14 ms·

“Become Abnormal”: traits to cultivate for top performance

129 points by jkuria 6y ago

the_arun 6y ago
Most of the successful abnormals have deep motivation to do things differently. They may even seem like rebels. If we are fearless & ready to take risks in life, we may be coined as abnormals & there is a chance of success as well.
- agustif 6y ago
  Well I fit pretty well on those lines and are not successful by (ab)normal standards anyway
jressey 6y ago
"they channeled their thoughts toward the fundamental details of having a 'good at-bat.'" I'll pass. You can't just use tangential examples of the most successful people. This feels like pop-(pseudo) science.
- dlivingston 6y ago
  Is there a non-pop-psych book that you would recommend in the same vein as this one?
  - jressey 6y ago
    I honestly believe the vein of this book being presented is "try hard and maybe you'll get lucky." I'm sorry I can't find it, but there was an article on here a month or so ago called something like "to get ahead, focus on the metagame." The idea is to work on things that will help you get actual benefits in life. For example, spend your energy at work making sure your boss knows you do a good job, and forget about actually doing a good job. While some folks find that hard to swallow, it's how you get a high salary and promotions.
- sfink 6y ago
  I won the lottery, and you can too! The secret to my success: always picking 24 for the first number.
chadlavi 6y ago
This reads like a very good example of how not to behave if you actually want to be happy
- OneGuy123 6y ago
  You imply that what makes you happy makes others happy. A programmer who obsessively programms random side projects in his spare time is completely engaged with them and likes to do that because he enjoys it on some level. So if you think that this is worse than watching netflix or wasting time with mundant social interactions...well...I guess that doesn't make you bad. You're just average.
  - foolmeonce 6y ago
    If you are doing whatever makes you happy, what is this style of article for? If you are trying to alter what makes you happy to be successful then maybe that is a recipe for unhappiness.
  - 0x262d 6y ago
    Lol this comment is absurdly condescending. I think the issue is more with picking "abnormal" as a goal, from reading this book, and then trying to develop abnormal traits to get there; in contrast to being intrinsically motivated to work hard on and specialize in something, which is obviously fine. Additionally, one could argue that fixating on the "abnormal" language is a surface level reading of this and an unfair criticism, which I think is partially true. But if I were to rephrase "be abnormal" based on this article, it would just end up at "be unusually good", which isn't very insightful.
    - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      > the issue is more with picking "abnormal" as a goal I actually like this language. It’s a different way of asking “what makes you different, and how can you leverage instead of fighting that?”
  - switchbak 6y ago
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
who's a super successful normal person then? I nominate Henry Ford, for no particular reason. I sort of think people will find something abnormal about any super successful person, a great success implies greatness and strangeness beyond the success.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Off-topic, but ... Many normal people are super racist, so, Henry Ford does indeed qualify as a super-successful normal person. My meta-point, of course, is that while excellence and the desire to achieve it (along with a bit of glory) can be admirable, success in life - in living your life, a good life - is wildly different from the famous people - any of them - whom society presents as a "success." I'd rather be healthy and have meaningful, healthy relationships and "unsuccessful" than unhealthy and "successful" - and, I think that's _real_ success!
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    I guess it was off-topic and hopefully that was why you got downvoted, and not because people didn't want to be reminded about Henry Ford's racism but who knows. Anyway I didn't downvote, have upvoted now to make up for it even though I'm kind of a judge people by the standards of their time type re Ford's morality. I'm sort of tired of people downvoting for what seem frivolous or personal reasons.
    - adamsea 6y ago
      Thanks, fellow-person.
bluedays 6y ago
Yeah, I get this a lot. I spend hours every day dedicated to doing things to improve my skills to become more valuable in IT. People think I'm crazy, but in the time frame I have begun to do this (since my daughter was born) I can now probably run circles around anyone else who would have started at the same time. Hours of dedication, every day, is not normal. It's probably not healthy either, but I got a late start and I need to catch up.
- realbarack 6y ago
  I'm curious about the timing. Many people seem to find it more difficult to maintain this level of dedication after they have kids. What made things different in your case?
  - zdragnar 6y ago
    Not OP, but I've had friends in similar situations. When infants, they're pretty easy to keep an eye on while cramming / self-teaching. It's when they start running around more that it becomes harder, especially if you have a significant other who is also busy with work.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Usually it is partner that does all the nighttime waking up during baby time. And the partner that deals with all the interruptions the toddler produces and the partner that generally does all childcare.
    - NateEag 6y ago
      And then partner leaves you from anger at your self-centered approach to existence. Not speaking from experience - I just have three kids, do what I can to take care of them despite being the primary breadwinner, and can't imagine the resentment that must stack up if you just drop all the sleepless nights and weekends of kid-juggling on your partner. Never mind that you'll lose 7/8ths of the whole point of having kids with this approach, too.
  - bluedays 6y ago
oneiftwo 6y ago
Never in my life have I found these totally generic advice collations useful. They're always vague, unfalsifiable, borderline platitudes. They "work" for the same reasons horoscopes work, and I think a sizable minority, if not majority, of people publishing such work are just sociopathic profiteers. This post is an advertisement, but sadly that seems to be the origin of most content on the internet now - at least the SEO optimized results that fill the first (1-10?) pages.
- stevenjohns 6y ago
  As a counterpoint, I’ve found these books to be extremely useful and it has had profound positive impacts on my decisions. It’s not telling you to wake up at 4am because that’s what [unicorn startup ceo] does. The advice given here is how to step back and find solutions, which is great for people who have difficulty arriving at those points. Likening it to horoscopes because it doesn’t work for you is like me dismissing books on dieting because I’m already slim. Lots of people don’t have positive role models, good teachers, mentors, or even stable parents. So even things as simple as “don’t be quick to anger, step back and think about the long term consequences” are lessons that many people have never been taught.
  - peteretep 6y ago
    Absolutely. I have made a study of self help books, and they’re full simply of ideas, rather than facts. These ideas have been invaluable to me.
- Sevaris 6y ago
  > Never in my life have I found these totally generic advice collations useful. I only check the HN comments for posts like this. That's where the real meaty content is where actual programmers/engineers talk about what may or may not have worked for them.
kstenerud 6y ago
Another book selling the illusion of control. And this idea of "becoming abnormal" borders on creepy and cultish. Successful people have the right combination of personal traits for the circumstances they find themselves in. In other words, they got lucky, and that luck will NOT translate to anyone else. And that's really about all you can say about it. Sure, learn some time management and people skills, but the rest is beyond your control, so stop worrying about it and be comfortable in your own skin. You're not going to be wildly successful, but you'll have a far better time being happy. And time is the only thing given in about equal measure.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >Successful people have the right combination of personal traits for the circumstances they find themselves in. Personality traits aren't set in stone: people can and do change their personalities. Just not when they believe such things can't be changed, because somebody who believes something cannot be changed is not going to find a way to change it.
holografix 6y ago
Warning: this post is a generalisation that could offend some people. I’m writing it because I feel I have to. This reads _very_ American. By that I mean both a good and, more so than ever in 2020, a bad thing. The good is obviously the undying optimism, self belief resilience and competitiveness I see displayed in the American way of life so often. The bad is how it lays the responsibility for outcomes solely at the individual’s feet. “Not terribly successful? Stop blaming your kids, your marriage, it’s YOUR fault, you’re the one not doing enough”. When does society get a share of the blame? When do you stop playing a game that’s rigged against you? Do you forever keep doing _more_ reducing yourself to a life of penitence and toil to be “exceptional”? This black or white, if I’m not a winner I’m a loser mentality is terribly unhealthy to the individual, society and frankly, to other nations.
- csunwold 6y ago
  I've been thinking about this problem a bit too, this distinction between individual and collective responsibility. Here's what I've arrived at so far: First, you have to have your own definition of success. Not everyone wants to be a rich entrepreneur with a million side hustles. Don't fall for the implicit message writers like this promote that you are a loser if you haven't built a multi-million dollar business from scratch. Identify your own goals and what makes you happy and work towards that even if its not in line with what pop leadership articles like this promote. Second, forgive me for re-stating what this post already said, but focus on what you can control. This is where individual responsibility is important. Not only will you be more effective, but you'll be happier. Third, you should make efforts that are within your control to improve structures and institutions that are making it easier for some people and harder for others. I would argue there is a moral imperative on those of us who are the beneficiaries of these systems to put extra focus here. Vote every chance you get. Donate time and money to organizations pushing for systemic change. Find opportunities to make the world a more equal place and act on them.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- cabaalis 6y ago
  I didn't read any of that in this article. Maybe the not accepting excuses point? One type of leader I've encountered in my career is the one who won't accept accept excuses. "If you can't do it, I'll get someone who can." It's not personal, it's a business. Another type of leader I've encountered is one who builds the team up and accepts the occasional failure, knowing that in the long run there may be more wins because the team will grow professionally. Personally, as a leader I find myself more in the second group. However, both are really equally valid, in the long run--in that they have an equal chance to achieve business goals. How are the other two points (Don't languish in what you can't change, look for a solution in every failure) an "American" viewpoint?
taurath 6y ago
I've watched enough people grow up, become rich and powerful, then find in their 40s they have absolutely no skills to enjoy the fruits of their labor. They stopped practicing empathy so long ago to get to where they were they don't even realize how much of life's genuine enjoyment they are missing. There are a few who have the time of their lives the whole way through. Not very many. In short, just because one can, doesn't mean one should. Understand that you are closing off doors as much as opening new ones - make sure that you don't forget which ones you deep down don't want to close off.
- jesterson 6y ago
  That's a very underrated thought, unfortunately.
- watwut 6y ago
  > They stopped practicing empathy so long ago to get to where they were In this case, I would worry more about those who were harmed in the process. Whether colleges or family or friends.
- lihaciudaniel 6y ago
  >Understand that you are closing off doors as much as opening new ones You can't have everything. You must sacrifice family if you want success and if you want family you must sacrifice success. Some people aren't even aware of that and blame the former for their lack of success.
  - unfunco 6y ago
    I don't think that's true at all, pulling two obvious examples out of the air, both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, two of the most successful men in history, are both seemingly dedicated to their families. Success is also a subjective term, success here is (I think) implicitly being defined as wealth, both Gates and Buffett are hyper-successful, and I know plenty of more-ordinarily successful people with families too. Actually, I'm almost certain I know more successful people with families than I know successful loners.
aerophilic 6y ago
I am somewhat surprised and taken aback by the level of negative comments in the thread... However, I suspect that the article “touched a nerve”. In my experience, the “stronger the reaction” the more likely something is there (think Lean Startup). The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. That said, I will echo/slightly modify some of the positive comments I read: it isn’t about being “abnormal” in working 20 hour days. It is being abnormal on where you spend the time you have. Most of the extremely successful people I know personally dont accept “reasons” for why “x didn’t occur”. I think one of the famous quotes from Steve Jobs at Apple was that once you reached a certain level (VP?), no reason is good enough, it all lands on you. Or to paraphrase my advisor: “How do you know someone wanted something (past tense)? They got it.” Not everyone can be abnormal. By definition, 95% of folks can’t be. The question is: What do YOU want for yourself. What is important to you that you will fight for? For me personally, it has meant to have a meaningful family life AND a meaningful career. It hadn’t been easy. It took many short term sacrifices and focus on the long game. But in general, I have what I wanted. Examples of sacrifice: taking a “lower paying job” so I would have more freedom to pursue what I thought was important. Going “part time”/passing up opportunities so I can be with my kids while they are super young. Taking “risks” in jobs that weren’t really “sexy” on the face of it, but had the potential for long term impact. I mention the above to say it can work (but even now my life is far from perfect). The key however (Per the original article) is to adopt a mindset where you are in the driver seat and conversely are responsible. By focusing on what you can control, and not wasting energy on what you can’t, you free up resources that compound over time. To make this concrete for folks: let’s say you spend 10 mins a day on thinking how “awful” <insert pain point> is. In the course of a week, you would have spent an over an hour unproductively. Over the course of a year, over a full work week. What could you have done with an extra “week”? It doesn’t take much, done repeatedly to make a profound difference on your life in the long term. The question is whether you are willing to. Edited for clarity/succinctness
- logicchains 6y ago
  >In my experience, the “stronger the reaction” the more likely something is there (think Lean Startup). The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Arguing that people have the power to significantly change their lives is a challenge to many people's egos. If they believe something like "I haven't achieved X, which I'd like to, but that's fine because it's out of my control", and somebody else comes along and says "actually it is in people's control", then their ego doesn't hear that as an uplifting statement of empowerment, instead it hears it as something negative, because acknowledging that X was achievable would require acknowledging that they had failed to achieve X.
goatherders 6y ago
I lived by most of these mantras for 20 years and when I turned 40 I decided it wasn't worth it. Literally on my birthday I said, "I'm going to stop acting like a jerk just to get things done, practice deeper empathy, smile more, and stop working 15 hours a day. I can (and have) build a successful company without acting like there must be some maniacal focus that makes me abnormal.
- artsyca 6y ago
  statistics are the most misunderstood of all the soft sciences Normal literally means dead average and a lot of people use a lot of stereotypical behaviours to escape from that fat part of the 'normal' curve to varying degrees of success Some are short term, some are longer term, some are violent some are empathetic -- it sounds like you broke away from normal even though you still see yourself as such but believe me there is no such thing as normal it's the worst of all worlds
yowlingcat 6y ago
No, at a certain point, basketball resembles building and selling ecommerce products very little, and I don't know if it's doing you a favor for anyone to listen to you torture the analogy this way. This is a poor concept for a post. I think you would need to answer the question "Which sport, if any, involves an environment closest to ecommerce marketing." In my opinion, a more suitable sport to draw comparisons from would be jai alai: - Balls are flying dangerously fast (204 mph) - Game has been known to cause fatalities when it hits players - Unpredictable, colorful, sketchy and associated with gambling markets based on match results Can you guess why I think this sport is more similar to e-commerce marketing than basketball?
esotericn 6y ago
These posts miss the point of life, to me. They read as propaganda distributed by sociopaths or something. It's intuitively obvious that if you're a relatively healthy person, and grind at a goal exclusively with no other desire, you'll eventually be at least good at it if not spectacular. Applying that to something that you're personally interested in makes sense - but the idea that you want to be a "top performer" in some wanky capitalist game so that you can have a load of numbers and buy some fancy toys at the cost of deleting your empathy is totally absurd to most people. That's _why_ it's abnormal, because it's a shit way to live and most people don't want it. Hell, I thought I wanted it for the longest time, eventually I grew out of it and I'm glad I did and that I'm still able to make up for lost time. As long as you can convince yourself that you know it's possible - you don't need to like, actually do it. Go and enjoy yourself and those around you, we're only here once.

129 points by jkuria 6y ago

Most of the successful abnormals have deep motivation to do things differently. They may even seem like rebels. If we are fearless & ready to take risks in life, we may be coined as abnormals & there is a chance of success as well.

agustif 6y ago
Well I fit pretty well on those lines and are not successful by (ab)normal standards anyway

jressey 6y ago

"they channeled their thoughts toward the fundamental details of having a 'good at-bat.'" I'll pass. You can't just use tangential examples of the most successful people. This feels like pop-(pseudo) science.

dlivingston 6y ago
Is there a non-pop-psych book that you would recommend in the same vein as this one?
- jressey 6y ago
  I honestly believe the vein of this book being presented is "try hard and maybe you'll get lucky." I'm sorry I can't find it, but there was an article on here a month or so ago called something like "to get ahead, focus on the metagame." The idea is to work on things that will help you get actual benefits in life. For example, spend your energy at work making sure your boss knows you do a good job, and forget about actually doing a good job. While some folks find that hard to swallow, it's how you get a high salary and promotions.
sfink 6y ago
I won the lottery, and you can too! The secret to my success: always picking 24 for the first number.

chadlavi 6y ago

This reads like a very good example of how not to behave if you actually want to be happy

OneGuy123 6y ago
You imply that what makes you happy makes others happy. A programmer who obsessively programms random side projects in his spare time is completely engaged with them and likes to do that because he enjoys it on some level. So if you think that this is worse than watching netflix or wasting time with mundant social interactions...well...I guess that doesn't make you bad. You're just average.
- foolmeonce 6y ago
  If you are doing whatever makes you happy, what is this style of article for? If you are trying to alter what makes you happy to be successful then maybe that is a recipe for unhappiness.
- 0x262d 6y ago
  Lol this comment is absurdly condescending. I think the issue is more with picking "abnormal" as a goal, from reading this book, and then trying to develop abnormal traits to get there; in contrast to being intrinsically motivated to work hard on and specialize in something, which is obviously fine. Additionally, one could argue that fixating on the "abnormal" language is a surface level reading of this and an unfair criticism, which I think is partially true. But if I were to rephrase "be abnormal" based on this article, it would just end up at "be unusually good", which isn't very insightful.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > the issue is more with picking "abnormal" as a goal I actually like this language. It’s a different way of asking “what makes you different, and how can you leverage instead of fighting that?”
- switchbak 6y ago

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

who's a super successful normal person then? I nominate Henry Ford, for no particular reason. I sort of think people will find something abnormal about any super successful person, a great success implies greatness and strangeness beyond the success.

adamsea 6y ago
Off-topic, but ... Many normal people are super racist, so, Henry Ford does indeed qualify as a super-successful normal person. My meta-point, of course, is that while excellence and the desire to achieve it (along with a bit of glory) can be admirable, success in life - in living your life, a good life - is wildly different from the famous people - any of them - whom society presents as a "success." I'd rather be healthy and have meaningful, healthy relationships and "unsuccessful" than unhealthy and "successful" - and, I think that's _real_ success!
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I guess it was off-topic and hopefully that was why you got downvoted, and not because people didn't want to be reminded about Henry Ford's racism but who knows. Anyway I didn't downvote, have upvoted now to make up for it even though I'm kind of a judge people by the standards of their time type re Ford's morality. I'm sort of tired of people downvoting for what seem frivolous or personal reasons.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Thanks, fellow-person.

bluedays 6y ago

Yeah, I get this a lot. I spend hours every day dedicated to doing things to improve my skills to become more valuable in IT. People think I'm crazy, but in the time frame I have begun to do this (since my daughter was born) I can now probably run circles around anyone else who would have started at the same time. Hours of dedication, every day, is not normal. It's probably not healthy either, but I got a late start and I need to catch up.

realbarack 6y ago
I'm curious about the timing. Many people seem to find it more difficult to maintain this level of dedication after they have kids. What made things different in your case?
- zdragnar 6y ago
  Not OP, but I've had friends in similar situations. When infants, they're pretty easy to keep an eye on while cramming / self-teaching. It's when they start running around more that it becomes harder, especially if you have a significant other who is also busy with work.
- watwut 6y ago
  Usually it is partner that does all the nighttime waking up during baby time. And the partner that deals with all the interruptions the toddler produces and the partner that generally does all childcare.
  - NateEag 6y ago
    And then partner leaves you from anger at your self-centered approach to existence. Not speaking from experience - I just have three kids, do what I can to take care of them despite being the primary breadwinner, and can't imagine the resentment that must stack up if you just drop all the sleepless nights and weekends of kid-juggling on your partner. Never mind that you'll lose 7/8ths of the whole point of having kids with this approach, too.
- bluedays 6y ago

oneiftwo 6y ago

Never in my life have I found these totally generic advice collations useful. They're always vague, unfalsifiable, borderline platitudes. They "work" for the same reasons horoscopes work, and I think a sizable minority, if not majority, of people publishing such work are just sociopathic profiteers. This post is an advertisement, but sadly that seems to be the origin of most content on the internet now - at least the SEO optimized results that fill the first (1-10?) pages.

stevenjohns 6y ago
As a counterpoint, I’ve found these books to be extremely useful and it has had profound positive impacts on my decisions. It’s not telling you to wake up at 4am because that’s what [unicorn startup ceo] does. The advice given here is how to step back and find solutions, which is great for people who have difficulty arriving at those points. Likening it to horoscopes because it doesn’t work for you is like me dismissing books on dieting because I’m already slim. Lots of people don’t have positive role models, good teachers, mentors, or even stable parents. So even things as simple as “don’t be quick to anger, step back and think about the long term consequences” are lessons that many people have never been taught.
- peteretep 6y ago
  Absolutely. I have made a study of self help books, and they’re full simply of ideas, rather than facts. These ideas have been invaluable to me.
Sevaris 6y ago
> Never in my life have I found these totally generic advice collations useful. I only check the HN comments for posts like this. That's where the real meaty content is where actual programmers/engineers talk about what may or may not have worked for them.

kstenerud 6y ago

Another book selling the illusion of control. And this idea of "becoming abnormal" borders on creepy and cultish. Successful people have the right combination of personal traits for the circumstances they find themselves in. In other words, they got lucky, and that luck will NOT translate to anyone else. And that's really about all you can say about it. Sure, learn some time management and people skills, but the rest is beyond your control, so stop worrying about it and be comfortable in your own skin. You're not going to be wildly successful, but you'll have a far better time being happy. And time is the only thing given in about equal measure.

logicchains 6y ago
>Successful people have the right combination of personal traits for the circumstances they find themselves in. Personality traits aren't set in stone: people can and do change their personalities. Just not when they believe such things can't be changed, because somebody who believes something cannot be changed is not going to find a way to change it.

holografix 6y ago

Warning: this post is a generalisation that could offend some people. I’m writing it because I feel I have to. This reads _very_ American. By that I mean both a good and, more so than ever in 2020, a bad thing. The good is obviously the undying optimism, self belief resilience and competitiveness I see displayed in the American way of life so often. The bad is how it lays the responsibility for outcomes solely at the individual’s feet. “Not terribly successful? Stop blaming your kids, your marriage, it’s YOUR fault, you’re the one not doing enough”. When does society get a share of the blame? When do you stop playing a game that’s rigged against you? Do you forever keep doing _more_ reducing yourself to a life of penitence and toil to be “exceptional”? This black or white, if I’m not a winner I’m a loser mentality is terribly unhealthy to the individual, society and frankly, to other nations.

csunwold 6y ago
I've been thinking about this problem a bit too, this distinction between individual and collective responsibility. Here's what I've arrived at so far: First, you have to have your own definition of success. Not everyone wants to be a rich entrepreneur with a million side hustles. Don't fall for the implicit message writers like this promote that you are a loser if you haven't built a multi-million dollar business from scratch. Identify your own goals and what makes you happy and work towards that even if its not in line with what pop leadership articles like this promote. Second, forgive me for re-stating what this post already said, but focus on what you can control. This is where individual responsibility is important. Not only will you be more effective, but you'll be happier. Third, you should make efforts that are within your control to improve structures and institutions that are making it easier for some people and harder for others. I would argue there is a moral imperative on those of us who are the beneficiaries of these systems to put extra focus here. Vote every chance you get. Donate time and money to organizations pushing for systemic change. Find opportunities to make the world a more equal place and act on them.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cabaalis 6y ago
I didn't read any of that in this article. Maybe the not accepting excuses point? One type of leader I've encountered in my career is the one who won't accept accept excuses. "If you can't do it, I'll get someone who can." It's not personal, it's a business. Another type of leader I've encountered is one who builds the team up and accepts the occasional failure, knowing that in the long run there may be more wins because the team will grow professionally. Personally, as a leader I find myself more in the second group. However, both are really equally valid, in the long run--in that they have an equal chance to achieve business goals. How are the other two points (Don't languish in what you can't change, look for a solution in every failure) an "American" viewpoint?

taurath 6y ago

I've watched enough people grow up, become rich and powerful, then find in their 40s they have absolutely no skills to enjoy the fruits of their labor. They stopped practicing empathy so long ago to get to where they were they don't even realize how much of life's genuine enjoyment they are missing. There are a few who have the time of their lives the whole way through. Not very many. In short, just because one can, doesn't mean one should. Understand that you are closing off doors as much as opening new ones - make sure that you don't forget which ones you deep down don't want to close off.

jesterson 6y ago
That's a very underrated thought, unfortunately.
watwut 6y ago
> They stopped practicing empathy so long ago to get to where they were In this case, I would worry more about those who were harmed in the process. Whether colleges or family or friends.
lihaciudaniel 6y ago
>Understand that you are closing off doors as much as opening new ones You can't have everything. You must sacrifice family if you want success and if you want family you must sacrifice success. Some people aren't even aware of that and blame the former for their lack of success.
- unfunco 6y ago
  I don't think that's true at all, pulling two obvious examples out of the air, both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, two of the most successful men in history, are both seemingly dedicated to their families. Success is also a subjective term, success here is (I think) implicitly being defined as wealth, both Gates and Buffett are hyper-successful, and I know plenty of more-ordinarily successful people with families too. Actually, I'm almost certain I know more successful people with families than I know successful loners.

aerophilic 6y ago

I am somewhat surprised and taken aback by the level of negative comments in the thread... However, I suspect that the article “touched a nerve”. In my experience, the “stronger the reaction” the more likely something is there (think Lean Startup). The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. That said, I will echo/slightly modify some of the positive comments I read: it isn’t about being “abnormal” in working 20 hour days. It is being abnormal on where you spend the time you have. Most of the extremely successful people I know personally dont accept “reasons” for why “x didn’t occur”. I think one of the famous quotes from Steve Jobs at Apple was that once you reached a certain level (VP?), no reason is good enough, it all lands on you. Or to paraphrase my advisor: “How do you know someone wanted something (past tense)? They got it.” Not everyone can be abnormal. By definition, 95% of folks can’t be. The question is: What do YOU want for yourself. What is important to you that you will fight for? For me personally, it has meant to have a meaningful family life AND a meaningful career. It hadn’t been easy. It took many short term sacrifices and focus on the long game. But in general, I have what I wanted. Examples of sacrifice: taking a “lower paying job” so I would have more freedom to pursue what I thought was important. Going “part time”/passing up opportunities so I can be with my kids while they are super young. Taking “risks” in jobs that weren’t really “sexy” on the face of it, but had the potential for long term impact. I mention the above to say it can work (but even now my life is far from perfect). The key however (Per the original article) is to adopt a mindset where you are in the driver seat and conversely are responsible. By focusing on what you can control, and not wasting energy on what you can’t, you free up resources that compound over time. To make this concrete for folks: let’s say you spend 10 mins a day on thinking how “awful” <insert pain point> is. In the course of a week, you would have spent an over an hour unproductively. Over the course of a year, over a full work week. What could you have done with an extra “week”? It doesn’t take much, done repeatedly to make a profound difference on your life in the long term. The question is whether you are willing to. Edited for clarity/succinctness

logicchains 6y ago
>In my experience, the “stronger the reaction” the more likely something is there (think Lean Startup). The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Arguing that people have the power to significantly change their lives is a challenge to many people's egos. If they believe something like "I haven't achieved X, which I'd like to, but that's fine because it's out of my control", and somebody else comes along and says "actually it is in people's control", then their ego doesn't hear that as an uplifting statement of empowerment, instead it hears it as something negative, because acknowledging that X was achievable would require acknowledging that they had failed to achieve X.

goatherders 6y ago

I lived by most of these mantras for 20 years and when I turned 40 I decided it wasn't worth it. Literally on my birthday I said, "I'm going to stop acting like a jerk just to get things done, practice deeper empathy, smile more, and stop working 15 hours a day. I can (and have) build a successful company without acting like there must be some maniacal focus that makes me abnormal.

artsyca 6y ago
statistics are the most misunderstood of all the soft sciences Normal literally means dead average and a lot of people use a lot of stereotypical behaviours to escape from that fat part of the 'normal' curve to varying degrees of success Some are short term, some are longer term, some are violent some are empathetic -- it sounds like you broke away from normal even though you still see yourself as such but believe me there is no such thing as normal it's the worst of all worlds

yowlingcat 6y ago

No, at a certain point, basketball resembles building and selling ecommerce products very little, and I don't know if it's doing you a favor for anyone to listen to you torture the analogy this way. This is a poor concept for a post. I think you would need to answer the question "Which sport, if any, involves an environment closest to ecommerce marketing." In my opinion, a more suitable sport to draw comparisons from would be jai alai: - Balls are flying dangerously fast (204 mph) - Game has been known to cause fatalities when it hits players - Unpredictable, colorful, sketchy and associated with gambling markets based on match results Can you guess why I think this sport is more similar to e-commerce marketing than basketball?

esotericn 6y ago

These posts miss the point of life, to me. They read as propaganda distributed by sociopaths or something. It's intuitively obvious that if you're a relatively healthy person, and grind at a goal exclusively with no other desire, you'll eventually be at least good at it if not spectacular. Applying that to something that you're personally interested in makes sense - but the idea that you want to be a "top performer" in some wanky capitalist game so that you can have a load of numbers and buy some fancy toys at the cost of deleting your empathy is totally absurd to most people. That's _why_ it's abnormal, because it's a shit way to live and most people don't want it. Hell, I thought I wanted it for the longest time, eventually I grew out of it and I'm glad I did and that I'm still able to make up for lost time. As long as you can convince yourself that you know it's possible - you don't need to like, actually do it. Go and enjoy yourself and those around you, we're only here once.