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How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

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Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#121

Post by john_moscow »

Totally anecdotal, but I have 2 friends from the time of doing my PhD in Germany. The first one is a brilliant person, hard-working, always determined to get to the bottom of things, but is not very charismatic. The other one is totally relaxed, doesn't care about what he's doing at all, but is extremely pleasant, cheerful and willing to agree with everyone just to make them happy (and will forget what he said 5 minutes later).

5 years after graduation, the first one tried several positions from an architect to a senior researcher, couldn't stand the politics and infighting and ended up as a software engineer in a fairly conservative enterprise. The second one started as a sales consultant in a smaller place, shook a few hands and is now a project manager in a Fortune 500 company.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#122

Post by mobjack »

allenu wrote: post #100
robertAngst wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagreed with that point, thinking through things means not making the mistakes later. Presenting your data should spark questions or proposals or agreement regardless how much time you put into it. I agreed with the first 4 points, but the last one seemed weak.

I read that point as sort of analysis paralysis where you just end up spending a lot of time researching and thinking through and not enough time taking action. For me, I've noticed there are times when I use thinking as a crutch to avoid actually doing. Often, doing, making a mistake, and then correcting is more expedient than analyzing all options to find the optimal one.

AB test have humbled me many times in the past and now accept that careful planning is overrated.

Instead of spending time trying to come up with the perfect idea, I work on finding the best way to test many half baked ideas.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#124

Post by Pete_D »

dageshi wrote: post #111
thrower123 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nicotine was one of the few nootropics that had real measureable positive effects in gwern's testing. Unfortunately it's addictive as hell, but nonetheless, you'd think that as much as we research into opiods and other narcotics, there would be more effort to find safer forms of nicotine or nicotine derivatives. https://www.gwern.net/Nootropics

Genuine question based on personal experience, is nicotine itself addictive or is it nicotine + method of delivery? Cause as someone who smokes cigars (don't inhale, do absorb nicotine via the mouth lining) I really don't find them addictive at all, that seems broadly the case with most cigar/pipe smokers we generally aren't addicted to them. And yet cigarettes are obviously super addictive, so is it something else i…

Another Gwern link: https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine

Highlight: "Wikipedia summarizes Guillem et al 2005 as "Technically, nicotine is not significantly addictive, as nicotine administered alone does not produce significant reinforcing properties" - the addictiveness coming from MAOIs (eg. Khalil et al 2000, Khalil et al 2006) & possibly other compounds present in tobacco"

So I'd expect cigars and pipe smoking to be addictive. My personal experience is smoking cigarettes occasionally (average less than one a day), and I wouldn't say I was addicted either.

My current hypothesis for why cigarettes seem more addictive is frequency. Searching "cigarettes per day average" turns up estimates mostly around 15 per day; most cigar/pipe smokers aren't anywhere near that.

(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or scientist.)

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#125

Post by kradroy »

astrodust wrote: post #37
_red wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

Unless you can coach and pivot someone from that "must make everything perfect" mentality to one where they can take a more pragmatic approach to things.

This is really hard. Really hard. It can take years to get an engineer to that sweet spot.

When I build teams I usually select "builders" and "improvers." Improvers can't create new systems because they spend all day theorizing edge cases and what-ifs. Builders can't improve systems because they spend all day theorizing new systems to replace the legacy one they see as imperfect. You also have to get the right ratio of those two. Too many builders gets you a lot of brittle systems and a huge JIRA backlog; too many improvers creates stagnation.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#127

Post by pier25 »

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…

That 4th point strikes very close to home.

Maybe the problem is that this kind of personality should be working in R&D instead of regular code-for-money types of work.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#128

Post by Pete_D »

moron4hire wrote: post #28
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 hate to say this, but I've been finding Nicotine to be very useful for dealing with anxiety, restlessness, and boredom with rote tasks. I've had some issues with depression and anxiety that I've been managing with my doctor, but there are still times where extreme stress can cut through the drugs and still give me some issues (work has been very political lately). I started craving a cigarette, which is weird becau…

Since you say you're on a very low dose, may I suggest gum or lozenges? I tried nicotine patches for focus a while ago and found that even the weakest ones were far too strong.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#129

Post by longerthoughts »

andyidsinga wrote: post #120
longerthoughts wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think most founders didn't have decent career prospects before starting a company? Are you suggesting that people start companies because they think being a founder is likely to be a high paying job? What founders are trading up in salary when they're starting their company?

in his first sentence : s/need/dont want to There seems to be anecdotal evidence. I've read about and talked to founders who have said things like "They just could't get hired" or "couldn't handle working for someone else" and "had no other option but to start their own business". that said - very likely a survivor bias in those samples..

I have no doubt that those founders exist, the question is whether or not they're more common than founders with other options.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#130

Post by Skrillex »

le-mark wrote: post #72
_Schizotypy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I feel like whining about someone else's crap code is enjoyable in itself.

Until you realize it's code you wrote. Happened to me when our children were little. There were large parts of a system I'd written, sleep deprived, that I had no recollection of writing. Version control said I did, but I didn't remember it.

That can make it even better, particularly if you can remember why you were making the decisions that you did.
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