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How to Be Successful

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: How to Be Successful

#61

Post by incompatible »

eanzenberg wrote: post #37
sama wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest reason I'm excited about basic income is the amount of human potential it will unleash by freeing more people to take risks. Until then, if you aren't born lucky, you have to claw your way up for awhile before you can take big swings. If you are born in extreme poverty, then this is super difficult :( It is obviously an incredible shame and waste that opportunity is so unevenly distributed. But I've witne…

What basic income will most likely do is send vast swaths of average people to entertainment and drugs. It's already happening, as social nets get bigger and wider.

Where are you living that social nets are getting bigger and wider? It seems to me that the modern idea, since the 1980s, has been to constantly cut them back.

Re: How to Be Successful

#62

Post by core-questions »

avip wrote: post #35
telesilla wrote: post #10

It's also very successful, if you have built a stable business and a way of supporting yourself and a few others around you. Being successful doesn't always mean having a 1BN valuation. But sure, it's nice to think that one day, it could happen. I'm just grateful every day that what I've got now - stability and plenty of resources - was a result of pretty much what Sam said. Believing in ourselves and not giving up,…

It's also very successful if you were a stay home parent and your kids were able to succeed thanks to your efforts.

Absolutely. There are a range of definitions for successful, but I think in many ways it's best left as "in the eye of the beholder", in the sense that it's about achieving your own personal threshold. If you build a way of life that is sustainable for yourself and provides you with personal and psychological stability for you and your dependents, and if you feel at least reasonably fulfilled in this, you can call yourself successful.

If you don't think you're doing what you should be, or think you could be doing So Much More, or that you have wasted potential, then maybe you're not successful yet, even if you're doing better on paper than some people who do view themselves as such.

Re: How to Be Successful

#63

Post by avip »

azangru wrote: post #42
davebryand wrote: post #25

A more accurate title for this is "How to Be Financially Successful". I'd love for Sam to write a post called "How to Be a Successful Human" or "How to Live a Successful Life". This more important topic has little-to-nothing to do with financial success.

Financial success can at least be measured. Being a successful human, on the other hand? Is it measured by one’s own satisfaction with life? By one’s impact on the society? By the number of offspring one produces? It’s all very confusing.

We can also measure people's height, yet we usually don't use it as a metric for success in life (you also don't see that many how to be tall posts).

Re: How to Be Successful

#64

Post by caractacus »

aphextron wrote: post #11

1. Be born to a wealthy middle class family and go to an elite school.

Seriously, it's incredible that someone could write this, redraft it at least six times, have it read by sixteen (16!) people, and not once acknowledge the boost provided to his life and career by family background (also race, but that can be for another post).

Re: How to Be Successful

#65

Post by beatpanda »

> It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US

Most people don't have any real access to capital, and most people's labor is totally alienated from its actual value. For most people, advice to "Work Hard" amounts to "Sacrifice More So Your Boss Can Get Richer".

Also, as far as "working hard", Americans are an extreme outlier: https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-product.... Maybe if Sam is hearing pushback against "Work Hard" as good advice, it's because Americans already work harder than other people in advanced economies for a lower quality of life (meaning less access to healthcare, less paid vacation, less self-reported happiness, etc).

Sam's a smart guy and knows all of this already, so it's baffling why he would include such a stupid throwaway line in this essay.

Re: How to Be Successful

#66

Post by codingdave »

> almost no one in the history of the Forbes list has gotten there with a salary.

Being "rich" and being on "the Forbes list" are two very different standards to aim for. (Neither of which has much to do with being a good/happy person or living a good/happy life.)

Re: How to Be Successful

#67

Post by J253 »

yingw787 wrote: post #13

Great post Sam! My two cents is to try and compete against yourself: quantify your actions with some set of metrics and loop your measurements of those metrics into a feedback loop of improvement. That way, you never feel left behind and have your improvement cycles interrupted or lost, and you gain a good deal of self-introspection, which is invaluable in a world where people nudge/push you around. Your understandin…

> My two cents is to try and compete against yourself

This. With social media so ubiquitous it's hard _not_ to compare yourself to others. I, personally, find internal motivation so much more of a driving force than external motivation. As long as I do better than I did last time, I'll be happy.

For example, if I can improve my 1600 meter run time by 5 seconds, that's a great success for me. And if I'm able to consistently see improvement over time, I'm successful. On the other hand, If I compare my 7m5s 1600m time to my neighbor's 5m30s time I feel terrible. And depending on personality type, seeing such a stark difference between where you currently are and where someone else is, it might deter them from even trying to get better. "I'll never get down to 5m30s, so why should I bother running at all?"

I'm not saying _all_ external comparisons are bad but I think it's important to know when to compare yourself to yourself (to ensure daily incremental progress is being achieved) and when to look up and see where you are relative to others (to see how your incremental progress is summing up in the big picture).

Re: How to Be Successful

#69

Post by jalgos_eminator »

rloomba wrote: post #36
dare0505 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, there were 18 mentions in the article about "success". Just 1 mention about "failure". Survivorship bias at its best: https://xkcd.com/1827/

I'm curious to hear about people that: 1. worked extremely "hard" for 20 years 2. sacrificed relationships/family/living life 3. found moderate/average success, but never caught a break

Yeah, I really would too. It always irks me when some highly successful businessman gives a talk about "do what you love and you will find success". As if billions of people before him that weren't particularly successful hadn't already tried that.
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