Successful People Start Before They're Ready | Hacker News Reader

Successful People Start Before They're Ready

jamesclear.com

39 pointszabramow14 comments

Good grief. I'm tired of seeing stories, books, etc. about "what successful people do" and similar. I couldn't help but post after seeing this title.

You know what successful people do? They use their brains to figure stuff out and they take some action. It's not complicated or mysterious.

You know what successful people don't do? Sit around reading articles about what successful people do.

The very idea of offering up some tips to success based on observations of someone else's success is ridiculous. Among other things, it propagates this myth that there is some unitary standard of success to which we should all aspire. And, it says that the reader in need of such tips is obviously a loser for needing to emulate someone else's success vs. being intrinsically able to create her own.

Just use your head and work. You have everything you need to create your own success, by whatever measure you prefer.

Couldn't agree more. What people miss here is that just behaving like successful people don't make you one. There's a lot more to it than just following one or even many aspects of people like RB. So, if you are inspired by this and are going to start something before you're ready - be prepared for failure and don't blame anyone else but yourselves for being so gullible and simplistic. Instead - find something you're passionate about and labor through building it.

Worth reading for Richard Branson's story about the first Virgin Airlines flight.

I'm impulsive and quit my high paying job almost on a whim -- does that make me successful? Because, honestly, I wish I had planned a little better, put aside $$$ etc.

Branson is one data point. Are there others? One point does not make a trend. I tend to think there's merit (though I have no hard evidence) in the idea that you can't wait for all the pieces to be in place before you try something, but I think it's dangerous to suggest that's the recipe for success.

And while his parents weren't millionaires he certainly came from an upper class family, which helps...

Unfortunately, so do people with bad working habits.

Success is a fine line, people.

Could you provide a little more detail? What kind of bad working habits are you referring to? Without any context, one can't really glean any information from your little nugget.

Sorry.

I was simply speaking to the headline of: 'Successful People Start Before They're Ready'

I'll believe it when you start by looking at people who start before they are ready and find out that a lot of them become successful.

Looking backwards is easy - successful people are successful.

Lots of comments on this thread about Branson being a single data-point, or unsuccessful people do this too.

Want a second data-point? Bill Gates. He did it time and time again. First with porting Basic to the Altair, then with selling DOS to IBM.

I hadn't thought of it before, but Gates is a very early adopter of making sure you're building the right product by selling it to the market first (do we have a name for that philosophy)?

So do failed people. But you'll never know which you are if you don't try.

Inspiring. I think the main point here is that: if you want to start something, and you procrastinate because you think you are not ready, then think again.

Inspiration bias.

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