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Here's what I would tell my kids: "Odds are, you ARE behind. In any given rank ordering, 50% are below average. 90% are NOT in the top 10% If you're lucky and

Here's what I would tell my kids: "Odds are, you ARE behind. In any given rank ordering, 50% are below average. 90% are NOT in the top 10% If you're lucky and work hard, you can be in the top 10%, 5% or even 1% of a few areas. But even then, you can beat yourself up about not being the best--because even if you sometimes are the best at something, sometimes you aren't. You can always make yourself miserable, if you choose to. So what do you do? You have 3 choices: 1. sit there and complain about it 2. Deny the reality of your "behindness", which makes for weak men and women (and I didn't raise wimps) 3. Or, you can realize that there's a set of skills related to managing your internal state The best way to do this is to focus on process-oriented goals, rather than results oriented goals. In other words, take pride in your work not in the output. You can lose every game, yet feel okay, if you set your goals to be play a bit better than last time--and do it. Once you get there, you can admit others are better than you and be thankful for the opportunity to learn from them--since you're no longer competing. This is what is meant by "losers focus on the winners, and winners focus on themselves". It's simple, but not easy. It takes work to achieve this, just like it takes work to achieve any useful skill. And just like any other skill, you'll get this right sometimes and screw it up at others. Just try to do it better today than you did yesterday, yes, like it's any other skill. Good luck, I'll always be rooting for you.

DogOnTheWeb 5y ago
I think this is the better approach. OP’s take feels almost nihilistic in disregarding any urge to “catch up” with peers or role models. We can acknowledge that others have gone further, faster in an area and use that as motivation without falling into despair. At the same time, life is about managing trade offs across many aspects. Often investing in one area means taking from another, and just because someone is further in one area, doesn’t mean their whole life is richer.
- biren34 5y ago
  Yeah, the fact is other people are often more talented, any maybe worse, even if other people aren't more talented, you just screw stuff up--often a lot. It's part of life and putting your head in the sand about is just weak. If you could have been farther--and worst case the only reason you aren't is because of mistakes you knew better than to make--face it, accept it, forgive yourself and use the experience to keep your head on straight going forward. It's all you can do anyway. As for tactics, sometimes it might help if you imagine it was someone else who screwed up the way you did and consider how you'd treat/view them. (For those of us with really super-critical inner voices, this can help us get in touch with our compassion.) Like all these kinds of things, YMMV.
- rrherr 5y ago
  “OP’s take feels almost nihilistic” OP: “So turn your eyes forward and focus on what you can change: the future.”
- Noos 5y ago
  No, despair often comes anyways. Those high achievers simply don't just achieve; in the process, they often define what "average" means in something. You see it in multiplayer videogames for example. The further, faster players often end up skewing the whole competitive curve, to where ranking players are a lot better on the whole compared to when the game started, but worse off by the metrics. A silver player now is easily equal to a gold player at launch. You can spend all this effort on a skill treadmill spending more and more effort to remain the same, only to fall off of it. High achievers are far too efficient and things tend to optimize way too much over time to try and play the competitive game. I think you can also see this in things like children's sports; the people who turn little league into portfolio activities end up raising the cost for everyone, who then abandons the sport. This is something I am wrestling with a lot in my life, and I think a lot of competitive burnout happens due to this. I can try to be my best self, but the deep end of the pool is so deep that it gets harder to not seek shallower and shallower water till I get out or drown.
Retric 5y ago
That can quickly become a seriously unhealthy attitude. It’s vastly more manageable to say in every activity there is someone at the top and everyone else is behind them. However, nobody is at the top of everything. The trick is making sure your good enough to do what you want to do. Don’t try to be better at everything, get better at the things holding you back and then move on. You don’t need to be the worlds best cook to make lunch, but pick something and hitting the top 10%, 1%, 0.1% or even #1 becomes possible. I have seen far to many overachievers who break down when they realized the vast majority of their time and effort has been wasted.
- OnlyOneCannolo 5y ago
  How exactly can it become unhealthy? I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't see it myself. If anything, it just looks like Stoicism to me.
  - Retric 5y ago
    People need to accept that getting better at something comes at the cost of not being better at something else. Some things like being able to clearly communicate in writing or even just walking are inherently useful. However, if the benchmark is being able to walk that’s pass fail, what does it matter if your in the 15th percentile or 90th percentile walker? Similarly not everything makes the cut. Judging a RPG wizard by their strength score misses the point. When someone accepts that splitting their focus isn’t free. Then not learning French and not being on the top 10% of something was also useful. Judging yourself by external rankings in multiple categories is therefore foolish. Having a higher rank in something may be counter productive.
    - OnlyOneCannolo 5y ago
      I didn't (and still don't) interpret the comment as saying that their kids have to be the best at everything. I think you're preaching to the choir.
      - 5y ago
ptr2voidStar 5y ago
"focus on process-oriented goals, rather than results oriented goals". Thank you for this. So simple, yet so profound when put into practice. I believe you might just have changed my life.
eloff 5y ago
I've come to this same conclusion over the years. I'm a good programmer, probably top 1%, but that means there are a hundred thousand better programmers out there. I've come across some that can do things I will never be able to. I'll likely never be the best at any one thing. But I strive to improve at all the things that matter to me. I even have a spreadsheet titled "better than yesterday" where I track my progress. Try to be the best version of yourself, not the best in the world. This constant need to compare yourself with your peers and neighbors and edited Instagram models is very unhealthy. It is the exact opposite of the road to happiness.
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  I think that the person who is enjoying themselves when they program, and sure, improving as well, is the one who is "ahead" or "winning". Some people enjoy difficult challenges, some enjoy creating something beautiful and elegant, and some enjoy helping others or making the world an easier place to navigate for others.
  - eloff 5y ago
    Honestly, yes. You're going to be doing this for a long time. A sizeable percentage of your entire life. If you're not enjoying it while you're doing it - it doesn't matter how much money you're making. You're just not going to be happy like that. A certain amount of any job is going to be drudgery, that's why they have to pay you to do it. But if it is mostly drudgery then it's time to change jobs or careers.
    - the_only_law 5y ago
      I’m just trying to get out of the cycle of “mostly drudgery” jobs. It seems that’s an overwhelming majority.
leoh 5y ago
This is totally missing the point of the post. This post is maybe the most humane, grounded, kind thing I've seen in a while -- and I go to the comments section and I see a bull whip. We all need to take a break and chill. There is an antique question put to Napoleon -- after you conquer the world, what will you do? Napoleon says: I'll sit back and drink a glass of wine. Our time on Earth is limited. If you want to spend it "winning" go on right ahead. But you need to make sure you also know you're perfectly okay right where you are, too; lest you go insane, lest you spend your whole life in a tizzy about where you rank. Which unequivocally seems to me to be a life... wasted.
- slibhb 5y ago
  For better or worse, we are constantly ranking ourselves against others. I'm not sure it's possible to opt out of this. If the author of this article didn't care what other people thought, why would he publish a blog? Even if all you value is equanimity, you'll compare yourself to people embodying it. True detachment is basically an ideal, religious state. If you fail to acknowledge the part of you that ranks yourself, it often leads to poorly masked jealousy. Like thinking everyone who makes more money than you is greedy, everyone who is smarter than you is pretentious. Better to notice that part of yourself. It doesn't have to rule you completely but it's there.
  - ganafagol 5y ago
    Maybe one way out is to change the metric you are comparing. That overachiever neighbor with 3 kids he rarely sees, the trophy wife that wants another gucci handbag and the porsche he drives hastily to the next meeting? Does he have more money? Sure. Is he more happy? Hardly. If the happiness and relaxation metric are what counts then me bindge watching netflix a lazy saturday morning wins 10x over that guy rushing to the airport to make it to his business class flight to Paris.
    - zimpenfish 5y ago
      > Is he more happy? Even if he is, it's not like happiness is a zero-sum game for humanity.
01100011 5y ago
> In any given rank ordering, 50% are below average. That's not exactly true in all cases though, is it?
- CBLT 5y ago
  Yeah, they should use median instead of average.
  - biren34 5y ago
    While I enjoy a good nitpicking as much as the next guy, when talking about rank ordering, the use of average to denote median is valid. Median and mean only diverge when there's a long-tail scalar that skews the mean away from the median. Since rank ordering gives every individual the same weighting with no scalars, "average" is accurate enough, if somewhat colloquial.
    - 01100011 5y ago
      With rank ordering and an odd number of ranks, isn't one rank exactly the median and therefore less than 50% are less than the median? I'm not trying to be an ass, I just have always wanted to have a discussion on this. I commonly hear 50% of people are below average intelligence, for instance. But it seems like IQ is a somewhat discrete scale and quite a few people are within the error bars of being exactly average. If you can't tell, I've never taken statistics.
      - biren34 5y ago
        The example you give is true. However, it's a toy example that doesn't usually relate to real world data sets. In most cases, with the amount of data you have, the rounding washes out any real impact of the effect, and you often have measurement error far larger than it anyway. But yeah, if you're ranking 9 people on an easily knowable stat, then technical 4/9 are below median, 4/9 above, and 1 is exactly median. With the IQ example you gave, it's just that people don't speak with that level of precision about most things--also, that level of precision is very rarely useful. So, you're not wrong, but kind of sideways to the discussion at hand. It's actually a common problem in business, where really detail-oriented analysts miss the forest for the trees over stuff like this. Regarding median vs mean vs average (as the 1st reply to your comment mentioned), median and mean are generally equal as long the values being measure are symmetrically dispersed around the "average". If you get a fat tail in one direction or the other, the mean will be skewed in the direction of that tail, and you need to be careful.
anarticle 5y ago
Or 4, not care about it. These sorts of "ahead" "behind" games lead to min-maxing skill, which sounds like optimizing but leads to fragility and non-robustness. Specialization is for insects. There is no high scoreboard at the end.
- biren34 5y ago
  Okay, this brings up a really pivotal point that took me way too long to learn: ALL advice MUST be tailored to the individual. This entire discussion is moot for some fraction of the population whether due to internal traits or external circumstances. So, if you are living option #4, good luck to you. If someone is not living option #4, there are likely internal drives they need to learn to control/manage, and just pointing out that other people are able to live option #4 isn't useful to them.
  - q3k 5y ago
    I think your original post irks me in the context of raising children: by only presenting them options #1-#3, you effectively blind them from seeing option #4 as a possibility. Eg., you have the potential of raising overly competitive children that will absolutely lose it when they realize there's no obvious ranking after they step out of the traditional path of school -> university -> corporate career.
    - biren34 5y ago
      How I wish I could link to another comment. Here's my answer to that, with some of it repeated from a comment posted to another comment above: I 100% believe in "success" and the will to power--and I want my kids to succeed, full stop. I make no excuses. It's part of my value system, and I don't hide from it. I'm a second generation immigrant, and on my visits back to India, I've seen what real poverty looks like. I don't mean any offense in this, but here it is as plainly as I can say: The idea that "success" isn't crucially important in life is just wrong. I see it as coming from a softness that I associate with participation trophies and the general wimpification of America. I very much ascribe to G. Michael Hopf's philosophy of “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” The ability to succeed is essential. It's the ability set a goal and accomplish it. That ability is totally separate from the nature of the goal. That goal can be making a billion dollars or it can be building a neighborhood community group. Given the above, I DON'T deem to know the right path for my children. They are their own people with their own passions, skills, and motivations. They're still young, but I hope that, if one day, one of them wants to drop out of college and pursue acting full time, I'll be supportive. My goal is to give them the skills and emotional strength to go out there and be the best version of themselves, and in my opinion, knowing how to succeed--and how to see other are farther along than you and still keep going--it crucial. At the same time, there's a reason I couched this conversation in terms of what I'd tell my kids. I'm not claiming any universal truth. This is me, my values, my biases. I think I'm right, but I'm just another schmoe doing the best I can. And fortunately, it's my right to screw up my kids in my own way :)
ganafagol 5y ago
Wow, you are not just missing the articles point, but you are turning it upside down. Two examples: > It takes work to achieve this, just like it takes work to achieve any useful skill. This is the recipe to have the exact feeling of inadequacy discussed in the article. "Didn't achieve? So you didn't put in the work. Shame on you. You are behind." > "losers focus on the winners, and winners focus on themselves". Having to be a winner is the exact mentality descibed in the article. And your kids not being raised wimps is a comment that just makes me sad.
- username90 5y ago
  > Having to be a winner is the exact mentality descibed in the article. Nobody said you had to be a winner though. But if you want to be a winner it is good to know what it takes.
danielscrubs 5y ago
My parent is a globally famous doctor basically invented scores that are used in the US and Europe. What they do that almost no one does: focus on a single super specific thing for decades. Everyone wants to jump around to their heart’s content and try different things. Few want to study for example Scott–Strachey semantics for decades, which is exactly why you can compete if you do it. It’s a fight against your heart or at a very least a fight for motivation.
- tafox 5y ago
  Surviorship bias. Your parent is one of the few successful ones, whose niche paid off. You don't hear about the vast majority of researchers & scientists, all smiliarly talented and motivated, where at least in their lifetime, their research didn't payoff. For the average person, the expected value of staying flexible and having decent breadth, is way higher than betting your entire life on some tiny niche.
weeboid 5y ago
Squid tentacles, FSM help your children.
crispyambulance 5y ago
> focus on process-oriented goals, rather than results oriented goals. THere's a third facet which I think better describes what you're talking about: being "purpose" oriented. Results-oriented and process-oriented are usually fine at any given moment in time, but there's a danger that one can end up in a rabbit-hole of meaninglessness upon introspection and looking back at the big picture. In other words, things like to-do lists, check-lists, and constant metric assessment have a dark flip side. You can only avoid that darkness by a clear-headed evaluation of your intention and your path. That's being "purpose" oriented.
caffeine 5y ago
I would tell my kids: "If you open quotation marks, make sure to close them, or programmers reading will get upset...

DogOnTheWeb 5y ago

I think this is the better approach. OP’s take feels almost nihilistic in disregarding any urge to “catch up” with peers or role models. We can acknowledge that others have gone further, faster in an area and use that as motivation without falling into despair. At the same time, life is about managing trade offs across many aspects. Often investing in one area means taking from another, and just because someone is further in one area, doesn’t mean their whole life is richer.

biren34 5y ago
Yeah, the fact is other people are often more talented, any maybe worse, even if other people aren't more talented, you just screw stuff up--often a lot. It's part of life and putting your head in the sand about is just weak. If you could have been farther--and worst case the only reason you aren't is because of mistakes you knew better than to make--face it, accept it, forgive yourself and use the experience to keep your head on straight going forward. It's all you can do anyway. As for tactics, sometimes it might help if you imagine it was someone else who screwed up the way you did and consider how you'd treat/view them. (For those of us with really super-critical inner voices, this can help us get in touch with our compassion.) Like all these kinds of things, YMMV.
rrherr 5y ago
“OP’s take feels almost nihilistic” OP: “So turn your eyes forward and focus on what you can change: the future.”
Noos 5y ago
No, despair often comes anyways. Those high achievers simply don't just achieve; in the process, they often define what "average" means in something. You see it in multiplayer videogames for example. The further, faster players often end up skewing the whole competitive curve, to where ranking players are a lot better on the whole compared to when the game started, but worse off by the metrics. A silver player now is easily equal to a gold player at launch. You can spend all this effort on a skill treadmill spending more and more effort to remain the same, only to fall off of it. High achievers are far too efficient and things tend to optimize way too much over time to try and play the competitive game. I think you can also see this in things like children's sports; the people who turn little league into portfolio activities end up raising the cost for everyone, who then abandons the sport. This is something I am wrestling with a lot in my life, and I think a lot of competitive burnout happens due to this. I can try to be my best self, but the deep end of the pool is so deep that it gets harder to not seek shallower and shallower water till I get out or drown.

Retric 5y ago

That can quickly become a seriously unhealthy attitude. It’s vastly more manageable to say in every activity there is someone at the top and everyone else is behind them. However, nobody is at the top of everything. The trick is making sure your good enough to do what you want to do. Don’t try to be better at everything, get better at the things holding you back and then move on. You don’t need to be the worlds best cook to make lunch, but pick something and hitting the top 10%, 1%, 0.1% or even #1 becomes possible. I have seen far to many overachievers who break down when they realized the vast majority of their time and effort has been wasted.

OnlyOneCannolo 5y ago
How exactly can it become unhealthy? I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't see it myself. If anything, it just looks like Stoicism to me.
- Retric 5y ago
  People need to accept that getting better at something comes at the cost of not being better at something else. Some things like being able to clearly communicate in writing or even just walking are inherently useful. However, if the benchmark is being able to walk that’s pass fail, what does it matter if your in the 15th percentile or 90th percentile walker? Similarly not everything makes the cut. Judging a RPG wizard by their strength score misses the point. When someone accepts that splitting their focus isn’t free. Then not learning French and not being on the top 10% of something was also useful. Judging yourself by external rankings in multiple categories is therefore foolish. Having a higher rank in something may be counter productive.
  - OnlyOneCannolo 5y ago
    I didn't (and still don't) interpret the comment as saying that their kids have to be the best at everything. I think you're preaching to the choir.
    - 5y ago

ptr2voidStar 5y ago

"focus on process-oriented goals, rather than results oriented goals". Thank you for this. So simple, yet so profound when put into practice. I believe you might just have changed my life.

eloff 5y ago

I've come to this same conclusion over the years. I'm a good programmer, probably top 1%, but that means there are a hundred thousand better programmers out there. I've come across some that can do things I will never be able to. I'll likely never be the best at any one thing. But I strive to improve at all the things that matter to me. I even have a spreadsheet titled "better than yesterday" where I track my progress. Try to be the best version of yourself, not the best in the world. This constant need to compare yourself with your peers and neighbors and edited Instagram models is very unhealthy. It is the exact opposite of the road to happiness.

SyzygistSix 5y ago
I think that the person who is enjoying themselves when they program, and sure, improving as well, is the one who is "ahead" or "winning". Some people enjoy difficult challenges, some enjoy creating something beautiful and elegant, and some enjoy helping others or making the world an easier place to navigate for others.
- eloff 5y ago
  Honestly, yes. You're going to be doing this for a long time. A sizeable percentage of your entire life. If you're not enjoying it while you're doing it - it doesn't matter how much money you're making. You're just not going to be happy like that. A certain amount of any job is going to be drudgery, that's why they have to pay you to do it. But if it is mostly drudgery then it's time to change jobs or careers.
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    I’m just trying to get out of the cycle of “mostly drudgery” jobs. It seems that’s an overwhelming majority.

leoh 5y ago

This is totally missing the point of the post. This post is maybe the most humane, grounded, kind thing I've seen in a while -- and I go to the comments section and I see a bull whip. We all need to take a break and chill. There is an antique question put to Napoleon -- after you conquer the world, what will you do? Napoleon says: I'll sit back and drink a glass of wine. Our time on Earth is limited. If you want to spend it "winning" go on right ahead. But you need to make sure you also know you're perfectly okay right where you are, too; lest you go insane, lest you spend your whole life in a tizzy about where you rank. Which unequivocally seems to me to be a life... wasted.

slibhb 5y ago
For better or worse, we are constantly ranking ourselves against others. I'm not sure it's possible to opt out of this. If the author of this article didn't care what other people thought, why would he publish a blog? Even if all you value is equanimity, you'll compare yourself to people embodying it. True detachment is basically an ideal, religious state. If you fail to acknowledge the part of you that ranks yourself, it often leads to poorly masked jealousy. Like thinking everyone who makes more money than you is greedy, everyone who is smarter than you is pretentious. Better to notice that part of yourself. It doesn't have to rule you completely but it's there.
- ganafagol 5y ago
  Maybe one way out is to change the metric you are comparing. That overachiever neighbor with 3 kids he rarely sees, the trophy wife that wants another gucci handbag and the porsche he drives hastily to the next meeting? Does he have more money? Sure. Is he more happy? Hardly. If the happiness and relaxation metric are what counts then me bindge watching netflix a lazy saturday morning wins 10x over that guy rushing to the airport to make it to his business class flight to Paris.
  - zimpenfish 5y ago
    > Is he more happy? Even if he is, it's not like happiness is a zero-sum game for humanity.

01100011 5y ago

> In any given rank ordering, 50% are below average. That's not exactly true in all cases though, is it?

CBLT 5y ago
Yeah, they should use median instead of average.
- biren34 5y ago
  While I enjoy a good nitpicking as much as the next guy, when talking about rank ordering, the use of average to denote median is valid. Median and mean only diverge when there's a long-tail scalar that skews the mean away from the median. Since rank ordering gives every individual the same weighting with no scalars, "average" is accurate enough, if somewhat colloquial.
  - 01100011 5y ago
    With rank ordering and an odd number of ranks, isn't one rank exactly the median and therefore less than 50% are less than the median? I'm not trying to be an ass, I just have always wanted to have a discussion on this. I commonly hear 50% of people are below average intelligence, for instance. But it seems like IQ is a somewhat discrete scale and quite a few people are within the error bars of being exactly average. If you can't tell, I've never taken statistics.
    - biren34 5y ago
      The example you give is true. However, it's a toy example that doesn't usually relate to real world data sets. In most cases, with the amount of data you have, the rounding washes out any real impact of the effect, and you often have measurement error far larger than it anyway. But yeah, if you're ranking 9 people on an easily knowable stat, then technical 4/9 are below median, 4/9 above, and 1 is exactly median. With the IQ example you gave, it's just that people don't speak with that level of precision about most things--also, that level of precision is very rarely useful. So, you're not wrong, but kind of sideways to the discussion at hand. It's actually a common problem in business, where really detail-oriented analysts miss the forest for the trees over stuff like this. Regarding median vs mean vs average (as the 1st reply to your comment mentioned), median and mean are generally equal as long the values being measure are symmetrically dispersed around the "average". If you get a fat tail in one direction or the other, the mean will be skewed in the direction of that tail, and you need to be careful.

anarticle 5y ago

Or 4, not care about it. These sorts of "ahead" "behind" games lead to min-maxing skill, which sounds like optimizing but leads to fragility and non-robustness. Specialization is for insects. There is no high scoreboard at the end.

biren34 5y ago
Okay, this brings up a really pivotal point that took me way too long to learn: ALL advice MUST be tailored to the individual. This entire discussion is moot for some fraction of the population whether due to internal traits or external circumstances. So, if you are living option #4, good luck to you. If someone is not living option #4, there are likely internal drives they need to learn to control/manage, and just pointing out that other people are able to live option #4 isn't useful to them.
- q3k 5y ago
  I think your original post irks me in the context of raising children: by only presenting them options #1-#3, you effectively blind them from seeing option #4 as a possibility. Eg., you have the potential of raising overly competitive children that will absolutely lose it when they realize there's no obvious ranking after they step out of the traditional path of school -> university -> corporate career.
  - biren34 5y ago
    How I wish I could link to another comment. Here's my answer to that, with some of it repeated from a comment posted to another comment above: I 100% believe in "success" and the will to power--and I want my kids to succeed, full stop. I make no excuses. It's part of my value system, and I don't hide from it. I'm a second generation immigrant, and on my visits back to India, I've seen what real poverty looks like. I don't mean any offense in this, but here it is as plainly as I can say: The idea that "success" isn't crucially important in life is just wrong. I see it as coming from a softness that I associate with participation trophies and the general wimpification of America. I very much ascribe to G. Michael Hopf's philosophy of “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” The ability to succeed is essential. It's the ability set a goal and accomplish it. That ability is totally separate from the nature of the goal. That goal can be making a billion dollars or it can be building a neighborhood community group. Given the above, I DON'T deem to know the right path for my children. They are their own people with their own passions, skills, and motivations. They're still young, but I hope that, if one day, one of them wants to drop out of college and pursue acting full time, I'll be supportive. My goal is to give them the skills and emotional strength to go out there and be the best version of themselves, and in my opinion, knowing how to succeed--and how to see other are farther along than you and still keep going--it crucial. At the same time, there's a reason I couched this conversation in terms of what I'd tell my kids. I'm not claiming any universal truth. This is me, my values, my biases. I think I'm right, but I'm just another schmoe doing the best I can. And fortunately, it's my right to screw up my kids in my own way :)

ganafagol 5y ago

Wow, you are not just missing the articles point, but you are turning it upside down. Two examples: > It takes work to achieve this, just like it takes work to achieve any useful skill. This is the recipe to have the exact feeling of inadequacy discussed in the article. "Didn't achieve? So you didn't put in the work. Shame on you. You are behind." > "losers focus on the winners, and winners focus on themselves". Having to be a winner is the exact mentality descibed in the article. And your kids not being raised wimps is a comment that just makes me sad.

username90 5y ago
> Having to be a winner is the exact mentality descibed in the article. Nobody said you had to be a winner though. But if you want to be a winner it is good to know what it takes.

danielscrubs 5y ago

My parent is a globally famous doctor basically invented scores that are used in the US and Europe. What they do that almost no one does: focus on a single super specific thing for decades. Everyone wants to jump around to their heart’s content and try different things. Few want to study for example Scott–Strachey semantics for decades, which is exactly why you can compete if you do it. It’s a fight against your heart or at a very least a fight for motivation.

tafox 5y ago
Surviorship bias. Your parent is one of the few successful ones, whose niche paid off. You don't hear about the vast majority of researchers & scientists, all smiliarly talented and motivated, where at least in their lifetime, their research didn't payoff. For the average person, the expected value of staying flexible and having decent breadth, is way higher than betting your entire life on some tiny niche.

weeboid 5y ago

Squid tentacles, FSM help your children.

crispyambulance 5y ago

> focus on process-oriented goals, rather than results oriented goals. THere's a third facet which I think better describes what you're talking about: being "purpose" oriented. Results-oriented and process-oriented are usually fine at any given moment in time, but there's a danger that one can end up in a rabbit-hole of meaninglessness upon introspection and looking back at the big picture. In other words, things like to-do lists, check-lists, and constant metric assessment have a dark flip side. You can only avoid that darkness by a clear-headed evaluation of your intention and your path. That's being "purpose" oriented.

caffeine 5y ago

I would tell my kids: "If you open quotation marks, make sure to close them, or programmers reading will get upset...