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How to Be Successful

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: How to Be Successful

#111

Post by el_benhameen »

apsec112 wrote: post #100
porpoisely wrote: post #92

I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes. Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens of failures and only 1 success. If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all get into harvard, we…

A presidential election is zero-sum, since there can only be one winner. There is no fixed number of millionaires; every middle-class American is very rich compared to what Romans or Persians or Carolingians expected.

Given the means by which they obtain and protect their wealth, I suspect that the people and companies at the top do view wealth as a zero-sum game.

Re: How to Be Successful

#112

Post by yesenadam »

avip wrote: post #38
davebryand wrote: post #25

A more accurate title for this is "How to Be Financially Successful". I'd love for Sam to write a post called "How to Be a Successful Human" or "How to Live a Successful Life". This more important topic has little-to-nothing to do with financial success.

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do."

"On every bookstall, in every magazine, you may find works telling people how to succeed. They are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books. To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful. That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey. Any live man has succeeded in living; any dead man may have succeeded in committing suicide. But, passing over the bad logic and bad philosophy in the phrase, we may take it, as these writers do, in the ordinary sense of success in obtaining money or worldly position. ..." - G.K. Chesterton, The Fallacy of Success

Read more - it's extremely funny and wise: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11505/11505-h/11505-h.htm#THE...

Re: How to Be Successful

#113

Post by bounded_agent »

davebryand wrote: post #25

A more accurate title for this is "How to Be Financially Successful". I'd love for Sam to write a post called "How to Be a Successful Human" or "How to Live a Successful Life". This more important topic has little-to-nothing to do with financial success.

The opening two lines says that it's also about building something important, and subtly imply that's the better goal of the two.

As a non-profit founder I found the advice useful. If you think the incentives of the world are such that doing something important is basically the same goal as making money, then that's great, but I don't think so.

Re: How to Be Successful

#114

Post by sama »

davebryand wrote: post #25

A more accurate title for this is "How to Be Financially Successful". I'd love for Sam to write a post called "How to Be a Successful Human" or "How to Live a Successful Life". This more important topic has little-to-nothing to do with financial success.

I also wrote this, which I think counting reprints is my most-read blog post ever:

https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades...

Re: How to Be Successful

#115

Post by ams6110 »

alphagrep12345 wrote: post #101
sama wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest reason I'm excited about basic income is the amount of human potential it will unleash by freeing more people to take risks. Until then, if you aren't born lucky, you have to claw your way up for awhile before you can take big swings. If you are born in extreme poverty, then this is super difficult :( It is obviously an incredible shame and waste that opportunity is so unevenly distributed. But I've witne…

Won't basic universal income give rise to more inflation and negate the benefits in the first place?

Depends where it comes from. If it's just printed by the government, yes. If it's taxed and redistributed then in theory no, but accounting for all the incentives that taxes create on both sides of the transaction is tricky and the result in most cases is "unintended consequences."

Re: How to Be Successful

#117

Post by mythrwy »

Good article. A lot of this stuff seems to come down to will (or maybe desire).

The power of sheer will is underrated imo. A long time ago, before technology (beyond sticks and stones) people did some incredible things to survive. They must have because we are here. I mean, chasing down deer for days, surviving in extremely harsh conditions, undergoing hunger and pain and injury and coming out the other side alive. We still have that capacity to some extent but most people don't believe this and stop at first discomfort.

Will seems almost magic sometimes, at least in my limited life experience. We do have incredible capacity to bend the world to our vision but it usually goes unfulfilled.

I wish I could will great success for myself but alas, although I think I'd enjoy being FU wealthy, it really seems like more trouble than it's worth. I don't want to deal with managing a bunch of resources and people. Don't want that sucking down my life. Don't want the responsibility, it seems a bit like a prison. So I do what interest me in places I feel good about until it doesn't anymore and usually skate by in relative comfort. I'd like to change this and reprogram my approach, but not sure how to go about it. I don't know if it's nature or nurture or what the situation is but I've noticed some people have incredible drive to materially succeed and best everyone else around them. However I like smelling the roses and casually enjoying my time on the planet. Maybe there's a pill I can get for this?

Re: How to Be Successful

#118

Post by mcilai »

porpoisely wrote: post #92

I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes. Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens of failures and only 1 success. If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all get into harvard, we…

My view is different: the number of people who are willing to truly do evening this post recommends is just small. But those who are willing to pay the cost of success have a real chance of getting it. It's just that most people likely conclude that success is not truly worth it.

Re: How to Be Successful

#119

Post by ams6110 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #110
core-questions wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a huge concern. I have known several people who, when they lose their seasonal jobs, coast on unemployment insurance until the very last minute, sometimes even going as far as welfare and couch surfing before a new job finds them (they won't go looking for it themselves). All they want is beer, weed, porn, and video games. They don't seem to want relationships, work, friendships beyond smoking buddies... it's…

>>All they want is beer, weed, porn, and video games. They don't seem to want relationships, work, friendships beyond smoking buddies... it's saddening, honestly. Honestly, this says more about your need to judge those people, than those people themselves. What is wrong with wanting nothing other than beer, weed, and video games? Seems like a nice, simple life. If it makes them happy, why does it make you sad? Is it…

I have no problem if all someone wants out of life is to get high and jack off. I do have somewhat of a problem being forced to pay for it.

Re: How to Be Successful

#120

Post by jshowa3 »

Is it odd that every time I see "How to be successful" posts, all of them are subjective opinion that's repeated from several hundred other "How to be successful" posts?

It's almost like there's no road map to success.

Here's my list, and its only one item.

"Be able to sustain yourself. To do that, find any profession where the income > expenses."

I learned that's the single, most important thing to being successful. If you can keep that up, everything else is just icing on the cake.

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