> 4. Smart people get bored easily. Being smart is not exactly the same as being curious, but if you have both these qualities you might find yourself becoming easily bored with executing the same behaviors over and over. Some types of success stem from creativity, but other types come from becoming an expert in a niche and performing a set of behaviors repeatedly. If you’re smart, curious, and have a love of learning, you might find you quickly lose interest in anything once you’ve figured it out. The execution side of performance might bore you, and you’d rather constantly be learning new things. This can end up being less lucrative than finding a niche and repeating the same formula, but that might seem too boring or unchallenging to you.
I've been wrestling with this for most of my career so far. I think it's all about striking the right balance. If you're not constantly learning you will stagnate. At the same time, jumping continuously from learning one new thing to another (esp. if the things are not very inter-related) can spread yourself too thin: you need to "go deep" on some things to become an effective/valuable contributor.
I sometimes feel resentful of the amount of time I've spent as a software engineer dealing with what I often feel is boring or pure B.S. (e.g. almost everything other than designing/building some novel complex system from scratch). But in reality looking back I see that a lot of that sh*t-shoveling has actually made me much better and wiser at my profession, despite how mind-numbing and boring it often was. So I'm trying to keep that perspective to get me through those really dull days when I want to just rage-quit and move to a rural commune :)
I think going deep on something is the key. It lets you keep learning without getting bored and needing to jump ship. One of my pet peeves is how programmers think "keep learning" means "learn another programming language". Not that that's bad, but after the twentieth or so, . . . instead try learning something "adjacent" to what you enjoy & do well. For example for a Ruby+JS web developer: read some HTTP RFCs, play around with SSL certificates, learn some admin/devops skills, get really familiar with some part of modern JS/HTML like your framework or build system or HTML5 canvas or video, read the Rails Github issues list and fix a couple bugs, try writing your own gem, try writing your own gem with some C/Rust implementation, go fix all the n+1 query problems in your app, learn how to use CTEs and lateral joins, learn some plpgsql, write your own Postgres extension, etc. Or pick something adjacent-but-non-technical, like marketing or SEO or sales or financial statements. Remember that careers are long, and learning pays compound interest. There is no reason to get bored!
"Solution: Try taking a 30,000-foot view of when it’s worth tolerating some boredom to collect easy wins when it comes to your overall success. Instead of attempting dramatic change, decide when tolerating short periods (a few minutes or hours) of boredom could have a very beneficial impact on your success. For instance, devoting 5 hours a week to an activity that’s monotonous but lucrative. Additionally, make sure you have enough outlets for your love of learning across the various domains of your life, including your work, hobbies, physical fitness, understanding yourself etc."
Doing work that's lucrative yet monotonous is one of the biggest struggles. I have in front of me a great strategy that I know will work, but I'm avoiding putting in the elbow grease.
Anyone know of a book that goes into this in detail? I know I'm procrastinating more by looking for a book to solve this, but at the same time, when I understand something thoroughly, I do it more often!
All jobs have some amount of grind. Being able to acknowledge its going to suck and push through it quickly can be super beneficial to your career. It's also one of the reasons why I encourage those in high school or college to try a non technical job first. Learn to appreciate doing monotonous tasks well.
My conclusion to the BS inherent to any job is this: get your "brain food" outside your job. Start today if you haven't been doing this. It's fine that sometimes we get to learn interesting things while on the clock, but we have way, way, way less control over what we learn. I have followed this strategy for some years:
1) Look for a low-stress job with manageable time. In tech this doesn't mean "low-pay" as well. I'm being paid quite well and I will never do more than 40 hours a week.
2) Treat that job as your day job to pay the bills, and learn whatever you want during your (relatively abundant) free time. Learn a new programming language, learn about any other topic of computer science or software engineering, get any skill not related to your job, get a new degree, whatever. It is up to you whether you want to learn something that will make you more money in the future or not. Beware: open source projects are nice but, unless it's a project of yours and yours only, you have less control over what you do, and in that sense it's a bit closer to a job.
It's also true that mundane tasks will make you much better at your job, but TBH, while that's helpful (and helps building a career more than most young people would think), it's not something that important to me. I'd rather be good at things that are important to me. A job is there to pay the bills and nothing more; anything else is a bonus which I won't take for granted, and this includes the social aspect of the job.
I hate to say this, but I've been finding Nicotine to be very useful for dealing with anxiety, restlessness, and boredom with rote tasks.
I've had some issues with depression and anxiety that I've been managing with my doctor, but there are still times where extreme stress can cut through the drugs and still give me some issues (work has been very political lately).
I started craving a cigarette, which is weird because I was only ever a cigar smoker, very infrequently at that, and gave it up (very easily, given I usually went months between cigars) years ago.
So under the guise of "if you're craving potato chips, maybe you're low on sodium", I bought a small, very low dosage, disposable e-cigarette at a convenience store. And the last two weeks have been some of my most stable, calm, consistently productive weeks in a very long time.
Now, I know Nicotine is very addictive, and I have no plans to go back to smoking. I'm planning to switch to a nicotine patch, as the vapor is irritating to my throat and there is still some concern of increased lung cancer risk. I think a patch will be easier to meter out the dosage, too, rather than puffing on a pen every time I feel like it. Sum total, I think I'm receiving a net benefit right now (it has also calmed my snack cravings and my blood pressure is now at a 5-year low).
Anyway, it's dangerous to self-medicate, but most people do anyway, whether it's with alcohol or bad relationships or the internet, and it's not my job to tell you what you can or cannot do. Just trying to relay that there might be some decision tradeoffs that might leave you with a net benefit.
I’m seeing how a few sprinkles of VBA can make an .org so much more efficient than trying to bend management to green light an entire new web app system written in a ‘real’ programming Lang
> But in reality looking back I see that a lot of that sh*t-shoveling has actually made me much better and wiser at my profession,
I agree with this to the point that I seek out the stupidest, most concrete, least automated solution as a point of reference before I build anything smart.
Im a chem engineer by degree, worked in a factory.
After got a job designing in Mechanical Engineering, got another job in a different product, finally I'm in Electrical Engineering.
Being a self taught programmer for 10 years, I've found this variety in experience allows me to engineer pretty much everything from embedded to packaging.
I might have been very talented at making airbags, but I would not be controlling electricity if I stayed in that one job.
I felt the harder things to convince someone(including self) is to spend lot of time to learn the "other skills" (mentioned in the article). People do try to improve their "other skills" to some extent but that may not be enough. Feedback loop for seeing the impact of the "other skill" is long and it is harder to measure. So one doesn't know if one has learnt enough.
Regarding boring. I have found that sometime if we zoom out too much things are boring. Life is boring if we think everyday we just wakeup, work, sleep. When we zoom in and look at the variety and try to understand life becomes more interesting.
Zooming in too much also can cause boredom. Zoom into the coding too much and think I am just typing another ifThenElse or while loop or some keystrokes it can be boring too.
Usually I have found, for management work zooming out makes it interesting for me. Technical work usually is interesting at the level I see it.
Like some people mentioned listening to music, doing something else when the work look boredom can also keep one going with passion.
The other challenge is once the work becomes routine, one starts feeling anyone can do it. One starts feeling am I justifying the money I get for it?
Over my admittedly not that long career, I've found that minimizing the overhead that the daily grind creates in your productivity is by itself an art form. The grind isn't avoidable, but you can be more or less productive despite it.
As an example, I recently had a project where most of the drudgery was changing one line, testing the whole thing (including manual tests), realizing another one-liner was needed, doing it all again, etc.
Automating testing wasn't a good idea at the time (high risk code, so you don't want to pile a refactor on top of a risky change), but I figured out approximately how long the builds would take, so I started setting timers on my phone. Kick off a build, switch tracks, come back when the alarm hit. By doing that I was able to context switch more efficiently to an unrelated project rather than twiddling my thumbs for twenty minutes every time I needed to wait for the build.
Ditto to all you just said: Figuring out how to strike the balance between "filling myself up" learning new things - while becoming an expert at repetitive drone work (cough cough documentation) was the hardest thing I've done. Still working on it.
Previously I had no balance - always was at one extreme or the other.
Not everyone can find the right balance and that is the issue. This is the reason why we need to strike the right balance when forming a team. Having too many "rockstars" can actually sound good on paper alone.
In my experience the people who actually focus on shipping are the real rockstars.
I suspect there are some wins to be had by thinking on how to automate or otherwise delegate well-understood repeated behaviors, while still collecting the proceeds from them.
This is something that could interest a smart and curious person for some time, and actually benefit from the intellect and curiosity expended on it. The person can also reframe the "repetitious monotonous task" as "learning the best way to execute and then automate the task". But learning with any confidence takes a lot sampling for any statistical significance!
I remember reading once that students who excel in high school (valedictorians and salutatorians) are underrepresented as successful company founders, meaning that they occur at a lower rate than one would expect from chance alone. I think the hypothesis was that these people tended to develop a perfectionistic (or even people pleasing) approach, and that this strategy works really well for "doing what you're told". So they might often end up as a lawyer or a doctor, but they won't start the next big company.
As someone who did well academically early on without putting in much effort, I constantly try to avoid this trap of a "successful", but boring life. I think the problem with a lot of these people is that the first sign of failure total demolishes them, because their identity is strongly tied to "being smart" (like the article mentions). I know two people who became valedictorians in high school, mostly on natural talent. The first became a lawyer at one of the best law firms in the country, but she mentally cracked after a few years. She ended up quitting her job on the spot and stays at home now (and drinks way too much). The second finished his PhD and hasn't applied for a job in over a year. No one is really sure why.
I've had some personal hardships in my life (chronic injuries and death of close loved ones) that I think has put failure into perspective for me, otherwise I would probably respond the same way.
Currently working my way through "Grit" by Angela Duckworth, it has some interesting things to say on smart people and why they can often grow up into underachievers. In school, the more average kids have to study hard to achieve good grades and thus learn a strong work ethic. Smart kids can often "coast" through school and thus don't pick up the same attitude to working through boring, hard, or long-lasting work.
It's an interesting book and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the topic.
> 5. Smart people sometimes see in-depth thinking and reflection as the solution to every problem. Bright people are accustomed to succeeding through their thinking skills, but can sometimes overlook when a different approach would be more beneficial.
This really resonated with me.
One of the "problems" with over thinking things and "figuring out all the potential problems" is that when presenting the ideas/concepts/solutions one doesn't leave enough room for response by the target audience. You end up with responses like "well - you're really smart - you seem to have thought of everything". Often we really do want and need the audience to have a chance to respond, poke holes, describe what they find to be useful / not useful.
Reading that I can’t help but think most people in the modern knowledge work classes probably identify with a lot of it. Doesn’t everyone have these feelings?
This all seems very normal to me, but I’m definitely the target audience. High IQ that was praised from a young age, hated school but did well with no effort, hated team work all my life, value deep thinking as the solution to almost any problem, successful in my career by objective measure, and I feel like a failure.
I’d argue that everyone sabotages their sense of success by having poorly calibrated expectations. It isn’t easy to honestly assess and accept your own capacity.
The phrase that comes to mind is: A students become professors, B Students become executives at large corporations. It is the C students who--perhaps lacking the traits to succeed in the previous two pursuits have no choice but to endure the risk/hardship of entrepreneurship--endow professorships and name buildings.
Examples of this:
1. Founder of Kinkos (failed in school and had to repeat two grades)
2. Billionaire Flavio Briatore
3. Almost Billionaire founder of Jimmy John's subs
Another phenomenon I see often is what I'd call "The Video Professor". The founder of that company reaped a massive fortune teaching "dunderheads" how to use computers and operate simple programs like Word and Excel. Many of my techie friends would sneer and dismiss it as being "too easy" and fail to recognize the business opportunity therein or other many similar opportunities.
Totally anecdotal, but I have 2 friends from the time of doing my PhD in Germany. The first one is a brilliant person, hard-working, always determined to get to the bottom of things, but is not very charismatic. The other one is totally relaxed, doesn't care about what he's doing at all, but is extremely pleasant, cheerful and willing to agree with everyone just to make them happy (and will forget what he said 5 minutes later).
5 years after graduation, the first one tried several positions from an architect to a senior researcher, couldn't stand the politics and infighting and ended up as a software engineer in a fairly conservative enterprise. The second one started as a sales consultant in a smaller place, shook a few hands and is now a project manager in a Fortune 500 company.
> 5. Smart people sometimes see in-depth thinking and reflection as the solution to every problem.
This one really rang true for me when I was less experienced... yet for me, the solution isn't what they list.
For me it was to talk to people. Don't solve things too much on your own.
Spend at least as much time communicating as you do thinking, because it turns out 1) assumptions you'd never think to question turn out to be invalid all the time, and 2) other people suggest solutions you'd never come up with because they have a different thinking style and different experience.
Over-communicate even when it seems pointless, especially when it seems pointless, because other people will point things out where you never imagined.
honest question, has anyone ever improved their lives by reading articles of this flavor ? (e.g 10 things successfully ceo's do, 10 ways to increase your chances of building a successful company)
Not necessarily directly. But perhaps indirectly, like how reading a useful novel or non-fiction book can help channel your thinking later.
In other words, reading the piece might not alter your behavior today and you might forget 98% of it if quizzed later, but next time you're presented with a decision to which it applies, you find yourself behaving somewhat more wisely than you would have if you hadn't consumed these articles.
Maybe. Or maybe these articles are no more useful than reading the backs of shampoo bottles. Tough to measure.
Yes. It's often a short article that piques my interest enough to do a deeper diver on a subject. It was articles like these that introduced me to meditation and fasting and machine learning.
Almost 20 years ago articles about David Allen and his Getting Thins Done book were popping up in my feed. That led to me reading the book and it has had a big impact on me.
Maybe not one particular article but reading the same messaging over and over again until it eventually sticks with me and then my brain is the one that reminds me of it rather than the article.
Articles on a subject also lead me to the books and videos on the subject as well.
I'd say that what you get out of these pieces is what you're willing to put in. For example with this HBR article (which is pretty good) there are some actions you could take and if you wrote them down, re-read the piece periodically and practised its recommendations then sure you'll get a lot out of it.
Some of those '10 habits of successful CEOs' fluff pieces don't really have many actionable insights so you're not going to get much out of them no matter how hard you try. But a good book like 7 Habits, GTD, Richest Man In Babylon, etc. - you re-read those and study even one and you'll probably get a lot.
I disagree lumping this type of article with "10 things successful CEO's do." I don't think you can reject all lists because of the majority are garbage "listicles."
Personally, I think there's a lot of actionable information in this article, for example about intelligent people having greater difficulty handling situations when they feel threatened than non-intelligent people.
Often, they act as jumping points to look at things differently and get the ball rolling. If you see enough of the same theme, you might start changing your behavior or at least looking into it. This article reminded me of some of my weaknesses that I need to work on.
It's like advertising. A single ad probably isn't going to get you to go and take action, but lots of ads over time sway your opinion.
It depends really. Personally, I find that explaining/reading doesn't work for me until I experience it. So, if you tell "sugar is bad", I don't get it. But then once I experience I will come back to you for advice.
So, most of the time I tend to save these article (pocket archive) and refer it back once the realization hits. And it most of the times it happens within a week.
I first heard about spaced repetition and Anki from some "Best Study Habits" listicle a few years ago and it has had a profound impact on my ability to retain information.
Skimming the list in the article and then reading the reactions here on HN have been pretty helpful for me in identifying some of my own problems. E.g. annoyance with diplomacy.
Seems survivor bias explains why many ostensibly successful people are boring. What is the anti-pattern in our organizations that produces leaders who lack competence and charisma? It's like somehow we've managed to collectively optimize against producing people others might actually admire.
Arguably much of what the author calls "relationship building," manifests in many organizations as "ability to conspire to undermine more talented and honest people."
Perhaps highly intelligent people do not belong in large organizations precisely because that particular talent is optimized for explosive growth and change that large orgs are necessarily structured to suppress in favour of stability.
One should recognize whether they are more of a fox or a hedgehog, and then decide where they belong. If you are really that intelligent, you should feel obligated to take outsize risks, because the success that comes from anything other than your talent will feel empty and dishonest. I also find that feelings of failure, shame, and regret are inversely proportional to the amount of risk I took. I wonder if that's generally true.
This is a problem only if the person is bothered by their lack of "success".
For some, being a dilettante may precisely be the life that they want. The problem is that if you are perceived as "smart" people all around you will push you to "succeed" in traditional ways, either because they want a share of the profits of such "success", or because they see someone not doing the boring grind as a moral failure, or out of concern that the dilettante is "throwing away their potential".
I'd say that if you are "smart" then it should make your life freer and not more constrained.
I don't like to think about it in terms of smart. I see supposedly smart people do stupid crap all the time. A better word for describing people with potential is focus.
Been there. Done that. Have been trying to change my thinking by more thinking or some actions given prescriptions. It just doesn't work.
Energy is neutral. It's how and where you use it makes the all difference.
All that this article is providing is prescriptions about how not to misuse it. The solutions given are just a prescription not really a solution. Few people might follow it successfully for few days or months and eventually get back to their conditioning. Or if they succeed in through the prescription given, they will attract other problems in their life. That's what Psychologist do, they help retrospect your life in little depth than you can and then help you persuade that you understood the problem and recognise the solution for it. But essentially what they have done is, either suppress it for the sake of ethics, morality etc. And convert the problems into some other problems unconsciously which errupts in your life after few months or years.
The very thing we are asked to drop through prescriptions or advices becomes difficult to let go of.
In the very attempt of forgetting you have to keep remembering it, just to forget it. It keeps coming back to your mind. In order to forget, the more you will need to remember it the stronger that memory becomes.
What essentially they are suffering or fail to recognise is that "Knowing the path is not synonymous to walking the path". But it's easier said or understood by reading it than done.
If you seek permanent transformation, something fundamental has to be changed. Something which is the very root cause of it. Only inner transformation can help.
Dynamic meditation given by OSHO is dynamite to realease the mental and body energy blockages which cause such and various other types of hurdles. It helps you energy center to move from Body to Mind to Heart to Being.
Before adopting this meditation I have asked thousand questions about it's genuineness and how it works but none of that help. It is only by actually trying for few weeks I could see the change in my character.
Note: I am not associated with any OSHO's meditation centre or their work. I am just someone who tried it and found it useful.
I've a colleague who can barely put a sentence together much less conduct and understand a complex analysis, yet this person has twice the umber of QUALITY papers as me..HOW? This person is really good at getting other people to do the work. Once I realized this I disengaged from this person's schemes, but I found it frustrating.
I'm smart, but wouldn't say I am super smart...but I am pretty damn tenacious to perfect whatever I am doing...this makes people impressed with my work but frustrated at my slow pace...to the point where the latter is interfering with my career.
[+] [-] bootsz|7 years ago|reply
I've been wrestling with this for most of my career so far. I think it's all about striking the right balance. If you're not constantly learning you will stagnate. At the same time, jumping continuously from learning one new thing to another (esp. if the things are not very inter-related) can spread yourself too thin: you need to "go deep" on some things to become an effective/valuable contributor.
I sometimes feel resentful of the amount of time I've spent as a software engineer dealing with what I often feel is boring or pure B.S. (e.g. almost everything other than designing/building some novel complex system from scratch). But in reality looking back I see that a lot of that sh*t-shoveling has actually made me much better and wiser at my profession, despite how mind-numbing and boring it often was. So I'm trying to keep that perspective to get me through those really dull days when I want to just rage-quit and move to a rural commune :)
[+] [-] pjungwir|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josephjrobison|7 years ago|reply
"Solution: Try taking a 30,000-foot view of when it’s worth tolerating some boredom to collect easy wins when it comes to your overall success. Instead of attempting dramatic change, decide when tolerating short periods (a few minutes or hours) of boredom could have a very beneficial impact on your success. For instance, devoting 5 hours a week to an activity that’s monotonous but lucrative. Additionally, make sure you have enough outlets for your love of learning across the various domains of your life, including your work, hobbies, physical fitness, understanding yourself etc."
Doing work that's lucrative yet monotonous is one of the biggest struggles. I have in front of me a great strategy that I know will work, but I'm avoiding putting in the elbow grease.
Anyone know of a book that goes into this in detail? I know I'm procrastinating more by looking for a book to solve this, but at the same time, when I understand something thoroughly, I do it more often!
[+] [-] joshdev|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gordaco|7 years ago|reply
1) Look for a low-stress job with manageable time. In tech this doesn't mean "low-pay" as well. I'm being paid quite well and I will never do more than 40 hours a week.
2) Treat that job as your day job to pay the bills, and learn whatever you want during your (relatively abundant) free time. Learn a new programming language, learn about any other topic of computer science or software engineering, get any skill not related to your job, get a new degree, whatever. It is up to you whether you want to learn something that will make you more money in the future or not. Beware: open source projects are nice but, unless it's a project of yours and yours only, you have less control over what you do, and in that sense it's a bit closer to a job.
It's also true that mundane tasks will make you much better at your job, but TBH, while that's helpful (and helps building a career more than most young people would think), it's not something that important to me. I'd rather be good at things that are important to me. A job is there to pay the bills and nothing more; anything else is a bonus which I won't take for granted, and this includes the social aspect of the job.
[+] [-] moron4hire|7 years ago|reply
I've had some issues with depression and anxiety that I've been managing with my doctor, but there are still times where extreme stress can cut through the drugs and still give me some issues (work has been very political lately).
I started craving a cigarette, which is weird because I was only ever a cigar smoker, very infrequently at that, and gave it up (very easily, given I usually went months between cigars) years ago.
So under the guise of "if you're craving potato chips, maybe you're low on sodium", I bought a small, very low dosage, disposable e-cigarette at a convenience store. And the last two weeks have been some of my most stable, calm, consistently productive weeks in a very long time.
Now, I know Nicotine is very addictive, and I have no plans to go back to smoking. I'm planning to switch to a nicotine patch, as the vapor is irritating to my throat and there is still some concern of increased lung cancer risk. I think a patch will be easier to meter out the dosage, too, rather than puffing on a pen every time I feel like it. Sum total, I think I'm receiving a net benefit right now (it has also calmed my snack cravings and my blood pressure is now at a 5-year low).
Anyway, it's dangerous to self-medicate, but most people do anyway, whether it's with alcohol or bad relationships or the internet, and it's not my job to tell you what you can or cannot do. Just trying to relay that there might be some decision tradeoffs that might leave you with a net benefit.
[+] [-] abledon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sevensor|7 years ago|reply
I agree with this to the point that I seek out the stupidest, most concrete, least automated solution as a point of reference before I build anything smart.
[+] [-] mkirklions|7 years ago|reply
After got a job designing in Mechanical Engineering, got another job in a different product, finally I'm in Electrical Engineering.
Being a self taught programmer for 10 years, I've found this variety in experience allows me to engineer pretty much everything from embedded to packaging.
I might have been very talented at making airbags, but I would not be controlling electricity if I stayed in that one job.
[+] [-] bePoliteAlways|7 years ago|reply
Regarding boring. I have found that sometime if we zoom out too much things are boring. Life is boring if we think everyday we just wakeup, work, sleep. When we zoom in and look at the variety and try to understand life becomes more interesting.
Zooming in too much also can cause boredom. Zoom into the coding too much and think I am just typing another ifThenElse or while loop or some keystrokes it can be boring too.
Usually I have found, for management work zooming out makes it interesting for me. Technical work usually is interesting at the level I see it.
Like some people mentioned listening to music, doing something else when the work look boredom can also keep one going with passion.
The other challenge is once the work becomes routine, one starts feeling anyone can do it. One starts feeling am I justifying the money I get for it?
[+] [-] ratsimihah|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] munchbunny|7 years ago|reply
As an example, I recently had a project where most of the drudgery was changing one line, testing the whole thing (including manual tests), realizing another one-liner was needed, doing it all again, etc.
Automating testing wasn't a good idea at the time (high risk code, so you don't want to pile a refactor on top of a risky change), but I figured out approximately how long the builds would take, so I started setting timers on my phone. Kick off a build, switch tracks, come back when the alarm hit. By doing that I was able to context switch more efficiently to an unrelated project rather than twiddling my thumbs for twenty minutes every time I needed to wait for the build.
[+] [-] dfsegoat|7 years ago|reply
Previously I had no balance - always was at one extreme or the other.
[+] [-] navinsylvester|7 years ago|reply
In my experience the people who actually focus on shipping are the real rockstars.
[+] [-] nine_k|7 years ago|reply
I suspect there are some wins to be had by thinking on how to automate or otherwise delegate well-understood repeated behaviors, while still collecting the proceeds from them.
This is something that could interest a smart and curious person for some time, and actually benefit from the intellect and curiosity expended on it. The person can also reframe the "repetitious monotonous task" as "learning the best way to execute and then automate the task". But learning with any confidence takes a lot sampling for any statistical significance!
[+] [-] eismcc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pier25|7 years ago|reply
Maybe the problem is that this kind of personality should be working in R&D instead of regular code-for-money types of work.
[+] [-] _Schizotypy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] projectramo|7 years ago|reply
Here are two tips:
1. get sleep
2. drink coffee
[+] [-] throwaway713|7 years ago|reply
As someone who did well academically early on without putting in much effort, I constantly try to avoid this trap of a "successful", but boring life. I think the problem with a lot of these people is that the first sign of failure total demolishes them, because their identity is strongly tied to "being smart" (like the article mentions). I know two people who became valedictorians in high school, mostly on natural talent. The first became a lawyer at one of the best law firms in the country, but she mentally cracked after a few years. She ended up quitting her job on the spot and stays at home now (and drinks way too much). The second finished his PhD and hasn't applied for a job in over a year. No one is really sure why.
I've had some personal hardships in my life (chronic injuries and death of close loved ones) that I think has put failure into perspective for me, otherwise I would probably respond the same way.
[+] [-] beaconstudios|7 years ago|reply
It's an interesting book and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the topic.
[+] [-] andyidsinga|7 years ago|reply
This really resonated with me.
One of the "problems" with over thinking things and "figuring out all the potential problems" is that when presenting the ideas/concepts/solutions one doesn't leave enough room for response by the target audience. You end up with responses like "well - you're really smart - you seem to have thought of everything". Often we really do want and need the audience to have a chance to respond, poke holes, describe what they find to be useful / not useful.
[+] [-] throwaway9980|7 years ago|reply
This all seems very normal to me, but I’m definitely the target audience. High IQ that was praised from a young age, hated school but did well with no effort, hated team work all my life, value deep thinking as the solution to almost any problem, successful in my career by objective measure, and I feel like a failure.
I’d argue that everyone sabotages their sense of success by having poorly calibrated expectations. It isn’t easy to honestly assess and accept your own capacity.
[+] [-] brianmcc|7 years ago|reply
If you're someone that thrives on finding new things and learning them, revel in it, don't beat yourself up - that's valuable.
Others thrive on crossing 't's and dotting 'i's - and good luck to them, the whole point is that teams succeed with the right blend of people.
https://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/
Bottom line if you try to be perfect at all dimensions, you're going to probably be unhappy: play to your strengths!
[+] [-] jkuria|7 years ago|reply
Examples of this:
1. Founder of Kinkos (failed in school and had to repeat two grades)
2. Billionaire Flavio Briatore
3. Almost Billionaire founder of Jimmy John's subs
Another phenomenon I see often is what I'd call "The Video Professor". The founder of that company reaped a massive fortune teaching "dunderheads" how to use computers and operate simple programs like Word and Excel. Many of my techie friends would sneer and dismiss it as being "too easy" and fail to recognize the business opportunity therein or other many similar opportunities.
[+] [-] john_moscow|7 years ago|reply
5 years after graduation, the first one tried several positions from an architect to a senior researcher, couldn't stand the politics and infighting and ended up as a software engineer in a fairly conservative enterprise. The second one started as a sales consultant in a smaller place, shook a few hands and is now a project manager in a Fortune 500 company.
[+] [-] crazygringo|7 years ago|reply
This one really rang true for me when I was less experienced... yet for me, the solution isn't what they list.
For me it was to talk to people. Don't solve things too much on your own.
Spend at least as much time communicating as you do thinking, because it turns out 1) assumptions you'd never think to question turn out to be invalid all the time, and 2) other people suggest solutions you'd never come up with because they have a different thinking style and different experience.
Over-communicate even when it seems pointless, especially when it seems pointless, because other people will point things out where you never imagined.
[+] [-] strikelaserclaw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newsbinator|7 years ago|reply
In other words, reading the piece might not alter your behavior today and you might forget 98% of it if quizzed later, but next time you're presented with a decision to which it applies, you find yourself behaving somewhat more wisely than you would have if you hadn't consumed these articles.
Maybe. Or maybe these articles are no more useful than reading the backs of shampoo bottles. Tough to measure.
[+] [-] criddell|7 years ago|reply
Almost 20 years ago articles about David Allen and his Getting Thins Done book were popping up in my feed. That led to me reading the book and it has had a big impact on me.
[+] [-] analog31|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmy1|7 years ago|reply
Articles on a subject also lead me to the books and videos on the subject as well.
[+] [-] leonroy|7 years ago|reply
Some of those '10 habits of successful CEOs' fluff pieces don't really have many actionable insights so you're not going to get much out of them no matter how hard you try. But a good book like 7 Habits, GTD, Richest Man In Babylon, etc. - you re-read those and study even one and you'll probably get a lot.
[+] [-] alexandercrohde|7 years ago|reply
Personally, I think there's a lot of actionable information in this article, for example about intelligent people having greater difficulty handling situations when they feel threatened than non-intelligent people.
[+] [-] allenu|7 years ago|reply
It's like advertising. A single ad probably isn't going to get you to go and take action, but lots of ads over time sway your opinion.
[+] [-] thisisit|7 years ago|reply
So, most of the time I tend to save these article (pocket archive) and refer it back once the realization hits. And it most of the times it happens within a week.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] nathanasmith|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Brigadirk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] projectramo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] motohagiography|7 years ago|reply
Arguably much of what the author calls "relationship building," manifests in many organizations as "ability to conspire to undermine more talented and honest people."
Perhaps highly intelligent people do not belong in large organizations precisely because that particular talent is optimized for explosive growth and change that large orgs are necessarily structured to suppress in favour of stability.
One should recognize whether they are more of a fox or a hedgehog, and then decide where they belong. If you are really that intelligent, you should feel obligated to take outsize risks, because the success that comes from anything other than your talent will feel empty and dishonest. I also find that feelings of failure, shame, and regret are inversely proportional to the amount of risk I took. I wonder if that's generally true.
[+] [-] yomritoyj|7 years ago|reply
For some, being a dilettante may precisely be the life that they want. The problem is that if you are perceived as "smart" people all around you will push you to "succeed" in traditional ways, either because they want a share of the profits of such "success", or because they see someone not doing the boring grind as a moral failure, or out of concern that the dilettante is "throwing away their potential".
I'd say that if you are "smart" then it should make your life freer and not more constrained.
[+] [-] austincheney|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] truth_seeker|7 years ago|reply
All that this article is providing is prescriptions about how not to misuse it. The solutions given are just a prescription not really a solution. Few people might follow it successfully for few days or months and eventually get back to their conditioning. Or if they succeed in through the prescription given, they will attract other problems in their life. That's what Psychologist do, they help retrospect your life in little depth than you can and then help you persuade that you understood the problem and recognise the solution for it. But essentially what they have done is, either suppress it for the sake of ethics, morality etc. And convert the problems into some other problems unconsciously which errupts in your life after few months or years.
The very thing we are asked to drop through prescriptions or advices becomes difficult to let go of. In the very attempt of forgetting you have to keep remembering it, just to forget it. It keeps coming back to your mind. In order to forget, the more you will need to remember it the stronger that memory becomes.
What essentially they are suffering or fail to recognise is that "Knowing the path is not synonymous to walking the path". But it's easier said or understood by reading it than done.
If you seek permanent transformation, something fundamental has to be changed. Something which is the very root cause of it. Only inner transformation can help.
Dynamic meditation given by OSHO is dynamite to realease the mental and body energy blockages which cause such and various other types of hurdles. It helps you energy center to move from Body to Mind to Heart to Being.
http://www.oshodynamic.com/five-stages.html
Before adopting this meditation I have asked thousand questions about it's genuineness and how it works but none of that help. It is only by actually trying for few weeks I could see the change in my character.
Note: I am not associated with any OSHO's meditation centre or their work. I am just someone who tried it and found it useful.
[+] [-] mooreds|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] projectramo|7 years ago|reply
It seems smart people sabotage their success in exactly the same way as dumb people.
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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