Success determined by ability to speak, ability to write, and quality of ideas
inc.com
inc.com
Success not meaning doing work that makes a difference, helping others, achieving contentment, or having a balanced meaningful life.
Not that the stated qualities don't help you with accomplishing the seocnd as being able to communicate appropriately is a powerful tool, but I've found the person on my engineering team that does the most actual work right now is the quiet guy who isn't trying to lead the team, doesn't spend a lot of time talking in meetings, and just diligently chips away at whatever he has been assigned. His quality of work is high, his output consistent and his stress and complaining seem lower.
Meanwhile as a loud "senior engineer" I have to spend all day trapped in meetings and arguing with people and get to spend very little time doing what I enjoy, spending more of my time fighting the "process".
I am more "successful" but I wish I was him.
Don't you think that if it weren't for you arguing with the rest of the organization, that quiet guy might not be nearly as productive as he is now? So from his perspective, I think your work does make a difference.
For those who has the perseverance and can ignore haters, there's still the money problem. UBI may help. But I feel like to support a decent standard of living in today's world, it's not possible unless mega crops buy-in or budget cuts happen elsewhere like defense. Both of which has close to zero chance of happening.
>Success not meaning doing work that makes a difference, helping others, achieving contentment, or having a balanced meaningful life.
>For those who has the perseverance and can ignore haters, there's still the money problem.
I don't think success should be spelled money to begin with.
More like
The ability to speak.
The ability to write.
The quality of your ideas.
Is the type of success in itself that is even more elusive.
That can be enough to make a difference, help others, achieve contentment, and have a meaningful life.
No guarantee of balance whether there is money or not.
I think it's good to be more or less fuzzy ourselves from time to time.
The only "have to" in life is death. I've been in situations like you describe as a lead, choose another role or choose a better story for yourself. Lead positions are hard for the very reasons you describe, they don't offer the immediate dopamine hit of typing code into your IDE or lining up commits throughout the day. It does take an extra degree of learned faith to understand your impact on the team. As the saying goes "manage it or it will manage you." Do you block off 1hr on your calendar every day to do things you want/enjoy like coding or skill improvement?
Although personally, I have no desire to become like the people who currently lead our society -- the most 'successful' -- so I guess I'm disagreeing more with his definition of success than his means of achieving it within the bounds he has set.
Ideas and creativity don't fit that reproducible mould
It's fun being heads down on things, but also it's disconnected from some of those same things you describe as success - doing work that makes a difference and helping others
The point is both you and them would be far more effective if that wasn’t the case.
Yes, there are many dysfunctional organizations, but even if you work on a road crew, being able to speak clearly and have good ideas will help. You may not speak the same way a prof might speak at a faculty meeting, but people you’re speaking with should be able to understand what you’re talking about.
But his points for speaking well...
1. Ask: How much does my audience know?
2. Get excited.
3. Slow down.
... are not terrible, unless you're going to pretend to be excited by the latest team outing to the Laser Tag place.
Mine are things that I think Winston would have approved of, and they're not particularly designed to help you climb the corporate ladder. They're for technical people like us, and definitely not about spewing BS.
Learn your topic inside and out, including all audience questions you can think of. Don't worry about your FORM at all; just the content.
Remember when you're up there:
1. You know the stuff.
2. They don't.
3. You want them to know it.
New book about the 80s coming very soon.
However, communication is a two-way process, and the following have been important to me in my career journey:
* Understanding when to listen instead of talking,
* Asking open-ended questions that provide opportunity for other viewpoints,
* Empathizing with others', including understanding their expectations.
Sometimes you don't realize the rest of the equation (or other side of the argument) until later.
A lot of the higher up, management types are so far removed from the ground work, that is all they see. You could be doing excellent work but they won’t see that if you can’t communicate your ideas to them or your busy doing the actual work, they will just see the end result and if a team was working on it, the people in the team that get the most credit are the louder, more visible ones.
Ultimately if you don’t work on the first two, it isn’t enough to have the third. Persuasion is really important because you’re usually not working in a vacuum.
They can’t write or articulate their concerns clearly. They are willing to argue their concerns during meetings but it feels like time wasting posturing for self-serving grand standing. Don’t waste peoples time with your stumbling bullshit. Be great then be done. The end.
Strong communication is a pillar of an effective organization, a competent work culture. Other pillars include strong leadership, a clear vision, and quality controls.
(1) Empathy
(2) Having a great world-view by (a) reading a lot of industry news, and (b) traveling
(3) Ability to write/communicate well (this is mentioned in the article)
(4) Resourcefulness / Creativity
That's just a job like any other, and it was a boring journey to get there as well.
The lost art of amateur craftmanship of every skill is the way to go. It's when you are an amateur that you make the most progress on a time unit basis.
And then you switch craft often once you reach a plateu ranging from social, engineering, music, poetry, leadership etc.
Donald Trump proves at least some of this thesis. Understand your audience and just trigger them = translates directly into political power in representative democracy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_...
However focusing on what you can’t control is to nullify your competitive advantage as a human: your brain. There’s a reason they say “luck favors the prepared mind”. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and play the hand you were dealt.
As a species, focusing on our competitive advantage has brought us to 100 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday clock: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/ .
2. You're misusing "sour grapes" -- you don't know what it means.
3. You're hyphenating "sour grapes" -- you don't know how it's spelled.
On your other points, you are wrong. I hyphenated "sour-grapes" due its use as an adjective.
It’s just that individuals that have benefited from this false meritocracy have a vested interest in the rest of us “hustling” at the individual level instead of banding together to change the system for everyone.
The most influential aspects of being successful is an ancestral history of wealth and success along with luck.
The comment comes up because it's akin to focussing on some micro-optimizations in bubble sort instead of using quick sort
However, it also kind of backs up the thesis here, as Fermi apparently worked very hard to lose his Italian accent once in America, as a means of more effectively communicating with the locals. He then became the leader of the Chicago reactor project, then an all-around consultant for the Los Alamos Manhattan Project.
Hearing such quotes may be to them insult to injury if coming from well born or huge outliers (that got 1/million lucky).
Even the most disadvantaged should still prepare themselves. And ideally get extra help, without pretense, from those who never had to face their precarious circumstances.
There are all kinds of possibilities and opportunities in front of us every day. We're "lucky" when we can a) identify them and b) take advantage of them.
There are lots of strategies for this ranging from the simple (learn more) to the complex (networking, the people kind) and everything can give you additional perspective, opportunities, etc, etc to make you "lucky." As you're successful with a few, you can build momentum, reputation, etc to grow your "luck"