4 ms·
The author touches on it, but to me, this is an extension of "ideas mean nothing, execution is everything" I'm an 80/20 kind of person. I catch on quick, I'm
by version_five 6y ago
The author touches on it, but to me, this is an extension of
"ideas mean nothing, execution is everything"
I'm an 80/20 kind of person. I catch on quick, I'm good at ignoring details, and can usually hammer out a version 0 of something very fast. Then I get bored and don't want to do the hard work of actually making something useful. I've found that outside of looking clever in new situations, this approach really hasn't gotten me very far.
Universally, I have seen really successful people do the extra work for the incremental gain. Competition and success happens at the margins, so it's not surprising that is where the effort needs to go.
Incidentally, this is a justification for "top tier" employers that are looking for perfect grades or test scores. These are a strong signal not just that someone is smart (which in itself isnt to rare or exciting) but that someone is willing to do what's needed to eke out incremental gains at the extreme margins, which is a much more important quality in competitive businesses.
Edit - something like this is mentioned in Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood". There is a character who was a natural musical prodigy and could sight read a song and play it well very quickly. But she could never be a competitive musician because she didn't want to put in the rest of the work to go from good to perfect.
- atoav 6y agoI am the same but over the time my version 0 grew in quality. Sometimes I feel writing software is a bit like speaking a posm — there is a lot of power in not using certain words, not going certain rabbit holes, anticipating the paths certain ideas will put you onto and a lot of it must be thought out, formulated and spit out into existence at once.
- water8 6y agoBusiness is where the textbook ends and ingenuity begins
- spamalot159 6y agoThe 20% people remind me of the "sociopaths" in the Gervais principle[1]. They are the people who are just waiting for the right moment to make a play for the top. Doing the rest of the 80% work is not visible or important enough to catapult them to the top. The 80% is left for the "clueless" group who does all the work but never gets recognized or moves up. [1]:https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
- elcomet 6y agoIsn't the point of 80/20 that the last 20% are actually 80% of the work ? That detail is the hard work
- jareklupinski 6y agosome of the success comes from the successful knowing the right way to share their prototypes in a way that excites and recruits others who are able to 'fill in the gaps' and then suddenly: startup!
- lazerpants 6y agoAs much hate as there is for MBAs and managers on Hackernews, the people who actually learn to manage well, as in, build teams with the potential for high performance and motivate them to perform, are nearly priceless for the reasons you've listed. Note: obviously some people learn this without formal training, but to some extent it is a teachable skill that one can pursue in business school
- muttled 6y agoI'm in IT but my MBA taught me a whole bunch of random useful things in business. Things like how to have difficult conversations, how to negotiate, how to do cost benefit analysis' for every applicable situation, how to interpret the numbers from statistical analysis, how to make decisions that involve a lot of stakeholders. Skills you can learn on the go, but it's just super useful when curated, peer-reviewed methods are spoon fed to you.