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The Right Kind of Stubborn

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#191

Post by yamrzou »

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…

> when should the persistent quit?

There is a book that addresses this question: Quit by Annie Duke

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#192

Post by locallost »

This is an extreme oversimplification based probably on the author's surroundings. I've met people recently who are extremely successful and good at persistently hacking away at a problem from different angles, but turns out are horrible listeners. In some of them however I've noticed they also have a tendency to stick to their initial solution, although not always. Simultaneously I am a pretty good listener, but noticed recently I stick to my plan more, sometimes too long, which is the opposite of my younger self that also hacked away at problems pretty persistently until they were solved. This potentially has something to do with a general loss of interest in solving some problems or types of problems (e.g. I'd done it in some form a dozen times).

People are a lot more complex, have their own quirks, traits and decades of reasons in their surroundings why they turned out that way, and continue to change all the time. A lot more complex than this simplistic, caricature, cardboard cutout view of people presented in the article.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#193

Post by ensocode »

eslaught wrote: post #145
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)…

Thanks, I thought the same but as you mentioned, there is no 100% intrinsic/extrinsic motivation. On the other hand there could be some self esteem problem within oneself which triggers motivation intrinsically but has external sources (i.e. childhood, always not enough, no unconditional love) so in the end there might not be a difference between internal and external.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#194

Post by kazinator »

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…

But the obstinates are mostly failing. So it can't be important to them to be right. It's more important to them to be consistent. Changing your mind about something to them is backpedaling. They are letting down everyone else who believes the same stuff.

Probably some obstinates fell for the all-American "believe in yourself" nonsense. If you just have confidence and believe in yourself, you will succeed in spite of setbacks.

The obstinate interprets that as never changing one's mind; if you change your mind, then that means you didn't believe in yourself and are letting down everyone who believed in the same program.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#195

Post by anonyfox »

kazinator wrote: post #194
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…

But the obstinates are mostly failing. So it can't be important to them to be right. It's more important to them to be consistent. Changing your mind about something to them is backpedaling. They are letting down everyone else who believes the same stuff. Probably some obstinates fell for the all-American "believe in yourself" nonsense. If you just have confidence and believe in yourself, you will succeed in spite of…

> But the obstinates are mostly failing

I believe there is a "trying too hard". Solving a worthwhile problem itself might be difficult enough to begin with, but trying to map out a solution plan and stubbornly make every checkpoint a success along the way statistically leads to failure.

Every single step has a chance of ("perfect") success that is not 100%. The more steps, the lower the overall chance of hitting the original problem/solution with the exact path of steps. And if the original plan contains a dead end one could not foresee, people give up at some point alltogether.

But persistence simply means more like "lets take multiple shots at solving the problem", discovering stuff along the way, pivot the strategy or change direction, but ultimately just trying to solve the problem X times, which over time increases the chance of solving it.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#196

Post by gizmo »

A surprising amount of wildly successful people disregard evidence that conflicts with their worldview. This essay suggests that they are wrong kind of stubborn, but real world outcomes suggest otherwise.

Steve Jobs famously decided he no longer needed to shower because he only ate fruit. Unsurprisingly, he reeked. If this isn't obstinacy, I don't know what is. For a decade he denied his child was his, in the face of overwhelming evidence. And yet he is lauded for having the right energy, imagination, resilience, and excellent judgement.

You can make similar observations about Ray Dalio, Noam Chomsky, Nassim Taleb, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk. I think their persistence has veered into suboptimal obstinance at times. But would they be any more successful without their character flaws?

This essay would have been stronger had pg looked for counterexamples to his theory, because there are many.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#197

Post by BaculumMeumEst »

"The persistent are attached to the goal. The obstinate are attached to their ideas about how to reach it.

...

Obstinacy is a reflexive resistance to changing one's ideas. This is not identical with stupidity, but they're closely related."

IMO you see this rear its head all the time in the form of language wars. Many people who are entrenched in the belief that $LANG is the best way to build software well beyond the point where it is reasonable to do so. And it's kind of funny because a lot of them quote PG in their reasoning.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#198

Post by locallost »

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…

Wouldn't nuking a product after 18 months be the opposite of the wrong kind of stubborn if it's the right thing to do? That's exactly my problem with views like these, it's always the other party that is "obstinate" and doesn't listen, but what if after 18 months the product as a whole didn't meet enough expectations? Then it would be very obstinate to insist on releasing it anyway, and a more pragmatic way to reach the goal (which in this case is ultimately to have a successful company) would be to shelve the product and eat the loss. I'm not saying that's the case here, but I am sure those QA people feel like if you asked them.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#199

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

locallost wrote: post #198
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…

Wouldn't nuking a product after 18 months be the opposite of the wrong kind of stubborn if it's the right thing to do? That's exactly my problem with views like these, it's always the other party that is "obstinate" and doesn't listen, but what if after 18 months the product as a whole didn't meet enough expectations? Then it would be very obstinate to insist on releasing it anyway, and a more pragmatic way to reach…

It wasn't the wrong kind of stubborn. It was exactly the right thing to do, for this organization.

I'm not sure that it was, in the aggregate, the most beneficial decision for the company, but it was the decision they made, and I had to go along with it.

I do think that we could have addressed the Quality issues, in a couple of months, and the app was something that I think would have been "revolutionary." That "revolutionary" part probably contributed to its demise. Many QA types are very conservative, and risk-averse. I suspect that they wanted to find problems, because they didn't want to deal with a very different (albeit awesome) kind of application. There were also a couple of other reasons, which I won't go into, here, but they weren't particularly well-handled. They did make it easier for the conservatives to sway upper management.

Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn

#200

Post by ido »

deanputney wrote: post #187
hi_dang_ wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bob, Since you’re the GPP author - as someone who recently published a Steam title and has glowing community reviews, I wish your comment was the article. pg just doesn’t do it for me. It’s a nonsensical word salad of half-baked conjectures and aphorisms. There’s nothing to discuss because there’s nothing thought provoking in there. I am however glad it spurred you to write something worth reading (again).

I read your comment, then looked at Bob's and thought "Ah, he's from Seattle." And I was right.

What do either of these comments have to do with Seattle?
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