Putting Money In The Bank | Hacker News Reader

Putting Money In The Bank

alexanderle.com

68 pointsalexcsm19 comments

I suggest a better lesson to learn is to not join competitions in which the difference between a winner and a loser is measured in ridiculously small numbers.

That just a measure of how accurate the judging process is. It's why FIFA are now going to experiment with goal line technology

Indeed. In many disciplines we would actually need multiple runs to find out who is best with some statistical significance.

I get the depositing analogy, but how is he withdrawing anything when he competes? Competing is just training with more incentive. If anything, he's much better/stronger after having performed at a competition than before. After resting for a week or so, of course.

This is a remarkably pedantic sentiment. Competing is not "just training with more incentive". Competition is the thing you train for. The differences psychologically are so obvious that they're not really worth enumerating.

Yeah, the withdrawing part of the analogy was weak. He had as much in the bank as he always did. In terms of physical fitness and ability, you only 'withdraw' when you stop practicing and let yourself go. I don't see a competition as doing that at all.

I'll definitely think of the Phelps quote when I am unmotivated to get out of bed and go to work in the morning. You never know, you might just learn something new and that something can possibly change your life for the better.

I think it was Woody Allen who said 90% of life is about showing up. It's a phrase that I think of a lot both on days when I dread doing something and after a day that went badly

I made the statement years ago which is often quoted that 80 percent of life is showing up. People used to always say to me that they wanted to write a play, they wanted to write a movie, they wanted to write a novel, and the couple of people that did it were 80 percent of the way to having something happen. All the other people struck out without ever getting that pack. They couldn’t do it, that’s why they don’t accomplish a thing, they don’t do the thing, so once you do it, if you actually write your film script, or write your novel, you are more than half way towards something good happening. So that I was say my biggest life lesson that has worked. All others have failed me.

Thanks, I thought it was something he'd said as a one liner, maybe in a film!

He probably did, I think this was a follow-up.

I was thinking about this the other day. 99% of people don't even realize you can start a software company. 99% of the people that do know you can don't even try. 99% of the people that do try give up to early, change their mind, don't get committed etc.

Just being in that final 1% is no guarantee of success, but it sure as hell is ahead of the other guys.

Unless of course you're not suited for it, and you lose out due to the opportunity costs of all the money you could have been making as a salaried employee elsewhere in the time you were barely getting by with a startup.

Only if you measure success as the amount you make.

Stackin bricks.

If this isn't brogrammer wisdom, I don't know what is.

Yeah, because having an interest in anything athletic-related makes you a brogrammer.

Groan

I think heyrhett's was trying to say that article does not teach its readers anything new about the world. You could sum it up as "practice makes perfect".

From the HN guidelines: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

One of my lads teachers has being saying "practice makes perfect" and he's repeating it ... i counter that it's not true, it "makes better".

A counter idiom is "excellence is good enough".

Striving for perfection can be destructive.

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