111–120 of 249 posts
TLDR: You need "energy, imagination, resilience, good judgement, and focus on a goal" to go places. Funnily enough, every very successful person seems to arrive at the conclusion that "focus" is a differentiator.
And focus requires that you assume that others will pick up the slack, to deal with all the stuff you're not focusing on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still disagree. The most prolific writers are journalists, and most of their stuff is absolute garbage. On top of that, most of the most successful people on the planet write little or nothing. They are too busy doing.
> The most prolific writers are journalists You state this as fact without providing a dataset to back it. I think this is not true at all. > most of the most successful people on the planet write little or nothing It depends on how you define "success". I would consider people like Linus and Dwayne Richard Hipp and TBL to be among the most successful people on the planet, and they write quite a lot. Do you call peop…
Look at your own comments. My comment is effectively "people whose day job is to write, write the most". It's borderline self evident.
Your argument has devolved into: "people who write a lot are by definition successful. I wonder if there is a correlation between writing a lot and success."
This is a great article on the difference between an obstinate person and a persistent person, but I'm not sure the general public perceives them the same way that Paul does. What I've found is that many times, people like the perceived confidence that obstinacy can bring. For example, let's say that someone points out a flaw in a plan. Person A responds by saying "That's not a real problem. It doesn't matter." Perso…
I was talking to a friend about this, and I've come to see this as the opposite of real-recognize-real, something like bullshit-interfaces-with-bullshit. That is, often people that haven't executed complex projects have a skewed view of the factors of success, something that they try to imitate and at the same time is more easily misled by people emulating the same signals.
It does remind me of an old joke about English conjugation rules. For example:
I/we are persistent.
You are obstinant.
He/she/they are pig-headed.
This is a great article on the difference between an obstinate person and a persistent person, but I'm not sure the general public perceives them the same way that Paul does. What I've found is that many times, people like the perceived confidence that obstinacy can bring. For example, let's say that someone points out a flaw in a plan. Person A responds by saying "That's not a real problem. It doesn't matter." Perso…
There are certain areas where the popular opinion is irrelevant. Warren Buffet said this in a more folksy way, “It’s very important to live your life by an internal yardstick,” he told us, noting that one way to gauge whether or not you do so is to ask the following question: “Would you rather be considered the best lover in the world and know privately that you’re the worst — or would you prefer to know privately th…
Both of those options sound terrible. It's a curse either way. I'd rather be known as publicly as "better than average" and privately know that I'm doing pretty well/my best.
If forced to pick between the two though, being publicly known as 'the best lover in the world' would seem most likely to present more opportunities to improve my skill/confidence. It's still a lot of pressure nobody needs.
I like this article a lot. I think a lot of the distinction between persistence and obstinance comes down to identity, attachment, and self esteem. Almost everyone who is persistent or obstinant has something to prove. They have some deep-seated feeling that they need to demonstrate something to their community, a sense that maybe their value is in some ways conditional on what they provide. Content people who feel a…
I have a lot of respect for people that are confident in something who are willing to actually go and do that something, even if they're wrong. Persistence in this context is persevering through being wrong and not giving up until you figure out a way to solve the problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The most prolific writers are journalists You state this as fact without providing a dataset to back it. I think this is not true at all. > most of the most successful people on the planet write little or nothing It depends on how you define "success". I would consider people like Linus and Dwayne Richard Hipp and TBL to be among the most successful people on the planet, and they write quite a lot. Do you call peop…
> You state this as fact without providing a dataset to back it. I think this is not true at all. Look at your own comments. My comment is effectively "people whose day job is to write, write the most". It's borderline self evident. Your argument has devolved into: "people who write a lot are by definition successful. I wonder if there is a correlation between writing a lot and success."
You seem to have changed your position from journalists to "people whose day job is to write", which is good, as that includes scientists.