I'm a little jaded from years of seeing posts like this, to the point that now they don't seem quite as much like "see, you don't need all that", but instead read more like "See, I've redefined the rules and evaluations -- I'm the winner now!"
People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige
111–120 of 375 posts
Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Marcus Aurelius is asking exactly how will that be of _use_? (Even when you’re alive)
Feeling better about yourself is not useful? Influencing a large number of people is not useful?
Feeling better about yourself must never be a primary concern. It's true that you can't help but feeling good about your actions if they do good, but your ego should be be supressed as much as possible.
Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige
#113> She would say, “Dave, you only got one award this year. Remember when you won seven last year?” > If it wasn’t that, maybe it was also because I am gay. My mother was never really happy about this Ah, the absolute pinnacle of neurosis parenting. That's a solid one-two punch to the child's psyche, which gives them a drive to please while at the same time ensuring it can never be met. Well done; you ensured your chil…
I've seen this type of thing with my son's friends. Hyper-competitivity in 2nd graders is bizarre to me. I experienced another extreme. :)
End of the day, parents do wacky things, usually in an attempt to protect their kids from their own insecurities, regrets and failures. Both sets of my grandparents were immigrants who experienced both incredible highs and dark low-points. That experience manifested in a bias for risk aversion. After I graduated from college and started my first job (at a bank), my grandmother would mail me application packets for civil service exams for the NYC Sanitation, NYPD, etc. (Note that I didn't live near NYC at the time at all) Her argument was that the stability of a civil service, union gig, close to the nest, was very important.
I try to hold my kids to a high standard of performance, but focus on doing the work and improving, not on some preconceived notion of outcome. In my professional experience, 95% of people focused on getting awards are bullshit artists, so it's not something that I encourage or discourage.
Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige
#114About a year ago, a similar sentiment hit me very hard. I was in a situation where I had actually checked all the boxes I wanted to check. My boxes didn’t involve working at FAANG, but they weren’t insignificant. I was very confused why I wasn’t happy.
There’s a very good short story by Alastair Reynolds called Understanding Space and Time. The protagonist is the last human alive. He finds his purpose in understanding the universe. Even once he completes this goal, he must go on living his life.
It may sound trite, but I tell people to put themselves in that position. What would you spend your time doing if you were the last human alive? Now obviously you don’t do that verbatim, but I think it should be an influential datapoint on your choice of career path.
The best news is that if you’re a half decent technical mind with a half decent network, the odds of you ever starving are quite low (not including dependents. That’s a different story). As a result, you have ample opportunity to carve out whatever corner of the universe you want for yourself :)
Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige
#115Thought-provoking article. I got over my obsession with emulating others' success when I realized that a lot of supposedly successful people were successful primarily because they were also lucky. Once you accept that a big factor in whether you'll end up "successful" is just chance, it becomes easier to accept that it may not be entirely under your control and so there's no reason to obsess about it. PG's advice, wh…
> At least you'll have had fun doing your thing. Whilst working 40+ hours a week for someone who was lucky enough that "the rest did follow."
It sounds like you're bitter about working "for" someone else. This might be an ego problem and the solution is not to just be an entrepreneur because that won't solve the root issue.
Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige
#116> Looking back, I also feel like I was frequently compared agaisnst other children. As a reminder that life is a competition, and you don’t want to be behind. I don't know how old you are but life is a competition. At the very fundamental level, all species are competing with each other for survival. Your mother was not mislead, she knows that in order to survive in this jungle, you need to be competitive. And given…
Except individual will lose to groups that cooperate, so even if the world is competitive, there is an incentive for collaboration and equality.
[deleted]
Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige
#117"People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out. But suppose that those who remembered you were immortal and your memory undying. What good would it do you? And I don't just mean when you're dead, but in your own lifetime. What use is praise, exc…
Frankly, a stupid quote. "What good is praise except to make your lifestyle a little more comfortable" That sounds pretty darn good to me. And the fact that your memory and work can be passed down and influence a theoretically infinite number of people.
What good will that influence do you?
Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige
#118> Looking back, I also feel like I was frequently compared agaisnst other children. As a reminder that life is a competition, and you don’t want to be behind. I don't know how old you are but life is a competition. At the very fundamental level, all species are competing with each other for survival. Your mother was not mislead, she knows that in order to survive in this jungle, you need to be competitive. And given…
Except individual will lose to groups that cooperate, so even if the world is competitive, there is an incentive for collaboration and equality.
[deleted]
Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige
#119> Should I learn to make pasta from scratch? No, that’s crazy. Nobody cares if you can make pasta from scratch and it’s not going to make any money. I think the author got it wrong here. He mixes the words "successful" with "fame". By learning a skill like making pasta from scratch, you can make yourself and other people happy. And if you go deep into the field, you can even make money on it, if that's important to y…
Do you have a recipe? :)
Yes.
Tipo OO flour (Caputo Classic), 63% hydration, 3% salt, 5% browning agent (sugar, syrup, malt, or something similar) and instant dry yeast or liquid sourdough according to how long time I got to rise the dough. I use PizzApp+ to calculate the recipe.
I did obsess about making the perfect pizza, and I did spend a year to make the perfect sourdough bread.
To recap it very simple, I think the recipe for success is having fun and enjoying what you do :)
Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige
#120I look at this from the opposite perspective, the person who doesn't care much for success and prestige but has to deal with the toxic side-effects of those that do. I grew up an only child in as single parent household where I was taught that it's better to quietly build a stable secure foundation for your life, rather than to put yourself "out there" and hope for the best. My mothers attitude was that it is better…
How do people like that ever get investment? Like, surely the investors must think, "well, they just screwed up their last 4 or 5 startups so maybe I'll keep my money."
Failed startup could mean anything from not having a good exit to simply not having any traction. It doesn't mean the founders were shit.