11 ms·

Scott Adams: How to Be Successful

690 points by codelion 13y ago

herdrick 13y ago
This is great. I just wish he hadn't stopped listing failures.
- anishkothari 13y ago
  Agreed. This is a teaser for his upcoming book, I'm sure there are more failures listed there. Here's another similarly-themed article[1] he wrote in 2011 [1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704101604576247143383496656.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870410160457624...
  - yskchu 13y ago
    Thanks for the share, great read; this alone deserves it's own HN submission.
mixmastamyk 13y ago
> Success caused passion more than passion caused success. I found that interesting.
- johnward 13y ago
  That's because it goes against the common strategy of "do what you love". I experienced this personally. I had very little interest in marketing. however after I saw some success I started getting passionate about it.
- NatCrodo 13y ago
  I myself found it very interesting. But honestly, I disagree on this.
- guynamedloren 13y ago
  It is interesting, but I completely disagree. At least in my own case. I've worked on projects that I've not been passionate about ("This is gonna make me super rich!"), and I always end up throwing in the towel and moving on. Passion is what drives me to keep going when there's simply nothing else.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    Yeah, the problem is, no matter how good you are at doing something, there is somebody somewhere who is just as good or maybe better at the same thing, and he or she likes it. That person will kick your ass if you follow Scott Adams's advice. (Advice that he apparently learned from an anonymous lending officer at a bank that isn't around anymore: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocker_National_Bank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocker_National_Bank)
    - benjohnson 13y ago
      You assume the market all has the same taste: While McDonalds has cheap and fast food, sometimes I like a French meal. My IT support business is "ok" but it thrives because we fill a need that isn't met by other that who are indeed more passionate and smarter than us.
    - ashutoshm 13y ago
      If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1. Become the best at one specific thing. 2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. -Scott Adams http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-advice.html http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...
  - larrys 13y ago
    " I've worked on projects that I've not been passionate about ..... and I always end up throwing in the towel and moving on" I've been there. And I have to say you'd be surprised how passionate you get when you get reinforced with money and something works. My guess is that had some of the projects you worked on hit in a satisfying way you would have found great joy and that would have made you more passionate.
- platz 13y ago
  Reminds me of the Tiger Mom's philosophy of parenting in which their children won't enjoy any of their activities (and usually they don't), that is, until they get good at them.
  - bluedino 13y ago
    Conversely, I enjoy learning to do things, and after that magic has worn off I get bored. Written enough code to put a 3D texture mapped model on the screen? That's enough for me. Finally made a perfect batch of eclairs? I won't make any more.
  - ngoel36 13y ago
    I had somewhat of a Tiger Mom. She forced me to do multiplication tables while my friends were still onaddition, learn guitar while my peers were learning basketball, play chess while the other kids were playing video games, watch Bill Nye while everyone else was watching Nickelodeon. And I hated it, to some degree I hated my parents for it. Until I realized all these SKILLS made me really fucking successful compared to everybody else my age. And all of a sudden I had passion. Passion for math, passion for learning, passion for science and technology and programming and computers. Ultimately, those skills instilled within me the passion that leads to me writing this post on Hacker News today. And I thank my Tiger Mom for that every chance I get.
    - lgieron 13y ago
      My parents pretty much left me to my own devices, and I'm still posting on hacker news. Also, i know people who were forced to learn piano as kids etc. and they are pretty much nowhere as adults. I'd say it's more genetics than anything.
      - obstacle1 13y ago
        I'm just confused as to why we're using posting on HN as a measure of success.
        13y ago
sillysaurus2 13y ago
YC, Hacker News, Arc, and PG's essays are all counterexamples to "success causes passion." The passion came first.
- betenoire 13y ago
  Counterexamples or examples that don't fit this one pattern? Do you think the passion _caused_ the success just because it came first?
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    Do you think the passion _caused_ the success? I think his success was equal parts intelligence and determination ("passion"). It seems true to say that those two ingredients alone were necessary and sufficient. He could still fail due to a run of bad luck. But it's a pretty safe bet that if things start to slip downhill, those setbacks won't make him any less determined. If a person's passion springs from their success, then they'll be discouraged when setbacks inevitably happen. Paul's model seems better: (a) doggedly pursue (b) something you're pretty sure will succeed. It'd be hard to doggedly pursue something that you're not already passionate about. In fact, that pattern seems common. Drew had decided to commit himself exclusively to Dropbox before even applying to YC; Airbnb's founders flew to NYC every week during YC to talk to users; Watsi's founders would probably do Watsi whether or not it was a huge success; etc. In every case it seems like their passion was independent of their success, because none of them were willing to give up under any circumstances. That's quite a different situation than someone whose determination depends on a positive feedback loop of success.
- SkyMarshal 13y ago
  YC not necessarily, PG pre-selects already highly successful people. They're just not startup millionaires yet.
  - lgieron 13y ago
    Hghly successful people? Isn't he mostly targeting graduates?
Dirlewanger 13y ago
I hate to be nitpicky, but the part about always looking for a better job is horrible advice in terms of marketing yourself. It's pretty well-known that bouncing around from job to job turns pretty much every employer off. But then again, the type of person Adams is describing is more of an entrepreneur type and not the typical desk jockey.
- mbetter 13y ago
  > I hate to be nitpicky, but the part about always looking for a better job is horrible advice in terms of marketing yourself. It's pretty well-known that bouncing around from job to job turns pretty much every employer off. That's because most employers are sexually aroused by the kind of sub-market wages paid to employees who don't move from job to job.
- karlmdavis 13y ago
  He didn't say to always be 'taking' new jobs, he said to always be 'looking'. And I'm guessing he's not exactly referring to "sending out resumes" or "going to every interview you possibly can."
  - matwood 13y ago
    Exactly. Always be looking around, networking, keeping up with trends in local companies and salaries. Be proactive and don't assume your current job will be there tomorrow.
- OWaz 13y ago
  I would have to disagree. I think for personal finances and experience you will always get a better deal by moving to another job every 1-3 years. 3 years might be the maximum if you're just doing the regular salary type of job. I have no experience with the start-up scene and I'm talking just about regular corporate jobs that offer no equity or valuable stock options.
  - mogrim 13y ago
    I think that probably depends a lot on where you work, and your seniority - in Spain a senior developer or project manager that changed jobs yearly would have a harder time finding work than one who showed more loyalty to his/her company.
milesf 13y ago
This insight is huge: Had I been goal-oriented instead of system-oriented, I imagine I would have given up after the first several failures. It would have felt like banging my head against a brick wall. But being systems-oriented, I felt myself growing more capable every day, no matter the fate of the project that I happened to be working on.
- calinet6 13y ago
  Truth right here. His systems thinking advice is phenomenal. Love this quote too: "Throughout my career I've had my antennae up, looking for examples of people who use systems as opposed to goals. In most cases, as far as I can tell, the people who use systems do better. The systems-driven people have found a way to look at the familiar in new and more useful ways." He's talking about success as simply a single point in the statistical sampling that is your life. This is an extremely correct, scientific, and most importantly helpful way to look at the world and your work.
  - DigitalJack 13y ago
    It sounds good, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to apply it. I realize this article couldn't contain everything that will be in his book and so I hope that there is more practical advice regarding systems other than "have a system" in the book. For example, the guy that was always looking for a new job... isn't that just a repeating goal? On a personal note, I need to lose weight. I've done it before: I lost 74 lbs, but now several years later I've gained back just over 90 lbs. I reached my goal, and lost all motivation for eating healthy, and steadily gained it all back and more. I'm trying to structure my life around doing healthier things (better food, more exercise). How can I systemize that? Or have I already? I have "goals" of walking X times per week for Y distance. Is that the wrong approach? Should it be "after having walked, walk again as soon as possible but not sooner than 1 day?" I guess I could use an example of some systems that were not just repeating goals.
    - ImprovedSilence 13y ago
      >>I guess I could use an example of some systems that were not just repeating goals. Don't go to the gym or workout or eat good just because you want to lose weight. Do it as a habit. Be motivated by the good feeling you get post workout everyday, not because you want to lose 10lbs or bench 200... Don't weight yourself, don't set a "goal". Just go. five times a week. Just keep going. Find a running club, and run because it's a good way to hang out with friends twice a week. Play a sport. Eat vegetables. But don't force them down, experiment with ways to integrate them into tasty meals. Then keep playing with recipes, and suddenly you're eating super healthy just because it's fun to try cooking some crazy plant from the store and you're making all these cool dishes.
aurelius83 13y ago
I disagree. I think that you have to take ownership of your own career and advancement. Until you reach a level, where you can really take ownership within a company. Employers these days will not raise your salary at market rate without you jumping from company to company. For example, person A stays at one company for 5 years and person B jumps from company to company every 1 to 2 years. At the end of the 5 years, person B will be making a lot more than person A.
- nopassrecover 13y ago
  What are you disagreeing with? The article explicitly makes the same point: "your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job". // Edit: I'm assuming you were attempting to reply to a sibling comment but posted a comment on the article instead of a reply.
  - aurelius83 13y ago
    Whoops, yes. I was replying to someone off of my phone.
- vladimirralev 13y ago
  Depends on the employers. It would be really stupid not to keep the salaries up to date. It's been said over and over again, it's taught in business schools, hell you can even google a lucky "management tutorial" right now and it's written there. Management should know this, this is their job. If the employers are incompetent then, yes you should leave.
  - auctiontheory 13y ago
    Having gone to business school, and having worked for well-known tech companies, I can assure you that there is approximately zero overlap between what you learn in Organizational Behavior class and what is practiced in real companies by imperfectly human managers. It's not really productive to say "everyone is incompetent." It's more productive to figure out how to manage your own career in an imperfect world.
  - 13y ago
triplesec 13y ago
This is good advice... for _some_ people.For those who might make the mistakes he's alluding to. Other people will have a different character where passion is indeed what makes them make good decisions and succeed. So, like all advice, this works for some of the people, some of the time. As he said himself in the text: "Beware of advice about successful people and their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike. "
- larrys 13y ago
  I liked the article. But the irony is that if he had written the exact same thing prior to achieving success with Dilbert it would mean absolutely nothing to the masses and hardly be taken seriously at all. But yet I'm sure he would admit that Dilbert succeeding was total luck after so many "failures". There are many people who are successful with many good things to say but nobody would ever take anything they say seriously before that lucky event (by that I mean on a wide scale basis I'm not saying that an individual might not listen to another offering some good advice.)
  - erichocean 13y ago
    I think that's fair, though. There are enough people who are old enough alive at any given time to have seen their system through to success or failure that it makes reasonable sense to prefer their experience over people just starting out. As a basic filter, you could do worse.
praptak 13y ago
Beware generic advice about achieving success: http://mustapha.svbtle.com/tfs http://mustapha.svbtle.com/tfs (This is just off HN frontpage)
- tannerc 13y ago
  Yes, this article falls well within those bounds, but I can't help but feel we'll never cease to encounter similar write-ups (or books, or videos, or lectures, or how-to guides). I think the best thing we can do right now is educate one another to be mindful of the advice and guidance we encounter. It can be motivational to hear about another's success, but unless we're willing to find what works for ourselves, it's useless. Regardless, Adams is a remarkably interesting person and hearing about his approach to success is on par with reading a really great biography. Entertaining at the very least, something to build-up personal momentum at best.
  - yajoe 13y ago
    I completely agree :) Success-styled self-help is a lot like the lottery. There are millions of analytical, intellectual, objective issues with each (e.g. YMMV, survival bias, terrible odds, etc.). What they have in common is they allow users to dream "what if" and have fun (e.g. "escape") with those dreams. Both advertise this fantastical thinking in terms of "how you can" -- either buy the lottery ticket or buy my book -- but they still mostly boil down to entertaining people with dreams. And heck, I love dreaming as much as the next person and love articles (or his comics) like this for that very reason... but I don't get hung up on trying to predict whether the content is strictly perfect just as I can't predict whether a random number printed on cheap paper will be life-changing.
- vladimirralev 13y ago
  Your advise is just as generic :)
- rajivtiru 13y ago
  This is a great point. Especially because as I read the article, I could tell the title was sensationalized to indicate that the article would tell you how to be successful. I like the content of the article though. It was a thought provoking argument for a system based approach to motivation rather than a goal oriented approach. I also liked the autobiographical parts. Its kind of sad to see that even people with something genuine to say need to dress it up to be generic so that they will get more exposure.
mindcrime 13y ago
If you drill down on any success story, you always discover that luck was a huge part of it. You can't control luck, but you can move from a game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it easier for luck to find you. The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game. If your current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and try something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens. The universe has plenty of luck to go around; you just need to keep your hand raised until it's your turn. It helps to see failure as a road and not a wall. I think that says it all, vis-a-vis the "luck" thing. Well said, Mr. Adams.
foobarbazqux 13y ago
All of these arguments for success implicitly appeal to our fear that we are not going to be able to have a good human experience if we don't have enough power over other people. You can succeed and you can fail, but you cannot be a success or a failure. The entire problem is identifying too strongly with the outcome of your actions. Incidentally, if you really commit to this worldview, then traditional motivators like guilt and money stop working. The transition period can be difficult; it's usually the crux of a mid-life crisis.
danso 13y ago
> On the other hand, Dilbert started out as just one of many get-rich schemes I was willing to try. When it started to look as if it might be a success, my passion for cartooning increased because I realized it could be my golden ticket. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects that I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success. > > So forget about passion. And while you're at it, forget about goals, too. This is the generalized version of: "It's not the ideas, it's the execution". And I have to say, I agree. It's not that ideas don't matter...but unless you already have some amazing foundation of wealth or opportunity, you need a good process to get to the point where reaching your idea is feasible.
pasbesoin 13y ago
What I learned from that experience is that there is no such thing as useful information that comes from a company's management. Now I diversify and let the lying get smoothed out by all the other variables in my investments. I've found that this can be as true for internal communication as external, at least once it goes beyond the communication of immediate assignments and expectations. You know those "business unit", "segment", "all hands" and the like "state of the business" meetings? Yeah, those. Actually, sometimes those are not exactly zero content. The more they try to convince you that something isn't, the more you may be inclined to assume that it actually is.
ateevchopra 13y ago
This is one of the best article I have read in weeks. Life is about "karma" and not associating you to the results. Mr. Linus Torvalds never made a "goal" to make linux run in every server on this planet. I don't know what is his real inspiration behind working on Linux, But one thing is clear that he succeeded. Everybody has his own reason to follow his/her path. Sometimes we don't even have a reason. We just go with the flow and keep learning what life gives us. Just by keeping our direction right in the flow, we will eventually reach our "goal". If we keep looking at the goals, we will never be able to look at our rocky path and eventually fall down. Making goals is wise. But sticking yourself to its result isn't. Every work we do is our karma. Writing this is also a karma. I'm not talking about HN "karma", but real karma. It is about sharing my views with the community. I learn from the community, so maybe someone will learn from me. This is how community works. Thats my karma. The word karma gained popularity from this famous verse of Bhagavad Gita : karmany evadhikaras te ma phalesu kadachana ma karma-phala-hetur bhur ma te sango ’stv akarmani It means : You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty. I am just gonna conclude this with board that I recently saw in Apple's recent iPhone event. http://oi44.tinypic.com/2uqd3es.jpg http://oi44.tinypic.com/2uqd3es.jpg
impart 13y ago
"Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal." - Earl Nightingale That's the definition I have adopted. Have a worthy ideal? Yes. Making progress, even through setbacks? Yes. Therefore, I feel successful due to my belief. The feeling of success attracts more of it. Win.
dianeloviglio 13y ago
Love reading stories about how people failed, it helps to know that everyone has ups and downs. FailCon - a conference just focused on hearing failures stories from successful startup founders is Oct 21st in SF and there are still a few tickets: www.thefailcon.com - me and my co-producer, Cassie, started it because we wanted to make talking about failure less taboo. I think it's working. :)
aurelius83 13y ago
What exactly does "system-oriented" mean? The article seems sort of contradictory to me. On one hand he is saying having goals is for losers and you need to be system-oriented instead, but on the other he is saying that his goal was to make it rich and he just tried a bunch of stuff until he reached that goal. The example of the person constantly looking for a better job is also confusing. Isn't the goal of that person to have a better job and he is just repeating the same goal over and over?
- Kurtz79 13y ago
  I don't see any contradiction. Goal : Lose 10 pounds. System: Eat healthily and exercise every day, without looking at the scale. Goal : Find a better job (when you think you need it) System : Be always on the lookout for a better job (even you are content with you current one)
alister 13y ago
Speaking of Scott Adams' business ideas, I've always liked his "Rules for Filtering Out Bad Ideas": http://filters.pen.io/ http://filters.pen.io/ My favorite is #3: It doesn't matter how many people dislike an idea. All that matters is how many like it. So you should ignore the odd person who says, "Personally, I don't like the idea of an antigravity invention, so you probably ought to spend your time doing something more useful." I would have phrased it as: Some good ideas will be viciously hated by a few/some/many, but it's still good if adored by some.
- RogerL 13y ago
  Plenty of people like segregation, the death penalty, imprisonment for drug use, add your own absurdity or dislike here. Not trying to Godwin the thread, but really, like/dislikes are a terrible measure of the value of an idea.
  - alister 13y ago
    If we were talking about "idea" in a totally general way, your point is fine. (I'd add astrology to your list.) But I, and I'm pretty sure that Scott Adams also, were talking about business ideas; i.e., are there any people willing to pay for this product or service, and how badly do they need or desire it.
    - RogerL 13y ago
      My business idea is to collect your social data and sell it to the highest bidder, in exchange for letting you play some free games. Some people love that. I personally cannot then conclude that the business plan is 'good' (for what I consider a reasonable value of 'good' - certainly it will make me buckets of cash).
  - anthuswilliams 13y ago
    I would think it's rather obvious he's talking about ideas to be employed in your personal life or business, not political ideas.
tokenadult 13y ago
Previous submission (no comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6537381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6537381
- erichocean 13y ago
  I wish that comments about previous submissions of the same article could be added to the HN commenting guidelines as "noise", and to be avoided, unless they were very far back, and actually contain useful comments. Telling us it's been submitted previously, and with no comments (!), seems like a particularly useless bit of information. Am I supposed to care? Click over to it? Up vote it? Comment over there? Exactly how did you hope to enrich the comment feed here by posting that?
  - tokenadult 13y ago
    Your question is fair. Here, noting that the article has been submitted before is perhaps an illustration of the role of luck ("survivorship bias") in attaining success. I appreciate such notices (and regularly upvote them, from anybody) because I like a reality check on the feeling "Haven't I seen this article before?"
    - erichocean 13y ago
      Alright. If people are getting value out of these public notices, keep 'em coming. :)
mogrim 13y ago
A hundred years earlier: "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."
tedmiston 13y ago
As we think about success as habits vs. goals, a good app to consider in practice is Lift [1], available for the web and iOS. 1: http://lift.do http://lift.do
bluecalm 13y ago
This is basically an idea that you shouldn't set goals on outcomes but on behaviors. The idea isn't new and is kind of mantra in some fields. One very specific one: professional gambling. This is good example because professionals gamblers have very long and imprecise feedback loop and setting goals on outcomes is recipe for constant frustration and confusion (sometimes you make great decision for 2 weeks and lose and sometimes you make awful decisions for 2 weeks and win big). Also for them it's easy to understand that outcomes are very poor indicator of good behavior. At least in "short term" but in many games the short term is sometimes several months or more. That is way more than our brain comprehends and you really have to fight its tendency to link value of behaviors with instant outcomes they produce (how intuition but also superstition is formed). People without gambling background often have different view on reality - it's not so easy for them to appreciate luck because they are not trained to recognize it and not trained to deal with it in methodological way. I love the take on those issues by the author. As someone who did professional gambling for many years I see the concepts popular in my field worded in "real life"/business terms. Great !
- skrebbel 13y ago
  I like this analogy. In a somewhat cheesy way, life is a casino, and the big winners are lucky idiots and pro gamblers. You can't choose to become a lucky idiot, but you can choose to become a pro gambler.
marincounty 13y ago
I can't even read another one of these. I've noticed one thing about these success stories; they always leave out the people, connections, and family money that made them successful. I've met very few Horatio Alger's. Old reference. 99% of the "Successful" kids I went to school with had rich parents. Gavin Newsom comes to mind. He was voted most fashionable at Redwood. He was an idiot. His parents paid for every business until one stuck. I know the current Gold Rush is different, but beware of the rich telling the poor how to succeed. Oh, and the books-- they never end. I guess the truth is hard to stomach for most successful people? I've always questioned what real success is anyways. Does it really matter if you have a billion dollars if you have a tumor in your pancreas? I certain parts of the world I hear integrity, honesty, and true altruism are what people call Successful--not here though. are
- colomon 13y ago
  I'm curious how you think this worked in the specific case here of Scott Adams. His Dilbert has been on a decline for ages, and it still manages to be one of the most consistently funny comic strips out there. In his heyday probably half of the tech guys in the US had one of his comics posted on the wall of their cubical. How did his (alleged) people, connections, and family money make that happen? Have they been hiring funny people to ghostwrite the strip? Did they make sure funnier writers were blacklisted? Did they somehow send him to a mystical funny school? If people were being paid to hang up his strips on their wall, I never got my check...
  - acuozzo 13y ago
    > How did his (alleged) people, connections, and family money make that happen? Did Scott Adams grow up in a slum and receive a US "inner city" education? Alternatively, did he grow up on a farm with a family that expected him to work to help support it once he could drop-out of school without repercussion? Are you starting to see where this is going?
    - scott_karana 13y ago
      You seem to be conflating "rich" with "not poor".
Amadou 13y ago
The problem with "grinders" and taking the passion out of business is that it implicitly encourages amorality. One of the biggest reasons that Google's "don't be evil" mantra gets so much play is because it is so rare for a modern corporation to even acknowledge the concept of morality, much less explicitly name it as a goal even if the execution is imperfect. I think moral behavior can only come from passion. If you don't have strong beliefs about the role of your business in society then it is entirely too easy to rationalize socially destructive practices in pursuit of financial success. I'm not saying passion is a cure-all, there is no such thing as a cure-all and it is clearly possible to be passionate about a socially destructive idea. But from a social perspective, I think we are better off with a lot of passionate failures and a few passionate successes than a lot of purely financial successes.
- noname123 13y ago
  Wait, don't public corporations have an fiduciary duty to their shareholders, debt duty to their bond holders and payroll obligation to their employees. To be honest, if I was a shareholder of GOOG or more likely the via fund manager of my 401K who is managing a portfolio of thousands of publicly traded companies, I could care hardly less about the company and more about their bottom-line; because the fund manager has a moral responsibility to manage the assets of the little guys /working class/teachers/firefighters - cue the TIAA-CREF feel good commercial. IMO, this is the true banality of evil that is not talked about. There is no invisible evil man pulling the strings behind the scene, only layers of our self-interest all conveniently shielded by complex layers of capital structures and financial incentives that no one wishes to really confront the conflicts and zero-sum nature involved in it all. I could hardly care less about corporations trying to be 'not evil' because that's a marketing gimmick. I'd rather have a company tell me how they are screwing honestly their customers, employees and shareholders; there's no shame in that because it's a given and the company would instantly gain respect for their honesty.
  - Amadou 13y ago
    Wait, don't public corporations have an fiduciary duty to their shareholders, debt duty to their bond holders and payroll obligation to their employees. Sort of. It sounds good on paper - in a perfect world perhaps the invisible hand of the market would make "greed is good" a functional philosophy. But that's not the world we live in - there will always be significant friction, imperfect knowledge, etc in the market such that insisting that one part of the entire system be "pure" in the economic liberal sense is really just denying the obvious in a way that encourages exploiting those imperfections. FWIW, the concept that corporations have no public duty beyond maximizing profits as a course of business is quite new. Here's some background: False Profits: Reviving the Corporation's Public Purpose http://www.uclalawreview.org/?p=1056 http://www.uclalawreview.org/?p=1056
plainOldText 13y ago
While reading the part where he gets into details about passion, I felt like the author uses "passion" as a substitute for "excitement". For instance: "I've been involved in several dozen business ventures over the course of my life, and each one made me excited at the start. You might even call it passion. The ones that didn't work out—and that would be most of them—slowly drained my passion as they failed." I believe passion just exists. It cannot be drained. You either have or you don't. Now of course, you can discover it, after all you cannot be passionate about things you haven't experienced, but once discovered I don't believe passion can be lost. Granted though, "passion" and "enthusiasm" are synonyms, so the distinction is slightly tricky.
jeffreyjflim 13y ago
on passion vs grinding: don't you think that this guy is presenting a false dichotomy here? Couldn't I (and I would!) lend to the guy who loves his job... AND is prepared to work hard at it?
ffrryuu 13y ago
he told me he was the CEO of a company that made screws. He offered me some career advice. He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was a continuing process.
SCdF 13y ago
It's interesting how different people define success. It sounds like Mr. Adams defines success by how much money you have. My definition of success is enough income to allow me to mostly ignore money[1] and instead can spend my days doing things that genuinely interest me, with people I genuinely like. [1] eg not having to worry about working out which yoghurt is the best value for money at the supermarket, not being afraid to go to the doctors because I can't afford it, having enough saved up that if I want to take a few months off employment to do my own thing I can, stuff like that.
- icelancer 13y ago
  [1] Is the same definition as Scott's if you word it that way. That's millions of dollars before you can think that way.
  - SCdF 13y ago
    I don't have millions or dollars (or even close) and I do think that way. All those examples were actually things I've done in the past. Are you American? Is the American healthcare system so bad that you feel you need millions of dollars to survive it? Or is it just that for you to be able to ignore money you need to have so much of it that you can snap purchase ferraris? FWIW when I say don't think about money I mean for mundane every day things, like going to the supermarket or the doctors, or not being tied down to work a job you hate because you need need need that paycheck that comes every month. I'm talking about flexibility, not the ability to buy everything you've ever wanted :-)
hortfort 13y ago
This sounds like great advice, but seems to contradict his (past?) use of, to quote him, "...something called affirmations, where you write your goals daily." (see http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/dilbert_20/ http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/dilbert_20/) Obviously his system oriented approach has room for overall goals, but the WSJ article comes across as totally anti-goal.
bradleysmith 13y ago
This was a really good read. I think his "have a system" is really better explained as keeping your goals dynamic, like "make my repeating income grow" or "always look for a better job." . I loved the piece, but was confused by the choice of "have a system" like some other comments have pointed out. I think this mindset is akin to Taleb's antifragile concept. If your goals are always trying to better yourself in some way or another, than any random events that cause your situation to get worse will increase your motivation to succeed. benefit from randomness, good or bad.
pshin45 13y ago
> Dilbert started out as just one of many get-rich schemes I was willing to try. When it started to look as if it might be a success, my passion for cartooning increased because I realized it could be my golden ticket. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects that I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success. I'd argue that Scott Adams' argument about passion isn't telling the whole story. I think Tom Kelley of IDEO said it best - He said to imagine a Venn diagram with three circles (1) What you love, (2) What you're great at, and (3) What makes money. Finding something that satisfies all three is ideal (but probably unattainable for most), while Scott Adams seems to be arguing that having (2) and (3) without (1) is the "best bet". Both are fair points, I think.
martincmartin 13y ago
If you're already as successful as you want to be, both personally and professionally, congratulations! The secret to being that successful is to be happy with whatever you have.
b1daly 13y ago
Man, I could use some actionable advice about how to improve my lot right now, but I can never seem to find it in such articles! Scott Adams is also an edge case, in that he is a world class cartoonist. Without that level of talent, I don't think his "systems" would work.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
exo_duz 13y ago
This statement really hits a chord with me. "To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That's literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize that you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or to set new goals and re-enter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure." I've always been taught that there are 3 people in the world: 1) People who live in the past 2) People who have a dream and stop having dreams when they achieve that dream 3) People who have dreams and set new dreams once they achieve their current dream Opens up the eyes based on another person's perspective. I wonder if that goal oriented purpose of life, getting the bigger house, better car etc. is just part of how society measures success.
vxNsr 13y ago
I was waiting for this to hit HN, it was basically written for this community. (It was first published in the friday WSJ)
goggles99 13y ago
Forget passion. Goals are for losers. Imagine if Steve Jobs followed this path. Imaging if everyone did. Does financial success while doing something arduous for 40 years make for happiness? This seems counter intuitive. We would have no innovation if there was no passion. We wouldn't even have electricity...
moya 13y ago
You might want to check out this talk by Bret Victor, "Inventing on Principle": http://vimeo.com/36579366 http://vimeo.com/36579366
Sam121 13y ago
Get fan of you but still i will walk on my success path. i thing it is not necessary to read article from other to become successful. yes we can take a idea but every man have own dream ,own ideas and own work power. Steve not read others idea,Same Gandhi didn't read other to be successful. They work own their dreams with their idea and knowledge.So i want to sat stick with dreams and take idea from that type articles but not implement all they say.
kgosser 13y ago
Tell me again how this is different than Malcolm Gladwell? Same format, same insight-porn result, yet this guy is heralded by you all and Gladwell is eviscerated. Confusing, really.
nvarsj 13y ago
I remember talking to a car parking attendant, and it turned out he was the owner of the lot. Out of curiosity I asked him how much he made - he turned around and pointed at a few nearby lots which he also owned - and gave me a staggeringly large sum. The dichotomy Adams presents is interesting, of passion versus making money. It's obvious really, but I never thought about it as explicitly. The battle between these two forces are evident all over the place. Taking gaming for instance. Freemium, addictive, social games versus indie games made with passion. One rakes in millions a day, the other may barely subsist a living. But I'd argue one is far more beneficial to the human experience than the other.
headgasket 13y ago
"Let me start with some tips on what not to do. Beware of advice about successful people and their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike." Is there a potential "mise en abyme" here? :-) great article, best I've read is while though, cheers. F

690 points by codelion 13y ago

herdrick 13y ago

This is great. I just wish he hadn't stopped listing failures.

anishkothari 13y ago
Agreed. This is a teaser for his upcoming book, I'm sure there are more failures listed there. Here's another similarly-themed article[1] he wrote in 2011 [1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704101604576247143383496656.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870410160457624...
- yskchu 13y ago
  Thanks for the share, great read; this alone deserves it's own HN submission.

mixmastamyk 13y ago

> Success caused passion more than passion caused success. I found that interesting.

johnward 13y ago
That's because it goes against the common strategy of "do what you love". I experienced this personally. I had very little interest in marketing. however after I saw some success I started getting passionate about it.
NatCrodo 13y ago
I myself found it very interesting. But honestly, I disagree on this.
guynamedloren 13y ago
It is interesting, but I completely disagree. At least in my own case. I've worked on projects that I've not been passionate about ("This is gonna make me super rich!"), and I always end up throwing in the towel and moving on. Passion is what drives me to keep going when there's simply nothing else.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Yeah, the problem is, no matter how good you are at doing something, there is somebody somewhere who is just as good or maybe better at the same thing, and he or she likes it. That person will kick your ass if you follow Scott Adams's advice. (Advice that he apparently learned from an anonymous lending officer at a bank that isn't around anymore: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocker_National_Bank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocker_National_Bank)
  - benjohnson 13y ago
    You assume the market all has the same taste: While McDonalds has cheap and fast food, sometimes I like a French meal. My IT support business is "ok" but it thrives because we fill a need that isn't met by other that who are indeed more passionate and smarter than us.
  - ashutoshm 13y ago
    If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1. Become the best at one specific thing. 2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. -Scott Adams http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-advice.html http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...
- larrys 13y ago
  " I've worked on projects that I've not been passionate about ..... and I always end up throwing in the towel and moving on" I've been there. And I have to say you'd be surprised how passionate you get when you get reinforced with money and something works. My guess is that had some of the projects you worked on hit in a satisfying way you would have found great joy and that would have made you more passionate.
platz 13y ago
Reminds me of the Tiger Mom's philosophy of parenting in which their children won't enjoy any of their activities (and usually they don't), that is, until they get good at them.
- bluedino 13y ago
  Conversely, I enjoy learning to do things, and after that magic has worn off I get bored. Written enough code to put a 3D texture mapped model on the screen? That's enough for me. Finally made a perfect batch of eclairs? I won't make any more.
- ngoel36 13y ago
  I had somewhat of a Tiger Mom. She forced me to do multiplication tables while my friends were still onaddition, learn guitar while my peers were learning basketball, play chess while the other kids were playing video games, watch Bill Nye while everyone else was watching Nickelodeon. And I hated it, to some degree I hated my parents for it. Until I realized all these SKILLS made me really fucking successful compared to everybody else my age. And all of a sudden I had passion. Passion for math, passion for learning, passion for science and technology and programming and computers. Ultimately, those skills instilled within me the passion that leads to me writing this post on Hacker News today. And I thank my Tiger Mom for that every chance I get.
  - lgieron 13y ago
    My parents pretty much left me to my own devices, and I'm still posting on hacker news. Also, i know people who were forced to learn piano as kids etc. and they are pretty much nowhere as adults. I'd say it's more genetics than anything.
    - obstacle1 13y ago
      I'm just confused as to why we're using posting on HN as a measure of success.
      - 13y ago

sillysaurus2 13y ago

YC, Hacker News, Arc, and PG's essays are all counterexamples to "success causes passion." The passion came first.

betenoire 13y ago
Counterexamples or examples that don't fit this one pattern? Do you think the passion _caused_ the success just because it came first?
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  Do you think the passion _caused_ the success? I think his success was equal parts intelligence and determination ("passion"). It seems true to say that those two ingredients alone were necessary and sufficient. He could still fail due to a run of bad luck. But it's a pretty safe bet that if things start to slip downhill, those setbacks won't make him any less determined. If a person's passion springs from their success, then they'll be discouraged when setbacks inevitably happen. Paul's model seems better: (a) doggedly pursue (b) something you're pretty sure will succeed. It'd be hard to doggedly pursue something that you're not already passionate about. In fact, that pattern seems common. Drew had decided to commit himself exclusively to Dropbox before even applying to YC; Airbnb's founders flew to NYC every week during YC to talk to users; Watsi's founders would probably do Watsi whether or not it was a huge success; etc. In every case it seems like their passion was independent of their success, because none of them were willing to give up under any circumstances. That's quite a different situation than someone whose determination depends on a positive feedback loop of success.
SkyMarshal 13y ago
YC not necessarily, PG pre-selects already highly successful people. They're just not startup millionaires yet.
- lgieron 13y ago
  Hghly successful people? Isn't he mostly targeting graduates?

Dirlewanger 13y ago

I hate to be nitpicky, but the part about always looking for a better job is horrible advice in terms of marketing yourself. It's pretty well-known that bouncing around from job to job turns pretty much every employer off. But then again, the type of person Adams is describing is more of an entrepreneur type and not the typical desk jockey.

mbetter 13y ago
> I hate to be nitpicky, but the part about always looking for a better job is horrible advice in terms of marketing yourself. It's pretty well-known that bouncing around from job to job turns pretty much every employer off. That's because most employers are sexually aroused by the kind of sub-market wages paid to employees who don't move from job to job.
karlmdavis 13y ago
He didn't say to always be 'taking' new jobs, he said to always be 'looking'. And I'm guessing he's not exactly referring to "sending out resumes" or "going to every interview you possibly can."
- matwood 13y ago
  Exactly. Always be looking around, networking, keeping up with trends in local companies and salaries. Be proactive and don't assume your current job will be there tomorrow.
OWaz 13y ago
I would have to disagree. I think for personal finances and experience you will always get a better deal by moving to another job every 1-3 years. 3 years might be the maximum if you're just doing the regular salary type of job. I have no experience with the start-up scene and I'm talking just about regular corporate jobs that offer no equity or valuable stock options.
- mogrim 13y ago
  I think that probably depends a lot on where you work, and your seniority - in Spain a senior developer or project manager that changed jobs yearly would have a harder time finding work than one who showed more loyalty to his/her company.

milesf 13y ago

This insight is huge: Had I been goal-oriented instead of system-oriented, I imagine I would have given up after the first several failures. It would have felt like banging my head against a brick wall. But being systems-oriented, I felt myself growing more capable every day, no matter the fate of the project that I happened to be working on.

calinet6 13y ago
Truth right here. His systems thinking advice is phenomenal. Love this quote too: "Throughout my career I've had my antennae up, looking for examples of people who use systems as opposed to goals. In most cases, as far as I can tell, the people who use systems do better. The systems-driven people have found a way to look at the familiar in new and more useful ways." He's talking about success as simply a single point in the statistical sampling that is your life. This is an extremely correct, scientific, and most importantly helpful way to look at the world and your work.
- DigitalJack 13y ago
  It sounds good, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to apply it. I realize this article couldn't contain everything that will be in his book and so I hope that there is more practical advice regarding systems other than "have a system" in the book. For example, the guy that was always looking for a new job... isn't that just a repeating goal? On a personal note, I need to lose weight. I've done it before: I lost 74 lbs, but now several years later I've gained back just over 90 lbs. I reached my goal, and lost all motivation for eating healthy, and steadily gained it all back and more. I'm trying to structure my life around doing healthier things (better food, more exercise). How can I systemize that? Or have I already? I have "goals" of walking X times per week for Y distance. Is that the wrong approach? Should it be "after having walked, walk again as soon as possible but not sooner than 1 day?" I guess I could use an example of some systems that were not just repeating goals.
  - ImprovedSilence 13y ago
    >>I guess I could use an example of some systems that were not just repeating goals. Don't go to the gym or workout or eat good just because you want to lose weight. Do it as a habit. Be motivated by the good feeling you get post workout everyday, not because you want to lose 10lbs or bench 200... Don't weight yourself, don't set a "goal". Just go. five times a week. Just keep going. Find a running club, and run because it's a good way to hang out with friends twice a week. Play a sport. Eat vegetables. But don't force them down, experiment with ways to integrate them into tasty meals. Then keep playing with recipes, and suddenly you're eating super healthy just because it's fun to try cooking some crazy plant from the store and you're making all these cool dishes.

aurelius83 13y ago

I disagree. I think that you have to take ownership of your own career and advancement. Until you reach a level, where you can really take ownership within a company. Employers these days will not raise your salary at market rate without you jumping from company to company. For example, person A stays at one company for 5 years and person B jumps from company to company every 1 to 2 years. At the end of the 5 years, person B will be making a lot more than person A.

nopassrecover 13y ago
What are you disagreeing with? The article explicitly makes the same point: "your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job". // Edit: I'm assuming you were attempting to reply to a sibling comment but posted a comment on the article instead of a reply.
- aurelius83 13y ago
  Whoops, yes. I was replying to someone off of my phone.
vladimirralev 13y ago
Depends on the employers. It would be really stupid not to keep the salaries up to date. It's been said over and over again, it's taught in business schools, hell you can even google a lucky "management tutorial" right now and it's written there. Management should know this, this is their job. If the employers are incompetent then, yes you should leave.
- auctiontheory 13y ago
  Having gone to business school, and having worked for well-known tech companies, I can assure you that there is approximately zero overlap between what you learn in Organizational Behavior class and what is practiced in real companies by imperfectly human managers. It's not really productive to say "everyone is incompetent." It's more productive to figure out how to manage your own career in an imperfect world.
- 13y ago

triplesec 13y ago

This is good advice... for _some_ people.For those who might make the mistakes he's alluding to. Other people will have a different character where passion is indeed what makes them make good decisions and succeed. So, like all advice, this works for some of the people, some of the time. As he said himself in the text: "Beware of advice about successful people and their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike. "

larrys 13y ago
I liked the article. But the irony is that if he had written the exact same thing prior to achieving success with Dilbert it would mean absolutely nothing to the masses and hardly be taken seriously at all. But yet I'm sure he would admit that Dilbert succeeding was total luck after so many "failures". There are many people who are successful with many good things to say but nobody would ever take anything they say seriously before that lucky event (by that I mean on a wide scale basis I'm not saying that an individual might not listen to another offering some good advice.)
- erichocean 13y ago
  I think that's fair, though. There are enough people who are old enough alive at any given time to have seen their system through to success or failure that it makes reasonable sense to prefer their experience over people just starting out. As a basic filter, you could do worse.

praptak 13y ago

Beware generic advice about achieving success: http://mustapha.svbtle.com/tfs http://mustapha.svbtle.com/tfs (This is just off HN frontpage)

tannerc 13y ago
Yes, this article falls well within those bounds, but I can't help but feel we'll never cease to encounter similar write-ups (or books, or videos, or lectures, or how-to guides). I think the best thing we can do right now is educate one another to be mindful of the advice and guidance we encounter. It can be motivational to hear about another's success, but unless we're willing to find what works for ourselves, it's useless. Regardless, Adams is a remarkably interesting person and hearing about his approach to success is on par with reading a really great biography. Entertaining at the very least, something to build-up personal momentum at best.
- yajoe 13y ago
  I completely agree :) Success-styled self-help is a lot like the lottery. There are millions of analytical, intellectual, objective issues with each (e.g. YMMV, survival bias, terrible odds, etc.). What they have in common is they allow users to dream "what if" and have fun (e.g. "escape") with those dreams. Both advertise this fantastical thinking in terms of "how you can" -- either buy the lottery ticket or buy my book -- but they still mostly boil down to entertaining people with dreams. And heck, I love dreaming as much as the next person and love articles (or his comics) like this for that very reason... but I don't get hung up on trying to predict whether the content is strictly perfect just as I can't predict whether a random number printed on cheap paper will be life-changing.
vladimirralev 13y ago
Your advise is just as generic :)
rajivtiru 13y ago
This is a great point. Especially because as I read the article, I could tell the title was sensationalized to indicate that the article would tell you how to be successful. I like the content of the article though. It was a thought provoking argument for a system based approach to motivation rather than a goal oriented approach. I also liked the autobiographical parts. Its kind of sad to see that even people with something genuine to say need to dress it up to be generic so that they will get more exposure.

mindcrime 13y ago

If you drill down on any success story, you always discover that luck was a huge part of it. You can't control luck, but you can move from a game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it easier for luck to find you. The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game. If your current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and try something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens. The universe has plenty of luck to go around; you just need to keep your hand raised until it's your turn. It helps to see failure as a road and not a wall. I think that says it all, vis-a-vis the "luck" thing. Well said, Mr. Adams.

foobarbazqux 13y ago

All of these arguments for success implicitly appeal to our fear that we are not going to be able to have a good human experience if we don't have enough power over other people. You can succeed and you can fail, but you cannot be a success or a failure. The entire problem is identifying too strongly with the outcome of your actions. Incidentally, if you really commit to this worldview, then traditional motivators like guilt and money stop working. The transition period can be difficult; it's usually the crux of a mid-life crisis.

danso 13y ago

> On the other hand, Dilbert started out as just one of many get-rich schemes I was willing to try. When it started to look as if it might be a success, my passion for cartooning increased because I realized it could be my golden ticket. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects that I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success. > > So forget about passion. And while you're at it, forget about goals, too. This is the generalized version of: "It's not the ideas, it's the execution". And I have to say, I agree. It's not that ideas don't matter...but unless you already have some amazing foundation of wealth or opportunity, you need a good process to get to the point where reaching your idea is feasible.

pasbesoin 13y ago

What I learned from that experience is that there is no such thing as useful information that comes from a company's management. Now I diversify and let the lying get smoothed out by all the other variables in my investments. I've found that this can be as true for internal communication as external, at least once it goes beyond the communication of immediate assignments and expectations. You know those "business unit", "segment", "all hands" and the like "state of the business" meetings? Yeah, those. Actually, sometimes those are not exactly zero content. The more they try to convince you that something isn't, the more you may be inclined to assume that it actually is.

ateevchopra 13y ago

This is one of the best article I have read in weeks. Life is about "karma" and not associating you to the results. Mr. Linus Torvalds never made a "goal" to make linux run in every server on this planet. I don't know what is his real inspiration behind working on Linux, But one thing is clear that he succeeded. Everybody has his own reason to follow his/her path. Sometimes we don't even have a reason. We just go with the flow and keep learning what life gives us. Just by keeping our direction right in the flow, we will eventually reach our "goal". If we keep looking at the goals, we will never be able to look at our rocky path and eventually fall down. Making goals is wise. But sticking yourself to its result isn't. Every work we do is our karma. Writing this is also a karma. I'm not talking about HN "karma", but real karma. It is about sharing my views with the community. I learn from the community, so maybe someone will learn from me. This is how community works. Thats my karma. The word karma gained popularity from this famous verse of Bhagavad Gita : karmany evadhikaras te ma phalesu kadachana ma karma-phala-hetur bhur ma te sango ’stv akarmani It means : You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty. I am just gonna conclude this with board that I recently saw in Apple's recent iPhone event. http://oi44.tinypic.com/2uqd3es.jpg http://oi44.tinypic.com/2uqd3es.jpg

impart 13y ago

"Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal." - Earl Nightingale That's the definition I have adopted. Have a worthy ideal? Yes. Making progress, even through setbacks? Yes. Therefore, I feel successful due to my belief. The feeling of success attracts more of it. Win.

dianeloviglio 13y ago

Love reading stories about how people failed, it helps to know that everyone has ups and downs. FailCon - a conference just focused on hearing failures stories from successful startup founders is Oct 21st in SF and there are still a few tickets: www.thefailcon.com - me and my co-producer, Cassie, started it because we wanted to make talking about failure less taboo. I think it's working. :)

aurelius83 13y ago

What exactly does "system-oriented" mean? The article seems sort of contradictory to me. On one hand he is saying having goals is for losers and you need to be system-oriented instead, but on the other he is saying that his goal was to make it rich and he just tried a bunch of stuff until he reached that goal. The example of the person constantly looking for a better job is also confusing. Isn't the goal of that person to have a better job and he is just repeating the same goal over and over?

Kurtz79 13y ago
I don't see any contradiction. Goal : Lose 10 pounds. System: Eat healthily and exercise every day, without looking at the scale. Goal : Find a better job (when you think you need it) System : Be always on the lookout for a better job (even you are content with you current one)

alister 13y ago

Speaking of Scott Adams' business ideas, I've always liked his "Rules for Filtering Out Bad Ideas": http://filters.pen.io/ http://filters.pen.io/ My favorite is #3: It doesn't matter how many people dislike an idea. All that matters is how many like it. So you should ignore the odd person who says, "Personally, I don't like the idea of an antigravity invention, so you probably ought to spend your time doing something more useful." I would have phrased it as: Some good ideas will be viciously hated by a few/some/many, but it's still good if adored by some.

RogerL 13y ago
Plenty of people like segregation, the death penalty, imprisonment for drug use, add your own absurdity or dislike here. Not trying to Godwin the thread, but really, like/dislikes are a terrible measure of the value of an idea.
- alister 13y ago
  If we were talking about "idea" in a totally general way, your point is fine. (I'd add astrology to your list.) But I, and I'm pretty sure that Scott Adams also, were talking about business ideas; i.e., are there any people willing to pay for this product or service, and how badly do they need or desire it.
  - RogerL 13y ago
    My business idea is to collect your social data and sell it to the highest bidder, in exchange for letting you play some free games. Some people love that. I personally cannot then conclude that the business plan is 'good' (for what I consider a reasonable value of 'good' - certainly it will make me buckets of cash).
- anthuswilliams 13y ago
  I would think it's rather obvious he's talking about ideas to be employed in your personal life or business, not political ideas.

tokenadult 13y ago

Previous submission (no comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6537381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6537381

erichocean 13y ago
I wish that comments about previous submissions of the same article could be added to the HN commenting guidelines as "noise", and to be avoided, unless they were very far back, and actually contain useful comments. Telling us it's been submitted previously, and with no comments (!), seems like a particularly useless bit of information. Am I supposed to care? Click over to it? Up vote it? Comment over there? Exactly how did you hope to enrich the comment feed here by posting that?
- tokenadult 13y ago
  Your question is fair. Here, noting that the article has been submitted before is perhaps an illustration of the role of luck ("survivorship bias") in attaining success. I appreciate such notices (and regularly upvote them, from anybody) because I like a reality check on the feeling "Haven't I seen this article before?"
  - erichocean 13y ago
    Alright. If people are getting value out of these public notices, keep 'em coming. :)

mogrim 13y ago

A hundred years earlier: "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."

tedmiston 13y ago

As we think about success as habits vs. goals, a good app to consider in practice is Lift [1], available for the web and iOS. 1: http://lift.do http://lift.do

bluecalm 13y ago

This is basically an idea that you shouldn't set goals on outcomes but on behaviors. The idea isn't new and is kind of mantra in some fields. One very specific one: professional gambling. This is good example because professionals gamblers have very long and imprecise feedback loop and setting goals on outcomes is recipe for constant frustration and confusion (sometimes you make great decision for 2 weeks and lose and sometimes you make awful decisions for 2 weeks and win big). Also for them it's easy to understand that outcomes are very poor indicator of good behavior. At least in "short term" but in many games the short term is sometimes several months or more. That is way more than our brain comprehends and you really have to fight its tendency to link value of behaviors with instant outcomes they produce (how intuition but also superstition is formed). People without gambling background often have different view on reality - it's not so easy for them to appreciate luck because they are not trained to recognize it and not trained to deal with it in methodological way. I love the take on those issues by the author. As someone who did professional gambling for many years I see the concepts popular in my field worded in "real life"/business terms. Great !

skrebbel 13y ago
I like this analogy. In a somewhat cheesy way, life is a casino, and the big winners are lucky idiots and pro gamblers. You can't choose to become a lucky idiot, but you can choose to become a pro gambler.

marincounty 13y ago

I can't even read another one of these. I've noticed one thing about these success stories; they always leave out the people, connections, and family money that made them successful. I've met very few Horatio Alger's. Old reference. 99% of the "Successful" kids I went to school with had rich parents. Gavin Newsom comes to mind. He was voted most fashionable at Redwood. He was an idiot. His parents paid for every business until one stuck. I know the current Gold Rush is different, but beware of the rich telling the poor how to succeed. Oh, and the books-- they never end. I guess the truth is hard to stomach for most successful people? I've always questioned what real success is anyways. Does it really matter if you have a billion dollars if you have a tumor in your pancreas? I certain parts of the world I hear integrity, honesty, and true altruism are what people call Successful--not here though. are

colomon 13y ago
I'm curious how you think this worked in the specific case here of Scott Adams. His Dilbert has been on a decline for ages, and it still manages to be one of the most consistently funny comic strips out there. In his heyday probably half of the tech guys in the US had one of his comics posted on the wall of their cubical. How did his (alleged) people, connections, and family money make that happen? Have they been hiring funny people to ghostwrite the strip? Did they make sure funnier writers were blacklisted? Did they somehow send him to a mystical funny school? If people were being paid to hang up his strips on their wall, I never got my check...
- acuozzo 13y ago
  > How did his (alleged) people, connections, and family money make that happen? Did Scott Adams grow up in a slum and receive a US "inner city" education? Alternatively, did he grow up on a farm with a family that expected him to work to help support it once he could drop-out of school without repercussion? Are you starting to see where this is going?
  - scott_karana 13y ago
    You seem to be conflating "rich" with "not poor".

Amadou 13y ago

The problem with "grinders" and taking the passion out of business is that it implicitly encourages amorality. One of the biggest reasons that Google's "don't be evil" mantra gets so much play is because it is so rare for a modern corporation to even acknowledge the concept of morality, much less explicitly name it as a goal even if the execution is imperfect. I think moral behavior can only come from passion. If you don't have strong beliefs about the role of your business in society then it is entirely too easy to rationalize socially destructive practices in pursuit of financial success. I'm not saying passion is a cure-all, there is no such thing as a cure-all and it is clearly possible to be passionate about a socially destructive idea. But from a social perspective, I think we are better off with a lot of passionate failures and a few passionate successes than a lot of purely financial successes.

noname123 13y ago
Wait, don't public corporations have an fiduciary duty to their shareholders, debt duty to their bond holders and payroll obligation to their employees. To be honest, if I was a shareholder of GOOG or more likely the via fund manager of my 401K who is managing a portfolio of thousands of publicly traded companies, I could care hardly less about the company and more about their bottom-line; because the fund manager has a moral responsibility to manage the assets of the little guys /working class/teachers/firefighters - cue the TIAA-CREF feel good commercial. IMO, this is the true banality of evil that is not talked about. There is no invisible evil man pulling the strings behind the scene, only layers of our self-interest all conveniently shielded by complex layers of capital structures and financial incentives that no one wishes to really confront the conflicts and zero-sum nature involved in it all. I could hardly care less about corporations trying to be 'not evil' because that's a marketing gimmick. I'd rather have a company tell me how they are screwing honestly their customers, employees and shareholders; there's no shame in that because it's a given and the company would instantly gain respect for their honesty.
- Amadou 13y ago
  Wait, don't public corporations have an fiduciary duty to their shareholders, debt duty to their bond holders and payroll obligation to their employees. Sort of. It sounds good on paper - in a perfect world perhaps the invisible hand of the market would make "greed is good" a functional philosophy. But that's not the world we live in - there will always be significant friction, imperfect knowledge, etc in the market such that insisting that one part of the entire system be "pure" in the economic liberal sense is really just denying the obvious in a way that encourages exploiting those imperfections. FWIW, the concept that corporations have no public duty beyond maximizing profits as a course of business is quite new. Here's some background: False Profits: Reviving the Corporation's Public Purpose http://www.uclalawreview.org/?p=1056 http://www.uclalawreview.org/?p=1056

plainOldText 13y ago

While reading the part where he gets into details about passion, I felt like the author uses "passion" as a substitute for "excitement". For instance: "I've been involved in several dozen business ventures over the course of my life, and each one made me excited at the start. You might even call it passion. The ones that didn't work out—and that would be most of them—slowly drained my passion as they failed." I believe passion just exists. It cannot be drained. You either have or you don't. Now of course, you can discover it, after all you cannot be passionate about things you haven't experienced, but once discovered I don't believe passion can be lost. Granted though, "passion" and "enthusiasm" are synonyms, so the distinction is slightly tricky.

jeffreyjflim 13y ago

on passion vs grinding: don't you think that this guy is presenting a false dichotomy here? Couldn't I (and I would!) lend to the guy who loves his job... AND is prepared to work hard at it?

ffrryuu 13y ago

he told me he was the CEO of a company that made screws. He offered me some career advice. He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was a continuing process.

SCdF 13y ago

It's interesting how different people define success. It sounds like Mr. Adams defines success by how much money you have. My definition of success is enough income to allow me to mostly ignore money[1] and instead can spend my days doing things that genuinely interest me, with people I genuinely like. [1] eg not having to worry about working out which yoghurt is the best value for money at the supermarket, not being afraid to go to the doctors because I can't afford it, having enough saved up that if I want to take a few months off employment to do my own thing I can, stuff like that.

icelancer 13y ago
[1] Is the same definition as Scott's if you word it that way. That's millions of dollars before you can think that way.
- SCdF 13y ago
  I don't have millions or dollars (or even close) and I do think that way. All those examples were actually things I've done in the past. Are you American? Is the American healthcare system so bad that you feel you need millions of dollars to survive it? Or is it just that for you to be able to ignore money you need to have so much of it that you can snap purchase ferraris? FWIW when I say don't think about money I mean for mundane every day things, like going to the supermarket or the doctors, or not being tied down to work a job you hate because you need need need that paycheck that comes every month. I'm talking about flexibility, not the ability to buy everything you've ever wanted :-)

hortfort 13y ago

This sounds like great advice, but seems to contradict his (past?) use of, to quote him, "...something called affirmations, where you write your goals daily." (see http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/dilbert_20/ http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/dilbert_20/) Obviously his system oriented approach has room for overall goals, but the WSJ article comes across as totally anti-goal.

bradleysmith 13y ago

This was a really good read. I think his "have a system" is really better explained as keeping your goals dynamic, like "make my repeating income grow" or "always look for a better job." . I loved the piece, but was confused by the choice of "have a system" like some other comments have pointed out. I think this mindset is akin to Taleb's antifragile concept. If your goals are always trying to better yourself in some way or another, than any random events that cause your situation to get worse will increase your motivation to succeed. benefit from randomness, good or bad.

pshin45 13y ago

> Dilbert started out as just one of many get-rich schemes I was willing to try. When it started to look as if it might be a success, my passion for cartooning increased because I realized it could be my golden ticket. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects that I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success. I'd argue that Scott Adams' argument about passion isn't telling the whole story. I think Tom Kelley of IDEO said it best - He said to imagine a Venn diagram with three circles (1) What you love, (2) What you're great at, and (3) What makes money. Finding something that satisfies all three is ideal (but probably unattainable for most), while Scott Adams seems to be arguing that having (2) and (3) without (1) is the "best bet". Both are fair points, I think.

martincmartin 13y ago

If you're already as successful as you want to be, both personally and professionally, congratulations! The secret to being that successful is to be happy with whatever you have.

b1daly 13y ago

Man, I could use some actionable advice about how to improve my lot right now, but I can never seem to find it in such articles! Scott Adams is also an edge case, in that he is a world class cartoonist. Without that level of talent, I don't think his "systems" would work.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

exo_duz 13y ago

This statement really hits a chord with me. "To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That's literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize that you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or to set new goals and re-enter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure." I've always been taught that there are 3 people in the world: 1) People who live in the past 2) People who have a dream and stop having dreams when they achieve that dream 3) People who have dreams and set new dreams once they achieve their current dream Opens up the eyes based on another person's perspective. I wonder if that goal oriented purpose of life, getting the bigger house, better car etc. is just part of how society measures success.

vxNsr 13y ago

I was waiting for this to hit HN, it was basically written for this community. (It was first published in the friday WSJ)

goggles99 13y ago

Forget passion. Goals are for losers. Imagine if Steve Jobs followed this path. Imaging if everyone did. Does financial success while doing something arduous for 40 years make for happiness? This seems counter intuitive. We would have no innovation if there was no passion. We wouldn't even have electricity...

moya 13y ago

You might want to check out this talk by Bret Victor, "Inventing on Principle": http://vimeo.com/36579366 http://vimeo.com/36579366

Sam121 13y ago

Get fan of you but still i will walk on my success path. i thing it is not necessary to read article from other to become successful. yes we can take a idea but every man have own dream ,own ideas and own work power. Steve not read others idea,Same Gandhi didn't read other to be successful. They work own their dreams with their idea and knowledge.So i want to sat stick with dreams and take idea from that type articles but not implement all they say.

kgosser 13y ago

Tell me again how this is different than Malcolm Gladwell? Same format, same insight-porn result, yet this guy is heralded by you all and Gladwell is eviscerated. Confusing, really.

nvarsj 13y ago

I remember talking to a car parking attendant, and it turned out he was the owner of the lot. Out of curiosity I asked him how much he made - he turned around and pointed at a few nearby lots which he also owned - and gave me a staggeringly large sum. The dichotomy Adams presents is interesting, of passion versus making money. It's obvious really, but I never thought about it as explicitly. The battle between these two forces are evident all over the place. Taking gaming for instance. Freemium, addictive, social games versus indie games made with passion. One rakes in millions a day, the other may barely subsist a living. But I'd argue one is far more beneficial to the human experience than the other.

headgasket 13y ago

"Let me start with some tips on what not to do. Beware of advice about successful people and their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike." Is there a potential "mise en abyme" here? :-) great article, best I've read is while though, cheers. F