
Successful people are successful - rmah
http://swombat.com/2012/3/10/successful-people
======
coffeedrinker
My immediate concern is your definitions of success, growth, and self-
sacrifice. You have narrowed your discussion to a person working a startup,
but you have chosen too broad of language.

Instead of growth, I think you should have use the idea of investment. One
chooses how you to spend his time, and that may be in learning new tools,
creating a product, or non-work related things.

Self-sacrifice is the key to producing strong personal relationships, and not
something that should be rejected based on a faulty association with time
spent in business. Whether one works for himself or another, it is not self-
sacrifice; rather, it is toward the reward. Self-sacrifice for personal reward
is no longer self-sacrifice.

Success in business or wealth (which seems to be your focus) may be completely
unrelated to other people's definitions of success. One may choose _not_ to
invest his time toward monetary success because he defines success not by
becoming rich but by enjoying strong relationships with his family. Note that
I am not saying that one cannot be "successful" at both, but there are many
who have become wealthy to the detriment of everything I would consider
success. To me they are wealthy or well-known, but truly failures.

Acting for the benefit of others does not have to be to one's own detriment,
and relationships without self-sacrifice are ultimately doomed.

~~~
fedd
> Self-sacrifice is the key to producing strong personal relationships

in op's terms, building connections wouldn't be self-sacrifice, but personal
growth, so little contradiction i think

------
manmal
A good friend of mine is the very opposite of a successful person, by almost
every definition - she has been poor almost all her life (way below our
country's poverty level), obese, chronically overworked, always stressed out,
and often depressed. You'd expect that she is of the so-called lower class,
but no - she's VERY intelligent and only hasn't finished her master thesis yet
because she "has so much other stuff to do".

Swombat casually mentioned that success might be a lifelong habit - in her
case it seems that UNsuccess can also be a habit. Whenever a decision comes
along, she decides for what's good for others. I recently heard she might even
put off her baby plans for one year just because her pupils asked her to stay
with them until school leaving exam. She also hates money, and starts inviting
people for dinner (who earn a lot more than her) whenever she got some € to
spare. Every week she's having a fever because she sleeps only 2-3 hours a day
so she can spend more time with working for her students (from whom she can't
take much money, because they are, well, students).

I really like her - almost everybody does. Such sacrificing personalities are
well thought-of in our society. Many people admire her for her ability to work
15h a day, while earning almost nothing. But it's a life I would never want to
lead.

Recently, her life has finally improved, and she has been forced to earn more
so her husband is allowed to move to Austria. Still, she now has 3-4 jobs at a
time, hustling around so she earns < half of what I make by working 20-30h per
week.

~~~
palish
It sounds like she's enjoying life, regardless of her poor situation. She's
aware of her decisions; they're a conscious choice. That's respectable.

~~~
polyfractal
She probably _isn't_ enjoying life at all. I've known people like this and
they are usually very unhappy with their situation, but feel powerless to
change their habits. Or, more likely, they gain satisfaction from the
attention due to all the "self-sacrifice".

My relative is just like the person described here. Goes out of her way to
please everyone, sacrifices greatly, terrible financials. All because she
loves the attention that is bestowed upon her. However, she is utterly
miserable with her life in general and is constantly bitter about her
circumstances...which she eases away by going out to dinner with some friends
or buying an expensive gadget.

~~~
manmal
Yes, people like that don't see how they are the master of their own life.
It's a difficult way to go, and I'm glad I don't have to learn this the hard
way.

~~~
palish
They are aware that it's difficult. They're also aware that they continue to
choose that lifestyle. This is just as valid of a life choice as any other.

It's more than a little arrogant to say that she's not the master of her own
life just because she works to the detriment of her health. Yes, by defintion,
she needs money to survive; nonetheless, she goes out and gets that money when
it's needed. That is worthy of respect.

You're saying she's somehow a bad human. In reality it's the greed for money
which makes us bad humans.

~~~
swombat
I know these types of people (I used to be one to a lesser degree) and I don't
think it's fair to say that she knows what she's doing. As a highly
intelligent person, if this is pointed out to her she'll no doubt rationalise
it all somehow, but that doesn't mean it's a conscious choice.

I've lived with an anti-money mindset for most of my life (it's changing,
slowly), and it wasn't a conscious choice. I never sat down and thought "ok, I
don't want money, so I'm going to steer away from opportunities to make money,
spend money that arrives to me as quickly as possible, and basically generally
push it away". Once it was pointed out to me repeatedly that I did this, I
started working on changing this subconscious choice. It's still an ongoing
process, and far from over.

It takes some pretty strong-headed, tireless friends to keep pointing out to
you that you're being stupid and it's hurting your life. It takes a number of
obvious, unignorable examples of people less talented than you doing much
better.

Without those constant nudges over a period of years, most people will
rationalise things just as you do, about themselves or about others. I wish on
this woman that her friends will figure out how to get it through to her that
she could have a much better life, and that her own subconscious choices and
thought patterns are holding her back, rather than any external circumstances.

For example, one such belief is the idea that money is evil, the cause of
problems. That's a load of crap. Money is a token of value that can be
exchanged for whatever the hell you want. It's a resource that can be used to
do great good or great evil - but that entirely depends on the person doing
things. Money is a lever that you can use to multiply your impact on the world
- but as long as you keep pushing money away from you, you don't get to use
that lever effectively. If you _understand_ this idea, that goes a long way
towards starting to resolve manmal's friend's money issues...

~~~
palish
I said _greed for money_ makes us bad humans. Not money.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with "not wanting to impact the world", and
it's a shame that so many are implying that it is. It's "enjoying life", plain
and simple.

I don't care about money; I let it run out a few months ago. Didn't phase me.
I simply got a job when I needed to, and now I have $11k saved up. I'm very
lucky to be a programmer. But more than that, I'm lucky to be able to enjoy
life by studying as much science as I want to. Does that make me a bad person?
By your implication, it does, because I don't care about money, and spend it
freely.

On a different note... It sounds like you've been through a struggle, and came
out stronger. I just wanted to say congratulations. I respect that a lot.

~~~
swombat
Of course it doesn't make you a bad person - and it sounds like your choice is
somewhat more deliberate. That said, I'd point out that it looks like you're
plenty capable of making a lot more money whenever you want to, and if you set
your mind on buying a house you'd come up with the cash for it within a couple
of years.

That's a world away from the situation described in previous posts. It sounds
like you have your priorities straight, which is commendable, rather than
being at the mercy of a self-sacrificing mindset...

 _On a different note... It sounds like you've been through a struggle, and
came out stronger. I just wanted to say congratulations. I respect that a
lot._

Thanks. Struggle still ongoing. :-)

------
kevinalexbrown
_Instead of making choices that benefit others, make choices that benefit
yourself._

I have a problem with this statement. I think of all the people that have put
in hard, boring work so that you can write that blog on an open-source powered
internet, so that I can type this response on my unix powered mac, so that we
can go to Wikipedia and gain knowledge only the exceedingly wealthy could have
had 200 years ago.

Other than that, I'm really at a loss for words.

EDIT: seriously, am I missing something? Even when that one guy was trying to
talk about how some child prodigy who had died wasn't very smart, and pg
talked about how embarassed he was for hackernes, I don't know if I've ever
seen something I disagree with so profoundly. Did the author only mean 'make
those choices some of the time'? It seems to me that the natural conclusion to
that statement is pretty disgusting.

~~~
unimpressive
I think what he meant was something more along the lines of: _Don't let self-
sacrifice inhibit your ability to accomplish the things you want to._

Helping others is pretty much a necessity on the road to personal growth. To
build tools that only you use stunts your ability and your ability to impact
the world. Right now I'm on personal projects building things for other people
to use, even though I myself have no need of the tools I'm building. In the
process however, I'm learning things building those tools, like socket
programming and interface design.

I win, and so does everyone I'm building for.

~~~
kevinalexbrown
I have no problem with that. But the idea that I should reject doing things
that benefit a large number of people just because they don't simultaneously
benefit me in an optimal way is scary. If you're _optimizing_ for your own
personal growth, then you're only going to choose to do something that
benefits others when it benefits you more than anything else you might choose
to do with your limited time and resources.

Now look, I know, maybe I'm just being selfish and optimizing for my personal
happiness when I donate to a cause I believe in, maybe Bill Gates just does
philanthropy because he 'made crappy products' and needs to feel good about
himself. But I don't believe that those choices are optimal for personal
growth, and I believe that the world turns on them.

------
holdenc
The funny thing about successful people is they are treated with great
respect, while the college drop-out, street musician or starving artist
doesn't get taken seriously -- until -- they become successful. And all of a
sudden they can charge a nice sum for a day of talking or doing the same
things they for years while mostly ignored. People love to hand out accolades,
money, responsibility and respect to the same people they ignored for a long
time -- after they are successful.

~~~
bluekeybox
"A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness" -- Daniel J.
Boorstin

------
bdunn
Amy Hoy calls this concept "stacking bricks" - working on project after
project until you have a wall of success. Overnight successes get a lot of
praise and press, but they're rare. Extremely rare. And often times a fluke
rather than the result of an uncannily talented person.

You can also educate others ("sacrifice" your knowledge) while also increasing
your success score. In fact, most of the people I really respect on Twitter,
for example - many of which I've never met - I respect because they've taught
me something. And almost all of them are financially successful.

~~~
swombat
_You can also educate others ("sacrifice" your knowledge) while also
increasing your success score. In fact, most of the people I really respect on
Twitter, for example - many of which I've never met - I respect because
they've taught me something. And almost all of them are financially
successful._

But that's not self-sacrifice. As you say, it increases your own success
score. Being perceived as an authority on subject X (which teaching it to
others tends to do for you) is directly valuable. None of those helpful-and-
successful people would be helping if the help was anonymised - because then
it'd do nothing for them. That's perhaps been one of the big improvements of
StackOverflow - making the value of helping others more obvious and
"bankable"...

~~~
bdunn
Good point. Outside of sacrifices to your well being (health, family, etc.),
what other actions do you think diminish your success score?

~~~
swombat
There are a lot of examples... Basically things that have a clear cost and no
clear benefit (or the benefit is so far down the line and so risky that it's
basically a lottery ticket).

Sacrificing all your social life for your business... rarely pays off. If
you're not mentally and socially healthy, you probably won't be building a
successful business.

Sacrificing your career for a startup... if the startup fails, you should
still be coming out of it with a stronger CV (if that's still relevant) than
you went in. However you measure it, the startup should give you more than the
"I did a startup" experience even if it fails.

Saying "I don't have the time to learn X because I'm too busy doing things" is
usually a good sign that you're in a self-sacrificing mindset.

Taking a significant loan/mortgage to cofound your first business, with the
idea that "I'll make it back later" - that's a self-sacrifice mindset, and
likely to decrease your "score".

Pulling all nighters when working for someone else, without some very clear
immediate tangible (and sufficiently valuable) benefit - typical symptom of
self-sacrifice. Success-minded people will save their energy for the right
kind of situation that has clear benefits to themselves as well as to their
employer. Those who constantly burn themselves out may well achieve success -
once they learn to stop doing that.

Concrete examples from my life:

\- Staying involved full-time in a venture that I didn't believe in anymore
because I felt I'd be letting my cofounder down. I don't think that did him
any favours either. I should have left earlier.

\- Going to work even though I was on strong doses of Solpadeine+Ibuprofene
just to keep my 39-degree fever down (I had a tonsil infection), because "the
project needed me" - and the same for working on that project on weekends. No
positive difference made to my life 5 years later (but probably some health
aftereffects waiting for me a few decades down the line).

\- Taking on costs I didn't need to in order to "be nice" - generally that's
rarely ever appreciated or even noticed. "Les bons comptes font les bons
amis", as they say in French (good accounts make good friends).

------
erikpukinskis
Lately, when people ask me "how do I get started learning to program?" I tell
them the exact opposite of the OP.

I say, as I've been saying for years, that they should just think of something
they want to build, and try to figure it out. And then I add this:

 _It doesn't matter if you succeed or fail._ Programming is constant failure.
You try something and it doesn't work. You try again and it doesn't work. You
might try 50 different things before you find the one that works.

And while success might matter when you're on the job, it doesn't matter when
you're learning. Because you learn _exactly as much_ from your failures as
your successes. When you figure out that Rails won't work for your streaming
media server because it can't hold enough connections open, after investing
weeks of investment.... great! You learned a thousand important lessons.

If you had succeeded, because you randomly chose Node.js at the start, you
would've actually only learned 999 important lessons.

Which isn't to say that I disagree with the OP... often success does compound.
But learning to program, at the very least, is an area where it's just Attempt
--not Success or Failure-- that compounds.

~~~
swombat
See this comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3688152>

I'm not sure how I could have expressed this better, but I'm not opposing
success and failure, just saying that growth-minded decisions lead to more
success.

Learning to program is a great example of a growth activity.

------
pron
Daniel Tenner's blog is terrific, but I'd like to voice some opposition (yet
again). This post is but another specimen in a long line of articles quite
popular here on HN that regard life and "success" as an optimization problem.
This genre is the hacker version of self-help books, and like many self-help
books it assumes that 1) you have near complete control over your life and the
outcome of your endeavors, and 2) that attempting to optimize all life's
variables is worthwhile. I have issues with both of these assumptions.

First, much in our lives is governed by pure chance. I can't quantify exactly
how much, but it's a lot. It's true that here in the West, we've managed to
eliminate many forms of sudden destruction that were quite common in pre-
modern life (and are quite common today in less developed countries), and when
disaster strikes we have mechanisms for mitigating its effects like insurance
and medicine. All this has led the Western man to believe that if he picks his
priorities just so and organizes his life just right, he has a good chance of
achieving any goal he sets out to achieve. This is, well, to put it simply -
not true. Not only is this not true, but believing it is dangerous for two
reasons: The first is that if in spite of everything you do not "succeed" you
may come to believe this is the result of some personal failing; this may be,
but it certainly not necessarily so. The other is that when _others_ do not
attain success you may come to believe that this is the result of some
personal failing on their part - like laziness, and, again, this ain't
necessarily so. Especially in America, where social mobility is so rare
compared to other modern countries (though it's better than in underdeveloped
nations), many failings are simply due to the environment a child was born
into. But even if you're born to the right parents, disaster, and fortune
_will_ strike you at random.

My problem with the second premise, that we should even aspire to optimize our
lives, is more one of a personal preference. One of my favorite books is
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground". The book's protagonist has this
to say:

"Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful
and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything
seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything."

"For man's everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to have the
ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or a quarter of the amount which
falls to the lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy nineteenth century,
especially one who has the fatal ill-luck to inhabit Petersburg, the most
theoretical and intentional town on the whole terrestrial globe."

He rebels against intentionality. He balks at modern attempts to optimize
life. He insists on his right to do things out of sheer spite. He want do do
things that go against any common or uncommon sense. He sometimes wants to
inflict pain upon himself, to wallow in the ensuing misery, and enjoy it. And
though he is far from a man anyone would want to end-up like, he is a free
spirit who chooses to be a slave only to his own neuroticism rather than to
anyone else's utilitarian logic.

~~~
nostrademons
Larry Page often tells us "Aim high, not because you'll get there, but because
you'll often discover things that are useful in their own right on the way
there."

We can't control how things eventually turn out. But why sabotage yourself by
intentionally aiming lower? We can certainly control what we put in, and if we
put in more, well, we may not get what we want, but we're likely to get
something that's pretty good regardless.

It _is_ an optimization problem. It's just not a _maximization_ problem. We
try to make the best decisions we can with the information that we have
available, and if those turn out not to be the best decisions in the end,
well, we now have more information.

~~~
pron
Right, as long as you remember not to look down on yourself, or more
importantly, on others, if you or they do not succeed.

But my second point was a general comment about the popularity of the self-
help/corporate/utilitarian discourse of "success", "usefulness", "improvement"
etc.. You should improve yourself (if that's what you want), but don't become
obsessed with improvement. There are other worthwhile and meaningful ways of
living - just consider other options.

I'm afraid to sound new-agist ('cause I'm not), but let me suggest that the
desire to improve is often the result of an external motivation such as
competition. Also, "success", and "improvement" are common words in corporate-
speak for two reasons: people who build corporations are often those who are
obsessed with success to begin with, and second, people thinking about success
and improvement tend to make better employees and better consumers. In
general, people overly concerned with success and/or improvement either create
authority or serve it well.

So improving yourself is certainly a great goal, but as you do it, make sure
that you're improving yourself in order to serve yourself and those you love
better - not someone else.

~~~
einhverfr
Ok, so I tried to learn PHP by creating a CRM program in that language. No
really.... I succeeded in learning PHP. I was less successful in creating a
CRM. Well, actually, I created a decent CRM for some markets, but failed at
marketing it and eventually abandoned it. I didn't realize it at the time but
this sort of thing is a key to my successes: I rarely take on a major project
for one reason only. Instead I take them on for a myriad of reasons so even if
the project fails, it's hardly a complete loss.

When I look back into the economic opportunities I "fell into" the same
principle was at work. I did something, did it for two or three reasons, one
fell through, another one became important, and suddenly my direction shifted.
The same thing is now happening as well.....

In nature in a healthy ecosystem, no plant fills only a single niche, and no
niche is filled by only a single species. I guess it took reading about
permaculture to see some of my own patterns in a deeper light.

~~~
cheatercheater
A pine tree very specifically only grows its vegetative part a few meters from
the very top of the tree line. That's a very well defined niche.

A cave is mostly only inhabited by fungus. There you go, a niche only
inhabited by a single kind of organism, and that's not even difficult to find.

Anyways, basing your behavior on how "things are in nature" is as insane as
eating bark because you see a bear do it. It's stupid because analogies do not
translate at all between things so distant as human and animal feeding
patterns, or - in your case - yellowstone forest and business markets. Unless
your CEO is Yogi Bear.

------
lhnz
"Every decision should be optimised so that personal growth is part of the
deal, and self-sacrifice is not."

My perspective is different:

Sacrifice yourself for life. Go all in! Not for yourself, your masters, or
your peers, but _for life itself_. This isn't about success. This is about
living to your fullest potential and consistently reaching a state of flow in
which you are able to fully appreciate all facets of _your journey_ , not just
its end.

edit; I'm being down-voted but I did not write a content-less post. I simply
disagree with the author. He is trying to optimise for success and by
implication happiness, but has not considered hedonistic adaption [0] and flow
states [1]. I believe his optimisations will not be fruitful long-term.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill>

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)>

~~~
swombat
"Constantly reaching a state of flow in which you are able to fully appreciate
all facets of your journey, not just its end" sounds like exactly the growth
mindset I'm promoting. Self-sacrifice, on the contrary, implies ignoring the
crappiness of the journey because you have some higher objective in mind.

------
jhspaybar
One other aspect that is probably lurking below the surface and many of you
may know but aren't focused on is that many people become a little bit
successful and stop taking the risks of new endeavors. With the idea that the
greatest successes are typically built on smaller successes, we also must be
aware when we've found a success that placates our desires for even greater
endeavors. Be happy with the things you've done(that great job, the nice
house, etc) but don't stop using your current success as a building block for
the next just because your current success is comfortable.

------
JVIDEL
It's amusing for me that this kind of advice is taken as something novel and
even inspiring, not for the advice itself or the person giving it but because
it shows how deformed our post-modern perception of the world is. That most
people out there actually believe they can get rich with no previous effort of
any kind but a matter of "positive attitude" shows the western civilization
has decayed a lot. 100 years ago the West was already centuries ahead of the
rest of the world because 300 years before it refused to follow "tradition"
and expect the "Gods" to provide and to _taketh away_. When water didn't come
to us we built pumps, something as simple as that was an almost unheard-of
mentality in the history of mankind, the only other exception being the
complex aqueducts built by the Roman Empire. When the Romans stopped building
they experienced a slow painful death, and right now we have massive
infrastructure deficits which go unfixed because well, any serious
infrastructure project is measured in decades, so how do you take credit of
that? If you're a politician you won't be in office by the time it's done, and
with the increasing instability of the markets investors will probably have
moved on to something else more than once by the time the project ends. One
would believe than with our average lifespan more than doubling in the past
200 years we should be able to think further ahead, but in reality the post-
modern society its fixated on the present, as if the future, a time other than
now, was a concept so abstract our brains couldn't process it.

------
jonmc12
Great thinking - but I think the dichotomy of self-sacrifice vs growth is not
the most useful conceptual model. I found the intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation in 'The two paths to success' to be more relatable when it comes to
optimizing for growth.

Focus on self-sacrifice could be described as an intrinsically motivated
activity to optimize for personal growth in realizing the ideal of benefitting
others. For me, these intrinsic cycles have been self-benefitting - a focus on
a particular product, or a focus on growth of engineering skills. In both
cases, relationships suffer, bank accounts dip - but at the end of the cycle I
have a more evolved product or a much stronger set of engineering skills.

Extrinsic motivation will optimize for a different set of success criteria.
Maybe growing skills not as important at this phase, but perhaps growth in
relationships, self-promotion and financial gains are the better opportunity
to grow.

Yes, growth is the basis of success, but interest is only part of the magic -
perhaps more important is arbitraging the value created as you switch between
these 2 contexts of motivation.

------
anklos
I believe __LIFE IS A RANDOM GAME __. You may argue that hard working can
change the fate. Yes. But hard working should also be seen as an attribute
that is set in your body when you are born, and it is random. So a person is
created with random attributes, and he will live with random chances happening
around him. That's the game of life.

------
akg
Vince Lombardi's famous quote "Winning is a habit" comes to mind. I think what
makes successful people successful is this attitude that no matter what they
do, regardless of it's significance, they give it all they have. They want to
win (using some subjective definition of winning).

I highly recommend reading James Wallace's "Hard Drive"
([http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-
Empire/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-
Empire/dp/B002KE5UEK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331412233&sr=8-1)) which provides
some insight into Bill Gates. Regardless of your thoughts about the man, I
think it is an extremely interesting read. The basic premise is that Gates is
extremely competitive even on a minuscule scale, and it is due to that
obsession & competitiveness he is where he is today.

------
Tycho
He's basically saying that constant reinvestment of your capital leads to ever
increasing success (and maybe, one day, blockbuster success).

I took my savings from my first job, went back to university to learn
programming, then got a job with over double the salary. Now earn enough to
save money (not that much, maybe a few thousand a year), and also learn a lot
of new skills on the job (finance). I've avoided things that take up all my
surplus cash/time... But I'm not sure how to 'reinvest' at this point. One
obvious choice is doing a CFA (company pays the bills but it would be a huge
timesink). Or I could try iOS or web development and use my money to get
outside help where needed to make a good product. Or i could invest in
stocks/bonds or something.

Anyone else care to share their history of, uh, reinvestment success?

------
chipsy
I think there's actually a balance between the self-sacrifice view and the
optimization view. Your parents have to sacrifice to give you care and
attention. Likewise, you have to sacrifice to build skills. All along, chance
factors come in to affect whether you're going to remain a healthy person, or
crippled/dead.

However, once you cross certain thresholds of ability, optimization becomes a
preferred solution. Networking starts to matter more. To build a desired
connection you can "sacrifice for someone else." Once you have the
connections, unique chances to work on ideas pass through you, and as we
already know, ideas + opportunity are prerequisite to most forms of "success."
Once you have that, the self-sacrifice process starts again, as now you have
to prove that it can be done.

------
xarien
I agreed with the post until I got to the self sacrifice portion. Life isn't a
zero sum game. When you help others, you're helping yourself at the same time.

I've always followed a pay it forward even with people I've met for the first
time and it has paid for itself time and time again. Watch how fast someone
comes running when they hear you need a favor when they've received one from
you...]

The other point I'd like to make is that I believe happiness and success go
hand and hand. I know a lot more selfless happy people than selfish ones. Of
course, success isn't one dimensional and if monetary measurements are the
only indicator then....

------
tzaman
Totally agree - but I still think some amount of sacrifice is necessary at the
beginning, when you finish your education and start with 0 (if you're lucky,
some have student loans).

Unless you have wealthy parents that is.

~~~
rmah
As far as I can tell, he's not saying that one should never sacrifice... just
that if you do, try to align the situation so there is a payoff for YOU down
the line. Education can be one of those things.

~~~
swombat
Down the line - and as early as possible.

I personally don't think that education is a self-sacrifice activity... or if
it is, you're studying the wrong things. University is a gigantic opportunity
to make vast numbers of valuable connections, learn lots of interesting
things, develop as a human being, and even gain some valuable credentials that
will make earning money easier.

Of course, it's a bit overpriced in America at the moment, but that doesn't
mean that education in general is a bad deal. On the contrary.

~~~
edwinnathaniel
How overpriced is education in America?

I went to UBC (British Columbia, Canada) and the tuition cost as of today is
$400+ per course. If a student enrols to 12 courses/year that comes down to
$4800/year or $19.2k/4-years. Less than $5k/year is probably not too bad for a
mid-tier University (e.g.: not MIT level).

Of course "not to bad" is because I compared it with our 2 weeks Caribbean
escapade last year where we spent probably between $4k to $5k in total for 2
people. Or a ticket price, round-trip, flying to Indonesia that cost around
$1.5k+/person during "shoulder season".

As a side note: Microsoft offers interns about $5k/month for 3-months (or
4-months, depending on your program). If interns can live frugally in
Seattle/Redmond (corporate housing with roommate), they probably can afford to
pay 1-2 years worth of education from one internship period.

~~~
DarkShikari
_How overpriced is education in America?_ Per year...

For a UC in California (public school): ~$31000 on-campus, $28000 off-campus
(see [http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/paying-
for-...](http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/paying-for-
uc/cost/index.html)).

For a private school in California, ~$55000/year on-campus.

~~~
edwardy20
UC must be one of the expensive schools. The average isn't too bad:

"In 2011-12, public four-year colleges charge, on average, $8,244 in tuition
and fees for in-state students. The average surcharge for full-time out-of-
state students at these institutions is $12,526."

<http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494.html>

~~~
mscali
That average includes some a large number of schools that many high-achievers
wouldn't consider as they won't meet many other high achievers there, nor will
they meet many high achieving faculty.

If an American is unable to get merit scholarships at top schools, they're
likely looking at $100-200k in tuition and expenses for a BS.

------
dustineichler
No matter how it seems, success is seldom if ever "overnight". Yes, it may
seem things come easier to some than others, but to me personally... success
isn't what you accomplish so much as it is how quickly you get up from
constantly being knocked down. I've failed more times than I care admit... and
I'm probably better for it. Maybe success looks like a pattern of
determination.

------
rgraham
>If you're going to work on a startup, plan things out so that even if it
fails without making a single ripple, you'll still be better off after than
you were before.

I've been thinking about this lately. It's really important to chose to spend
time on things that are positive for you whether the primary aim or best case
scenario pans out or not. Great post.

------
JoeAltmaier
xkcd of course has something to contribute to this conversation:
<http://xkcd.com/1027/>

~~~
cheatercheater
Has nothing to do with the OP. Is spam.

------
yason
Success is a life you won't regret.

------
dkarl
_Having a self-sacrifice mind-set means consistently making decisions that
benefit someone or something other than yourself, and often at a cost to
yourself._

This is a very rational way of looking at things, much too rational to
describe a "mind-set." From the point of view of most of our brain, the parts
of our brain we've lived with our whole lives but still have a hard time
communicating with, investing in yourself _is_ self-sacrifice. You sacrifice
short-term pleasure for long-term pleasure. You even sacrifice short-term
success for long-term success. The long-term success is off the radar of most
of your brain, so you need a mindset that sees your "sacrifice" in a positive
light.

For example, getting up early and knocking out an extra feature at work brings
you immediate positive rewards. People notice it, and they notice you. That's
relatively easy, a lower form of self-sacrifice. Staying up late studying
linear algebra or a new concurrency paradigm doesn't bring you any immediate
external rewards. (Sometimes you get the joy of understanding a major new
idea, but more often it's just hard work.) It will bring rewards someday, but
that pleasure is off your radar. You need a psychological connection between
the pleasure you pass up today and a reward that is unspecified and even
unimaginable because it is impossible to predict in any concrete detail.

One way of making that psychological connection is the concept of sacrifice,
which often shows up as an important aspect of religious faith. Acting
correctly now will bring rewards in the future: in the afterlife, in the next
lifetime, or if you believe in the "Prosperity Gospel," next quarter.
Christianity explicitly promotes sacrifice by setting up Jesus as the highest
model for emulation, and by adopting the symbol of his sacrifice as the symbol
of the religion itself.

I am not religious myself, but I think it is significant that we selfish,
self-interested human beings are attracted to the power of sacrifice embodied
in the story of Jesus(+). Perhaps it has something to do with the potential we
see to better our own lives and the lives of the people we care about if only
we had the discipline to sacrifice ourselves to what we value. Setting aside
the moral question of whether it is appropriate to value our own well-being
more highly than that of another person, it is painfully obvious that we value
the well-being of ourselves today much more highly than the well-being of
ourselves next year, or even next week. If our psychological concept of self
and selfishness cannot extend to the person we will be next week, then perhaps
it is in our long term self-interest to develop a mentality that helps us
sacrifice ourselves to something that is (or merely seems) separate from us.

There are other ways to tackle the problem, but no single strategy will take
us very far by itself. Cultivating a sense of intrinsic pleasure in the
deferred-reward activities that we substitute for immediate-reward activities
helps, but it can be overwhelmed by factors that affect mood, such as fatigue,
problems in other areas of our lives, or simply having a bad day. Imagining
the rewards can help, but sometimes the rewards are uncertain or unknowable.
Pride can be a useful tool, but when we're tackling challenging work or
something we aren't very good at, pride is sometimes best kept out of the
picture. Sometimes stuff just sucks, and the only thing we can do is embrace
the pain as evidence that we are following the right path.

Obviously there are pitfalls. You need to guide your sense of sacrifice so
that it serves whatever you think is important. (Your children, your career,
your guild, your six-pack abs, whatever.) Some people blindly sacrifice
themselves for whoever walks by, hoping to find someone who returns the favor,
so there's no arguing that a sense of self-sacrifice can express itself
pathologically when it's poorly directed. Still, I think self-sacrifice is not
just a morally beautiful idea, but a pragmatic way of pursuing your own
interest as well.

(+) Religion is a worthwhile subject for HNers who are interested in "success
literature" articles like this one. A common feature of all major religions is
that there is an optimal way to live that brings the highest reward, but our
morally or intellectually flawed selves naturally revolt from that path and
seek lesser pleasures, which ultimately lead to disappointment or even
punishment. Religion is the struggle to understand the higher path, detach
ourselves from the compelling illusions that dominate our behavior, and attune
ourselves to the highest source of good so we can follow it with conviction.
Many articles on HN read the same way if you define success as the highest
good.

~~~
swombat
_...investing in yourself is self-sacrifice. You sacrifice short-term pleasure
for long-term pleasure. You even sacrifice short-term success for long-term
success. The long-term success is off the radar of most of your brain, so you
need a mindset that sees your "sacrifice" in a positive light._

But that's not self-sacrifice by my definition, because you're still the one
reaping the benefit. Getting up early to do work that will benefit someone
else and not yourself - that is self-sacrifice. Getting up early to get ahead
in your studies is just self-discipline.

~~~
dkarl
Like I said, rationally speaking, you're right, but mind-sets don't matter
when you can analyze something rationally and follow your decision without
difficulty. A mind-set comes into play when a problem is rationally
intractable or emotionally vexed.

------
TuxPirate
STOP STARING AT ME DANIEL TENNER! I CANNOT STAND IT ANYMORE!

 _click_

------
shingen
I don't believe that success is a life long habit for most people. I think
successful people learn how to be successful through trial and error.

There are formulas for success and failure. Some people learn faster, some
people learn slower; some lessons are better than others and get you there
faster; some people are fortunate enough to be able to fail in more modest
ways while they're simultaneously being successful in the grand scheme of
things (Zuck). Sometimes randomosity bails you out of stupid choices,
sometimes you hit the floor hard; the choice to learn or not is up to the
individual either way.

Some people become successful early, and fail late. The list of former Forbes
400 members is littered with these people. Some people fail early, and succeed
later, and for the rest of their lives, having learned their lesson.

In my experience, failure can feel a bit like living through a great
depression. You become emotionally reflexive based on what you've learned /
digested. Same way people learned to be extremely frugal after The great
depression. If you learn the right lessons from it, your reflexes will keep
you from making similar stupid mistakes later on. I don't know how you really
learn those lessons without experiencing them (even if you do so in the 'fail
small and often, while succeeding overall' manner).

~~~
swombat
I think I might have miscommunicated. I'm not referring to success in contrast
to its supposed opposite of failure. Successful people fail. A lot. However, I
believe that they do have a habit/mindset of making decisions that benefit
them (and, often, others, but always themselves too) rather than hurting
themselves.

This is contrasted with the self-sacrifice mindset, where a person makes
decisions that will hurt them and benefit other people or no one.

Also, worth pointing out that I never intended to imply that this "lifelong
habit" can't be acquired. I'm slowly getting there, and I started from a
strong self-sacrificing mindset.

~~~
joering2
how do you actually know you "slowly getting there"? how do you measure that?
and IF you can measure and know what it means to "already be there", wouldn't
you actually... be there?

~~~
swombat
A lot of our behaviours and responses are driven by subconscious habits and
thoughts. I may know that I have a bias towards doing X, but that doesn't mean
that I consistently avoid doing X - in fact, quite the opposite. It takes
years of re-training your subconscious to get away from behaviours which have
become habitual. Knowing the way and walking the way are two different things,
as they say.

I know I'm slowly getting there because I can observe the direct correlation
between how I've shifted my thought patterns, and how the situation around me
has shifted. One could posit coincidence as an explanation, and that may be
true, but the areas of my life where I don't apply this "growth" mindset are
the ones that haven't grown. Try it for yourself and see if it does anything
for you.

~~~
joering2
very interesting indeed. Any chances to get a real-life example out of you?

~~~
swombat
I mention a good example, about a "pushing money away" mindset that I'm slowly
changing, in this comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3688375>

Another example, with contrast between areas where I'm applying the mindset
and those where I'm not: learning. In my work, I've blown away the excuse that
"I don't have the time to learn" - I was lucky that the circumstances forced
me to. As a result, I am now basically an expert on tax credits and grants,
and adding more similar fields as time passes, without any hesitation.

Conversely, I've had a "I just need to get things done" attitude to
programming and fiction writing over the last few years, and those have budged
little if at all. I know that's the wrong mindset, but it takes time to get
over it.

Is this the kind of example you were looking for?

~~~
joering2
thanks.

------
funkah
> _Many people think it makes sense to sacrifice everything for some elusive
> success that's waiting a few years down the line when their startup makes it
> big._

Yep, it's a sucker's bet. You only get one shot at life, and you should be
living it, not dreaming of the day when you can. And big things promised in
the future have a funny way of not actually arriving.

