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The annoying habits of highly effective people

economist.com

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Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#51

Post by keyle »

matwood wrote: post #31
keyle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and as an example of billionaire... Notch is a night owl and rolls out of bed pretty much at any hour and he did alright with Minecraft...

Getting up early is just a sign of discipline. Ignore that Notch may be a sign of survivorship bias for second. I watched one of Ludlum dares one time and one thing I saw was discipline. There is no other way to make a complete game in ~48 hours without it.

Yes, good point. These were great to watch https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=notch+ludum+dar...

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#52

Post by ericdykstra »

jiveturkey wrote: post #7
phakding wrote: post #3

Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. I've read a few and never found anything in it that could relate to. May be I am not meant to be one of those people. Even if I worked hard, got in at work at 5 am every day, I don't think I could go from being a lowely team lead to cto or CEO of a multi billion dollar corporation. I don't think it just works that way. I could be very wrong, but that…

Interesting perspective. Is it your belief that people read these as how-to or self-help books? I enjoy reading them the same way I enjoy learning from my co-worker's habits. I take what matters to me and throw away the rest. I'm always trying to improve how I do my current job. It's not enough to have an open mind about work habits / techniques, one has to actively seek out new information. Also it's usually an inte…

Biographies can be interesting, but books that extrapolate directives from case studies of winners are totally useless. If 8 of the top 10 CEOs do x, you can be sure it will be reported in that kind of book, even if 999 of the bottom 1000 failed business leaders do the same thing.

There are tons of these books, and the only lesson they teach is how often people fall for the trap of survivorship bias.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#54

Post by pandapower2 »

phakding wrote: post #40
matwood wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that you couldn't become the CTO? Serious question. What qualities are you lacking?

Well I don't even know what a cto does. I have been in many meetings with them, but besides making high level decisions and asking for status, I don't know what they do. Besides I was born in poverty and needed lot of efforts to be able to socialize with people born upper middle class. I can only imagine what else I need to learn to socialize within upper echelons. I can't explain it to you fully. Thanks for asking t…

>I don't know what they do.

In my experience all C level executives do a very good job of seeming like they know what they are doing. That seems to be a huge part of the job. Seeming like you know what you are doing, seeming like you know what is going to happen in the future (despite that being fundamentally unknowable) and being vaguely intimidating.

Beyond that they select from the set of possible projects that could be undertaken ie create a new product, overhaul some existing system, lay off a bunch of people etc etc. Having made that selection from the options put in front of them their reputation improves if the project goes well (or at least looks like it did). Their reputation takes a hit if the project goes badly.

They may have little or nothing to do with the project execution upon which their career rides. It seems like a bizarre job in that regard. Decide on a high level course of action then wait 6+ months to see if you will be considered a genius or an idiot. During that time your involvement is limited to periodically listening to status updates while looking stern.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#55

Post by vajrabum »

phakding wrote: post #40
matwood wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that you couldn't become the CTO? Serious question. What qualities are you lacking?

Well I don't even know what a cto does. I have been in many meetings with them, but besides making high level decisions and asking for status, I don't know what they do. Besides I was born in poverty and needed lot of efforts to be able to socialize with people born upper middle class. I can only imagine what else I need to learn to socialize within upper echelons. I can't explain it to you fully. Thanks for asking t…

It might be a good thing the next time you have a meeting with a CTO to ask them what they do what their jobs is before or after the meeting. I asked a VP that question at biotech company I was consulting at 15 years or so ago and the answer was very revealing. It didn't make me a VP or even a manager but I have a much better perspective on that level of management then I did before.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#56

Post by sonnyblarney »

jjoonathan wrote: post #4
phakding wrote: post #3

Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. I've read a few and never found anything in it that could relate to. May be I am not meant to be one of those people. Even if I worked hard, got in at work at 5 am every day, I don't think I could go from being a lowely team lead to cto or CEO of a multi billion dollar corporation. I don't think it just works that way. I could be very wrong, but that…

Same appeal as any other type of cargo-culting: it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success than it is to spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct.

" it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success"

Let's not be superfluous. Being a CEO is hard, even the 5 am rising and 'hand shaking' parts.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#57

Post by pandapower2 »

exabrial wrote: post #53

I wouldn't call Tim Cook an effective manager though. He centralizes decisions on himself and had been turning Apple's reputation and Halo-effect into cash rather than innovation.

>and had been turning Apple's reputation and Halo-effect into cash rather than innovation.

Sounds pretty much like his job. Apple doesn't exist to innovate. It innovates to produce cash.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#58

Post by apatters »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19
jjoonathan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same appeal as any other type of cargo-culting: it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success than it is to spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct.

> spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct. Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that.

> spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct.

> Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that.

While there are undoubtedly success stories which resemble both of these caricatures, I think they're in the minority. I can't say I'm hobnobbing with the Forbes billionaires list but I have personal relationships with many people who built successful businesses. Betting on a unique opportunity is often an amplifier, so is starting in a good place in terms of money/family. But what they all have in common is they focused religiously on the top line, they didn't fuck up the bottom line, and they worked very hard.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#59

Post by maerF0x0 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #21
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no executive/manager is going to hold a CEO accountable for being late/strolling into work I did this. I had just been promoted to the lowest manager position at a global bank. Our global head had a habit of starting meetings late. After one, I asked to speak privately. I said I had been working hard with my team on improving their timeliness. They responded, and our mornings became more productive as a result. But…

Were you ever terminated or had your contract not renewed for providing upwards feedback that was rejected?

on this thread. There is defensible feedback and there is just being contrarian. If you have a reasonable position, you may just be missing the CEO's context and they should be smart enough to see the gap and fill it in for you. Without requiring a pink slip.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#60

Post by snaky »

throwaway82729 wrote: post #6
phakding wrote: post #3

Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. I've read a few and never found anything in it that could relate to. May be I am not meant to be one of those people. Even if I worked hard, got in at work at 5 am every day, I don't think I could go from being a lowely team lead to cto or CEO of a multi billion dollar corporation. I don't think it just works that way. I could be very wrong, but that…

I don't think it's helpful to copy what they do as CEO. I look for what they did in their lowest paying job and how they changed as they progressed in their careers. Of course, very few autobiographies cover this.

It depends.

> Faggin: Well, for the timing of the product out, that was put three-and-a-half months of my life at 80 hours a week doing the layout. I mean, that was the only way I could solve that challenge. We couldn’t find a layout draftsman. They weren’t experienced enough or fast enough. And that was the absolute, the limiting time in terms of getting the product out. Because the design, Shima pretty much was doing it all the time it was allotted, but the layout was just not getting done fast enough. And so that’s why I had to do it. You know, a CEO doing layout draftsman job was not something that would be normal, but that’s what I had to do, and I did it. So that’s how I solved that problem. And that certainly saved many, many, many months for the project. As I said, I did two-thirds to three-quarters of the chip drawing it myself.

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Histo...

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