Buy can you be extraordinary with not being OK?
Being OK with not being extraordinary
311–320 of 396 posts
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#312I’ve made well into eight figures by taking almost the opposite approach. As a kid, all I wanted to do was get the fuck out of my unsafe neighborhood and never go back. When I was young I read a lot of biographies of successful people. What I got out of it was that they just worked a lot harder than most, and failed more than most.
Later I observed that there were people dumber than I was with better jobs than I had, and I took that as a positive sign. It meant that just by working hard, I could get those jobs too.
And one thing reading all those biographies told me was that many of these ultra-accomplished people paid a heavy price, usually in their personal lives. I decided I would rather be a happy millionaire with a family than an unhappy billionaire with two or three ex-wives.
I taught myself how to program, took some writing classes in a junior college, and taught myself business and investing by doing dry runs on paper. The kinds of programming I did were fairly challenging, because as a person without a degree I knew I would have to work harder than people who had one. I also stuck to programming that I liked, but that also had a likely long commercial future.
Eventually I was able to parlay all of this into what this website calls a “lifestyle business“, one that has let me stay home and raise children while still earning a great living over the last few decades. I have hit a fair number of singles and doubles, plus a triple or two. At my age now I’m not going to make a billion, But I own a couple of houses outright, have a retirement fund that can help support very high medical bills for medically fragile family members, and I can take care of my handicapped kid until I die.
All of this came from keeping my expectations lower than the author’s. I was thinking not in terms of what I “should“ be able to accomplish, but what I could accomplish if I worked hard and smart.
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#313I’ve made well into eight figures by taking almost the opposite approach. As a kid, all I wanted to do was get the fuck out of my unsafe neighborhood and never go back. When I was young I read a lot of biographies of successful people. What I got out of it was that they just worked a lot harder than most, and failed more than most. Later I observed that there were people dumber than I was with better jobs than I had,…
I have a similar background, but right now I'm just taking a salary as a software engineer and looking to expand that. Have you written more about your path so someone like me could learn from it?
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#314I’ve made well into eight figures by taking almost the opposite approach. As a kid, all I wanted to do was get the fuck out of my unsafe neighborhood and never go back. When I was young I read a lot of biographies of successful people. What I got out of it was that they just worked a lot harder than most, and failed more than most. Later I observed that there were people dumber than I was with better jobs than I had,…
I have a similar background, but right now I'm just taking a salary as a software engineer and looking to expand that. Have you written more about your path so someone like me could learn from it?
I almost wrote this same comment. At this point, I'm probably going to be soft-retired in 4-5 years anyway. But once I know I won't die homeless, I'm excited to get started with this capitalism thing.
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#315>No one starts off as extraordinary
Huh? I challenge you to remove from that list of overachievers all the people who had rich, smart, supportive parents. I think you will find it considerably shrunken.
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being an excellent communicator is a great virtue to have and something I come to value more and more in co-workers. Once upon a time in my career it was standard for devs to wander off into the woods to painstakingly craft a wonder over 3-4 months, now collaborative working is the thing and it's far more productive. Those people who have the right balance of not being constantly dependent on others but knowing when…
>Once upon a time in my career it was standard for devs to wander off into the woods to painstakingly craft a wonder over 3-4 months Care to elaborate on that more? Curious to hear what kind of work streams you were a part of, and how they differ from the more 'collaborative' norm of today.
For a while I was employed at a shop that was a sort of unified platform and on that platform we would support a number of tools - these tools were usually developed by contractors that would get a complex set of business rules and build a solution to fit - then we FTEs would take care of the plumbing and platform tech debt... Unlike how a lot of places like that might look with outsourcing our contractor pool was pretty steady so while they didn't technically continuously work for the company they were essentially co-workers.
It was an interesting place to be but suffered greatly from a lack of permanence in the roster - for a few years tings were great - then some of our regulars moved on and were replaced with more flaky people. I assume it was just the specific mix of folks that made that setup sustainable while it was.
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
If that were true, everyone with a very high IQ would be a great poker player, a great negotiator, a great writer, a great leader, a great investor.. etc. IQ is as proxy for problem solving if the problems look like a standardized test. The problems people face in the real world require more specialization and a more complex combination of skills and traits.
IQ is one of the strongest predictors we have for many life outcomes, such as career success, wealth, lower risk of death. This doesn't mean "everyone with a very high IQ will blah blah blah" but it does mean that those with high IQs are more likely to achieve certain things.
IQ is one of those myths smart people love.
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a ridiculously defeatist attitude, and the quicker you can drop it the better off you'll be.
If video games are the subject the attitude should be am I having fun, not am I getting better. Some people can make money at playing games (both video and otherwise), but most people need to be okay with doing it for fun and never being world class.
This discounts the long-term benefits of learning to derive pleasure from the progression of your own skills and abilities.
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
IQ is a general measure for pattern recognition. Most modern IQ tests are heavily dependent of things like ravens matrices. Pattern recognition in obviously helpful when problem solving.
Is IQ really legit? I heard form Nassim Nicholas Taleb that the math used by psychologist is weak.
It's not. It was originally used to find profoundly disabled children. But know extended to be the be all and end all of intelligence. It's weak science.
Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
IQ is one of the strongest predictors we have for many life outcomes, such as career success, wealth, lower risk of death. This doesn't mean "everyone with a very high IQ will blah blah blah" but it does mean that those with high IQs are more likely to achieve certain things.
Strongest predictor taken from a pool of weak predictors is still a weak predictor.
I might be pulling things out of my ass here but IIRC the correlation is up there with that of your parents’ wealth. And in current political discussion lots of time is spent on how to deal with the latter. It may in fact still be a weak predictor, but that obviously doesn’t make it meaningless.