Willpower is Not Enough | Hacker News Reader

Willpower is Not Enough

sebastianmarshall.com

18 pointsjasonshen15 comments

Quite true, but what your post doesn't do enough to recognize is how much this type of thinking has pervaded our culture, and the damage it is doing. The current generation of up-and-coming workers (25 or so and below) have been taught their entire lives that they were special, they were smart, and interesting, and likeable, and that the only thing that was standing in their way was going out and trying. If they did, they'd prevail...regardless of whether they actually had the talent, not to mention the work ethic to put in the hours of sweat and toil to develop that talent into actual skills and learn to put them to good use. I'm a college student now, and the level of assumption about what the world is going to do for us in the future, not us for it, it for us, and the amount of entitlement is absolutely ridiculous. It would be bad enough if these people thought willpower would be enough. They don't even think they need that.

I worked for years in high school as a salesman at my local bike shop, and for a while as well at a television production company, and I've seen multiple people my age come and go from those jobs because they couldn't learn to alter their perspective on how things should work (to no-experience them) to fit with the way things do work.

I've seen your posts rise to the top of HN many times. Who are you though? What is your occupation? Do you have any connection to startups?

Jason is the founder of http://www.ridejoy.com and a member of the 2011(?) YCombinator class.

Occupation? Startups. Connection to startups? Ycombinator.

He's the real deal. ;)

Sorry, I was referring to Sebastian Marshall. I didn't make that clear enough.

Hey atomical - I'm Jason Shen. I'm an entrepreneur based in San Francisco. I cofounded a nonprofit in college, worked at a startup called isocket (now known as BuyAds) and cofounded a YC backed startup called Ridejoy.

You might also be wondering about Sebastian Marshall. He's a friend of mine, an entrepreneur in his own right and wrote a book called Ikigai. More on him here: http://sebastianmarshall.com/about

Hi Jason, I looked over his site but that really tells me nothing about him. It's laced with lines like,

"I signed up for a life a little bit off the mainstream path, so maybe I've got some interesting things for you. Writing on here is geared for those who want to cultivate their enterprising spirit, to build results, to become more creative, to gain a greater self-mastery, to get more perspective, to build more, to do more, to live more."

Yeah okay, but what's your day job and what have you done.

His about page [1] says "strategist, entrepreneur, technologist, avid reader and writer, casual historian, cowboy scientist, and I like doing some adventure and travel type stuff".

His LinkedIn [2] says "Real Estate, Project Management, Technology, Philanthropy, Writing".

His youtube channel [3] is full of lectures about strategy.

Sooo..."life coach" mashed up with "strategy consultant" or something equivalent? Of course, you could ask, "Does it matter what his credentials are?"

[1] http://sebastianmarshall.com/new-start-here

[2] http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=81632430

[3] http://www.youtube.com/user/yousebastianmarshall

> Of course, you could ask, "Does it matter what his credentials are?"

It definitely does. Credentials are how I block the reality distortion field put up by a lot of enterprising individuals.

I don't think the willpower/training distinction is as clear as his post suggests.

If I had more a much stronger desire/willpower than George St. Pierre to excel at fighting, I would train harder than he did... and I would be a better fighter. The man is great because he's trained hard, worked out, etc.

Willpower may not be enough to make you a success on 30 seconds notice. But you can get better at almost anything over time by working at it.

Part of the problem with the St. Pierre comparison is that he's in the top 1% of fighters worldwide. It's unlikely that even with far greater motivation you could see dramatic gains over him as a fighter. There are also genetic factors when it comes to physique that are out of either of your controls.

Though I do agree that you can get better at things over time - in fact I advocate developing habits as a way of "improving" your ability to manage your behavior and augment your willpower.

The reason GSP is in the top 1% (more realistically the top 5 on earth) is that he works so hard at it. Despite his natural gifts, he wouldn't be able to compete at a high level without training... which he did because of his willpower.

"I would train harder than he did... and I would be a better fighter."

Training like crazy - great. Physically gifted (fast-twitch muscles, size, reach etc.) - great. Those two factors build a great foundation.

But nothing replaces fight time. Until you've put yourself in competitive combat situations, there is no way for you to truly understand how to react naturally to a fight situation. Honing your fight craft and anticipation is the difference between victor and vanquished at the very top.

That's fine. But if you take two people... and one is much more committed to becoming a better fighter, the committed guy will log more fight time.

The exact mechanism by which one becomes good is really a tangent to the original article and my the comment you are responding to.

"It's obvious that an insanely motivated, untrained person would lose in a fight with George St-Pierre, the current Welterweight Champion of UFC. They would get destroyed."

Strangely enough, that was the plot to a Friends episode with Jon Favreau: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMD-TWtY9lQ

Jason: the link "how habits affect willpower" at the bottom of the post is broken. Here's the diff:

    -    h<a href="lifehacker.com/...">ow habits...</a>
    +    <a href="http://lifehacker.com/...">how habits...</a>

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