
“Become Abnormal”: traits to cultivate for top performance - jkuria
https://capitalandgrowth.org/answers/Article/3217401/This-One-Trait-Got-10-National-Championships-for-Coach-John-Wooden
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taurath
I've watched enough people grow up, become rich and powerful, then find in
their 40s they have absolutely no skills to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
They stopped practicing empathy so long ago to get to where they were they
don't even realize how much of life's genuine enjoyment they are missing.
There are a few who have the time of their lives the whole way through. Not
very many.

In short, just because one can, doesn't mean one should. Understand that you
are closing off doors as much as opening new ones - make sure that you don't
forget which ones you deep down don't want to close off.

~~~
proverbialbunny
When I was in my late 20s I won the bitcoin goldrush. I had more money than I
knew what to do with and from that I fell into depression.

It took me a while to come to the realization that I love doing things, eg I
love programming, but I don't always have projects I want to be doing.
Thankfully, I love just doing fun things, so turns out companies are perfect
for giving me things to do.

I'm not a workaholic, quite the opposite. I have hobbies and what not, but I
enjoy working.

Maybe I never learned how to enjoy the fruits of my labor, or maybe I have,
being lucky enough to go through psychological growth bumping into these
challenges and prospering from them.

The human condition is odd, isn't it?

~~~
simplyinfinity
A lot of people want to be rich and do 'nothing'\- eg. sit on a beach all day
or travel all the time. Most people will experience the same thing as you did,
but don't know it before hand. People want to be useful and do something, what
they don't want is crap bosses and poor work conditions. From what I've
observed, people with good bosses & work conditions (including adequate salary
to cover their needs and save some) tend to desire less to be rich as all
their needs are covered. More often people under poor working conditions & pay
desire to be rich as means to get away from their situation thinking it would
solve their problems.

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bluedays
Yeah, I get this a lot.

I spend hours every day dedicated to doing things to improve my skills to
become more valuable in IT. People think I'm crazy, but in the time frame I
have begun to do this (since my daughter was born) I can now probably run
circles around anyone else who would have started at the same time.

Hours of dedication, every day, is not normal. It's probably not healthy
either, but I got a late start and I need to catch up.

~~~
realbarack
I'm curious about the timing. Many people seem to find it more difficult to
maintain this level of dedication after they have kids. What made things
different in your case?

~~~
watwut
Usually it is partner that does all the nighttime waking up during baby time.
And the partner that deals with all the interruptions the toddler produces and
the partner that generally does all childcare.

~~~
NateEag
And then partner leaves you from anger at your self-centered approach to
existence.

Not speaking from experience - I just have three kids, do what I can to take
care of them despite being the primary breadwinner, and can't imagine the
resentment that must stack up if you just drop all the sleepless nights and
weekends of kid-juggling on your partner.

Never mind that you'll lose 7/8ths of the whole point of having kids with this
approach, too.

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aerophilic
I am somewhat surprised and taken aback by the level of negative comments in
the thread...

However, I suspect that the article “touched a nerve”.

In my experience, the “stronger the reaction” the more likely something is
there (think Lean Startup). The opposite of love is not hate, but
indifference.

That said, I will echo/slightly modify some of the positive comments I read:
it isn’t about being “abnormal” in working 20 hour days. It is being abnormal
on where you spend the time you have.

Most of the extremely successful people I know personally _dont_ accept
“reasons” for why “x didn’t occur”. I think one of the famous quotes from
Steve Jobs at Apple was that once you reached a certain level (VP?), no reason
is good enough, it all lands on you.

Or to paraphrase my advisor: “How do you know someone wanted something (past
tense)? They got it.”

Not everyone can be abnormal. By definition, 95% of folks can’t be. The
question is: What do YOU want for yourself. What is important to you that you
will fight for? For me personally, it has meant to have a meaningful family
life AND a meaningful career. It hadn’t been easy. It took many short term
sacrifices and focus on the long game. But in general, I have what I wanted.

Examples of sacrifice: taking a “lower paying job” so I would have more
freedom to pursue what I thought was important. Going “part time”/passing up
opportunities so I can be with my kids while they are super young. Taking
“risks” in jobs that weren’t really “sexy” on the face of it, but had the
potential for long term impact.

I mention the above to say it can work (but even now my life is far from
perfect). The key however (Per the original article) is to adopt a mindset
where _you_ are in the driver seat and conversely are responsible.

By focusing on what you _can_ control, and not wasting energy on what you
can’t, you free up resources that compound over time. To make this concrete
for folks: let’s say you spend 10 mins a day on thinking how “awful” <insert
pain point> is. In the course of a week, you would have spent an over an hour
unproductively. Over the course of a year, over a full work week. What could
you have done with an extra “week”?

It doesn’t take much, done repeatedly to make a profound difference on your
life in the long term. The question is whether you are willing to.

Edited for clarity/succinctness

~~~
logicchains
>In my experience, the “stronger the reaction” the more likely something is
there (think Lean Startup). The opposite of love is not hate, but
indifference.

Arguing that people have the power to significantly change their lives is a
challenge to many people's egos. If they believe something like "I haven't
achieved X, which I'd like to, but that's fine because it's out of my
control", and somebody else comes along and says "actually it is in people's
control", then their ego doesn't hear that as an uplifting statement of
empowerment, instead it hears it as something negative, because acknowledging
that X was achievable would require acknowledging that they had failed to
achieve X.

------
goatherders
I lived by most of these mantras for 20 years and when I turned 40 I decided
it wasn't worth it. Literally on my birthday I said, "I'm going to stop acting
like a jerk just to get things done, practice deeper empathy, smile more, and
stop working 15 hours a day.

I can (and have) build a successful company without acting like there must be
some maniacal focus that makes me abnormal.

~~~
artsyca
statistics are the most misunderstood of all the soft sciences

Normal literally means dead average and a lot of people use a lot of
stereotypical behaviours to escape from that fat part of the 'normal' curve to
varying degrees of success

Some are short term, some are longer term, some are violent some are
empathetic -- it sounds like you broke away from normal even though you still
see yourself as such but believe me there is no such thing as normal it's the
worst of all worlds

------
kstenerud
Another book selling the illusion of control. And this idea of "becoming
abnormal" borders on creepy and cultish.

Successful people have the right combination of personal traits for the
circumstances they find themselves in. In other words, they got lucky, and
that luck will NOT translate to anyone else. And that's really about all you
can say about it. Sure, learn some time management and people skills, but the
rest is beyond your control, so stop worrying about it and be comfortable in
your own skin. You're not going to be wildly successful, but you'll have a far
better time being happy. And time is the only thing given in about equal
measure.

~~~
logicchains
>Successful people have the right combination of personal traits for the
circumstances they find themselves in.

Personality traits aren't set in stone: people can and do change their
personalities. Just not when they believe such things can't be changed,
because somebody who believes something cannot be changed is not going to find
a way to change it.

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yowlingcat
No, at a certain point, basketball resembles building and selling ecommerce
products very little, and I don't know if it's doing you a favor for anyone to
listen to you torture the analogy this way. This is a poor concept for a post.
I think you would need to answer the question "Which sport, if any, involves
an environment closest to ecommerce marketing."

In my opinion, a more suitable sport to draw comparisons from would be jai
alai:

\- Balls are flying dangerously fast (204 mph)

\- Game has been known to cause fatalities when it hits players

\- Unpredictable, colorful, sketchy and associated with gambling markets based
on match results

Can you guess why I think this sport is more similar to e-commerce marketing
than basketball?

------
the_arun
Most of the successful abnormals have deep motivation to do things
differently. They may even seem like rebels. If we are fearless & ready to
take risks in life, we may be coined as abnormals & there is a chance of
success as well.

~~~
agustif
Well I fit pretty well on those lines and are not successful by (ab)normal
standards anyway

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esotericn
These posts miss the point of life, to me. They read as propaganda distributed
by sociopaths or something.

It's intuitively obvious that if you're a relatively healthy person, and grind
at a goal exclusively with no other desire, you'll eventually be at least good
at it if not spectacular.

Applying that to something that you're personally interested in makes sense -
but the idea that you want to be a "top performer" in some wanky capitalist
game so that you can have a load of numbers and buy some fancy toys at the
cost of deleting your empathy is totally absurd to most people.

That's _why_ it's abnormal, because it's a shit way to live and most people
don't want it. Hell, I thought I wanted it for the longest time, eventually I
grew out of it and I'm glad I did and that I'm still able to make up for lost
time.

As long as you can convince yourself that you know it's possible - you don't
need to like, actually do it. Go and enjoy yourself and those around you,
we're only here once.

------
oneiftwo
Never in my life have I found these totally generic advice collations useful.

They're always vague, unfalsifiable, borderline platitudes. They "work" for
the same reasons horoscopes work, and I think a sizable minority, if not
majority, of people publishing such work are just sociopathic profiteers.

This post is an advertisement, but sadly that seems to be the origin of most
content on the internet now - at least the SEO optimized results that fill the
first (1-10?) pages.

~~~
stevenjohns
As a counterpoint, I’ve found these books to be extremely useful and it has
had profound positive impacts on my decisions.

It’s not telling you to wake up at 4am because that’s what [unicorn startup
ceo] does. The advice given here is how to step back and find solutions, which
is great for people who have difficulty arriving at those points.

Likening it to horoscopes because it doesn’t work for you is like me
dismissing books on dieting because I’m already slim.

Lots of people don’t have positive role models, good teachers, mentors, or
even stable parents. So even things as simple as “don’t be quick to anger,
step back and think about the long term consequences” are lessons that many
people have never been taught.

~~~
peteretep
Absolutely. I have made a study of self help books, and they’re full simply of
ideas, rather than facts. These ideas have been invaluable to me.

------
bryanrasmussen
who's a super successful normal person then? I nominate Henry Ford, for no
particular reason.

I sort of think people will find something abnormal about any super successful
person, a great success implies greatness and strangeness beyond the success.

~~~
adamsea
Off-topic, but ...

Many normal people are super racist, so, Henry Ford does indeed qualify as a
super-successful normal person.

My meta-point, of course, is that while excellence and the desire to achieve
it (along with a bit of glory) can be admirable, success in life - in living
your life, a good life - is wildly different from the famous people - any of
them - whom society presents as a "success."

I'd rather be healthy and have meaningful, healthy relationships and
"unsuccessful" than unhealthy and "successful" \- and, I think that's _real_
success!

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I guess it was off-topic and hopefully that was why you got downvoted, and not
because people didn't want to be reminded about Henry Ford's racism but who
knows. Anyway I didn't downvote, have upvoted now to make up for it even
though I'm kind of a judge people by the standards of their time type re
Ford's morality. I'm sort of tired of people downvoting for what seem
frivolous or personal reasons.

~~~
adamsea
Thanks, fellow-person.

------
jressey
"they channeled their thoughts toward the fundamental details of having a
'good at-bat.'"

I'll pass.

You can't just use tangential examples of the most successful people. This
feels like pop-(pseudo) science.

~~~
dlivingston
Is there a non-pop-psych book that you would recommend in the same vein as
this one?

~~~
jressey
I honestly believe the vein of this book being presented is "try hard and
maybe you'll get lucky."

I'm sorry I can't find it, but there was an article on here a month or so ago
called something like "to get ahead, focus on the metagame." The idea is to
work on things that will help you get actual benefits in life. For example,
spend your energy at work making sure your boss knows you do a good job, and
forget about actually doing a good job. While some folks find that hard to
swallow, it's how you get a high salary and promotions.

------
holografix
Warning: this post is a generalisation that could offend some people. I’m
writing it because I feel I have to.

This reads _very_ American. By that I mean both a good and, more so than ever
in 2020, a bad thing.

The good is obviously the undying optimism, self belief resilience and
competitiveness I see displayed in the American way of life so often.

The bad is how it lays the responsibility for outcomes solely at the
individual’s feet. “Not terribly successful? Stop blaming your kids, your
marriage, it’s YOUR fault, you’re the one not doing enough”.

When does society get a share of the blame? When do you stop playing a game
that’s rigged against you? Do you forever keep doing _more_ reducing yourself
to a life of penitence and toil to be “exceptional”? This black or white, if
I’m not a winner I’m a loser mentality is terribly unhealthy to the
individual, society and frankly, to other nations.

~~~
thomk
Your points here are exactly why I am no longer religious.

Also, if you are easily offended, I'd skip the rest of this, I do not want to
offend anyone, these are my opinions alone.

If you worship any God, then you can never be as good as your God. You can
never be #1 even after you die. The whole framework sets you up for a life of
the inability to win. You are at BEST going to be #2 because you can never
ever be #1. Every religious person who worships a God is going to _feel_ like
they are a loser; because they are not and never will be #1 a 'winner'. It is
exhausting.

I have not had a good experience with Christians in my everyday life. I'm
sorry to say that, but when I meet someone and they tell me they are
Christian; I immediately become suspicious of them. I have learned this from
many, many interactions.

I think it has something to do with comparing yourself to God. "I am not #1.
Sometimes I am close to #1 and sometimes I am very far from #1. When I am far
from #1, maybe I steal a little or lie a little. I know I can get closer to #1
later and be forgiven (by the true #1)."

It's a sliding scale. There's no permanence.

They only way to win that game is to not play. Once you realize that not only
are you already #1 there is no #2. You are responsible for you. That means you
live exactly by your own personal values. For me it means I never lie or steal
and that decision is not based on how I feel about myself!

I have a friend who is a Buddhist monk. We were talking about emotions
recently and she said something I now think about every day: "You can't
control your emotions. Don't even try, they are far too powerful. You can only
control your BEHAVIOR."

I am in control of me. Nothing else is in control of me, not even my own
emotions. And since I am in control of me, who else is to blame if my life is
not working out?

That's not American my friend, that wisdom is ancient.

~~~
czbond
I respect your opinion - it's hard to put those out there.

As a counter thought, would a 'hole' in the argument be that religion doesn't
ask, require, or expect you to be #1. It just asks you to try to improve and
to become a better person. How could G _d expect you to be as good as
"he/she/it/they"? G_d would have created you, and designed your limitations.

Why not separate G*d's expectations of you from your interpretations of it?
Just say "i'm falliable, always will be; always improving, always will be"

~~~
wombatpm
Depends on your branch. Calvinism claimed there were only 1300 Elect who were
guaranteed a place in heaven. Lot of effort spent trying to figure out your
ranking

~~~
czbond
I did not know that. 1300? That is quite a specific, but round number. 1028
would have been really cool!

------
chadlavi
This reads like a very good example of how not to behave if you actually want
to be happy

~~~
OneGuy123
You imply that what makes you happy makes others happy.

A programmer who obsessively programms random side projects in his spare time
is completely engaged with them and likes to do that because he enjoys it on
some level.

So if you think that this is worse than watching netflix or wasting time with
mundant social interactions...well...I guess that doesn't make you bad.

You're just average.

~~~
0x262d
Lol this comment is absurdly condescending. I think the issue is more with
picking "abnormal" as a goal, from reading this book, and then trying to
develop abnormal traits to get there; in contrast to being intrinsically
motivated to work hard on and specialize in something, which is obviously
fine.

Additionally, one could argue that fixating on the "abnormal" language is a
surface level reading of this and an unfair criticism, which I think is
partially true. But if I were to rephrase "be abnormal" based on this article,
it would just end up at "be unusually good", which isn't very insightful.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _the issue is more with picking "abnormal" as a goal_

I actually like this language. It’s a different way of asking “what makes you
different, and how can you leverage instead of fighting that?”

