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The Million Dollar Question

sebastianmarshall.com

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Re: The Million Dollar Question

#71

Post by hariis »

Jun8 wrote: post #39

"Why won't you?" Indeed. I created this HN user almost two years ago, before I applied to YC. In these two years I did pretty much nothing towards my goal, except reading HN, nodding in agreement over good posts, and bookmarking stuff on Delicious, adding to the hundreds I already have. What stops me? Fear? No, I just know I can be successful with my idea. Laziness? Maybe, but I've worked 18 hr days on projects I lik…

Perhaps, Destiny.

Edit: I mean, Is that goal what you want.. Really want to do?. If you were to die in 1 week, would you feel that you missed out on accomplishing your goal?

Re: The Million Dollar Question

#73

Post by patrocles »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #29

I really liked this post. Sebastian continues to develop his conversational style. Very nice. Asshole consultant inside of me kept nodding early on: "You just don't get it, Sebastian! Charge more!" You see, there's a very sad truth consultants learn early on: it doesn't matter how much you know that can help somebody. All that matters is how much influence you can have. The reason some consultants charge ten times wh…

Modern Psychology Rocked by Motivation Discovery

Chiba, Japan -- For decades, eminent psychologists had struggled with what exactly motivates people. Today all those theories have been conclusively shown to stem from one single fear: the loss of group identity.

Sebastian Marshall, a self-declared business analyst operating out of Japan, discovered this principle while seated on a bench, sipping an iced coffee, much like Isaac Newton when he discovered gravity.

"Who would have thought that Competency, Relatedness, and Autonomy were all derived from group identity?" wondered an astounded Dr. Edward Deci, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. "Maybe Relatedness, but all three? This is going to revolutionize Psychology, bringing it closer to Sociology."

President Barack Obama stated, "It is advances like this which show that our humanity is grounded in our sociability. Our ability to come together to overcome all challenges. We should take the single "man" out of "humanity" and replace it with "peoples". Hu-peoples-ity. Or maybe replace it with "meeples", you know, the little guys from Carcassonne. God, I love that game."

Re: The Million Dollar Question

#74

Post by sgns »

Hisoka wrote: post #26
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #6

This is a fantastic post, very thought-provoking. But also very sad to me. I disagree with the underlying premise that success and happiness are somehow negatively correlated. There's this idea in the post that if you want to be uber-successful, you can't have a "normal" life. I know very successful people who are miserable, stressed-out workaholics. And I know very successful people who could have been one of the pe…

Hmm.. I didn't really get that message. I think you're absolutely right. You don't have to sacrifice relationships, happiness, and certainly not health to be successful. But when you're entrepreneurial, you often can't be content with living the "normal" life. You really want to be like one of those people in the suburbs: they're blissful (partially because they don't know the possibilities/opportunities you see). Bu…

This too -- I can identify precisely with this second paragraph. I can't be content with filling some kind of mould. But that's because I can see the mould, and it certainly isn't me.

Seeing possibilities is not something one necessarily chose to do - it was maybe the result of a great need at a time, but now that you're out of the mould, and you see you're a pot maker - not just the clay - the bets are off, because your dreams are different.

I think that's when meaning becomes important, in order to not be consumed by ambition. That's probably also when it becomes really important to make sure that you have both supportive and different people around you.

Re: The Million Dollar Question

#75

Post by sgns »

typicalrunt wrote: post #8

Amazing post. I read every word of it (as opposed to just scanning it). What type of work does he do* and where can I meet/read more people like him? He strikes me as a kind of mentor...something which I find is lacking in the IT industry. Mentors don't always need to be the smartest person in the room, they just need to have experience and patience to see the things that you are blind to. * He says he's a strategist…

I suspect he's kind of like Steve Jobs, if Steve Jobs had not been practising Zen-Buddhism. Instead he's learning how to follow through more directly by helping others do it. He's probably not alone about it either. A guy with a skill. It's just that now the circumstances force more of us to use it, which is to say, to start to develop it. Just a thought.
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