Hacker News Reader

Comment by lm28469 | Hacker News Reader

> Unfortunately, after a year of purposely trying, I was still not becoming Elon Musk nor any other “successful” person. Despite reading everyday, meditating, getting up early, taking cold showers, and many more things. But what makes these guys successful anyway? Their fame? Money? Contribution to society?

And wearing grey t-shirts won't make you Zuckerberg [0]. You don't become a 0.00000001%er by mimicking the most meaningless aspect of their life.

Seems to me that this is particularly affecting people who aren't satisfied with themselves / rarely reflect on themselves and get caught in the rat race without ever pausing to look around. You can always be more successful, earn more money buy more gadgets, have a nicer car, more awards, it's an endless quest, but if you're empty inside these things won't help you.

[0] https://careers.workopolis.com/advice/the-reason-mark-zucker...

View on HN

Let's also note that becoming a startup billionaire to then go off and fund your pet projects is a bit of an anomaly. It's very hard to "mimick" the successful parts of their lives.

> It's very hard to "mimick" the successful parts of their lives

Given the level of luck involved I'd say it's near impossible.

I've noticed a definite transition in the past 20-25 years and that's more and more difficulty for people to accept things like luck and talent exist. I also think the difficulty of acceptance has negative consequences on people's psyche. They seem to become angry and depressed if they've, by all accounts, been successful in the "mimicking" but the desired results don't follow.

Cargo cult has been around forever.

The part about reading, meditating, waking early, and so on sounded a bit like a cargo cult.

It just sounds like a healthy lifestyle to me.

Also, it's unlikely there will ever be another Musk or Zuckerberg in tech. Technology is a largely established industry and it's very unlikely that a single person is going to found and maintain control of another trillion dollar company.

Zuck-a-bees need to get in on the ground floor of the next, next big thing, which barely exists right now.

Did tech “barely exist” when Zuckerberg started Facebook in 2004?

This may be correct, but you cannot be certain of this at all.

Everyone always thinks they're at the end of history in one way or another. Saying that current big tech companies have reached a critical threshold and will remain static for a certain amount of time is like watching a stock price go up - you may think it's a sign that it will continue growing, or that it's peaking and will go down, but you can only say that with certainty in hindsight. Nassim Taleb would go as far to say that there are much less actual underlying trends, and that more is governed by randomness than you think.

In terms of emerging technology, growth and consolidation is a pattern that happens throughout history, and the current state does appear to match that pattern, but this situation is more volatile because the big companies don't have as much physical assets which vastly changes the ability for smaller companies to compete (source: capitalism without capital).

It is not correct. Visit Slashdot archives during the post early 2000s boom era. Every poster saying that the era of getting rich from the Internet was over. See any technology or industry and 90% of the commenters would say that it is too late to get in the bandwagon, the right time was 4,8,12 years ago. Every year the comments are pretty much in the same vein.

I am not saying it is easy, far from it, but the idea that there is no chance for unknown person/companies cannot grow to establish themselves as giants is ludicrous.

What are you talking about? The next big thing after the wave FB rode already happened and Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp et al rode that wave.

And the next wave after that is already happening, but you'll have to figure that one out on your own.

One word: Crypto.

Crypto is the next thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com