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I was tricked into thinking I had “grit”

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Re: I was tricked into thinking I had “grit”

#91

Post by fellowniusmonk »

irjustin wrote: post #7

I disagree with the author's premise that you have "grit" only when it can be applied in any direction. To me, "grit" requires adversity instead of simply overall breadth. It's quite easy for us humans to do something if everything is going well. What about when it's not going well? Do we have enough to persevere through all times, including hard ones? Your startup is failing? Your research is yielding no fruit? You…

I've always viewed Grit through the lens of poverty and achievement, real achievement in the face of real adversity.

There isn't a single thing on his list that counts as grit (based on my understanding) except perhaps in some circumstances programming and networking, even that's with the caveat of using those two as a means to escape poverty. Most of this list are "nice to haves" and grit doesn't really apply:

Running, Lifting weights, Writing, Sticking to a diet, Developing a wake-up/go-to-bed schedule, Mindfulness, Reading, Networking, Music (piano), Baking, Cooking, Programming.

Grit is when everything has gone wrong, you're hosed and overwhelmed and the stakes are crucial and you get out of bed and "get at it" anyway. If you have even middle class parents to go home to... eh, then grit is mostly replaced by capital and calculated risk.

Re: I was tricked into thinking I had “grit”

#92

Post by mikekchar »

cambalache wrote: post #80
mikekchar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a "rule of 3". You can be quite good at 3 things (give or take). One of them will probably be your job. One will probably be your relationships. You have time for 1 more. If you keep changing your mind about what that last one will be, then you will only be good at 2 things. There are ways to be good at only 1 thing as well.... or even 0...

A "thing" is just such a vague and general concept that is useless. If either your job or your relationships can be reduced to only mastering 1 thing I really envy you. If you say I am being unfair and of course it involves many sub-tasks , so why dont just choose to be good at life? So you can concentrate in just one thing and still have 2 other "things" to spare. Now, less snarky and more serious, in any activity o…

What you say is absolutely correct ;-) However, I still find it useful to think in these terms. For example, I'm working on a game in my spare time and streaming (most of it) on Twitch. But I'm also making cheese and doing a lot of research for it. I keep thinking of writing a book about cheesemaking because the information available to normal people is by and large pretty awful. So I think to myself, "Are you willing to give up your game in order to write your book?" And the answer is, no. I may slowly write a few things here or there, though (just to reduce the amount of time I spend answering questions on reddit!) But I think a book would be a very bad idea for me even though it is sooo tempting.

Re: I was tricked into thinking I had “grit”

#93

Post by 4ist »

wegs wrote: post #90
fs111 wrote: post #35

It is not important to work hard, it is important to be happy. Stop glorifying the act of working, please.

To me, a lifelong search for happiness seems flawed and ephemeral. It's culturally very American, but doesn't seem to lead to happiness. I strive for purpose, meaning, and positive impact. When I succeed, I'm happy. That drives how I pick my job and how I run my family life. The Frankl book "Man's Search for Meaning" makes a good case for this as a life goal. I'm not going to my categorical statements like yours. But…

This is something I was thinking about lately. I think having the goal of being "not-unhappy" is more personally viable than aiming at happiness. In the past when I was seeking happiness I would just smoke weed and play videogames all day, which felt good at the time but the day after I would feel like trash because I wasted so much time/energy and typically ate straight garbage.

Re: I was tricked into thinking I had “grit”

#95

Post by lazyasciiart »

onion2k wrote: post #52
hef19898 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are dscribing a perfect way for an early burn-out and a lonely life. Relationships are one of the most important things in life, and I say this as a guy who could litteraly not talk to anyone for two weeks strait. It's relationships with people that get you your first customers for your start-up, your key employees. relationships keep you down to earth, friends and fmily. The latter being one of the most importan…

I didn't say that you should say no to everything . I said you should develop the ability to say no to things that you don't want to do because you have more important things to spend your time on. Trying to make everyone around you happy by giving up time you want to spend on important things is a much quicker route to burn out than declining some meetings you don't care about.

"declining some meetings you don't care about" isn't normally going to make your family angry and your friends drop you, so I don't think that's how people are interpreting your comment.

Re: I was tricked into thinking I had “grit”

#96

Post by toyg »

nmfisher wrote: post #27
ardit33 wrote: post #8

It is impossible to be really good at everything.... when I optimized for work, my fitness goals went through the window. When I optimized to get a project done, my reading (books) went down as well. When I optimized for fitness (working out and soccer), my work and side projects started progressing slower. It is very hard to work on your project at home, when you are in a intense bulking, or 'cutting' phase, and onc…

I think you hit the nail on the head. It's good advice, particularly if you're someone with a short attention span who's constantly jumping from project to project. Nowadays, it's so easy to see just how far the talent pool is across the globe. You see the awesome cello player on Instagram, the amazing 3D games artist on Twitter, the world class gymnast on TikTok. You get so excited and inspired, and naturally, you w…

Indeed. Also, nobody posts their failures online. You only see success, and the path to that success is hidden or even misrepresented (“I made this in an afternoon!” ... and 5 years working 8h/day on the necessary skills).

Re: I was tricked into thinking I had “grit”

#97

Post by koheripbal »

doublesCs wrote: post #38

I have learned the same thing about myself: I am (relatively) successful not because my grit allowed me to keep doing something which I disliked but were rewarded, but because the things I enjoy doing are things which are valued by our society. I realized this after reading the following Warren Buffet quote[1]: "I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependen…

...and that's why he also said on Monday: "If you took someone and asked them, without them knowing whether they'd be born boy or girl, black or white, with or without any relevant talent, or to rich or poor parents, and asked them when and where they'd like to be born. They'd answer, 'The US, in modern times'. There is no place on Earth, and no time in history, that a person can make the most of their talents, as today in the US. As hard as it is to be in the bottom 10% here and now, it would have been much worse any time in the past."

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69rm13iUUgE

Re: I was tricked into thinking I had “grit”

#98

Post by oska »

wegs wrote: post #89
oska wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow I think Buffett would have ended up a parasite in any society. There's always been a niche for the Buffett type.

Why do you think he's a parasite? He seems to live a modest life, and work very hard to make the economy work more efficiently. He's giving almost all of his money to philanthropic causes, and seems to campaign for all the right causes. He maintains a pretty low profile for his level of success (he doesn't even support philanthropy through his own family foundation; he went with Gates, since he thought they'd do a be…

I think his claim to be a beneficial 'allocator of capital' is bogus. He tends to invest in established exploitative companies. His investments have been made on an almost exclusive basis of growing wealth, which in the end is a very sterile end to aim for.

> I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty.

— Buffett, quoted in Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

I agree he's led a modest life. I am somewhat dubious about his claims to be a philanthropist. I don't see exploiting the world (Buffett & Gates) necessarily redeemed by later posing as a philanthropist.

None of this is meant as a critique of capitalism. Just a critique of the kind of sterile, exploitative capitalism that Buffett practises, that he then tries to dress up as philanthropy. "It's ok if I give away all my money at the end" - well he can't take it with him can he? And at 89, he still hasn't given most of it away anyway.

Finally, here's a link to a much more detailed criticism of Buffett, if you're interested:

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/special-investigat...

Re: I was tricked into thinking I had “grit”

#99

Post by AgentMatt »

GistNoesis wrote: post #76
ardit33 wrote: post #8

It is impossible to be really good at everything.... when I optimized for work, my fitness goals went through the window. When I optimized to get a project done, my reading (books) went down as well. When I optimized for fitness (working out and soccer), my work and side projects started progressing slower. It is very hard to work on your project at home, when you are in a intense bulking, or 'cutting' phase, and onc…

It seems that it's more a problem with your inability to optimize correctly than anything else. But you are on the right way. You are trying to do a multiple-objective optimization one objective at a time, and cycling through them. You have already noticed that you can't totally forget the other objectives when working on one, otherwise you lose more over a cycle. In fact what you seem to be aiming for is a single ob…

> But the rule of thumb of good optimization (something something Jensen inequality) is that all your objectives must be growing all the time so you just have to be sure you are not letting something regress. It's called striking a balance. Then all objectives will grow following a S-curve simultaneously.

Does this assume no cost for context switching?

When I have tried to juggle several objectives in my life, I often have regressions in the ones I don't focus on at the time. For example, after focusing on working out for a while, I may lose interest and not follow an "optimal maintenance" regimen, meaning my abilities decay below their peak. I don't feel too bad about it, and use muscle memory as justification: when I return to the activity, I will get back to my peak much quicker then when I first got there. Doing so allows me to extend the time before I have to refocus on that activity again. (But maybe that's suboptimal in the sense that I pushed myself too hard initially, so I am fed up with that activity and don't feel like doing maintenance at all.)

> Closely related is the eternal debate between satisficer vs maximizer which is just the primal-dual representation of the optimization problem.

Can you elaborate on this?

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