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Comment by lampe3 | Hacker News Reader

From my personal experience I would say we have this bias not only when it comes to success stories.

One person has done something good or bad. Then all people who are in that specific group must be like this. Think of Politicians. One does something bad they are all bad. One bicycle driver is riding like crazy so lets ban all of them. I had some bad Asian food so Asian food in general must be bad. Country X had a shooting once so it must be a unsafe country.

You can find examples like that everywhere.

It makes sense that we also have that bias when it comes to success stories.

Plus with the social media culture of "Do thing X" and you will be successful.

I see that all around: Write a paper journal and you will be successful. Wake up early and you will be successful. Read a bazillion books a year and you will be successful. Read my book and you will be successful. Listen to that podcast and you will be successful. Start a shitty idea startup and sell it after X years and you will be successful.

In the end success is not only hard work. Its not only doing thing X. It has so many variables and random points that we can't just replicate someones success story.

Just think about it for a second. As a European reading about US success stories. How much does it help? The (business) culture is totally different. Yes the internet makes it kind of easier but still its just not the same.

Also whats different is that you are not starting at the same time, location, community, knowledge and luck/random level.

So yeah its fun to read these success stories but they should not be your guide of how to become successful yourself.

View on HN

Yes.

I'm starting to see this for myself and now i'm basically decided to ignore a lot of advice after consuming a lot of it.

Instead just to have a few goals and spend time in reflection to decide if they are still what I want and how that is working for me, what I need to do to get closer to them etc and let that decide the best routines.

So many things I hear that are apparently the answer to everything just doesn't work for me. Lots of popular productivity systems, journaling, getting up early, morning routines etc. I get that they can and do work for a lot of people, but the advise I feel is close to worthless as it matters what works for you and if you use trial and error and a reflective process you can figure that out for yourself, without needing the advice or at least i've heard enough of it to know what my options are now so what I need to do is consume less of that and adjust behaviours in my own life accordingly.

I think it comes down to the basic idea that life is way more complex than we can imagine, there is just so much at play and every little thing affects everything else, everyone works quite different and each environment and situation is also unique, bringing the exact same solutions to those things is silly, the only thing to do is adapt to it along the way, it's the system of evolution, but somehow we forget that and want some magical universal solution to avoid the chaos that the real world brings.

Don't start with all these productivity systems...

I tried them all.

Keeping a second brain for me was just waste of time and being busy with writing stuff down. A quick google search was most often faster.

Journaling after a full journal did not give me anything in return. Just a journal full of crap.

Planing my whole week in a calendar when to do what... Good luck with a child doing that. Specially if you don't have the money for a nanny of sorts. A 5 months old baby gives a shit about your plans.

The only thing that really helped for me when I wanted to write a blog post every week was to do with a friend together and beetling money on who loses will pay a good meal.

Healthy competition is the best motivator. Challenging each other does work but both parties have to give a shit.

Another great motivator is being told you will never be able to do something, which gives fuel to the motivation in the form of spite.

> Another great motivator is being told you will never be able to do something, which gives fuel to the motivation in the form of spite.

Very American of you. :P

For people already struggling this only adds depression to the bigger depressive pile, FYI.

Perspectives, we all need them. People can be beaten down to a level where every single adversity is putting them back to bed, unwilling to get out for the next day or two.

Sure, but they have bigger problems and hopefully are seeking professional help not thinking about advanced productivity techniques like this thread is about.

For most people this is a perfectly fine point. This trend of "but wait this won't work for this particular group" in online conversation isn't useful.

This obviously wasn't directed at heavily depressed people or people struggling it was directed at otherwise normally functioning people trying to have an edge.

Apologies, I didn't mean to ruin your argument by citing groups and circumstances to which it doesn't apply.

I mostly meant to question your definition of normally functioning people. IMO from a lifetime of observations the normal state of your average human is being passive, not learning, not improving, and not changing their life situation. Hence my comment. Sorry that it was worded a bit poorly.

You probably meant "your normal functioning human that also wants to improve their life", I assume.

That approach is problematic for some people. The depressive pile has already been mentioned, but we also have to consider that some people are less competitive than others. Some people are teachers or nurses until the day they retire. It isn't because they don't have what it takes to be principals or hospital administrators. A good many do so because that's where they see themselves doing the most good. In other cases, it is because they enjoy what they are doing. How many times have we seen developers mention that they feel pressured to go into management or being forced out of the industry as they get older? In other cases it is because people seek a better work-life balance. I left professional life largely due to the constant encroachment of work life on my personal life, and I suspect I am not unique.

There are other things to consider. Everyone who is employed serves a purpose, else they wouldn't be employed. It doesn't matter whether they're that paper pusher who exists solely to ensure everything is documented in the remote case of legal issues or the person who spawns a company that goes on to employ thousands of people. Sure, the latter feels more meaningful than the former, but that says more about our society than anything else (e.g. the failure of people to do their job, people wilfully breaking the law, frivolous or malicious litigation). Why should one group have more success when everyone is making a contribution?

Another thing to consider: in a world of large corporations that employ hundreds or thousands of people, a disproportionate number of people are at the bottom of the hierarchy. In a world of small businesses, there is hope of rising up the ranks, inheriting or buying out the business, or of setting out on your own. In a world of large corporations, there is only so much movement you can do and the form of competition to move up may not reflect the personality of those who are qualified.

My problem is that is has always been extremely difficult to find a competitive partner. Most people that are willing to compete for motivation fall into the three below categories.

1. Are already so far ahead that they just like having people to push the "I win" button on and there is no way to beat them. You can see how online games are ruined by cheaters to get a feel how many people do this.

2.People that are so unhealthy hyper competitive that they will ruin their life to "win" against you. Going as far as to sacrifice personal health/finance and general life balance just to game whatever the competition is.

3.Say they want to compete then do nothing.

There is also the initial problem of finding someone that is roughly at the same place in life as you to compete with for motivation. People have various differences that can make huge handicaps, health,money, kids, pets, parents, education, career, housing.

Competition is only healthy if a reasonable baseline of safety nets exist for those who lose the competition. We don't have those safety nets most of the time and it leads indirectly to harmful consequences for those involved, making it far from healthy.

You're definitely right, advice shouldn't be taken as gospel. We definitely need to have some sort of self reflection and analysis to figure out if things are benefiting the things that really matter most to us

Doing what successful people do increases your odds of success. It doesn't guarantee anything.

Doing what losers do decreases your odds of success.

> they should not be your guide of how to become successful yourself.

Of course they should be.

Can you explain a little bit more?

What odds?

What part of that successful people do?

What do you mean by loser?

Even the simple act of trying will improve your odds of success. Some basic strategies:

1. stay in school

2. don't do drugs

3. don't do crimes

If you want to be a pro basketball player, your odds will improve if you practice playing basketball. Want to be a guitar god? Get a guitar and start practicing. Every guitar god I've heard of have one thing in common - they played a lot, for many many years, before breaking through.

Doing nothing pretty much guarantees you won't get what you want.

This isn't rocket science.

> What do you mean by loser?

Doesn't matter what my personal definition is. I bet you have your own personal definition of a loser. You'll increase your odds of becoming one by doing what they do.

> Some basic strategies:

> 1. stay in school

> 2. don't do drugs

> 3. don't do crimes

You forgot:

4. be born to rich parents

That probably has a greater influence on chances of success than most others.

It probably does, but it's not something you can affect, so not really of note when discussing what you can do to increase you odds of succeeding in something, which is what he was doing.

It's also worth noting that the advice applies to people born wealthy too. You aren't likely to become a guitar god without practice even if you have money. It just might be easier to find the time to actually practice.

> not really of note when discussing what you can do to increase you odds of succeeding in something

It's because it chips away at people's egos. It hurts people to realize how much of their success was pure luck. It's hard to look down on others that way. Same with intelligence -- no one chooses their intelligence, so I find it odd when people boast about their borderline-pseudo-science-better-than-you-score, I mean, IQ score.

What is the story about the emerald mining, abused Zambian worker who turned into billionaire who started their own space program again? Right, it wasn't that person, but the son of the family that owned the mines that started his own space program (Musk).

> It's also worth noting that the advice applies to people born wealthy too. You aren't likely to become a guitar god without practice even if you have money. It just might be easier to find the time to actually practice.

I completely agree. One has to use what is given to them, but it's a lot easier to use an ability when one has an opportunity.

I can't remember who, but a highly talented and famous musician , was once asked, "Who do you think the greatest <instrument> player of all time is?" He said, "It was probably some kid in a 3rd-world factory who never got to hold an instrument in their life."

LOL the whole point of the "advice" is just to imply that people who aren't rich are all drug-users, high school dropouts, or convicts.

> It's because it chips away at people's egos.

I mean, I'm not going to dispute there's a massive amount of luck that goes into almost everyone's success, but I also think in many (probably even the vast majority) of cases, luck is just going to give you the opportunity, and drive and keeping on track as much as you can is what lets you take advantage of those opportunities.

The difference between the advantaged and disadvantaged is how many times those opportunities knock (or if you're really advantaged, kicks your door down and basically carries you).

Many people that have succeeded have a hard time accepting that it might not have been all their own drive and ambition and actions that account for where they ended up, because to be consistent with their view of themselves that might lead them to give some of their good fortune to others, and there's a lot of mental biases to prevent people from accepting that.

At the same time, many people that aren't succeeding have a hard time accepting that perhaps their own actions have played a large role in why some past opportunities never panned out. In the end, for your personal growth it's best to focus on what you can affect, which is not your birth circumstances and how that might affect you negatively (not to ignore it, but don't let it prevent forward movement). For society, we should look at both.

Actually location is the most important indicative of success in life. So if you were born in the USA you already won such a lottery that it completely dwarfs the rest of influences on your chances of success.

As to rich parents - that can't be an important indicator, just by considering how many more rich people are in the current generation compared to the previous one: who helped them?!

I am indeed talking about living in a free country, like the USA. Communist societies actively destroy anyone who is successful.

> how many more rich people are in the current generation compared to the previous one

Fewer isn't it? There is _increasing_ inequality.

Anyway, it's structural, whether the social systems deliver the economic product to a smaller number or larger number of people. It's not down to differences between individuals receiving or not receiving the product.

Except that 80 percent of American millionaires are first generation affluent. Source: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Am...

It doesn't surprise me that there can be a lot of movement among the lower to upper middle class brackets. I suspect where the unfairness is really apparent is the bottom 20% or so. What are expected adulthood earnings for kids that grow up below the poverty line?

Once you restrict your stats to those that stay in school and don't do drugs, I'd think it is hard to correct for other causes. Like the presence of involved parents.

What's their definition of "millionaire"? Thanks to inflation it is now possible to become one just by virtue of having a household of two white collar workers, each making 150k annually, no kids, no cars - after a decade or two you cross 1M USD net worth.

I think it is helpful to define "millionaire" in 1920s dollars ($20M today)

It's been a long time since I've read the book, but I remember the average millionaire household they surveyed only having a single income of $70k or something.

You sound like a American entitled boomer.

Just work hard and it will be fine.

Which if you look was never true.

> Get a guitar and start practicing. Every guitar god I've heard of have one thing in common - they played a lot, for many many years, before breaking through.

Sure but they also got talent and were the exception and your view is biased. The ods of becoming a guitar god are very low and of course they are lower if you don't play the guitar but thats not the point. If I would just practice like one of these guitar gods the chance of becoming one is still really really really low.

> Doesn't matter what my personal definition is. I bet you have your own personal definition of a loser. You'll increase your odds of becoming one by doing what they do.

Sure if you compare doing nothing to doing something yeah you don't have to be a genies to understand that doing something is usually better. But just doing something will not bring you closer to success. its like 0.00% chance vs 0.00000001% chance. yeah the later one is bigger but that's it.

More important then going to school is learning More important then not doing drugs is understanding how to eat healthy Not doing crimes is such an odd thing to mention here.

I know your definition of a loser... a kid who does drugs and stops going to school. not that hard to figure that out. But maybe there are reasons why that kid takes drugs. Probably because to start with that from the start and later on we don't have the same play field. Not getting a job because you live on the wrong street is a thing not only in the US just to name one example.

>Just work hard and it will be fine. Which if you look was never true.

I don't know, but I still think the first strategy beats the hell out of the alternative: "don't do anything and wait for life to pamper you" - because it won't.

Life is a fight and one's attitude, while not the only factor, will go quite far towards determining the outcome. A can-do attitude, optimistic and oriented towards success will often encourage a person to take the necessary steps and gambles.

While a victim mentality, a losing attitude will discourage a person and make it lose the fight before even starting.

I mean these sound nice in a book or in a blog post but in real life.

Attitude to fight everybody and be better then everybody can lead to being alone because nobody wants to be your friend or only as long as you have money or other stuff.

Yes some people have victim mentality but again just because someone has a winning attitude does not mean he/she will win.

The odds are bigger of course if you do something but again how much? from 0.001 to 0.002? or 0.05? Just doing stuff is most often not a better advise then doing nothing.

Its more important to do the thing that brings you near to your goal. Which these days is taking hack after life hack. Which usually only benefits the people selling you stuff.

What about the person who has to work 2 jobs? yes they still can learn that 1 hour when they have a break.

But in most of the definitions they would be a looser which they are not.

Sometimes it is the systems fault. Sometimes it is random luck or misfortune.

What has a bigger impact on you being healthy and wealthy then doing hard work?

Your parents being healthy and wealthy.

If you look at studies this is the biggest impact not working hard.

If you put in the work on guitar, your odds of having some kind of success are very high.

The degree of success is often largely beyond your control. Maybe it'll be weekly shows at the local Holiday Inn. Maybe it'll be the cover of Rolling Stone. That part of it doesn't correlate to the amount of effort all that much.

But having any success vs having no success is very largely correlated to the amount of work you put in.

> Just work hard and it will be fine.

I didn't say work hard. Nor did I say it will be fine. I said it IMPROVES THE ODDS OF SUCCESS.

> they also got talent

I don't buy that. When I was younger, I enjoyed competitive ballroom dancing. I was terrible at it, but I kept at it for years, and finally was able to get on the floor in a competition with the good dancers. I'd get complimented on my "talent". What a laugh. Talent is good for about 1%. The other 99% comes from working at it.

> doing something is usually better. But just doing something will not bring you closer to success.

You just contradicted yourself.

> Not doing crimes is such an odd thing to mention here

Considering the number of people in jail who thought it was a good idea, it seems an obvious thing to mention.

Dropping out and doing drugs is a choice. Odds of being a success dim considerably if you take that route.

But it isn't my definition of a loser. If you read my posts consistently, a loser is a person who believes he does not have agency in his life. They drift along, never trying, always making excuses, always blaming bad luck. Their journey through life is predictable.

You can always tell the winners, too. He may be poor, middle class, or wealthy. But he's always excited to face the next day, always has ideas he's working on, always fun to talk to, never dwells on past failures, and most importantly, takes responsibility for his life - the good and the bad.

You can always tell the winners?

So scammers like MLM/Gurus/Influencers and the rest are seen als winners.

Still they are what they are scammers.

That single person responsibility thing is nice in theory but breaks really fast in the real world.

Yes it works for people who already had a great start and they can decide.

But that for me is a pretty middle class western world view and has led to were we are now.

If that is good or bad I don't know but could it be better? Sure.

First we need to understand that sometimes things are not in our hands. Sometimes the system is rigged against us (not always). If we then start to make the play field fair for everybody then your theory would work but I don't see this happening in the next 10 years.

Get a guitar and start practicing is so delusional.

The guitarist Buckethead is a great example. He isn't just great on guitar, he also wears a mask and KFC bucket on his head and is good with nunchucks. The idea "talent" and hard work wins out in the end is just complete bullshit.

Marketing is far far more important. That seems incredibly obvious.

The idea of talent and hard work is some kind of Christian residual value that is still hanging around even though marketing dominates in literally every domain in the modern world.

If you want success you need to find your KFC bucket, mask and nunchucks because most domains can't really be differentiated by the actual task at hand.

Many guitar gods use drugs, Walt Disney and Bill Gates did not stay in school, and people like Mike Tyson and Kevin Mitnick were successful after comitting crimes.

There's just too many variables in life that make success more about luck than following general guidelines.

Focus on the common traits not a few outliers. Also some people had success despite certain behaviours they engaged in, or started those after reaching success.

The bill gates example always gets rolled out for some reason, he's an outlier. For most people, if they are at a good university, doing something they are good at, then graduating is probably a good idea. Bill gates made a calculated decision, Paul Allen persuaded him that they were about to miss out on the micro computer revolution. If you look at what bill gates accomplished as an under grad, there is a strong argument that he wasn't going to gain anything from staying on (Google the pancake problem bill gates). One of his professors remarked to a colleague that some kid bill is probably the smartest person he has ever met.

In short defining bill gates as a college drop out is a ridiculously narrow view. I'm guessing most people who drop out aren't on a path to success.

If you're talking about "success" as in getting a job, having a gapless resume, good background check, good credit, fitting the corporate mold, becoming the "organization man," etc., then you need to a college degree.

However, this is not a path to the _kind_ of success Bill Gates had, which has to do with getting in early on some new field's new monopoly.

And watching that new field like a hawk, and outcompeting all the other hawks.

A lot the "outcompeted" still left with billions.

Wasn't his very affluent private high school one of the first schools in the nation to have a computer at the time? Again, this kind points back to something another post said about how one's success (in terms of monetary achievement) is strongly correlated to one's parental success. I mean, his mother held a high position in IBM at the time, and his father was a very successful lawyer while living in Seattle, Washington (a then, current affluent area of the US).

I'm not saying he wasn't some genius, or wasn't driven, or wasn't better than most in some way.

I just notice the part about Gates growing up in the ghettos of Baltimore or growing up in a trailer park in the deep, rural South, working multiple jobs while in high school just to survive, etc. is missing for him success story. Same goes for Musk, Jobs, etc.. Wealth doesn't guarantee success, but...

Wealth => greater % of better opportunities => greater % chance of being successful.

Luck plays a large role -- lucky to be intelligent, lucky to be rich, lucky to be in good health, lucky to be born in the right place, etc.. People hate to admit it because it takes away from their egocentric identities, but if Gates grew up in a poor rice farming village in Vietnam at the same time he grew up, we wouldn't be talking about him right now.

It's an outlier, but Gates is far from the only prominent figure in tech who dropped out. It's a whole dang cliche at this point- Jobs, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Dorsey, Dell, Kalanick, Gabe Newell, Jan Koum of WhatsApp all dropped out. Even Page dropped out of his PhD program! Not to mention dropouts from other industries, from Richard Branson to Henry Ford.

This reoccurring pattern in tech is probably why Thiel came up with his whole "don't go to college" narrative.

> Many guitar gods use drugs

After becoming guitar gods, yes.

These responses just make me laugh. Do you really think you're going to improve your odds of success by failing to complete high school? from prison? desperately searching for your next drug fix?

I think the confusion here is in part because success is so nebulous a term.

Consider success in the stock market, that’d be getting significantly better returns than the vast majority of people. Success in general is the same thing. If you don’t “beat the market” ie the average by a significant margin, you don’t really standout from the crowd as a success. Like the stock market: there is not general recipe that when followed will make you successful. That doesn’t mean there aren’t general things you can do to improve your odds of success, a simple proof of this is considering the negative: if you killed yourself youd lower your chances of finding success, so not killing yourself helps. Same with not getting locked up in jail, not murdering people, etc

Another fact is: success is not entirely luck else rich people (if that’s what we’re calling success) wouldn’t have so much in common. That doesn’t mean rich people and poor people are two different species, but clearly there are traits and behaviors that tend to increase your success odds.

If it’s a recipe you’re looking for, not that I’m all that successful, I’d say: know what you want to achieve, and devote significant time, effort, and thought towards achieving it, taking advantage of every opportunity you can, learning as much as possible, deliberate seek out luck filled situations like meeting new people, and be adaptable. If you do that for long enough and you aren’t successful, then a revolution is called for.

You do realize you're defending the position of "let's increase your odds from 0.001% to 0.5%", right?

You are kind of citing baseline expectations and not success boosters here.

Additionally, to play basketball for "many, many years", somebody has to pay your bills in the meantime. A luxury that most of the world does not have -- namely you being able to go all-in on your dream. Rent is still due next month.

Usually, the basketball playing happens when rent is still paid by parents.

Indeed, and exactly. But the "many, many years" part to me kind of implies that you can be now 30+ and still mainly do basketball and trying to break through. Which is sadly unrealistic if you haven't got a job or parents willing to support you for that long.

I hate to be the grim adult but reality does set in at one point and you have to accept you've missed your (probably generously big) window of opportunity and move on.

>What part of that successful people do?

1. they are rarely stupid

2. they often sleep a lot less

3. they more often than not are hyperthymiacs (related to #2).

4. they produce unlimited amounts of self-generated morale (related to #3).

5. they are stress tolerant (related to #4)

6. they are healthier in general (related to all of the above)

I don't know very many successful people with numerous chronic health conditions that impair their cognition to the point of debility, who are asleep 16 hours a day, constantly depressed and demotivated and break down at the first sight of adversity.

Do you?

My productivity drops drastically if I don't get enough sleep.

Yeah, seriously! Besides my own personal productivity, I also noticed in college that the amount of sleep my dormmates got correlated well with academic success, moreso than class attendance did. Of course it could be that those who struggled just had to stay up later, but I'm pretty convinced there was a terrible feedback loop in play.

I looked up Hyperthymic/hyperthymia, so you don't have to...:

Hyperthymic temperament, or hyperthymia ... is a proposed personality type characterized by an exceptionally, or in some cases, abnormally positive mood and disposition. It is generally defined by increased energy, vividness and enthusiasm for life activities, as opposed to dysthymia.

(from wikipedia)

> 1. they are rarely stupid not all of them but the tendency: a) Influencer b) pornstars c) tv stars > 2. they often sleep a lot less > 3. they more often than not are hyperthymiacs (related to #2). I asked that all of my bosses they do sleep as much as I or any other healthy person. > 4. they produce unlimited amounts of self-generated morale (related to #3). Internal and External motivation is a thing but sure a depressed person will probably be not successful. It does not mean that Internal motivated person will be successful or that it even helps. I would like to see some evidence for that. > 5. they are stress tolerant (related to #4) Again some evidence that this is a general treat would be nice. > 6. they are healthier in general Not really the heart attack risk in C Level or management or related positions is very high. We just don't talk about dead people anymore. Steve Jobs is the outlier here.

> I don't know very many successful people with numerous chronic health conditions that impair their cognition to the point of debility, who are asleep 16 hours a day, constantly depressed and demotivated and break down at the first sight of adversity.

Because they are either dead or don't want to be know or we just don't want to talk about them because they don't fit our perfect world view.

Also the person you are describing needs help a lot of it and I don't see how this proves that the opposite would lead to success.

This is the dumbest thing I read in a while. It doesn’t account for survivor bias. How many people met all those criteria and failed? It could be that for every million with those characteristics, only 1 succeeded.

The list doesn't appear to be meant as a formula free of bias, rather just commonalities. So folks who lack those traits may be statistically less likely to succeed.

Interesting that the criteria come from being born that way and/or the outcome of a low stress and loving childhood. Neither of which a person can control for themselves.

If you look at the GP comment they replied to (quote below), it‘s fairly clear that they didn’t mean this to be a recipe that will make you successful, but simply commonalities that may make success more likely.

> Doing what successful people do increases your odds of success.

Sleeping less doesn't mean much if you're born in a remote village in Africa or China where clean water is a luxury, in a toxic family where not being beaten up and having a stable psyche is a requirement if you want to act out your potential at school.

You don't choose whether you're depressed or not. It's absurd to me that in 2022 you're saying that learning that successful people are not depressed is an actionable advice that people can learn from.

Surprise, you don't get to choose anything at all on that list.

You didn't mention what might be the most important things successful people have to get them there: a good support network of other successful people, and a good safety net to catch them if they fail (sometimes the same network). I think you can scratch away everything on that list and the network (family, friends, colleagues, etc.) could still help you be successful.

It's like a game where some people get a copy with infinite save/load and helper bots, while others get the raw version where their subscription ends after the first failure. So if I told you "being a successful gamer is about having the patience to load again and again until you manage to hit your target" you'd think I'm crazy, your copy already deactivated after the first missed shot.

The starting conditions are so varied that choosing to define successful people just by looking at the person and nothing else is more of a personality cult exercise than an objectively useful one [0]. And it's no surprise, most successful people love to make that success only about themselves.

[0] https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/the-wireless/373065/the-pencilswo...

I don’t disagree.

But one could build a network etc etc.

Winning genetic lottery is a lot less debatable, and really was just a red herring to point out the role her majesty the Fortune plays in our lives from even before we are born.

We don’t get to choose the hand we must play.

Why do you think America is fuller of successful people than other countries?

Is it though? By what metrics do you believe that's true?

I can think of at least one highly successful person (Creator of several household name open source projects), who has dealt with rather serious chronic health conditions throughout their life. Won't name names since it's a somewhat sensitive subject.

For an example from the business world that is a matter of public record, Steve Jobs was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer in 2003 and he still had an active role in the development of the iPhone and iPad before eventually dying in 2011.

> 1. they are rarely stupid

I know at least 5 people who are fairly stupid but were at the right place, the right evening, the right dinner and spoke with the right people.

They all retired at 35 with tens of millions after taxes. They can coast on these savings for 10 years if they live lavishly and if they close all their businesses tomorrow.

They weren't stupid in 2-3 regards, yeah. For everything else that I chatted with them I'd call them stupid and be very confident in my opinion.

IQ is only important in the reverse direction: i.e. if it's below a certain minimum. From one point and on, whether you are e.g. at 100 or 170 doesn't matter much.

> 2. they often sleep a lot less

It's surprising that in 2022 we're still romanticizing this. Even young and energetic people can be severely debilitated by maintaining 4-5 hours of sleep a day for some mere 3 to 6 months (and I've experienced this myself, and I've seen it in dozens of acquaintances and colleagues).

The most resilient person to lack of sleep I've met is myself. I maintained a crazy sleep schedule AND was unhealthy for 13 or so years. Eventually it catches up with you. I actually understood my cognition got impaired one day, panicked, then took deep breaths and start putting myself back on track. This was 6-9 months ago and from then on I keep getting better and better at my job (again) and I heal gradually.

"Sleep less"... just no. This meme should die for good.

Seems that you bought the entrepreneur propaganda books.

> 3. they more often than not are hyperthymiacs (related to #2).

It helps if you're born that way but you can also cultivate it with diet and exercise. Or, you can be cautious and strategic and still succeed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> 5. they are stress tolerant (related to #4)

Same as sleep, this is very temporary. Be exposed to stress and uncertainty for a year and it will break you.

You might be confusing "stressful situations because you might actually live under a bridge and feed off of trash cans if you keep failing" with "uncertain situations in which the person thrives, because they are a gambler by heart, but they have a safety net or investors" here.

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Sure chronic depression doesn't help but you should also account for the fact that too many failures can and do lead to depression as well. Most success advice completely ignores survivor bias and that's a shame because it ruins the chances of a good quality discussion.

Successful people often need less sleep than what’s considered the norm. 5 hours for them is 8 hours for most people. Same with stress, stress tolerance is above the norm.

They’ve won the genetic lottery. Not every successful person has these traits of course. But enough to see a pattern.

Sure, biologically needing less sleep is certainly an advantage. But in the context of this thread it is a bad example. There are some things common among successful people that are feasible to do and would increase odds of success. The reason "sleep less" is dangerous is because it is feasible to do, but it is not going to be helpful for the majority of people. If you are someone that functions best on 7 hours a night and you start pushing yourself sleeping 5, you will notice some cognitive decline, and very well could be decreasing your odds of success.

Stress tolerance is an interesting one, because there's definitely a huge innate component but there also are ways to improve your stress tolerance behaviorally. It's an interesting question for child rearing too, because there is a lot more opportunity to modify stress tolerance during development than in adulthood. How do you give a child the right amount of stress exposure? I imagine it varies a lot between kids.

I will concede there probably are sleep hygiene things that could be done to decrease the amount of sleep needed a bit. But sleep is one of the few things I won't mess around with much any more. Granted if your career is not going well you may be more inclined to roll the dice, but I just consistently find lack of sleep to cause nothing but issues, and I personally haven't discovered anything that allows me to feel rested with < 7 hours.

The time in which one sleeps is not the only variable that matters. I rather have 5 hours of restful, deep sleep than 8 hours of tossing, turning, and waking up every couple of hours. Plus, there are other variables like how close to sleep was your last meal/snack, what time you go to sleep and wake up at, caffeine intake, etc..

Can some people function better on less sleep? Sure, but I would need to see more data on this topic before I believe it is as widespread as I anecdotally hear it.

Are these people that need less sleep actually performing better, or they do they merely believe that because they are inhibited by their lack of sleep? I am pretty sure there have been studies observing this effect. One "thinks" they are performing better, but reality begs to differ.

Monetary success results in less need for sleep.

Bezos famously sleeps 8 hours a night. Personally I like getting good rest but I also find my most productive moments are when sleep deprived or in the midst of insomnia.

As Arnold Schwarzenegger keeps saying: "Stop saying you don't have time. You have."

IMO it's really not about sleeping less. It's about optimizing your day and, provided you're full of energy and enthusiasm, you can slice and dice every 15-minute segment of your day to do something productive.

It's crazy, really. On some of my very good days (I am changing diet and do some exercise but the effects are sporadic) I was able to be productive on my computer and phone for 14-15 hours straight, with only toilet breaks and quickly gulping some snacks in the meantime. On these days I do catch up with stuff that's been eating at me for the last 6-8 weeks...

So yeah, I don't disagree that if you're very efficient you can achieve a lot. And I do agree with Arnold and many others who say that people complain about the wrong thing because we really very often do have the time. But it's hard for me to agree that systemically depriving yourself of sleep is good.

Sure, there are such things as the genetic lottery indeed. But it only takes you so far. Believe me, I've seen some rather perfect-seeming humans crash and burn, hard, around their 37-43 year old mark. In the end, you're abusing a resource that you are given genetically. Sooner or later it's depleted. We're no terminators with nuclear batteries.

But hey, if you are that genetic prodigy AND manage to make it big before your body starts catching up with the fact that it's Homo Sapiens and not an Asgardian... then more power to you, really. I was stupid enough not to use my youth and now I have to practice an olympic pentathlon (figuratively) just so I can break even in life. But complaints get us nowhere. Trying to change food, trying to exercise more, trying to reduce distractions and negative emotions etc. And it works.

Sleep needs was worded poorly.

I really just tried to describe a hyperthymiac in detail (they need less sleep). They have a lot of traits that help to compete. Some I’ve known worked for decades under enormous amounts stress that would probably kill most, but without any visible impact on the hyperthymiac in question. And it was all on 5 hours of sleep per days. For 20 years straight.

The larger point that everyone missed is none of these attributes are under your control. In this case, its just blessed genetics. Not sure if that’s what they tell you in books: “make sure to win at genetics” lol.

Luck factor is huge. Genetics. Early life events. Family environment. country you live in. Family connections. After that - your ability to execute on the hand the fate dealt to you.

But even that, the ability to execute, isn’t entirely under your control. Some will be untouchable simply because genetics.

This doesn’t meant one should never try, quite the opposite.

Haha, you definitely got me. Thanks for clarifying!

> Not sure if that’s what they tell you in books: “make sure to win at genetics” lol.

Nobody ever will. As Jenifer Lopez was singing:

    "Life can be cruel in a way that I can't explain
     And I don't think that I could face it all again"

Most people, after they move past the critical mass phase and start amassing money / assets / other-forms-of-wealth and insure themselves to be never poor ever again, will NEVER admit the role of luck, genetics, connections, rich family etc.

It is how it is. I wish them well and I am happy they made it. But I grew tired of the memes and delusions that many of them often spit out.

I actually knew a couple: a former elite prostitute/escort and her former pimp. They made a ton of money by pimping her to rich guys, she managed to get extra payments from them, gained some connections, arranged partner businesses with some of them, did a lot of money (probably shady but happily I never inquired further and I really don't care) and at one point she started acting as if she was such a shrewd clever businessman and that her success was all but preordained and the was sooooo smart that she almost made it sound as if she planned it from childhood. I kid you not, she was extremely full of herself and was looking down on literally anybody who is below the social ladder than her.

She was so hilariously out of touch that I couldn't help but laugh out loud at one point, which predictably led to losing the acquaintance. I don't regret it, I don't need such people in my life.

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So yeah, I am aware hyperthymiacs exist, I am only saying everything has a limit. One notable example is a guy who finally broke at 68-70. I seriously have no clue how was he healthy and ambitious literally from 14 years old all the way to 70 while almost never sleeping more than 4-5 hours. But they are genetic flukes as you said. I still believe we the regular humans can achieve a lot with 16-17 waking hours.

Actually, a lot of successful artists and thinkers were pretty ill and/or depressed - e.g. Nietzsche, Proust.

There are many very successful people with chronic mental health conditions that at times impair their cognition to the point of debility. Like, re-read your comment with Simone Biles in mind, who is arguably the most successful gymnast ever but did spend extensive time constantly sleeping while depressed and demotivated and broken down. Quoting her, "At one point I slept so much because, for me, it was the closest thing to death without harming myself. It was an escape from all of my thoughts, from the world, from what I was dealing with."

You can't deny that Vincent van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Virginia Woolf, Robin Williams, Marylin Monroe, Chester Bennington, Ernest Hemmingway and many others were successful despite their struggles, and those are just those for whom those internal struggles resulted in something obvious to the public. For physical issues, there's Avicii who got quite successful while touring with many serious health problems. In the field of business we have to remember that for currently active entrepreneurs there are strong incentives to hide any issues (e.g. Elon Musk has years earlier admitted struggles with depression and/or bipolar disorder, but IMHO we won't get reliable information about their extent until after he retires or dies), but there are earlier examples like Ted Turner, founder of CNN; and of course there's the famous case of Aaron Swartz as a cofounder of Reddit. Here's a study https://www.michaelafreemanmd.com/Research_files/Are%20Entre... showing that entrepreneurs have a higher rate of mental health conditions than the general public.

So I believe that your argument is based on false expectations.

I sleep a lot. A lot. Sleeping more than 12 hours is no problem for me. Unsurprisingly, I'm also rather hypothymiac (it runs in the family). I consider myself very successful, and others do as well.

More importantly, I also never felt that my large amount of sleep was working against me in that. Almost the opposite actually, as I can "sleep off" depression, minor sicknesses, general bad mood etc.

What’s very successful for you?

I’ve described the list because I’ve met several people like that.

All but one were self made billionaires in traditional business, none of that VC unicorn nonsense.

5 hours of sleep per day, nearly 100% performance during the entire 19 hours, in some cases - for 20 years straight, under enormous stress.

> I don't know very many successful people with numerous chronic health conditions that impair their cognition to the point of debility

You'd be surprised to find out how many highly successful creatives are bipolar. Britney Spears for instance infamously went through a very public manic episode a number of years ago. Bipolar disorder definitely fits the bill for a "chronic health conditions that impair their cognition to the point of debility".

Well it seems that most people do end up the average of their friends.

That's an astute observation. Choosing winners for friends, and cutting loose the losers, will increase your odds of success.

For example, if you want to be good at skiing, hang out with people who are good at skiing.

This only works if your peers aren't following the same strategy of maximizing potential otherwise they would just cut you out for being the least successful friend.

If you look hard enough for a reason to fail, you'll surely find one.

Unless you can manage to be good at something they want to be better at.

Also European, and would like to point out that the major difference is the investor cash available to startups comparing to places like Silicon Valley.

Its the amount of money, willingness to invest at all and in what to invest.

Sometimes the investors want to be like Silicon Valley investors but yeah its like with the success stories they have read about it but not experienced it.

Its not even about being a European. Its about the notion to become successful and start a company you need to go and raise VC.

Its a story that was sold to the world so that the dealflow is generated. Go change the world they say, go and chase your dreams of a better world... Honestly that got me into severe depression. I am not bitter, just stating the obvious that we have been sold a narrative via hustle porn media and that narrative served well.

Now time for a wake up call, all us 300k wantepreneurs cannot generate unicorns and produce a successful exit. That is just statistically impossible.

https://twitter.com/sokirill/status/1314138323951050753

I don’t think it’s just a question of money, as far as Europe goes it’s still also very much a question of the legal and cultural “frameworks” that inhibit SV style ecosystems from forming.

The availability of cash is a factor for sure but it’s not necessary the main cause. And you can see this with some of the less developed European countries where the lack of incumbent large employers, large unions and as well as a weaker social security net do often lead to them being more entrepreneurial than some others.

And it’s also very important to distinguish between “tech” and startups.

Ireland been very successful at attracting large tech companies but it’s startup scene is still pretty poor. Whilst Eastern European and Baltic states are somewhat opposite.

On the other hand you have countries like Israel that managed to attract both whilst being pretty much at risk of war since it’s inception.

It’s also important to note that there are many paths to success, Europe found a path even if it doesn’t include startups at the same level as the US or other countries. And while it’s also clear that in some cases it does hurt them in the long term as evident by the current dominance of US tech giants it doesn’t mean that the only way out of that is to adopt the SV model.

It’s not just the money. If you announce that you are going to found a tech startup people will think that you are just going to play Space Invaders (mind, not COD or FIFA) all day and stop having showers. If there’s a chance in 200 for an American that a relative will give them some money to bootstrap the company, in Europe is even less likely that your partner or family will take you seriously.

In some European countries it is extremely expensive to found companies. In Italy 5-10K€ would maybe cover all your bureaucratic costs for the first year vs 10-20£ in the UK (or 1K£ if you hire an accountant).

In Italy the government may prevent you from selling your company to foreign entities if it is deemed “strategic”, using the so-called “Golden Power”. What is a “strategic” company is so ill-defined, that it could be applied to any company way before it reaches unicorn status or even relevance.

Great points and with that, I would say with that success, in my opinion, should be far more an internally derived metric than an external one. Sure, material success is one form of achievement in life. However, there are so many other forms of success (e.g., parenthood, safety, etc). FOMO is real and sometimes people measure themselves so harshly against the accomplishments of others that they fail to acknowledge their own successes in life.

I want to prioritize everything else more than money. For now I can't because I am mostly living month to month without any savings.

I hear what you say but we operate on a hierarchy of priorities. Right now I am definitely above the survival stage... but only 1-2 tiers above.

I can't in good conscience drop my job and just go gaze the stars with my wife. I won't be at peace. :|

In psychology, there is a concept linked to that: the labelling theory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory

Another way to see the points above, from philosophy, is https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sophism

I have a theory that a huge amount of what contributes to success, and effective advice for people seeking success, boils down to the placebo effect. If I'm right, the content of what success stories encourage us to do matters much less than how well we expect it to work.

I'm unsure how widely I should share that theory, since naming a placebo robs it of its power...

> since naming a placebo robs it of its power...

Search "knowing placebo still works"

Very interesting, thanks for sharing! Though I wonder how that study accounted for the placebo effect ;^)

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