Can you explain a little bit more?
What odds?
What part of that successful people do?
What do you mean by loser?
What odds?
What part of that successful people do?
What do you mean by loser?
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?
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)
> 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.
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.
> Doing what successful people do increases your odds of success.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
They’ve won the genetic lottery. Not every successful person has these traits of course. But enough to see a pattern.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
> 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'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.
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."
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.
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?!
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.
I think it is helpful to define "millionaire" in 1920s dollars ($20M today)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There's just too many variables in life that make success more about luck than following general guidelines.
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.
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.
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.
This reoccurring pattern in tech is probably why Thiel came up with his whole "don't go to college" narrative.
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?
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 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.
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.
For example, if you want to be good at skiing, hang out with people who are good at skiing.