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Comment by musicale | Hacker News Reader

> History’s great achievers—a Napoléon, a da Vinci, a Mozart—have always managed themselves.

Turned out OK for one of them.

It's always a little dubious when modern people pretend to have high confidence about the behaviors of long-dead people to serve their modern purposes. (Another example: oh you're an INFJ, just like Moses from the Bible!)

Our ancient ancestors never had to deal with such deep thoughts, so we can't help but make dubious comparisons because our brains haven't evolved enough.

Yes, it's so lazy. Modern people ought to pretend to greater laziness, and then things would go better.

I think interesting take on the same idea I saw lately was "Every Dead Body on Mt. Everest Was Once a Highly Motivated Person". It seems not that new but still.

> I think interesting take on the same idea I saw lately was "Every Dead Body on Mt. Everest Was Once a Highly Motivated Person". It seems not that new but still.

I mean, everyone dies. Not that I'm elevating Mt. Everest climbers, but at least they're aspiring for something.

Now, if the message you're trying to get across is it takes more than motivation, and life is rife with failure, that I can get behind. But "don't try, there's no point" is the laziest, most self-serving twaddle ever to be uttered (and no, it's not Nihilism either).

It is not “don’t try there is no point”.

It is: don’t use Napoleon, Mozart, Jobs, Musk someone who climbed Mt Everest in your silly article about motivation because it will backfire.

Someone being internally motivated by Napoleon or Jobs or someone who climbed Mt Everest is OK that is their own personal motivation.

Honestly, I have a hard time seeing any of those specific three as a paragon of self-management. More, I feel they are prime examples that self-management is not a necessity and may actually hinder success. I mean, it's hard to say this without being both blunt and sounding reductive (though using them as the opening line and clear examples for such an article does the same, so here goes), but one was a major gambling addict with severe financial issues to the end, the others ambitions led him into exile to say the least and the last had less focus than a moth during 4th of July fireworks.

Yes, and imagine managing any of them.

Are you saying that two of these are not good examples of high achievers?

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