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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, the "success definition" trap is real. For me I was having coffee with a former co-worker who was now a VC because they had been at one of the same companies I had been but had joined "pre-IPO" and so probably had a net worth of 20 - 30 million. They asked what I was looking for and I said "To be successful like you!" and they said, quite seriously, they would prefer to be successful like me. And at that point we talked about the parent's point of how do you define success? This person had money but had lost their their spouse to divorce over 'working too hard' and were now alone. Meanwhile my third kid was on the way and I was doing okay but certainly not "FU money" okay. And yet from their perspective, that was more successful than they felt. That really threw me for a loop.

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Without bragging, but I have succeeded in two of my startups and I have always been super lazy. Work life was mixed all the time. But never had stress. Always took time for myself. And maybe worked 3 days effectively a week. Remaining time I spend with my kids and hobbies. I dont believe in this rat race 60 hour a week thing.

You are totally bragging, but that's OK. I would hope you recognize the huge amounts of luck and context that go into a success like yours; many people work their asses off and still fail.

>> I dont believe in this rat race 60 hour a week thing.

The question is do you believe you were successful because of, or in spite of this?

Neither.

Success is never determined by hard work. It's always a combination of many other factors and at best hard work may contribute a little. Otherwise the billions of very hard working people struggling to feed their families would be extremely successful.

But that's not a story that you put on a poster, so people prefer to believe the lie that killing themselves chasing "success" is a good thing.

Hard work is preferred by employers over slacking off (for obvious reasons), so that's what gets promoted as the way to success.

I like this view. I’m not especially successful (by any of the measures knocking about) but in the midst of a startup again for the last year. This time I work how I want to work and am actually enjoying myself. The whole 80 hours a week startup thing is padded with a lot of performance art in my experience. I am actively avoiding all that this time around. I find that I solve a lot of things by not doing them or solving them when not actively trying. We’ve made great progress so far.

Totally feel this. I think all people should desire to be wealthy and to keep from being impoverished, but we should not define wealth and poverty simply in terms of our monetary wealth, or lack thereof. People who have the love of family and friends, a clear conscience, health, their physical needs met, and thankful hearts, are far wealthier than a majority of people in this world who have a large number in their bank account.

Yet in our consumer world, people are continually thinking of their worth simply in terms of the money they have or the money they make. I’ve known many married working moms, who decided to leave the workforce and be homemakers, who constantly felt like their worth diminished because of the decrease in their wealth, not recognizing that the bond they had with their children, was growing stronger and greater, and didn’t recognize how incredibly valuable that truly was.

Note: I’m not saying working moms can’t have strong bonds with their children, I’m talking about specific situations where for them it was hindering their relationships, and their relationships improved but was at the cost of less money.

The social pressure to play the game, even when you don't need to, is so strong. It is way easier to be happy when you have money than when you don't, and it may be something close to necessary (I guess there's happy poor people) but not anywhere near sufficient. A lot of smart, driven people seem to lose sight of this.

Yeah there was a song by silverchair(?) saying ~ “money isn’t everything, but I’d like to see you try to live without it”. When money has been tight for us in the past, that itself brings stress. Though knowing we have great community, who we could rely on to not starve, to be clothed, and have a roof over our heads alleviates a lot.

I think a lot of times those who don’t have great community around them, are often the ones who will really chase money over other things, because the impact of not having it is so much higher for them.

> Yeah there was a song by silverchair(?) saying ~ “money isn’t everything, but I’d like to see you try to live without it”.

Tomorrow. What a banger.

Next lines are:

You think you can keep on goin’, livin’ like a king Ooh, babe, but I strongly doubt it

I guess my question is can you even go for, "just your slice"? I don't want or need mega millions. I just want to be well off enough. Maybe that is day job? Preferably, it'd been cool to have some success, mic drop, and live a good life. Tom Anderson from Myspace fame seems to have done well. Successful product and off living his life.

The first "start up" I worked at was Sun Microsystems (I joined the day after they went public :-) so maybe not a startup at that point). But I was (and am) good friends with a number of people who worked there before I did. Pretty consistently a number of people who did well from that got to a point where they had "enough" and didn't need any more so they switched to working on things that spoke to their values rather than places where they could "make a lot of money." I have found that pretty inspiring and a counter balance to what passes for a 'success story' in the press today.

> and they said, quite seriously, they would prefer to be successful like me.

The different between you two though is that they have millions and can still have your lifestyle within a couple of years.

Except they could not. You can't buy with money the experience of a good life partner, you cannot buy with money the experience of having kids and raising them.

Those are things you buy with your time, your life clock if you will. You have a limited budget of time and you don't get to spend it twice. And when you get to the point where you feel like you've probably spent half or more of it, you might look at what you spent your time acquiring and be disappointed.

Pretty much everyone I've talked to about 'success' uses the definition of 'the sense of pride in what they have achieved in their life so far.'

If the value of what is a 'good' thing to achieve came from inside of you, then in my experience, you'll be happy with what you've achieved. However, if you adopted someone else's definition of what is 'good' to achieve, you may find that having achieved it you don't feel happy. I expect it is different for everyone.

What this conversation did for me was to show me how one thought about 'success' affected the choices of where you spent your time, that they were different for everyone, and that people using someone else's idea of success could be disappointed or unhappy having achieved 'success'. And that realization helped me make decisions about how I spent my time based on what I valued in my life rather than by an arbitrary "score" like a bank balance.

Buuuut they might not be able conceive... Or may regret being older then they wanted to be or any number of other things.

Money isn't everything.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

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