
Is it too late to be awesome? - dennybritz
https://medium.com/better-humans/4d1d8fae13e9
======
mbrock
What's so terrible about not being "awesome?"

How about just living a decent life? Being kind and helpful?

There's a kind of virtue ethics at work around these parts, and the primary
virtue is "awesomeness." A sociologist or ethicist could write a whole thesis
about this community.

It's not a universal idea. Some people have a primary virtue of "decency." Or
even "humility." Taste those words for a moment...

"Comparing is as much of a disease as perfection. When we learn to be
ourselves, be patient, and how to be comfortable in our own skin, then – and
only then – will we achieve true happiness."

An ancient Zen poem says "For and against opposing each other -- this is the
mind's disease." Of course, this site revolves around a highly competitive
market. Ambition is its lifeblood...

I think that if you want to be happy, that's not going to come from success or
ambition or striving. They seem more or less orthogonal.

An interesting question might be: What would you do if you were already happy
and content? Think of it as like the question of what you would do if you
already were financially independent. Call it emotional independence, maybe.
Equanimity?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
And since when has awesomeness been mutually exclusive with decency, kindness,
or even helpfulness?

 _I think that if you want to be happy, that 's not going to come from success
or ambition or striving. They seem more or less orthogonal._

Some of us require a certain level of striving to be happy. If we're not being
awesome enough, we get depressed.

 _An interesting question might be: What would you do if you were already
happy and content?_

But short of a few things I cope with, I _am_ happy and content.

~~~
mbrock
I'm not positing any mutual exclusion. Just hinting at a possible overvaluing
or a distortion. Maybe that's not relevant for you.

Of course all these words are flexible and can encompass a wide span. If
awesomeness motivates you towards real goodness, that's, well, awesome.

But I think that for some, it can have aspects of self-obsession, an excessive
concern with entrepreneurial success, an overemphasis on individual
achievement causing neglect of softer, less "specular" values -- like
kindness.

Not to imply any lack of kindness. What I'm trying to say has more to do with
how we value our kindness. The tragedy would be someone with a kind heart who
thinks themselves worthless because they haven't completed any "awesome"
projects on their own.

------
overload119
As a university student I'm surrounded by brilliant people, a lot of whom
excel in academics. This has always been really frustrating for me.

I think the takeaway message I've learned from school, and in life, is that
there will always be someone who is better than you at something. I'm always
envious of my peers who are better at (X), and I forget that if I reflect on
my own skills, I'll find (Y) that I can do better.

You'll likely never find someone who is better than you at EVERYTHING.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. I think there's a certain beauty in
that, because by working together, we get the benefit of being good at X and
Y. This is why cofounders who have complementing skill sets are so successful.

Find something you like, and just do it. Connect with people that do things
you don't like to do or are not as good at. The rest will fall in place.

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a
tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” - Albert
Einstein

~~~
Sven7
Well said. All I'll add is, thanks to the internet, there is much more
comparing going on. An unhealthy amount imho.

This is a great motivator for some people. For others not so much. One needs
to figure out where one falls in the spectrum and moderate time spent looking
at what the rest of the world is up to accordingly.

~~~
VandyILL
I try not to think of it as a motivator or something to make me feel
minuscule. I think it's real strength is to remind you that things are
possible. You may not have to live up to the other people's heights, but it
reminds you that other people have climbed mountains the world didn't even
know exists. Reminds you not to keep your own mountains sitting in the back of
your mind, even if they're just molehills.

~~~
Sven7
You don't have to think of it as a motivator or something that makes you feel
minuscule.

Given the time people are spending on the internet these days, exposed to
things no other generation was, much of this happens subconsciously.

~~~
VandyILL
I agree on both points.

------
gbog
Just trying to get the nasty nitpick comment right:

Quoting Lao Tzu from quote sites is to be avoided, except in ironic context.
Lao Tzu (Lao Zi) is the supposed authors of a very small Chinese classic
called Daodejing. It has 81 poems, and I wasn't able to find anyone that would
be close enought to this "be yourself" quote. "Be yourself" is not even a
concept that can be found in this book, because in fact "be", and "self" are
not Taoist concepts.

What related teaching could be found in this book, you'll say? In fact, it
could be more something like "kill your desires", "hide your intelligence",
"return to the origin", and many paradox like "the dumbest is the most
clever", "the weakest is the strongest", "be not having any will everything
happens according to your wishes".

So maybe I can invent a Laotzu quote more relevant to the article: "try to be
awesome and everyone is bored, try not to be awesome and everyone will wow in
awe"

------
zoba
I've been wondering about this line of thinking lately, and I'm confused if
its actually productive.

For example: I need to lose about 15 pounds. If I just accepted myself as me,
I'd never really work towards the better picture of myself, 15 pounds lighter.
Doesn't this apply when trying to better yourself in other ways?

If I'm not imagining a future where I'm better than I am right now, how will I
ever get to it? What easier way to imagine how one could be better than to
look at what other people have, and hope to have it myself.

I feel like, eventually, people just end up settling and stop fighting to
better themselves. I think the older someone is, the more likely the are to
have settled. I hope for myself, that I keep fighting.

~~~
enjo
As I've gotten older I've come to discover that there's a really fine line to
walk here. You want to be motivated. You want to develop the best version of
you that you possibly can.

However, being _CRITICAL_ of yourself is about the most counter-productive
thing a person can do. When you are critical of yourself, you do things for
the wrong reason. Lamenting about how fat you are leads you to diet, but you
never make real lifestyle changes to support it. A personal trainer friend of
mine has made the observation that the best way to lose weight and get fit is
to first develop the ability to be happy.

There is science to support this mindset. Constant self-teardown comes with
real physiological changes in your body. You'll be more anxious, which means
you'll spend more time in a sympathetic nervous state. The increase in
adrenaline and cortisol leave you feeling sluggish and worn out. Guess what
happens when you feel like that? You eat to much, you sleep to much, and you
generally do everything you wanted to stop doing in the first place!

There are a whole host of things that go on when you _push_ yourself instead
of learning to _be_ yourself. None of those things are very good.

I've been a driven guy. I've been successful in a startup. I've failed
terribly. As I reach my mid-30's I've found myself focused on becoming
_content_. Surprisingly, I've found that my productivity and desire haven't
really changed much. I still want to do really well, but now I keep everything
in perspective and I'm much happier for it.

~~~
naitbit
Thank you so much for that. If I just started doing something I compared
myself to professionals, if my work started to look good compared to them I
started comparing myself with best people in profession I knew about, and if I
could not find anyone better then I would start comparing myself against
imaginary ideal. I knew it was bad for my self esteem but I thought that it
will make me achieve more. Thanks for showing me a reason why being so
critical about myself is not needed.

------
chatmasta
The people who accomplish the most are never satisfied with how much they have
accomplished. Series of accomplishments require continuous accomplishing,
which requires motivation. These high-achievers continue to accomplish so much
because they constantly motivate themselves with thoughts of inadequacy. I
assume most people only follow others who they see as more accomplished than
themselves in some way. By definition you must follow someone in order to
compare yourself to them. Thus, you must only compare yourself to people more
accomplished than you. By doing do, you promote in yourself the same feelings
of inadequacy that drive thr most acccomplished people.

tl;dr Compare your accomplishments to greater accomplishments by other people.
Feelings of inadequacy will motivate you to accomplish more.

~~~
skadamat
If you look at some of the most successful people, most of them are driven by
other motivators besides success. Many are driven to make a difference in the
world (Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc), others were super super curious (Richard
Feynmann, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Warren Buffett) and pursued / stuck with their
passions, and others were at the right place at the right time (and of course
people are often some combo of all 3). The thing is, very few people just are
addicted to success for the SAKE of success, and some of those people have an
unhealthy addiction for money. Success is what you make of it. There are many
people in the energy sector driven to eradicate global warming and get off our
fossil fuel addiction. Many of them will be never known to the world / famous
in any way, but they are always looking to make more and more of an impact
daily and be successful over time (even if many of them won't ever be rich or
famous).

~~~
oyvindeh
I think many people are seeking success for success' sake - at least it's a
significant part of why they do what they do. The fact that they want to make
a difference in the world may be true, but I think it's often a mix, and that
people fool themselves to believe that their need to feed their ego is smaller
than it actually is. The risk from this, is that although people are fighting
for a good cause, their ego may interfere in bad ways in certain situations,
leading to decisions and actions which hurts the good cause in short or long
term (for example by pushing away other people who may do a better job than
themselves).

(This, of course, doesn't go for everybody.)

Edit: Note that becoming rich and famous isn't the only way to feed your ego.

------
oyvindeh
I attended a talk given by a Buddhist monk named Ajahn Brahm about a year ago.
He said that 70% is always good enough. The reasoning goes that if you strive
for 100% (or 110%, like some brag about doing) you will very often disappoint
yourself (as well as those around you). If you go for 50%, you won't be
motivated enough. So 70% seems about right. (There is a Youtube video of him
talking about this subject [1].)

There is tendency today that everybody wants to accomplish so much. I know
this from myself: Compared with many of my friends, I have accomplished quite
a lot - but it doesn't satisfy me, I need more to be happy. I agree with the
author that we should focus more on just being. Because, if you think of it,
what happens when you have accomplished whatever you had aimed for? It feels
great... for a little while. Then, life is back to normal. We often believe
the fallacy that happiness is available somewhere in the future, not here and
now, and once we get this or that - THEN we will be happy[2]. And so you risk
rigging your life in order to always reach for the next mountain top you have
in sight, thinking that it's the final one.

An Australian nurse interviewed people on their death bed about their regrets
in life[3]. The second biggest regret was that people had worked too hard.

Think about the real motives for what you do: If you do something to prove
yourself for others (e.g. fame and glory), you're fooling yourself. First of
all because it will most likely not make you happy, second because you will be
forgotten anyway (especially today when everybody claims their 15 minutes of
fame). If you strive for something because you think it will make you more
happy, you are fooling yourself to believe that happiness is somewhere in the
future and not available now.

On the other hand, if the road is the goal, you are more likely rigging your
life for lasting happiness. In the end, what is the use of accomplishing
things if you are, and continue to be, unhappy?

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6k6DMp1TxQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6k6DMp1TxQ)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixRISCK7pmE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixRISCK7pmE)

[3] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-
five-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-
of-the-dying)

~~~
reddit_clone
I am curious. What was the biggest regret of the dying patients?

~~~
oyvindeh
"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others
expected of me."

The rest are here: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-
five-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-
of-the-dying)

------
thewarrior
Meet Jon Von Neumann :

Von Neumann's ability to instantaneously perform complex operations in his
head stunned other mathematicians. Eugene Wigner wrote that, seeing von
Neumann's mind at work, "one had the impression of a perfect instrument whose
gears were machined to mesh accurately to a thousandth of an inch."

Paul Halmos states that "von Neumann's speed was awe-inspiring."

Israel Halperin said: "Keeping up with him was... impossible. The feeling was
you were on a tricycle chasing a racing car." Edward Teller wrote that von
Neumann effortlessly outdid anybody he ever met, and said "I never could keep
up with him".

Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim described von Neumann as the "fastest mind I ever
met", and Jacob Bronowski wrote "He was the cleverest man I ever knew, without
exception.He was a genius."

George Pólya, whose lectures at ETH Zurich von Neumann attended as a student,
said "Johnny was the only student I was ever afraid of. If in the course of a
lecture I stated an unsolved problem, the chances were he'd come to me at the
end of the lecture with the complete solution scribbled on a slip of paper."

Halmos recounts a story told by Nicholas Metropolis, concerning the speed of
von Neumann's calculations, when somebody asked von Neumann to solve the
famous fly puzzle: Two bicyclists start twenty miles apart and head toward
each other, each going at a steady rate of 10 mph. At the same time a fly that
travels at a steady 15 mph starts from the front wheel of the southbound
bicycle and flies to the front wheel of the northbound one, then turns around
and flies to the front wheel of the southbound one again, and continues in
this manner till he is crushed between the two front wheels. Question: what
total distance did the fly cover? The slow way to find the answer is to
calculate what distance the fly covers on the first, northbound, leg of the
trip, then on the second, southbound, leg, then on the third, etc., etc., and,
finally, to sum the infinite series so obtained. The quick way is to observe
that the bicycles meet exactly one hour after their start, so that the fly had
just an hour for his travels; the answer must therefore be 15 miles.

When the question was put to von Neumann, he solved it in an instant, and
thereby disappointed the questioner: "Oh, you must have heard the trick
before!" "What trick?" asked von Neumann, "All I did was sum the infinite
series."

Von Neumann had a very strong eidetic memory, commonly called 'photographic'
memory.Herman Goldstine writes: "One of his remarkable abilities was his power
of absolute recall. As far as I could tell, von Neumann was able on once
reading a book or article to quote it back verbatim; moreover, he could do it
years later without hesitation. He could also translate it at no diminution in
speed from its original language into English. On one occasion I tested his
ability by asking him to tell me how The Tale of Two Cities started.
Whereupon, without any pause, he immediately began to recite the first chapter
and continued until asked to stop after about ten or fifteen minutes."

It has been said that von Neumann's intellect was absolutely unmatched. “I
always thought Von Neumann’s brain indicated that he was from another species,
an evolution beyond man,” said Nobel Laureate Hans A. Bethe of Cornell
University. "It seems fair to say that if the influence of a scientist is
interpreted broadly enough to include impact on fields beyond science proper,
then John von Neumann was probably the most influential mathematician who ever
lived," wrote Miklos Redai in "Selected Letters."

Glimm writes "he is regarded as one of the giants of modern mathematics".The
mathematician Jean Dieudonné called von Neumann "the last of the great
mathematicians", while Peter Lax described him as possessing the "most
scintillating intellect of this century", and Hans Bethe stated "I have
sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a
species superior to that of man".

~~~
StefanKarpinski
Does anyone know of a biography of Von Neumann? I've looked for one many times
and never found any. It's like he was five different men – he revolutionized
so many fields, any of which would have been an epic accomplishment. He was
also the only one who immediately understood the significance and consequences
of Gödel's incompleteness result, according to Goldstein's biography of that
other genius.

~~~
calhoun137
Turing's Cathedral[1] is not a proper biography, but it's mostly all about Von
Nuemann during the period where he worked on the early computer. I have read
most of it while in the bookstore, and it's really good.

[1][http://books.google.com/books?id=6sElRNGXWFIC&printsec=front...](http://books.google.com/books?id=6sElRNGXWFIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false)

------
atsaloli
"If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for
always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata)

------
sporkologist
My father in law is 80, he lifts weights every day, and can quote Shakespeare
to you all day long. I hope to be half that awesome at that age.

------
calhoun137
If you really want to feel inadequate, check this out:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann)

~~~
michaelrbock
Or
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk)

------
Jdfmiller
My dad once said to me: "There will always be someone better than you".

It really pissed me off for ages, because I was like, what's the point then?
What's the point if I can't be the best at something? But then I realised that
if someone's always going to be the best and beat you, you don't have to
strive in life to be the best at something. It kills the ego for me, which is
a big battle for a lot of us. Being good at it and enjoying the journey is
enough. I try to be excellent at what I do, but It doesn't matter if I'm not
the best. Even if I am, It's unlikely I always will be and that's fine. For
most of us that are average, it's unlikely we're going to be the next "Big
thing". But who cares.

On a side note, this article seemed kind of nothingy, I don't think I learnt
anything new from it so i'm wondering why it's so high on HN?

------
Falling3
I feel like we see these kinds of posts fairly frequently.

And I'm glad. I knew everything that the author said yesterday. I probably
knew it 10 or even 15 years ago. But it's really difficult to keep these ideas
at the forefront of your mind. Being reminded of it often is the only way I've
found so far.

------
neona
As someone who's been struggling to find my way in life the last couple years
(i'm 22, not in college, and working a low-skill job to make ends meet), I
constantly run into this problem.

Indeed, reading HN makes me feel pretty horrible a lot of the time, reminding
me of all the cool things people are doing, and that I might be able to do
such things if I could only get off my ass. That I've been unable to focus
adequately to get any practically useful coding, let alone reading, done in
the last couple years has brought me significant distress, and seeing so many
brilliant people on HN only makes me feel like i'm falling behind.

It's so easy to feel trapped by this, only entrenching yourself in inaction as
you compare yourself to every person you feel is smarter or more successful
than yourself.

------
dsego
My biggest problem was always comparing myself not to one man, but a great
number of people. Unhappy, because I wasn't as cool as one guy, smart as this
other guy, didn't have expensive stuff like this third guy. Then I realised
that none of them have it all, and if I compare myself to only one of them, I
would never trade my life for theirs.

------
lcedp
No, it's not too late.

Fox example take Paul Stone, who started to workout after age of 60 [1]

Or Leslie Nielsen who's known for being a comedian started to act in comedies
at the age of ~54.

[1]
[https://pp.vk.me/c418616/v418616330/5e45/LAj3RgtCnIU.jpg](https://pp.vk.me/c418616/v418616330/5e45/LAj3RgtCnIU.jpg)

------
jotm
There's a simple solution to this: stop comparing yourself to others and
always strive to be better than _yesterday you_.

This way, you can improve every day (week/month/year) and become all that you
can be without the stress of knowing that you'll never be the next Bill Gates
or Zuckerberg or Musk.

------
Tichy
I think one problem is that we tend to think about this in terms of willpower.
To be awesome, all we have to do is really want it and work really hard,
right? I suspect in reality it is much more about habits. Example: write a
book by writing 2 hours every day, no matter what. Finish what you start? (Not
sure if that is actually a good idea) If you have started one company,
starting other companies will probably come much more natural to you. Or Aaron
Swartz's "always say yes to everything". Little things like that. Of course
you still need to find the right habits. I'm currently reading "The Luck
Factor" and it also comes down to making a habit out of meeting more people
and making new experiences - it's all a numbers game.

------
martinkallstrom
What is (or should be) the real driver here is the difference between striving
for success and striving for creating value. If you strive for success it
always feels as if there's a long way there, no matter how far you get. You
can rarely see the best way forward because it's mostly depending on chance.

But if you strive for creating value you can start in an instant, by just
being helpful to someone or (in the case of being a tech entrepreneur)
building a small web service that you know that a handful of people find
valuable.

With time, striving for creating value will take you on a straighter path to
success than if you were aiming for success all along the way.

------
areeved
Here's the thing about many 'successful' people:

You see Kevin Rose's list of accomplishments and it seems overwhelming and
insurmountable by a regular pleb such as yourself.

But Kevin Rose is just a regular pleb – and he certainly wasn't any different
than you or I before he got "famous". You know what happened? He had one
break-out success, and was then able to leverage that into a wide variety of
other opportunities.

So focus on creating that one break-out success for yourself, the rest will
come in due course.

------
egypturnash
It's never too late to be awesome. You just have to stop caring if YOU'RE
awesome, and do more things you think would be pretty awesome.

When I turned 41, I started taking burlesque dance classes. I got a lot fitter
and learnt a ton about how to carry myself confidently. I didn't have either
of those things in mind when I started, or when I kept going to class. I was
just getting out of the house and enjoying myself.

------
shanellem
This reminds me of the saying: "Never compare your beginning to someone else's
middle." It's never too late to start, so it's never too late to be awesome.

------
mistermann
Some technology blog posts are starting to become largely indistinguishable in
content from Cosmo magazine.

Oh, you feel inferior to you peers, etc.

So what? Do something about it, or shut up. Because you read Hacker News and a
variety of other tech blogs you're predestined to be great? What is the
difference between you and the teenager that reads Cosmo and wants to be
beautiful and famous? Why are you even pursuing fame, or if that's not it,
what are you pursuing? Why are you taking time out of your day to write blogs,
don't you have something more important to do?

------
bane
It depends on if you define awesome as how others see you or how you see
yourself.

------
VandyILL
I think he already answered his own question in another post. Declares he's
already awesome because he lives in NY & has an Amex.

[https://medium.com/better-humans/fb2e4d6aea5f](https://medium.com/better-
humans/fb2e4d6aea5f)

~~~
thufry
That sentence is more an acknowledgment of a privileged life.

~~~
VandyILL
I'm a middle class kid that managed to go to under grad & grad school on
scholarships. I've lived an extremely privileged life.

My opinions are formed by the life I have lived as it is the only life I will
ever experience. I guess my interpretation of awesome is more in line with
inspiring awe.

Depending on her background, her situation could very well inspire awe and be
something she never thought possible. From my experiences, her examples of
"awesome" in other posts are what I would consider "Sweet" even though she has
several things I wish I had. If you measured everything in the world on a
scale of awesomeness, rather than believing something has to hit a threshold
of actually inspiring awe, then her life would be well above mine.

For more common forms of awesome, things like watching my younger brother with
autism be able to take my dog for a walk is pretty awesome given everything
else I have gone through with him. Living in the suburbs though, getting a
piece of plastic that extends credit to me is not awe inspiring.

~~~
thufry
So you're saying that you use the word "sweet" the way she uses "awesome." And
let's not go down the road of saying that "awesome" has to be used as if it
was "awe some," as people clearly don't use it that way.

------
jhonovich
So Von Nuemann and Kevin Rose are on the same level?

------
wavefunction
Do awesome, don't be awesome.

~~~
cylinder714
"Don't dream it, be it."

------
michaelochurch
I came to a blistering realization about this: _excellence wants to do,
mediocrity wants to be_. It's pretty evident. People who are doing excellent
things are too busy in the action (flow) to obsess over others' perceptions,
while mediocre people (most) have to manage their own social acceptability and
success within an established permission system. You can really only have one
or the other. You can deep-dive and go for excellence, or you can stay at the
surface and be constantly attuned to others' perceptions of you, your work,
and your position in society... but you can't be in two places at once.

[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/careerism-
bre...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/careerism-breeds-
mediocrity/)

From that essay: _Mediocrity wants to “be smart” and for everyone to know it.
Excellence wants to do smart things. Mediocrity wants to be well-liked.
Excellence wants to create things worth liking. Mediocrity wants to be one of
the great writers. Excellence wants to write great works._

Right. But as Kefka said, "You sound like chapters from a self-help booklet!"
Everyone can get behind these ideas-- it's a nice pep talk-- but you're
actually going to end up in opposition to society if you try to live that way.
It's hard. People in power will try to beat the crap out of you. If you really
insist on doing great things, you should expect to pay for it. Trying to do
great things at work injects a lot of job-loss risk that most people can't
stand; trying to do great things outside of work requires discipline that most
people don't have.

It's never "too late". We don't understand the brain, with regard to aging,
very well and have _no idea_ when a healthy person's creativity or cognitive
power peaks-- it's somewhere between 15 and 70, but highly individualized--
which is another way of saying that there isn't a meaningful enough difference
for us to know. (It's like a world in which unfair coins turn up heads
50.000001% of the time; it will take an ungodly amount of time to determine
whether a coin is fair or unfair, but it just doesn't matter.) "Too late" is
not what one should be worried about. Peoples' perceptions of us change
dramatically as we get older. When you're 40, you can no longer exploit the
chickenhawking of a corporate middle-manager who did his 20s wrong and wants
to live vicariously through someone more sociable and attractive than him,
which makes becoming his protege impossible... but, by the time you're 40, you
really shouldn't want that. How we're perceived changes dramatically from 20
to 25 to 30 to 40. What we can do (in terms of creativity, courage, integrated
understanding) seems to be increasing monotonically until very close to the
end of life.

Really, though, "being awesome" is the wrong goal. The discussion should be
around "doing awesome".

