It's reading like a recipe for success when really it's simply observation on factors that helped the author have a successful career.
How to Be Successful
91–100 of 326 posts
Re: How to Be Successful
#92I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes.
Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens of failures and only 1 success.
If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all get into harvard, we can't all be wealthy, we can't all be movies stars. We can't all win the game of musical chairs.
It's like the "how to become a millionaire" books. If we all followed their advice, nothing would change because the market has only room for X number of millionaires. And if it worked and we all became millionaires, being a millionaire would become meaningless.
At the end of the day, hard work, contacts and luck leads to success. The older I get, the more I realize that the latter two is far more important than the first criteria.
Re: How to Be Successful
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is a huge concern. I have known several people who, when they lose their seasonal jobs, coast on unemployment insurance until the very last minute, sometimes even going as far as welfare and couch surfing before a new job finds them (they won't go looking for it themselves). All they want is beer, weed, porn, and video games. They don't seem to want relationships, work, friendships beyond smoking buddies... it's…
Like you say, these stunted people already exist. They already do everything in their power to minimize their work time, including trying for disability or welfare. UBI won't create more of them, and it won't end the ones we have, but it may add stability to the working poor.
Re: How to Be Successful
#94#2: Have almost too much self-belief. Self-confidence has been something I've struggled with my entire life, to the point where its crippled my career growth as a developer. I've been told that I'm a good developer, but if I only believed in myself I could go a lot further and become truly great. However, it's hard for me to believe in myself when I don't have a lot of data points to prove that I AM competent and cap…
"it never feels like its having enough impact on me actually growing"
Then you aren't outside your comfort zone enough because when you are, there will be NO DOUBT you've grown.
Do you know what the difference between a shitty golfer (like me) and a slightly better golfer (like my brother) is? Maybe 25 rounds of golf per year. If I played 25 MORE rounds of golf, I could beat him solidly.
Do you know what the difference between say Tiger woods and the very best Amateur golfer in the world is? A thousand rounds of golf. Ten thousand?
Point 1: Down here in the land of the unwashed masses of basically average developers like you and I, you can make noticeable strides by just consistently working a little harder. You can make leaps and bounds by consistently working A LOT HARDER.
Point 2: Once you start advancing past people, it gets harder and harder to advance past people. There's only so much room at the top, in every possible hierarchy. Check out some Jordan Peterson on Competence Hierarchy.
And I guess....
Point 3: The only real way to be successful is to be comfortable in your own body. I have some bad news for you buddy, this part of the article is complete horse shit.
"The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion. Cultivate this early. As you get more data points that your judgment is good and you can consistently deliver results, trust yourself more."
Cultivate what early? Delusion? Self confidence? \eyeroll
Success means actually liking yourself and nothing more. Some people call this CONFIDENCE. Same exact thing.
How do you become confident? Achieve. How do you achieve? Apply your knowledge. How do you get knowledge? FAIL AT THINGS How do you fail at things? Try new things.
By the way "success" is such a stupid word. I have worked very, very closely with someone who has $100M in the bank. I was his computer guy for all his properties around the world and guess what? He's jealous of another guy we know with $1B in the bank.
Success != Money Confidence != Money
Success == Confidence
OH and guess what shows up when you have confidence?
Only everything you want.
Re: How to Be Successful
#95Earlier 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.
Even assuming you had any facts to base your assumption, why is that a bad thing? There is nothing holy about work, especially work for the enrichment of others.
I, an i suspect many people here, get paid handsomely to move bytes from one place to another and this funds either our ambitions or tastes. I think it's hard to argue that your general well paid tech employee is contributing to society moving bytes around appreciably more than a stoner chilling out on the couch.
Re: How to Be Successful
#96A 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.
"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do."
Finally, a sane judgement free comment. Thank you.
Re: How to Be Successful
#971. Let me have >= 5-10% of your billion dollar company for a song.
2. Be born into a successful family so that you will actually have the ability and inclination to take risks the way I say you need to.
Re: How to Be Successful
#98Earlier 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.
I also have a hard time buying that. Wouldn’t that mean that high tax countries with more welfare would be more probable to have big drug problems? E.g. Sweden does not have a bigger problem with drugs then the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_prevale... (and of course you are not saying that social welfare is the only parameter)
Re: How to Be Successful
#991. Be born to a wealthy middle class family and go to an elite school.
not disputing that privilege is a thing, but don't you think that if this were true, all people who are born into a middle-class wealthy family and go to a nice school would achieve outlier success? it could be that the privilege is a pre-req to outlier success, but there are counter-examples. and then, if you observe that both groups (the counter-examples and the people who satisfy the pre-req and achieve outlier su…
Am I the only one who finds the concept of privilege resentful?
It is shifting the reference point downwards, defining being disadvantaged as the standard and everything above as privileged. In my opinion that's a terrible idea as striving to become better has to be good and not something that you eventually should feel bad about.
Re: How to Be Successful
#100I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes. Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens of failures and only 1 success. If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all get into harvard, we…
A presidential election is zero-sum, since there can only be one winner. There is no fixed number of millionaires; every middle-class American is very rich compared to what Romans or Persians or Carolingians expected.