Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

asc.upenn.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 265 posts

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#161

Post by caddemon »

WalterBright wrote: post #83
inter_netuser wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What part of that successful people do? 1. they are rarely stupid 2. they often sleep a lot less 3. they more often than not are hyperthymiacs (related to #2). 4. they produce unlimited amounts of self-generated morale (related to #3). 5. they are stress tolerant (related to #4) 6. they are healthier in general (related to all of the above) I don't know very many successful people with numerous chronic health condit…

My productivity drops drastically if I don't get enough sleep.

Yeah, seriously! Besides my own personal productivity, I also noticed in college that the amount of sleep my dormmates got correlated well with academic success, moreso than class attendance did. Of course it could be that those who struggled just had to stay up later, but I'm pretty convinced there was a terrible feedback loop in play.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#162

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

yawnxyz wrote: post #135
sbilstein wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep.... Bootstrapping is for fools. Virtually no founders out there are pouring their personal savings into their company. The issues with bootstrapping: 1) No one to tell you to give up except your own survival instinct. 2) You've already told yourself to ignore that survival instinct because of the success stories you've heard. 3) Even if your idea is fantastic, there is another group of folks out there who have ra…

We've been bootstrapping our weird tech/bio/techbio startup for the last four years... it's NOT EASY at all, but we've made it to the point that we're ramen profitable (For now) and it's kind of an amazing feeling. Of course I'm making like 1/5 I would at a tech company, but we're literally saving people's lives, and that really makes up for not making as much.

Kudos to you! In that time did you ever feel that you were being unfairly compared to certain unicorn startups as you were becoming profitable?

How does the reach of FAANG and their financial clout make it difficult when you're hiring devs?

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#163

Post by tlogan »

This also means that success in business is very much correlated if one’s parents are also entrepreneurs. Now it can be that these people are more well off but it could be also that ones who have parents running the business learn first hand what actually matters. I believe it is combination of two.

And things what actually matters is so unsexy that nobody wants to write about it.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#164

Post by nopenopenopeno »

wruza wrote: post #50
going_ham wrote: post #28

Nobody writes it, but it's okay to have average job, with average life and average family as long as you can enjoy your life! Why burden yourself with idea of success and setting expectations. At this point I am sure life doesn't give anything unless you look for it. And even if you seek, there is no guarantee. So I think it's waste of energy. My experience so far. I am really glad that I learned how stability is nec…

I had a conversation with my colleague recently on this. We quickly got lost in this complex topic, but what we managed to recognize was that a large part of "success" phenomenon (here, locally) is just a replacement for a social stability and respect. Atomized society loses big chunks of what makes people happy and sure about their position. And having this is much better than e.g. owning an expensive car. But when…

Yeah, it turns out we live in a society after all.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#165

Post by nickpp »

pdimitar wrote: post #117
WalterBright wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the simple act of trying will improve your odds of success. Some basic strategies: 1. stay in school 2. don't do drugs 3. don't do crimes If you want to be a pro basketball player, your odds will improve if you practice playing basketball. Want to be a guitar god? Get a guitar and start practicing. Every guitar god I've heard of have one thing in common - they played a lot , for many many years, before breaking…

You do realize you're defending the position of "let's increase your odds from 0.001% to 0.5%", right? You are kind of citing baseline expectations and not success boosters here. Additionally, to play basketball for "many, many years", somebody has to pay your bills in the meantime. A luxury that most of the world does not have -- namely you being able to go all-in on your dream. Rent is still due next month.

No post body was provided.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#166

Post by caddemon »

vimy wrote: post #148
pdimitar wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. they are rarely stupid I know at least 5 people who are fairly stupid but were at the right place, the right evening, the right dinner and spoke with the right people. They all retired at 35 with tens of millions after taxes. They can coast on these savings for 10 years if they live lavishly and if they close all their businesses tomorrow. They weren't stupid in 2-3 regards, yeah. For everything else that I chat…

Successful people often need less sleep than what’s considered the norm. 5 hours for them is 8 hours for most people. Same with stress, stress tolerance is above the norm. They’ve won the genetic lottery. Not every successful person has these traits of course. But enough to see a pattern.

Sure, biologically needing less sleep is certainly an advantage. But in the context of this thread it is a bad example. There are some things common among successful people that are feasible to do and would increase odds of success. The reason "sleep less" is dangerous is because it is feasible to do, but it is not going to be helpful for the majority of people. If you are someone that functions best on 7 hours a night and you start pushing yourself sleeping 5, you will notice some cognitive decline, and very well could be decreasing your odds of success.

Stress tolerance is an interesting one, because there's definitely a huge innate component but there also are ways to improve your stress tolerance behaviorally. It's an interesting question for child rearing too, because there is a lot more opportunity to modify stress tolerance during development than in adulthood. How do you give a child the right amount of stress exposure? I imagine it varies a lot between kids.

I will concede there probably are sleep hygiene things that could be done to decrease the amount of sleep needed a bit. But sleep is one of the few things I won't mess around with much any more. Granted if your career is not going well you may be more inclined to roll the dice, but I just consistently find lack of sleep to cause nothing but issues, and I personally haven't discovered anything that allows me to feel rested with < 7 hours.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#167

Post by DarylZero »

vimy wrote: post #148
pdimitar wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. they are rarely stupid I know at least 5 people who are fairly stupid but were at the right place, the right evening, the right dinner and spoke with the right people. They all retired at 35 with tens of millions after taxes. They can coast on these savings for 10 years if they live lavishly and if they close all their businesses tomorrow. They weren't stupid in 2-3 regards, yeah. For everything else that I chat…

Successful people often need less sleep than what’s considered the norm. 5 hours for them is 8 hours for most people. Same with stress, stress tolerance is above the norm. They’ve won the genetic lottery. Not every successful person has these traits of course. But enough to see a pattern.

Monetary success results in less need for sleep.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#168

Post by nickpp »

lampe3 wrote: post #99
WalterBright wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the simple act of trying will improve your odds of success. Some basic strategies: 1. stay in school 2. don't do drugs 3. don't do crimes If you want to be a pro basketball player, your odds will improve if you practice playing basketball. Want to be a guitar god? Get a guitar and start practicing. Every guitar god I've heard of have one thing in common - they played a lot , for many many years, before breaking…

You sound like a American entitled boomer. Just work hard and it will be fine. Which if you look was never true. > Get a guitar and start practicing. Every guitar god I've heard of have one thing in common - they played a lot, for many many years, before breaking through. Sure but they also got talent and were the exception and your view is biased. The ods of becoming a guitar god are very low and of course they are…

>Just work hard and it will be fine. Which if you look was never true.

I don't know, but I still think the first strategy beats the hell out of the alternative: "don't do anything and wait for life to pamper you" - because it won't.

Life is a fight and one's attitude, while not the only factor, will go quite far towards determining the outcome. A can-do attitude, optimistic and oriented towards success will often encourage a person to take the necessary steps and gambles.

While a victim mentality, a losing attitude will discourage a person and make it lose the fight before even starting.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#169

Post by DarylZero »

bennysomething wrote: post #151
slim109ya wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many guitar gods use drugs, Walt Disney and Bill Gates did not stay in school, and people like Mike Tyson and Kevin Mitnick were successful after comitting crimes. There's just too many variables in life that make success more about luck than following general guidelines.

The bill gates example always gets rolled out for some reason, he's an outlier. For most people, if they are at a good university, doing something they are good at, then graduating is probably a good idea. Bill gates made a calculated decision, Paul Allen persuaded him that they were about to miss out on the micro computer revolution. If you look at what bill gates accomplished as an under grad, there is a strong arg…

If you're talking about "success" as in getting a job, having a gapless resume, good background check, good credit, fitting the corporate mold, becoming the "organization man," etc., then you need to a college degree.

However, this is not a path to the _kind_ of success Bill Gates had, which has to do with getting in early on some new field's new monopoly.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#170

Post by caddemon »

bennysomething wrote: post #155
bitwize wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some basic strategies: > 1. stay in school > 2. don't do drugs > 3. don't do crimes You forgot: 4. be born to rich parents That probably has a greater influence on chances of success than most others.

Except that 80 percent of American millionaires are first generation affluent. Source: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Am...

It doesn't surprise me that there can be a lot of movement among the lower to upper middle class brackets. I suspect where the unfairness is really apparent is the bottom 20% or so. What are expected adulthood earnings for kids that grow up below the poverty line?
Post reply on HN