important part is that you are confident with the day, with your life. Now I'm not sure if this guy in the article is winning or not, he forgot to state that. He just said that he was the best in a competition and got a very high score on a test. I guess he felt good those days, otherwise he would not post about it, I hope. This is of course a subjective view, the concept is.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  That is one way to look at it. Personally I do not believe winning is subjective, you either get what you initially wanted or you didn't - that has got to be pretty objective. The goal you move towards on the other hand is obviously something that should be chosen by the individual who is trying to win and I will argue that all goal that really matter or bring happiness are chosen by the person who is trying to achieve it rather than by society at large.
enra 16y ago
Winning isn't normal, but also I don't like to think grinding yourself through life is winning or normal either. The author describes a one strategy to win in a simple environment with clear rules and way of progress (school, sports). I admire the discipline but I would like to see that energy to be channeled to building something valuable. What I like think is a life where you think hard about things that are worth doing, and not mix motion(doing something) with action(getting tanglible results).
gfodor 16y ago
This article also underscores how important that you choose wisely what it is you want to win at, since if you even want a chance of it you'll likely have it consume your life.
- jdileo 16y ago
  Your comment is so right and timely. At 38 years old I can honestly say I'm one of the best BD/Sales/speakers on the planet....and I hate it! I no longer want to spend hours wearing a headset prospecting, cold-calling, etc. It's always been about chasing the almighty dollar, and I've had 7-figure years. But I hate it and the lack of passion has recently led to lack of effort and the resulting avalanche of guilt because I'm not pushing as I should.
oconnore 16y ago
http://imgur.com/9dMGz.png http://imgur.com/9dMGz.png What is this crap? I'm running Fedora 14 with Opera 10.63. I guarantee you my computer has no "malware". And if it does, you sure can't detect it from an HTTP request. Just a guess: I am on a university network shared by lots of humanities majors, many of whom probably browse porn websites on unsecured Windows XP boxes. The company that provides this "service" for Jason sees that many of the computers on this network have been infected by a bot net, and then decides that it's a great idea to block the whole sub net. Now over 5000 people can't read Jason's blog. Is this really effective security? If you want to be really safe, I recommend you block 0.0.0.0/0.
- joevandyk 16y ago
  Yup, same here with OS X w/ Chrome.
- asmosoinio 16y ago
  Same here... Really annoying.
- jasonshen 16y ago
  Sorry - I signed up with cloudflare which promised a faster safer experience for my readers. =( I'll talk to them.
  - oconnore 16y ago
    Well, whatever you did worked. Thank you, I enjoyed the article.
  - jasonshen 16y ago
    Just following up on this - here's how Cloudflare replied. I'm going to set my security levels to low. Information about how the challenge pages appear can be found here: http://www.cloudflare.com/wiki/DataSources http://www.cloudflare.com/wiki/DataSources The party could look up their IP to see why the challenge is happening here: http://projecthoneypot.org/search_ip.php http://projecthoneypot.org/search_ip.php One thing that you can do is set your security settings to low on CloudFlare so only the worst offenders get challenged (attackers, etc.). You can do this by going to settings->CloudFlare settings->Security Level->Change to low. There will be false positives with data, of course, but there are two options available to challenged visitors: 1. Pass the captcha to gain entry to your site. 2. The site admin can whitelist the ip address of the visitor in their CloudFlare Threat Control Panel, which will (a) override CloudFlare's behavior, and (b) help correct false positives.
noidi 16y ago
This blog post reminded me of Alan Watts' Music and Life, which is great food for thought when pondering your goals in life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4
paganel 16y ago
Maybe it's a cultural thing (I'm an East-European who's never been to the States), but what's with this obsession about "winning", "not being a loser" etc?
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  I can't speak for the nation as a whole, but in Silicon Valley people are very competitive. There's a mentality that I too partake in sometimes of "why do it, if you can't do it well". (and 'well' has been pushed to the extreme of 'be one of the best') The influx of Asian students driven mercilessly by their parents has not exactly helped reverse this trend.
- nihilocrat 16y ago
  It's a cultural thing, definitely. Some Americans take it too far, but even those who don't (many), who don't think everything in life is about winning a competition, still interpret most things as competitions even if they aren't officially so. We've got tons of sayings that subconsciously make us a winners-only culture: "Winners don't do drugs", "Quitters never win", etc. As a teenager I was totally disillusioned with it, so I mistakenly thought winning of any form and encouraging others to try to win made you an intellectually bankrupt tool. Probably made me happier, but had the adverse effect that I feel a lot lazier than other people I know because I'm more prepared to do "good enough" rather than try to outperform my peers. Being American-born, I feel like I could be seen as a poor performer by my superiors simply because I'm not doing better than my peers.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    As far as cultural things go, I'll take it over "tall poppy syndrome" anytime. I'd rather be looked down upon for doing poorly than be looked down upon for doing well.
- robryan 16y ago
  It is a good trait in many ways, it drives people to put in the extra yards when they may not have. Given that so many things in life are when stripped down a competition. There has been argument in Australia recently over schools giving the message to primary school kids that it doesn't matter who wins in there sporting contests. I think not only does this ruin a game (when someone isn't actually trying in a game I'm involved in I lose motivation pretty quickly) but it carries over to other areas and gives a kid of close enough is good enough mentality.
ZoFreX 16y ago
Reminds me of a quote: > C'est en faisant n'importe quoi, qu'on devient n'importe qui ! Which (really badly) translated goes something like "It is by doing nothing important, that one becomes noONE important"
warmfuzzykitten 16y ago
Great blog post! Winning is hard, sustained work.
chegra 16y ago
I see systems that are design for his success. Take away his systems, I think his probability of success would drastically decrease. His systems set his expectation. I'm sure his school consistently produce high calibre people like him and even the gym that he went to after school. I'm pretty sure if he had siblings, they would also go to a top tier school. I say that to say that the take away from this is not about doing abnormal things but being in a system that expect superior performance. I think the goal is to seek out these systems and become apart of them for our given endeavors.
- jasonshen 16y ago
  You're certainly right. I'm not trying to pretend like I'm some kind of super-person. We had advantages: my mom was a gymnastics coach, I was in a great school system, high expectations were placed on me. We had disadvantages: we were immigrants, lower middle class growing up and neither parent had any experience with the US college application process. I think Warren Buffet says it best: "Take me as an example. I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I'd been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can't run very fast. I'm not particularly strong. I'd probably end up as some wild animal's dinner."
knieveltech 16y ago
Reminds me of a singular experience I had several years ago. I'd been driving pizza delivery and in general coasting through life after dropping out of college. I had wanted to be a programmer when I grew up but a personality conflict between myself and the head of the CS department at school convinced me to hit the bricks. Anyway I was doing a delivery to a local apartment complex on a windy day and on my way back to the car this little pink piece of paper blew across the parking lot and fetched up next to my shoe. I picked it up and inspected it. It was printed on both sides, one side had some kind of spam advertisement for carpet cleaning or real estate or something, but the other side caught my eye. All it said was "If you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done". While it would make a great narrative to say I went back and quit my dead end job immediately and dedicated myself to getting my shit together, it was another year before I started putting my life in order. But ever since that day, whenever I felt like I was in a rut or whatever, I'd remember that little piece of paper. Eventually I got my shit together, educated myself on a couple of programming languages and joined the workforce as a developer, married, bought a house. While I don't think that piece of paper is solely responsible for my successes, the idea "If you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done" has been kicking around in my head ever since, and I'm sure it's colored at least some of the choices I've made since that day.
- jasonshen 16y ago
  Thanks for sharing - that's an awesome story.
- fuzzythinker 16y ago
  Did you keep that paper and framed it? It would have impacted more people who visit you, and your kids, and grandkids too. Thanks for that quote, saved in my Chrome home page plugin.
- karlzt 16y ago
  what was that personality conflict that you had with the head of the CS department?
  - 16y ago
sayemm 16y ago
"Intensity is the price of excellence." - Warren Buffett, page 293 of "The Snowball"
ibagrak 16y ago
Although I greatly admire the author's personal accomplishments, I feel like some arguments in this write up are based on false premises. Here is an example: "winners will do what losers won't" What about the guy who gets the second place? the third? Surely, he did a lot of things that losers didn't but isn't he also a loser? This quickly grows absurd when you talk about competitive sports, but perhaps the line between winners and losers and what they do to become who they are is not as well-defined. Framing everything in terms of winning and losing ends up producing cultural constructs that are by and large unsupportable with real-world evidence and experience. I know this probably sounds like sour grapes or one loser's whining, but reading between the lines of the original post it doesn't sound like author was particularly happy "living" that categorization himself. Perhaps, I am imagining things though. I also think competitive sports are exceptional in how strongly work correlates with achievement. When I look at winners in business, for the life of me I don't think their accomplishments correlate with "work". Work is but one aspect, but there is also talent, intelligence, luck, and background. All of those matter too.
jamesbritt 16y ago
A corollary is that losing is normal. Or, maybe more precisely, not winning is normal. But in order to win you need to be willing to try, and if you try there's a chance you'll lose, or fail, or look foolish, or whatever. A first step in being a winner it getting comfortable with being a loser. http://creatingminds.org/quotes/failure.htm http://creatingminds.org/quotes/failure.htm
mrchess 16y ago
After reading the blurb about gymnastics I realized that this was the Jason used to compete with me back in high school over on the East Coast. Times like this reminds me how small the world is!
juiceandjuice 16y ago
Congratulations you've done everything the world told you that you need to do in order to become a "winner" It's a shame you've never seen the prize though.

261 points by jasonshen 16y ago

I enjoyed reading the post, and agree with it. It would be nice to read a follow-up post on balancing life -- does being a winner mean not having a family, watching a movie with friends etc?

jasonshen 16y ago
I'll see what I can do there! Certainly the post comes off as a little extreme but I was trying to make a point about what it takes to be successful. It's important to have down time and rejuvenation periods as well.

Periodic 16y ago

I like the point that "winning" requires abnormal behavior, but I don't like the phrasing as "winning". Winning implies a competition, when many worth-while things in life aren't a competition and often simply passing a personal bar will suffice. It is a good point that doing extraordinary things requires extraordinary devotion, but the focus on overworking and beating an opposition bothers me. I'd like to think that accomplishing extraordinary things requires an extraordinary goals and extraordinary passion. You need to have a goal to direct your energy towards, and you need the passion to pursue that goal even when it feels like it might be out of reach. I think the real message of this article is just that accomplishing extraordinary things requires a lot of hard work, persistence, and patience. I think it misses the love and passion that is required to do that long-term.

kiba 16y ago
To do extraordinary thing also require you to believe in something that's accurate and correct but not many people believe to be true.
jasonshen 16y ago
You're totally right Periodic. I didn't talk about passion but that's definitely one of the main drivers of my efforts (the others being parental pressure and personal ambition). I think competition is healthy and good as long as it doesn't consume your life. Whenever you engage in an activity where you can compare your performance to others, there will be competition. So why not try and be better? More broadly speaking, winning can also more a general term for "being successful" or "achieving your goals".
potatolicious 16y ago
I think the missing (but important) point from the post is that life really is a zero sum game. I've "won" at a large number of things throughout my life, some of which I wholeheartedly value, others I consider to have been an unwise waste of time. To win at something you must sacrifice another, and the bigger the win the bigger the loss on the other end. When you see a huge win but no downside, check your surroundings and tread carefully. Unless you've invented ways to artifically extend your lifespan, or have tripped into a time warp, time is the ultimate limiting factor in everything. The author mentions that he often wished to have a "normal" childhood, but then dismisses that (all too quickly, IMHO) given the scope of his accomplishments. This is not to denigrate his achievements in the least, but rather that in hindsight many of the things that I sacrificed and fought for had hidden costs that didn't make themselves evident until much later on. The advantage of leading at least a marginally "normal" childhood is your ability to identify, internalize, and connect - something I dismissed in my youth as being either irrelevant, or fixable later. It is definitely not the former, and the latter gets exponentially harder as you get older. All in all, this is not a discouragement from going nuts and working hard, but rather a strong warning that one's time resources are severely limited even if you push your body to the limit, and that the price you pay for these achievements is non-zero and often hidden.
- robrenaud 16y ago
  I am sorry if this is an overly literal interpretation of your post, but it doesn't seem to me like you are applying the correct meaning of zero sum game. In a zero sum game, every win for you is an equal and opposite loss for your opponent. Who is your opponent in life? Now I'll certainly agree that every decision made rules out other possible options, and hence there is an ever present opportunity cost for all decisions.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    > "Who is your opponent in life?" Yourself, I imagine. My meaning with the term is that every win (measured by some metric) for you is also an equal and opposite loss for yourself (measured in some other metric). > "and hence there is an ever present opportunity cost for all decisions." Well said. My point of my post was that often we are dismissive about these opportunity costs (I know I was, along with my other overachieving peers), and often not fully aware of their scope. To bring some specificity to vague concepts: I didn't put the time in to really socialize, connect, and date during high school. I did better at it during college, but to be perfectly honest I still put too much time towards achievements that don't in the end make me happier. I'm still recovering from the effects of that now; IMHO it's easy for high-performers (in the scholastic sense) to be blindsided by this later on. I've had more than one depressing/uncomfortable conversation where the true cost of this sacrifice dawns upon a high-performer. I've had this realization myself.
sliverstorm 16y ago
You're taking it too literally. It's not saying everyone who is not winning is a looser; I think you could replace every instance of "winning" in that article with "doing extraordinary things" and retain exactly the same meaning.

lwhi 16y ago

I like this article. Our society places too much emphasis on superlatives. This emphasis creates a world that idolises extremes and pushes us further towards (ab)normal ideals. The journey we take towards our goals is where lessons are learnt.

tomjen3 16y ago
I agree,about our society, being too full of extremes, but the article doesn't change this at all. It's just more honest about what it takes to make it all the way to be a winner in - a lot of hard work and persistence and a willingness to ignore what everybody else tells you to do. It's not a new view of the way to success, but it is a great message which we have to be reminded of from time to time lest we forget it.
- lwhi 16y ago
  Hmm.. well, maybe it challenges the notion slightly, by highlighting the fact that winning is abnormal. But then again, 'normal' is such a loaded term.

InfinityX0 16y ago

Like it, but wish the author had done this without so much braggadocio. It could have been done the same way without so much self-reference and would have come off better, IMO.

wazoox 16y ago
Poor boy, he doesn't have a life, never plays a video game, never go to the movies, doesn't have a girlfriend, all he has is the satisfaction to be a winner, let him brag :) I am a winner because I do almost whatever I want, most of the time. I don't leave for the office until 10:30; I keep time to read books, work on Beethoven's sonatas, and run outdoors. I don't give a f*ck about money, rewards and other people opinion. Find your inner winner!
- alexgartrell 16y ago
  Why do people always assume that being impressive and having a life are mutually exclusive? I kind of consider myself something of a winner (top school, top job, blah blah blah), and I've certainly busted my ass to get here, but I've also had a lot of beers, seen movies, dated girls, played [American] football, etc. At the end of the day, I'm unconvinced that you can be a "winner" without doing all of it. I'm not completely convinced that the author is the huge virginal dork you made him out to be, but if it makes you feel better about your inner winner, more power to you, I guess.
  - nostrademons 16y ago
    I found the "bragging" interesting, because I scored higher than him on the SATs with zero test prep, and made All-State orchestra despite having quit violin lessons three years before and barely practiced in the last year. We all have things that we're good at. Mine just happened to be the stuff that looks great on a college app at age 19. Luck has a way of balancing itself out, though. I struggled mightily at fitting in with peers when I was in school, and I've struggled hard to do high-quality original creative work since. Haven't quite gotten the hang of either, while meanwhile there're people who create world-changing products like FaceBook and GMail and Google Maps within a couple years of getting out of college.

forgotAgain 16y ago

Winning is normal. If it wasn't we would have been extinct as a species a long time ago. What isn't normal is devoting your life to something not related to survival. At the individual level winning is important if it provides a benefit to the species as a whole. Otherwise it is transitory and unimportant.

Alex3917 16y ago

"The Olympian stands alone." --John Biglow

matwood 16y ago

Good post, and exactly right. Look at anyone who 'wins' and you'll often see extreme habits. Athletes are easy examples to look at because they compete so directly and much is written about them. If you look at a Michael Jordan or a Tiger Woods you'll of course find talent, but also an unrelenting competitive drive that made them practice for hours and hours a day. Their practice schedules were/are not normal even for the professional athlete level. There is a good quote from a forgettable rap song: Losers make excuses, winners make it happen The author of the blog post made it happen even if he wasn't aware of doing it at the time.

snikolov 16y ago
As much as I support making it happen over making excuses, I sometimes find it a difficult distinction to make. Jason's story hits home for me in many ways. I was also an overachiever in high school who came home at 10pm from gymnastics, did homework, slept 4 hours and did it all over again. I went to a super-competitive high school, stressed over my GPA to two decimal places, got into the top schools etc. Looking back, I did it out of something that I can only describe as pure competitive drive. I did it because I had to do well. I was concerned far more often about being a winner than about identifying and achieving a particular thing that I really care about. But winning felt good! I seem to have forgotten that since I came to college. My mindset for the past three or so years has been "I don't compete with others. I'll figure out what's really important to me and I'll work hard to achieve that." The result? I haven't figured out what's important to me. I don't feel like I've been a winner in many things because I've allowed myself to think I don't care about winning at those things. For example, I have allowed myself to say "I don't really care about algorithms" and gotten Bs and Cs in algorithms. I tell myself that blindly winning at the wrong thing for the sake of winning could make me unhappy in the long run, that I should slow down and explore and figure out some real goals first. Yet it sounds a lot like a lame excuse, and it's even more difficult to do when one feels that one is "falling behind" compared to one's peers. My conclusion is still that simply making it happen may be too superficial. It was for me. A substantial question is what you want to make happen and why.
- jasonshen 16y ago

adovenmuehle 16y ago

I think the word "successful" makes more sense to me in this context. He was successful at prioritizing activities to achieve goals he wanted to accomplish, but what was won? I congratulate the author on having the discipline to accomplish these things. Either way, I think it's a good example of using discipline to accomplish ones goals.

timwiseman 16y ago
What was won? The goals he set are achieved. Now, you may question whether he set the right goals, but that is a different question.

Seth_Kriticos 16y ago

In my personal opinion, winning is getting the feeling at the end of the day that it was spent well. Most of us of course define this as achieving something, like completing some new program module or getting a good contract. The important part is that you are confident with the day, with your life. Now I'm not sure if this guy in the article is winning or not, he forgot to state that. He just said that he was the best in a competition and got a very high score on a test. I guess he felt good those days, otherwise he would not post about it, I hope. This is of course a subjective view, the concept is.

tomjen3 16y ago
That is one way to look at it. Personally I do not believe winning is subjective, you either get what you initially wanted or you didn't - that has got to be pretty objective. The goal you move towards on the other hand is obviously something that should be chosen by the individual who is trying to win and I will argue that all goal that really matter or bring happiness are chosen by the person who is trying to achieve it rather than by society at large.

enra 16y ago

Winning isn't normal, but also I don't like to think grinding yourself through life is winning or normal either. The author describes a one strategy to win in a simple environment with clear rules and way of progress (school, sports). I admire the discipline but I would like to see that energy to be channeled to building something valuable. What I like think is a life where you think hard about things that are worth doing, and not mix motion(doing something) with action(getting tanglible results).

gfodor 16y ago

This article also underscores how important that you choose wisely what it is you want to win at, since if you even want a chance of it you'll likely have it consume your life.

jdileo 16y ago
Your comment is so right and timely. At 38 years old I can honestly say I'm one of the best BD/Sales/speakers on the planet....and I hate it! I no longer want to spend hours wearing a headset prospecting, cold-calling, etc. It's always been about chasing the almighty dollar, and I've had 7-figure years. But I hate it and the lack of passion has recently led to lack of effort and the resulting avalanche of guilt because I'm not pushing as I should.

oconnore 16y ago

http://imgur.com/9dMGz.png http://imgur.com/9dMGz.png What is this crap? I'm running Fedora 14 with Opera 10.63. I guarantee you my computer has no "malware". And if it does, you sure can't detect it from an HTTP request. Just a guess: I am on a university network shared by lots of humanities majors, many of whom probably browse porn websites on unsecured Windows XP boxes. The company that provides this "service" for Jason sees that many of the computers on this network have been infected by a bot net, and then decides that it's a great idea to block the whole sub net. Now over 5000 people can't read Jason's blog. Is this really effective security? If you want to be really safe, I recommend you block 0.0.0.0/0.

joevandyk 16y ago
Yup, same here with OS X w/ Chrome.
asmosoinio 16y ago
Same here... Really annoying.
jasonshen 16y ago
Sorry - I signed up with cloudflare which promised a faster safer experience for my readers. =( I'll talk to them.
- oconnore 16y ago
  Well, whatever you did worked. Thank you, I enjoyed the article.
- jasonshen 16y ago
  Just following up on this - here's how Cloudflare replied. I'm going to set my security levels to low. Information about how the challenge pages appear can be found here: http://www.cloudflare.com/wiki/DataSources http://www.cloudflare.com/wiki/DataSources The party could look up their IP to see why the challenge is happening here: http://projecthoneypot.org/search_ip.php http://projecthoneypot.org/search_ip.php One thing that you can do is set your security settings to low on CloudFlare so only the worst offenders get challenged (attackers, etc.). You can do this by going to settings->CloudFlare settings->Security Level->Change to low. There will be false positives with data, of course, but there are two options available to challenged visitors: 1. Pass the captcha to gain entry to your site. 2. The site admin can whitelist the ip address of the visitor in their CloudFlare Threat Control Panel, which will (a) override CloudFlare's behavior, and (b) help correct false positives.

noidi 16y ago

This blog post reminded me of Alan Watts' Music and Life, which is great food for thought when pondering your goals in life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4

paganel 16y ago

Maybe it's a cultural thing (I'm an East-European who's never been to the States), but what's with this obsession about "winning", "not being a loser" etc?

sliverstorm 16y ago
I can't speak for the nation as a whole, but in Silicon Valley people are very competitive. There's a mentality that I too partake in sometimes of "why do it, if you can't do it well". (and 'well' has been pushed to the extreme of 'be one of the best') The influx of Asian students driven mercilessly by their parents has not exactly helped reverse this trend.
nihilocrat 16y ago
It's a cultural thing, definitely. Some Americans take it too far, but even those who don't (many), who don't think everything in life is about winning a competition, still interpret most things as competitions even if they aren't officially so. We've got tons of sayings that subconsciously make us a winners-only culture: "Winners don't do drugs", "Quitters never win", etc. As a teenager I was totally disillusioned with it, so I mistakenly thought winning of any form and encouraging others to try to win made you an intellectually bankrupt tool. Probably made me happier, but had the adverse effect that I feel a lot lazier than other people I know because I'm more prepared to do "good enough" rather than try to outperform my peers. Being American-born, I feel like I could be seen as a poor performer by my superiors simply because I'm not doing better than my peers.
- philwelch 16y ago
  As far as cultural things go, I'll take it over "tall poppy syndrome" anytime. I'd rather be looked down upon for doing poorly than be looked down upon for doing well.
robryan 16y ago
It is a good trait in many ways, it drives people to put in the extra yards when they may not have. Given that so many things in life are when stripped down a competition. There has been argument in Australia recently over schools giving the message to primary school kids that it doesn't matter who wins in there sporting contests. I think not only does this ruin a game (when someone isn't actually trying in a game I'm involved in I lose motivation pretty quickly) but it carries over to other areas and gives a kid of close enough is good enough mentality.

ZoFreX 16y ago

Reminds me of a quote: > C'est en faisant n'importe quoi, qu'on devient n'importe qui ! Which (really badly) translated goes something like "It is by doing nothing important, that one becomes noONE important"

warmfuzzykitten 16y ago

Great blog post! Winning is hard, sustained work.

chegra 16y ago

I see systems that are design for his success. Take away his systems, I think his probability of success would drastically decrease. His systems set his expectation. I'm sure his school consistently produce high calibre people like him and even the gym that he went to after school. I'm pretty sure if he had siblings, they would also go to a top tier school. I say that to say that the take away from this is not about doing abnormal things but being in a system that expect superior performance. I think the goal is to seek out these systems and become apart of them for our given endeavors.

jasonshen 16y ago
You're certainly right. I'm not trying to pretend like I'm some kind of super-person. We had advantages: my mom was a gymnastics coach, I was in a great school system, high expectations were placed on me. We had disadvantages: we were immigrants, lower middle class growing up and neither parent had any experience with the US college application process. I think Warren Buffet says it best: "Take me as an example. I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I'd been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can't run very fast. I'm not particularly strong. I'd probably end up as some wild animal's dinner."

knieveltech 16y ago

Reminds me of a singular experience I had several years ago. I'd been driving pizza delivery and in general coasting through life after dropping out of college. I had wanted to be a programmer when I grew up but a personality conflict between myself and the head of the CS department at school convinced me to hit the bricks. Anyway I was doing a delivery to a local apartment complex on a windy day and on my way back to the car this little pink piece of paper blew across the parking lot and fetched up next to my shoe. I picked it up and inspected it. It was printed on both sides, one side had some kind of spam advertisement for carpet cleaning or real estate or something, but the other side caught my eye. All it said was "If you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done". While it would make a great narrative to say I went back and quit my dead end job immediately and dedicated myself to getting my shit together, it was another year before I started putting my life in order. But ever since that day, whenever I felt like I was in a rut or whatever, I'd remember that little piece of paper. Eventually I got my shit together, educated myself on a couple of programming languages and joined the workforce as a developer, married, bought a house. While I don't think that piece of paper is solely responsible for my successes, the idea "If you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done" has been kicking around in my head ever since, and I'm sure it's colored at least some of the choices I've made since that day.

jasonshen 16y ago
Thanks for sharing - that's an awesome story.
fuzzythinker 16y ago
Did you keep that paper and framed it? It would have impacted more people who visit you, and your kids, and grandkids too. Thanks for that quote, saved in my Chrome home page plugin.
karlzt 16y ago
what was that personality conflict that you had with the head of the CS department?
- 16y ago

sayemm 16y ago

"Intensity is the price of excellence." - Warren Buffett, page 293 of "The Snowball"

ibagrak 16y ago

Although I greatly admire the author's personal accomplishments, I feel like some arguments in this write up are based on false premises. Here is an example: "winners will do what losers won't" What about the guy who gets the second place? the third? Surely, he did a lot of things that losers didn't but isn't he also a loser? This quickly grows absurd when you talk about competitive sports, but perhaps the line between winners and losers and what they do to become who they are is not as well-defined. Framing everything in terms of winning and losing ends up producing cultural constructs that are by and large unsupportable with real-world evidence and experience. I know this probably sounds like sour grapes or one loser's whining, but reading between the lines of the original post it doesn't sound like author was particularly happy "living" that categorization himself. Perhaps, I am imagining things though. I also think competitive sports are exceptional in how strongly work correlates with achievement. When I look at winners in business, for the life of me I don't think their accomplishments correlate with "work". Work is but one aspect, but there is also talent, intelligence, luck, and background. All of those matter too.

jamesbritt 16y ago

A corollary is that losing is normal. Or, maybe more precisely, not winning is normal. But in order to win you need to be willing to try, and if you try there's a chance you'll lose, or fail, or look foolish, or whatever. A first step in being a winner it getting comfortable with being a loser. http://creatingminds.org/quotes/failure.htm http://creatingminds.org/quotes/failure.htm

mrchess 16y ago

After reading the blurb about gymnastics I realized that this was the Jason used to compete with me back in high school over on the East Coast. Times like this reminds me how small the world is!

juiceandjuice 16y ago

Congratulations you've done everything the world told you that you need to do in order to become a "winner" It's a shame you've never seen the prize though.