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How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

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Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#141

Post by Stryder »

gervase wrote: post #13
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

Bravo.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#142

Post by bonniemuffin »

WalterSear wrote: post #60
bonniemuffin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely don't want my team to appreciate boring tasks! I want them to persist, endure, and then automate. The person who grinds through the boring stuff while thinking about how to automate it so they don't have to be bored anymore, is the person I want to hire.

The nature of the work doesn't allow that. Coding takes all your thought - even when it's boring and monotonous. The comparisons being made to washing dishes aren't realistic.

Sorry for the ambiguity: I didn't mean literally at the same time like washing dishes while dreaming of dishwashers. I mean, like, do some boring coding drudgery one day/week/month, and then the next day/week/month do a bit of dreaming and whiteboarding of how to automate a better world, and then we can prioritize and make time for the automation work to make the better world a reality.

The important part is noticing and recognizing things that are ripe for automation, rather than accepting the shitty world as it is and continuing to suffer through repetitive work that could've been automated.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#143

Post by OnACoffeeBreak »

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 haven't read the book or really know much about Angela Duckworth's research. I just recall reading somewhere that much of her conclusions have been found to be incorrect. Quick search results from NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-...

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#144

Post by pcpcpc »

throwaway713 wrote: post #82

I remember reading once that students who excel in high school (valedictorians and salutatorians) are underrepresented as successful company founders, meaning that they occur at a lower rate than one would expect from chance alone. I think the hypothesis was that these people tended to develop a perfectionistic (or even people pleasing) approach, and that this strategy works really well for "doing what you're told".…

It's anecdotal, but I've noticed this a lot in the years since I've graduated from a "top-ranked" school.

I worked on Wall Street after graduating from school and burned out very quickly. I had a very high estimation of my own ability and importance and a desire to accumulate visible markers of success. I saw this in my peers too.

I've been working through these feelings personally and now feel much more well adjusted and resilient, but it's not been an easy journey, and sometimes I feel like I'm working through the baggage of being a former "top-performer" in a world that's just too big to really care about me (or most anyone).

Happy to share specifics if it'd be helpful to anyone.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#145

Post by Swizec »

rcavezza wrote: post #45
friendly_chap wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a 10x developer if they don't know how to write maintanable software, you just thought they are. The dev you describe sounds like a junior who can crank out code at high velocity.

This is so interesting. I have met many people that others considered "geniuses" because they solved hard problems and got things done fast. And then 3 years later, people still complain about having to deal with "[Name of Developer] Code". I guess if you move fast and write code that others can't read, it's easy to get labeled a genius.

> And then 3 years later, people still complain about having to deal with "[Name of Developer] Code"

You're saying their code was so good it survived 3 years of real world use and project evolution. That's extremely rare.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#146

Post by idDriven »

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…

As Pete_D linked below there is now some evidence questioning the addictiveness of pure nicotine, however for ethical purposes these studies are generally done using animal models, most commonly rats so YMMV. Animal studies don't always correlate 1:1 to human studies. The majority of studies I have read still find nicotine more addictive than placebo. Definitely traditional cigarette products, many of the manipulations done in treating most brands of cigarettes (the exception being brands marketed as natural i.e. American Sprits) made them more addictive by adding additional constituents and potentiators. In the combustion of tobacco products as well you have the active constituents bound to the smoke molecules, which are larger and therefore more absorbed in the lungs. So yes you would be getting more effect from lung-inhaling a combusted product. Vapor products have a much smaller particulate size so are mostly absorbed by the mouth and upper airway and much less lung-dependent. The other issue that may help to influence addiction is that there is some evidence that exposure to nicotine while the brain is still developing, leads to a tendency to use higher doses as an adult. This may translate to developing brains get used to this powerful nootropic and are more addicted as adults, as speculation, it would be hard to design a study to test this. In terms of vapor, freebase nicotine has traditionally been used in vapor products, these tend to show slower absorption and more even blood levels over time. What Juul innovated, and why their product is so much more effective that previous electronic cig-alikes (like Blu) that use freebase nicotine is the development of nicotine salts that allow for increased peak absorption more mirroring the absorption curve of a traditional cigarette. The relative addictive potential of nicotine salts vs. freebase nicotine has not yet been scientifically investigated. The World Health Organization and other health organizations that tend to prefer harm-reduction and scientific objectivity estimate vaping is at least 95% less harmful than tobacco as a nicotine delivery system. (Source: can cite links, RN who reads journal articles for fun. Smoker since 14 y/o switched to vape full-time almost a decade ago.)

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#147

Post by jkuria »

The phrase that comes to mind is: A students become professors, B Students become executives at large corporations. It is the C students who--perhaps lacking the traits to succeed in the previous two pursuits have no choice but to endure the risk/hardship of entrepreneurship--endow professorships and name buildings.

Examples of this:

1. Founder of Kinkos (failed in school and had to repeat two grades)

2. Billionaire Flavio Briatore

3. Almost Billionaire founder of Jimmy John's subs

Another phenomenon I see often is what I'd call "The Video Professor". The founder of that company reaped a massive fortune teaching "dunderheads" how to use computers and operate simple programs like Word and Excel. Many of my techie friends would sneer and dismiss it as being "too easy" and fail to recognize the business opportunity therein or other many similar opportunities.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#148

Post by SubiculumCode »

jnbiche wrote: post #136
SubiculumCode wrote: post #78

I'm smart, but wouldn't say I am super smart...but I am pretty damn tenacious to perfect whatever I am doing...this makes people impressed with my work but frustrated at my slow pace...to the point where the latter is interfering with my career.

I've have the exact same problem. My tenaciousness has given me the ability to understand concepts and obtain skills beyond my "natural ability". But it doesn't make me fast at them. Anyone out there successfully overcome this problem?

Perfect is the enemy of good.

So I guess know when it is important to perfect, but allow yourself to be mediocre when it doesn't matter...So I guess I work on determining whether the thing I am working on really needs perfection or not.

Note: I am a researcher.

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#149

Post by badpun »

ratsimihah wrote: post #102
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 spent most of the day trying to get access to the new Instagram API when all I wanted to do was getting some data for my ML model.

I've found that probably over 50% of my work as a developer in bank was about dealing with security:

- Getting credentials to some external system with which we need to integrate

- Learning how their authentication scheme (Kerberos etc.) works

- Finding workarounds to not having admin rights on my laptop

- Finding workarounds to bank's firewall (a lot of package repos were blacklisted)

- (the biggest one) Having to deploy the app into dozens of separate unix accounts, because, according to security "no one account should have access to all this data"

Re: How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

#150

Post by 200w »

pcpcpc wrote: post #144
throwaway713 wrote: post #82

I remember reading once that students who excel in high school (valedictorians and salutatorians) are underrepresented as successful company founders, meaning that they occur at a lower rate than one would expect from chance alone. I think the hypothesis was that these people tended to develop a perfectionistic (or even people pleasing) approach, and that this strategy works really well for "doing what you're told".…

It's anecdotal, but I've noticed this a lot in the years since I've graduated from a "top-ranked" school. I worked on Wall Street after graduating from school and burned out very quickly. I had a very high estimation of my own ability and importance and a desire to accumulate visible markers of success. I saw this in my peers too. I've been working through these feelings personally and now feel much more well adjuste…

The exact same thing happened to me. Went to a top-ranked school; did internships in finance every summer, despite loathing every one of them; and once full-time came began spiralling down.

I think the main issue that propels high-achievers into these careers is simply peer pressure. I was never happy in finance, my stomach churned as each summer internship approached, but I did it all because I couldn't imagine what people would think of me if I didn't get the next big internship or full-time offer. Did he get cut? Did he fail the interviews? Is he not smart? The pang of euphoria from getting the offer had to overcome the everyday loathing of the work and, of course, it never did.

Even if you don't believe most work in finance to be difficult, enjoyable, or even that lucrative you cling to the prestige attached to the name of your employer like in no other industry. When you ultimately work up the hutzpah to leave and see your friends moving on gaining new titles, different employers, etc. you still feel pangs of their relative prestige increasing despite all your internal protestations that you don't care anymore. It's insidious and comically absurd to try to explain to people (as I'm sure you've noticed). These vaunted colleges really do a number on many of their students.

Would be happy to hear more specifics of your story.

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