How Smart People Sabotage Their Success • Hacker News Board

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#11

Post by brianmcc » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 3:23 PM UTC

Read about Belbin team roles if you've never done so.

If you're someone that thrives on finding new things and learning them, revel in it, don't beat yourself up - that's valuable.

Others thrive on crossing 't's and dotting 'i's - and good luck to them, the whole point is that teams succeed with the right blend of people.

https://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/

Bottom line if you try to be perfect at all dimensions, you're going to probably be unhappy: play to your strengths!

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#12

Post by newsbinator » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #9

honest question, has anyone ever improved their lives by reading articles of this flavor ? (e.g 10 things successfully ceo's do, 10 ways to increase your chances of building a successful company)

Not necessarily directly. But perhaps indirectly, like how reading a useful novel or non-fiction book can help channel your thinking later.

In other words, reading the piece might not alter your behavior today and you might forget 98% of it if quizzed later, but next time you're presented with a decision to which it applies, you find yourself behaving somewhat more wisely than you would have if you hadn't consumed these articles.

Maybe. Or maybe these articles are no more useful than reading the backs of shampoo bottles. Tough to measure.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#13

Post by gervase » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

throwaway9980 wrote: post #8

Reading that I can’t help but think most people in the modern knowledge work classes probably identify with a lot of it. Doesn’t everyone have these feelings? This all seems very normal to me, but I’m definitely the target audience. High IQ that was praised from a young age, hated school but did well with no effort, hated team work all my life, value deep thinking as the solution to almost any problem, successful in…

I think the article was written in such a way as to trigger the Barnum effect [0], since most people think of themselves as "smart".

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#14

Post by beaconstudios » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

Currently working my way through "Grit" by Angela Duckworth, it has some interesting things to say on smart people and why they can often grow up into underachievers. In school, the more average kids have to study hard to achieve good grades and thus learn a strong work ethic. Smart kids can often "coast" through school and thus don't pick up the same attitude to working through boring, hard, or long-lasting work.

It's an interesting book and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the topic.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#15

Post by abledon » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

bootsz wrote: post #4

> 4. Smart people get bored easily. Being smart is not exactly the same as being curious, but if you have both these qualities you might find yourself becoming easily bored with executing the same behaviors over and over. Some types of success stem from creativity, but other types come from becoming an expert in a niche and performing a set of behaviors repeatedly. If you’re smart, curious, and have a love of learnin…

I’m seeing how a few sprinkles of VBA can make an .org so much more efficient than trying to bend management to green light an entire new web app system written in a ‘real’ programming Lang

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#16

Post by joshdev » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 3:32 PM UTC

bootsz wrote: post #4

> 4. Smart people get bored easily. Being smart is not exactly the same as being curious, but if you have both these qualities you might find yourself becoming easily bored with executing the same behaviors over and over. Some types of success stem from creativity, but other types come from becoming an expert in a niche and performing a set of behaviors repeatedly. If you’re smart, curious, and have a love of learnin…

All jobs have some amount of grind. Being able to acknowledge its going to suck and push through it quickly can be super beneficial to your career. It's also one of the reasons why I encourage those in high school or college to try a non technical job first. Learn to appreciate doing monotonous tasks well.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#17

Post by jimmy1 » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #9

honest question, has anyone ever improved their lives by reading articles of this flavor ? (e.g 10 things successfully ceo's do, 10 ways to increase your chances of building a successful company)

Maybe not one particular article but reading the same messaging over and over again until it eventually sticks with me and then my brain is the one that reminds me of it rather than the article.

Articles on a subject also lead me to the books and videos on the subject as well.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#18

Post by mkirklions » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

bootsz wrote: post #4

> 4. Smart people get bored easily. Being smart is not exactly the same as being curious, but if you have both these qualities you might find yourself becoming easily bored with executing the same behaviors over and over. Some types of success stem from creativity, but other types come from becoming an expert in a niche and performing a set of behaviors repeatedly. If you’re smart, curious, and have a love of learnin…

Im a chem engineer by degree, worked in a factory.

After got a job designing in Mechanical Engineering, got another job in a different product, finally I'm in Electrical Engineering.

Being a self taught programmer for 10 years, I've found this variety in experience allows me to engineer pretty much everything from embedded to packaging.

I might have been very talented at making airbags, but I would not be controlling electricity if I stayed in that one job.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#19

Post by gdfer » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #14

Currently working my way through "Grit" by Angela Duckworth, it has some interesting things to say on smart people and why they can often grow up into underachievers. In school, the more average kids have to study hard to achieve good grades and thus learn a strong work ethic. Smart kids can often "coast" through school and thus don't pick up the same attitude to working through boring, hard, or long-lasting work. It…

I second this. These concepts were a reality check for me.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#20

Post by _red » Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

joshdev wrote: post #16

bootsz wrote: post #4

> 4. Smart people get bored easily. Being smart is not exactly the same as being curious, but if you have both these qualities you might find yourself becoming easily bored with executing the same behaviors over and over. Some types of success stem from creativity, but other types come from becoming an expert in a niche and performing a set of behaviors repeatedly. If you’re smart, curious, and have a love of learnin…

All jobs have some amount of grind. Being able to acknowledge its going to suck and push through it quickly can be super beneficial to your career. It's also one of the reasons why I encourage those in high school or college to try a non technical job first. Learn to appreciate doing monotonous tasks well.

As a manager of a dev group, I've migrated away from trying to hire "10x developers" and now optimize for "intelligent and persistent".

The "10x" developers are seductive, and can supercharge a project into getting version 1.0 off the ground in months instead of years. However, each one we've hired has left us worse off than before once they got bored and left us in the weeds trying to piece together what they had done.

Most of them suffer from "shiny ball" syndrome and are constantly dismayed by the complexities of the real world. The real world is a grind, filled with edge-cases, filled with needing to make 1-off exceptions, etc. These types of developers tend to hate that, and prefer the abstract beauty of their elegant and simple solutions....and when the real world crashes into their elegant creations, they get 'burned out' and jump ship.

I'm not blaming them, its just an observation. These 10x developers can be a godsend to a brand new startup, but past a 1.0 product, they can subtly turn into a liability fairly quickly.