Ask News.YC: How hard was it to learn to be a self-starter? | Hacker News Reader

Ask News.YC: How hard was it to learn to be a self-starter?

13 pointsbrlewis22 comments

From http://paulgraham.com/sfp.html: "I could see that from how the founders' attitudes changed during the summer. Most were emerging from twenty or so years of being told what to do. They seemed a little surprised at having total freedom. But they grew into it really quickly; some of these guys now seem about four inches taller (metaphorically) than they did at the beginning of the summer."

I've been sending my kids to a private Montessori school where they learn to be self-starters. I'm concerned that next year I may have to send them to public school. For those of you who spent 20 years being told what to do, how hard was it to transition to self-starter mode?

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I'm 40 and still learning to be a self-finisher ;) I think this why start-ups need co-founders.

There seems to be some correlation between people who are natural self-starters having problems finishing things. I think the opposite is true as well, people who are naturally good at finishing things seem tooften have a harder time of "thinking outside the box", which is often a predicate to starting something.

So, when I say natural, do I mean you're born slanted one way or does it happen in early childhood development? My son is close to 4 now. He goes to a school with some similarities to the Montessori program (I'm in Shanghai, my son's specialty school is dramatic arts focused and tries to get him to express himself well). I have some of the same concerns about raising children as you express. I think the whole self-starter behavior is learned and can be sown at an early age. I think the "finishing things" behavior is also best to be sown in early. But school isn't the only and maybe not the best source of learning...

I'm a lifetime entrepreneur. Why? Its what I experienced...my father ran his own businesses. Every time I would see him (he didn't raise me full time) he had some business. His father was a lifetime entrepreneur. My mother's father was a highly successful lifetime self-made-businessman. I think these male role models in my childhood directed me more than any school did.

I spent my whole education in public school, but I also had a sort of "counter example" from my dad who has been self-employed since I can remember. Almost instinctively, I opted for self-employment even while still in high school.

I think the examples and alternatives are the most important thing. I find it hard to believe that it was just in my nature that I'm more independent than many others, as many would like to believe esp. from what they've been told their whole lives. I feel strongly it's something that can be learned, and as long as that spirit is encouraged I imagine your kids will be fine. By the sound of it, you're already aware and active in teaching this spirit, so you probably have nothing to worry about :)

I quit my job 6 months ago to do my own thing and its been a hard transition. The basics get me all the time - waking up early; going to bed before midnight; surfing the net; putting together daily task lists, etc. A few things that are working for me are:

1. I hired a really good business coach.

2. I have big goals that are very short term - like 2-3 months. So my "big" goal now is to close the year at a certain revenue level.

3. Although I work from home, I try to have 1-2 very, very packed days that involve outside the home stuff related to my work.

The struggle continues though and I went to private schools from kindergarten to college.

Where did you look for your business coach?

I got lucky - I found him while networking - I was not really looking for a coach, but he helped me find new business so often that I decided to work with him professionally.

Bruce, I spent all of my years in the (Canadian) public education system.

The trick is to be supportive, as my parents were, of not letting the school get in the way of what the kids want to do.

My kid is on his way to a mastodon tusk excavation this weekend. Crazy.

Sadly, some people will never make the transition, but for me, reality hit when I committed to start my startup directly out of college. Once you've jumped in with both feet, you learn quite quickly how to be a self-starter. You learn that to get things done, you need to teach yourself the fine art of time management and to keep up with those around you, you need to have an intellectual curiosity which drives you to learn and innovate on a daily basis.

Absolutely. Jumping in (and having no safety net!) really does work. Nothing makes you succeed like necessity, kinda like a survival instinct I suppose. The key is finding the right set of influences that will increase the odds, in his case for his kids, of them taking a real leap.

This is why I like some of the ideas behind John Taylor Gatto's writing, especially about how kids need to have enough freedom and independence to challenge themselves, as opposed to being challenged from an authority. I think that's a crucial step in a kid, whether they realize it or not, jumping into something head first and seeing if they can swim so to speak.

Ive always had a f-u attitude. I never listened to the teachers at school. It started in middle school, I realized my grandfather owned his own business and was his own boss. In high school I slept in class except when an assignment was due, i skipped class and came to school wasted.

At that point, I started reading books (I was about 15), my first was rich dad poor dad (which had no real substance besides widening my prospective). Then I started reading real estate books, then 'business' books, automotive books, medical books, biographies, books on philosophy & finally programming books (where ie settled for now). Along with that I started making friends with the 'smart' & 'creative' kids at school, which led to meeting 'rich' & 'successful' people and being able to observe, what I thought, were their strong and weak points.

I feel that 'self-starting' comes from awareness that you can do whatever you want and become successful. How you reach this awareness, I'm not sure (my path was basically family, books, new people).

disclosure: i am on my mobile, so my grammar and spelling may be more off than usual.

I went to public school but in the meantime taught myself computer programming, drawing, photography, and other subjects I was interested in. And I've worked for myself ever since graduating from college. So I'd say that attending a public school does not preclude becoming a self-starter.

I am in this exact position (graduating college in 8 weeks), so I guess I'll give this answer a shot.

I think that you need to encourage you child to find activities where he/she can learn how to learn by himself/herself. For me, that was debate. We had no coach, we had no teachers, it was just a bunch of kids and books, taking on the best teams in the nation. Or perhaps the Robotics club, or some sort of community service outlet, these are all great activities that build great people and self-starting skills.

You can also encourage him/her to figure out much earlier what his/her passions are, if he's/she's young enough, perhaps get him/her to read books on different professions and encourage him/her to learn about them by himself/herself.

As the internet becomes more pervasive, it has become a lot easier to learn online and off, but at the end of the day, I think that being a self-starter requires a lot of support from friends and family and the drive and passion to get what is important. So even by asking this board, you children should be in good hands.

PS. I went to public school, and it was an awesome experience.

I don't think you can truely learn to be a self-starters. Being a self-starter myself, I have friends who just don't have the drive to do it themselves, even after knowing/seeing that it's the only way to get things done. Thus I'm convinced that this drive is mostly genetic. Plus, isn't the definition of a self-starter someone who accomplishes things on his own without prior instruction? Then being a self-starter is independent of the amount of instructions. If anything I'd throw my kids in public school to make them better self-starters, because self-starters have to learn to keep that drive going even when the mainstream population are followers.

That is not to say you can't learn the trades of being a self-starters, such as discipline, progress logging, mini-goal management, lauch-then-iterate, etc. But that comes with experience. I won't even attempt to teach these things to kids under 12.

I'm a terrible task manager and (though I've never been diagnosed) am quite attention deficit. But, I've learned that I'd rather force myself to get good at those things than have to take orders from someone.

Paul Allen's book helped me a lot. Having a business partner that is a natural self-started helps a lot too.

You also have to learn your limits. For example, no matter how hard I try, I _know_ that I can't work well at home. I get too distracted and I'm not productive. So, I don't even try. I've always had an office.

I learned to be a self-starter from a friend who was apparently born that way.

You don't have to pay for Montessori for your kids to be self-starters. There have to be other ways to go about this. In addition, I think you're focusing too much on one aspect of their lives. What about integrity? What about determination? What about curiosity? What about attention to detail? Humility? Passion? Ambition? There are too many desirable traits to focus too much on a single one.

Other traits are desirable, but I asked about this one here because I thought people might have firsthand experience overcoming problems with it, and also because it's the trait most threatened by quitting Montessori.

In respect to being a "self-starter," I believe that schooling doesn't matter. You just need creativity and discipline. And good for you for sending them to public school; some here may think I'm off my rocker, but I think that public schools are a superior learning environment (for social skills, pragmatism, etc.).

To be honest. It took a lot of hard work.

I have learned HTML, CSS, PHP, Unix and other technologies from scratch for the past four years and still have a lot to learn. As long as you have the passion for learning you will be a successful "self starter".

Let your kids do what they want to do.

if you did that, obese kids would be the norm, school (if kids went at all) would end up teaching the finer points of getting to the next level of supermario. Kids need guidance, but also a forum for innovation.

i think you missed the subtlety of travisjeffery's post. the montessori method of teaching is all about "Let your kids do what they want to do.". most young children have a natural "i'm full" signal that prevents obesity (any parent knows this). most kids are naturally curious. many of our greatest historical thinkers did not attend school and had lots of "do what you want" time. the "let kids do what they want" works surprisingly well when they have opportunities to explore and good role models.

my only other addition to the travisjefferies post is "and allow children to fail". too often we don't allow children to learn from their failures. this is part of being a "self starter". you don't fear failure because it has happened so many times though personal experimentation that you have an intrinsic understanding that "it's no big deal, i'll eventually figure it out".

it's really simple - 1. be headstrong, 2. be mission-based 3. try and fail 4. try not to learn the wrong lessons from failure

You don't "learn", "teach", or "transition" into "self-starter" mode; its something you're born with.

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