Hacker News Reader

Comment by jtraffic | Hacker News Reader

This article is ostensibly about "how to be successful in a job". One of the pieces of advice is "Figure out how to perform better in your job." Nice.

I have some advice about how to succeed in life: "Figure out how to perform better in your life."

View on HN

I agree, I think that a lot of the points seem to serve only to pad the article length and are not actionable for most people.

- Surround yourself with great people

- Consider changing where you live

- Save money

- Look for ways to become more productive

- Figure out how to perform better in your job

- Think better

The authors could consider cutting out points that sound like platitudes that can be found in a standard self-help guide or magazine.

And maybe also avoid putting down the endemic "think positive" advice before proceeding to point 4, "apply positive psychology".

That tripped my hypocrisy alarm, hard.

Yeah, the difference is that "positive psychology" is scientific field, and they haven't discovered that "thinking positive" helps with being more successful. I changed the title of the sub-section.

This is a good point, and why I didn't include the positive psychology point in my list – because it is a genuinely different thing.

I agree the titles sound obvious, but within each section we have lots of actionable advice (e.g. books to read about specific decision-making advice, the best tips we've found on how to save money, ideas for specific cities to move to), so I disagree these are not actionable for most people.

Yeah that title doesn't really convey what we mean. I'll change it.

I think it's OK, I mean the heading's maybe a little similar but being "good" and being "successful" aren't really the same.

Good article, I think if one approaches it openly and without cynicism it's bringing together actually quite a lot of good suggestions. Have just ordered one of the recommended books - I must be in a receptive frame of mind :-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com