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The Right Kind of Stubborn

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#141

Post by zhynn »

xivzgrev wrote: post #125

I wish this article hit on an important point: when should the persistent quit? We all know we should know when to hold and when to fold, but in practice that's a hard decision to make especially when we're invested. And someone who is "persistent" vs "obstinate" should be able to do this: quit when it's right to do so. The closest thing he mentions is this, "persistence often requires that one change one's mind. Tha…

It's a paradox, expertise will tell you which one to pick (know when to quit | never give up). Tom Sachs called principals like these "Paradox Bullets". The movie: https://vimeo.com/293569057

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#142

Post by cm2012 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #64

I used to work for a corporation that was legendary for their Quality (note the capital "Q" -I got used to denoting it that way). They have been making precision optical gear for over a hundred years, and fetch many thousands, for their consumer (really, professional) kit. Thousands of successful people have built their entire careers around this company's gear. If you want to see "stubborn," look no further than the…

The best metaphor for this is the concept of resonant yaw.

Make one small 1 degree mistake on a rocket launch, you will end up hundreds of miles off target.

Make a small mistake in an organic system and you'll be fine, you can just iterate. You'll drive yourself crazy trying to get it perfect.

The trick is knowing which situation is which.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#143

Post by cm2012 »

sublinear wrote: post #50

I don't really agree with any of this. Thinking there's a way to distinguish the two in the moment without you yourself being the more competent one is to believe in crystal balls. You only know for sure who was right in hindsight when everything else that could have been decided is also known. It's a categorical error to attribute success to personality and behavioral traits. There are just as many benevolent genius…

There's pretty clear, stat sig relationships between personality traits like OCEAN/Big 5 and lifetime income. Even less scientific categorization like Myers-Briggs have the most successful types earning double the least successive types in massive surveys.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#144

Post by nsguy »

munificent wrote: post #123
nsguy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obstinant can just be a nay-sayer though? Someone who isn't even trying to solve the problem their way but someone getting in the way of problems being solved at all. 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 t…

Nay-sayers exist too, but I think they are out of scope for what PG is talking about. He's talking about the people actually working on solving a problem, not someone on the sidelines.

Right. It confused me but re-reading PG's post he's certainly making that distinction. Yeah- I have seen the bash your head against a wall and not take any input kind of stubborn.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#145

Post by eslaught »

munificent wrote: post #58

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…

Your analysis seems to assume that the only form of motivation is external. By this logic, persistent/obstinant people do things because they hope for some external reward (e.g., praise, recognition, fame, possibly financial compensation). The difference is merely at the granularity of the goal this is attached to.

My experience is that the persistent people I know have at least some degree (and often a large degree) of internal motivation. They do things because the process of problem solving is rewarding in and of itself, and/or they have some intrinsic motivation about solving the problem. They are not out to please anyone else except themselves.

Maybe no one is purely 100% internally motivated. But my experience is that the more persistent people I know generally have a higher percentage of internal motivation. In contrast the people who give up more easily generally have a lower percentage of internal motivation; if they really only care about the external reward, it often turns out there are lots of ways to do that, and many are shorter than solving "hard" problems.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#146

Post by testoo »

cm2012 wrote: post #143
sublinear wrote: post #50

I don't really agree with any of this. Thinking there's a way to distinguish the two in the moment without you yourself being the more competent one is to believe in crystal balls. You only know for sure who was right in hindsight when everything else that could have been decided is also known. It's a categorical error to attribute success to personality and behavioral traits. There are just as many benevolent genius…

There's pretty clear, stat sig relationships between personality traits like OCEAN/Big 5 and lifetime income. Even less scientific categorization like Myers-Briggs have the most successful types earning double the least successive types in massive surveys.

this is really interesting, I'd love to read more if you have the link/links!

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#147

Post by hyperthesis »

munificent wrote: post #58

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…

"Giving the world a solution" vs. "showing the world how flawlessly smart they are" reminds me of being "visited" by a genius (muse, inspiration). You now have the gift to share, but it doesn't show you're a genius.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#148

Post by m463 »

A few things.

I don't think you can argue against being obstinate without understanding it. I suspect being obstinate has value. It is basically the whole chesterson's fence kind of thing.

Sort of like "electric cars are impractical!"

That said, persistence is how the future is created. But sometimes it doesn't work.

I'm also reminded of "Often wrong, never in doubt". Unfortunately this seems to work well in society, but it takes people with experience to argue against it.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#149

Post by ShardPhoenix »

I liked PG's essays better when they were more concretely rooted in the details of his work his work at his startup and at YC. This one feels like a sort of non-specific variant of Bulverism - diagnose a bunch of people without presenting evidence, then start psychoanalysing them (also without evidence).

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#150

Post by socketcluster »

Good article. Five qualities of persistence:

> Energy, imagination, resilience, good judgement, and focus on a goal

It's nice to frame it that way so we can know what to focus on.

Personally, I'm strong in terms of energy, imagination and resilience.

I'm probably a bit weaker in terms of judgment and focus on a goal. I think my approach to the latter 2 has something to do with my environment.

Good judgement is actually harder to achieve than it seems. I think my issue is that I was conflating 'good judgment' with 'common sense'. But it's not the same. We're humans and things can be complex for irrational, artificial reasons. Good judgement these days often entails adapting to the subtle irrationalities of the environment and learning to exploit them. That lesson has been really tough for me.

In terms of 'Focusing on a goal', my issue is that I chose a huge audacious goal with small milestones along the way. While I managed to achieve all of the milestones, they don't bear any financial rewards; their utility was just a risk mitigation strategy so that I could easily pivot to other, less ambitious goals if the big audacious goal didn't pan out.

My goal over the past 10 years was to create a platform that would make it much easier easy to build fast, secure, bug-free, highly maintainable software. That's a really difficult goal especially on the sales side as it is a highly competitive space. I managed to build a platform which achieves that. See https://saasufy.com/

But unfortunately, I'm realizing that my goal is too big. I'd be competing against many big tech platforms and also against existing software development paradigms (which is even harder!). So now I'm shifting my strategy towards using my platform Saasufy.com just for myself and my friends to build more niche products like this HR/Recruitment platform: https://insnare.net/

I'm thinking I may have to even re-imagine what 'niche' means.

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