
Scott Adams: How to Be Successful - codelion
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304626104579121813075903866.html#!
======
milesf
This insight is huge:

    
    
      Had I been goal-oriented instead of system-oriented, I imagine I would
      have given up after the first several failures. It would have felt like 
      banging my head against a brick wall.
    
      But being systems-oriented, I felt myself growing more capable every
      day, no matter the fate of the project that I happened to be working on.

~~~
calinet6
Truth right here. His systems thinking advice is phenomenal. Love this quote
too:

"Throughout my career I've had my antennae up, looking for examples of people
who use systems as opposed to goals. In most cases, as far as I can tell, the
people who use systems do better. The systems-driven people have found a way
to look at the familiar in new and more useful ways."

He's talking about success as simply a single point in the statistical
sampling that is your life. This is an extremely correct, scientific, and most
importantly helpful way to look at the world and your work.

~~~
DigitalJack
It sounds good, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to apply it. I realize
this article couldn't contain everything that will be in his book and so I
hope that there is more practical advice regarding systems other than "have a
system" in the book.

For example, the guy that was always looking for a new job... isn't that just
a repeating goal?

On a personal note, I need to lose weight. I've done it before: I lost 74 lbs,
but now several years later I've gained back just over 90 lbs. I reached my
goal, and lost all motivation for eating healthy, and steadily gained it all
back and more.

I'm trying to structure my life around doing healthier things (better food,
more exercise). How can I systemize that? Or have I already? I have "goals" of
walking X times per week for Y distance. Is that the wrong approach? Should it
be "after having walked, walk again as soon as possible but not sooner than 1
day?"

I guess I could use an example of some systems that were not just repeating
goals.

~~~
DigitalJack
I appreciate the advice in the sibling posts.

I will consider these while I try to work out what the difference is between
what Scott Adams calls a goal vs a system. I can be very pedantic, and I think
that is getting in the way of understanding.

I googled "systems vs goals" and actually found another Scott Adams post on
the topic, even about excercise :)

[http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/systems/](http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/systems/)

I'm trying to get a more direct handle on the difference so I can better apply
it generally.

It seems that when Adams says "goal" he is specifically talking about an
endpoint. A destination. And that's a common definition I think.

His use of system seems to still have goals, they are just smaller and easily
achieved. They also seem to be more related to triggers or starting points.
For example, "go to the gym" not "workout" or "do X reps."

He also provides a relief valve in this case (not _having_ to work out once he
gets there if he doesn't feel up to it), so that the pressure of the expected
follow through to "going to the gym" is relieved and thus not a deterrent.

So if I were to apply this to walking, it could be something like "put on
walking shoes, exercise clothes, and go outside, everyday."

Or for better food: "Go to the store, buy some veggies I like," and maybe add
on "go through prep work for cooking them." The relief valve could be that "I
don't _have_ to cook and eat this for dinner, but i do have to buy and prep."

~~~
comrade_ogilvy
Right. Actually doing the exercise or actually eating the vegetables is at
worse a minor nuisance, that on most days has enough immediate positives that
it is self-reinforcing. Once we have the running shoes on, we probably find
ourselves happy with the choice 30 minutes later some 99%+ of the time. Ditto
the clean vegetables sitting on the counter.

The problem comes at the "meta" level, bargaining with ourselves whether we
_feel_ like going to the gym, so we hem and haw over putting the shorts and
shoes on. Allowing this self-bargaining process to become involved is adding
mostly negative emotional energy in a way that does not pay a useful dividend.

Presumably the relief valve has value in cutting short certain kinds of
excuses. "Fine. If I am outside with my shoes and gear on, I do not have to go
to the gym. Just getting the shoes on is easy enough, right? Once I am
outside, maybe I will want to stroll around the block. But I can decide that
once I am outside and ready -- no sense in dawdling now."

------
bluecalm
This is basically an idea that you shouldn't set goals on outcomes but on
behaviors. The idea isn't new and is kind of mantra in some fields. One very
specific one: professional gambling. This is good example because
professionals gamblers have very long and imprecise feedback loop and setting
goals on outcomes is recipe for constant frustration and confusion (sometimes
you make great decision for 2 weeks and lose and sometimes you make awful
decisions for 2 weeks and win big). Also for them it's easy to understand that
outcomes are very poor indicator of good behavior. At least in "short term"
but in many games the short term is sometimes several months or more. That is
way more than our brain comprehends and you really have to fight its tendency
to link value of behaviors with instant outcomes they produce (how intuition
but also superstition is formed).

People without gambling background often have different view on reality - it's
not so easy for them to appreciate luck because they are not trained to
recognize it and not trained to deal with it in methodological way. I love the
take on those issues by the author. As someone who did professional gambling
for many years I see the concepts popular in my field worded in "real
life"/business terms. Great !

~~~
skrebbel
I like this analogy. In a somewhat cheesy way, life is a casino, and the big
winners are lucky idiots and pro gamblers. You can't choose to become a lucky
idiot, but you can choose to become a pro gambler.

------
ateevchopra
This is one of the best article I have read in weeks.

Life is about "karma" and not associating you to the results. Mr. Linus
Torvalds never made a "goal" to make linux run in every server on this planet.
I don't know what is his real inspiration behind working on Linux, But one
thing is clear that he succeeded. Everybody has his own reason to follow
his/her path.

Sometimes we don't even have a reason. We just go with the flow and keep
learning what life gives us. Just by keeping our direction right in the flow,
we will eventually reach our "goal". If we keep looking at the goals, we will
never be able to look at our rocky path and eventually fall down. Making goals
is wise. But sticking yourself to its result isn't.

Every work we do is our karma. Writing this is also a karma. I'm not talking
about HN "karma", but real karma. It is about sharing my views with the
community. I learn from the community, so maybe someone will learn from me.
This is how community works. Thats my karma.

The word karma gained popularity from this famous verse of Bhagavad Gita :

 _karmany evadhikaras te ma phalesu kadachana ma karma-phala-hetur bhur ma te
sango ’stv akarmani_

It means :

 _You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled
to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of
your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty._

I am just gonna conclude this with board that I recently saw in Apple's recent
iPhone event.

[http://oi44.tinypic.com/2uqd3es.jpg](http://oi44.tinypic.com/2uqd3es.jpg)

------
Amadou
The problem with "grinders" and taking the passion out of business is that it
implicitly encourages amorality. One of the biggest reasons that Google's
"don't be evil" mantra gets so much play is because it is so rare for a modern
corporation to even acknowledge the concept of morality, much less explicitly
name it as a goal even if the execution is imperfect.

I think moral behavior can only come from passion. If you don't have strong
beliefs about the role of your business in society then it is entirely too
easy to rationalize socially destructive practices in pursuit of financial
success.

I'm not saying passion is a cure-all, there is no such thing as a cure-all and
it is clearly possible to be passionate about a socially destructive idea. But
from a social perspective, I think we are better off with a lot of passionate
failures and a few passionate successes than a lot of purely financial
successes.

~~~
noname123
Wait, don't public corporations have an fiduciary duty to their shareholders,
debt duty to their bond holders and payroll obligation to their employees.

To be honest, if I was a shareholder of GOOG or more likely the via fund
manager of my 401K who is managing a portfolio of thousands of publicly traded
companies, I could care hardly less about the company and more about their
bottom-line; because the fund manager has a moral responsibility to manage the
assets of the little guys /working class/teachers/firefighters - cue the TIAA-
CREF feel good commercial.

IMO, this is the true banality of evil that is not talked about. There is no
invisible evil man pulling the strings behind the scene, only layers of our
self-interest all conveniently shielded by complex layers of capital
structures and financial incentives that no one wishes to really confront the
conflicts and zero-sum nature involved in it all.

I could hardly care less about corporations trying to be 'not evil' because
that's a marketing gimmick. I'd rather have a company tell me how they are
screwing honestly their customers, employees and shareholders; there's no
shame in that because it's a given and the company would instantly gain
respect for their honesty.

~~~
Amadou
_Wait, don 't public corporations have an fiduciary duty to their
shareholders, debt duty to their bond holders and payroll obligation to their
employees._

Sort of. It sounds good on paper - in a perfect world perhaps the invisible
hand of the market would make "greed is good" a functional philosophy. But
that's not the world we live in - there will always be significant friction,
imperfect knowledge, etc in the market such that insisting that one part of
the entire system be "pure" in the economic liberal sense is really just
denying the obvious in a way that encourages exploiting those imperfections.

FWIW, the concept that corporations have no public duty beyond maximizing
profits as a course of business is quite new. Here's some background:

False Profits: Reviving the Corporation's Public Purpose
[http://www.uclalawreview.org/?p=1056](http://www.uclalawreview.org/?p=1056)

------
marincounty
I can't even read another one of these. I've noticed one thing about these
success stories; they always leave out the people, connections, and family
money that made them successful. I've met very few Horatio Alger's. Old
reference. 99% of the "Successful" kids I went to school with had rich
parents. Gavin Newsom comes to mind. He was voted most fashionable at Redwood.
He was an idiot. His parents paid for every business until one stuck. I know
the current Gold Rush is different, but beware of the rich telling the poor
how to succeed. Oh, and the books-- they never end. I guess the truth is hard
to stomach for most successful people? I've always questioned what real
success is anyways. Does it really matter if you have a billion dollars if you
have a tumor in your pancreas? I certain parts of the world I hear integrity,
honesty, and true altruism are what people call Successful--not here though.
are

~~~
colomon
I'm curious how you think this worked in the specific case here of Scott
Adams. His Dilbert has been on a decline for ages, and it still manages to be
one of the most consistently funny comic strips out there. In his heyday
probably half of the tech guys in the US had one of his comics posted on the
wall of their cubical.

How did his (alleged) people, connections, and family money make that happen?
Have they been hiring funny people to ghostwrite the strip? Did they make sure
funnier writers were blacklisted? Did they somehow send him to a mystical
funny school? If people were being paid to hang up his strips on their wall, I
never got my check...

~~~
acuozzo
> How did his (alleged) people, connections, and family money make that
> happen?

Did Scott Adams grow up in a slum and receive a US "inner city" education?

Alternatively, did he grow up on a farm with a family that expected him to
work to help support it once he could drop-out of school without repercussion?

Are you starting to see where this is going?

~~~
scott_karana
You seem to be conflating "rich" with "not poor".

~~~
acuozzo
Who said anything about `rich'? Neither I nor the parent ever used the word.

~~~
scott_karana
The great grandparent who started off the line of reasoning was pretty
explicit about it, saying things like the following:

> 99% of the "Successful" kids I went to school with had rich parents

In either case, you're referring to a poor minority of Americans. I don't
think anyone else was arguing that average Americans are overprivileged
compared to ... other average Americans.

(If I misinterpreted, please let me know: I've been on a roll today.)

------
foobarbazqux
All of these arguments for success implicitly appeal to our fear that we are
not going to be able to have a good human experience if we don't have enough
power over other people.

You can succeed and you can fail, but you cannot be a success or a failure.
The entire problem is identifying too strongly with the outcome of your
actions.

Incidentally, if you really commit to this worldview, then traditional
motivators like guilt and money stop working. The transition period can be
difficult; it's usually the crux of a mid-life crisis.

------
praptak
Beware generic advice about achieving success:

[http://mustapha.svbtle.com/tfs](http://mustapha.svbtle.com/tfs)

(This is just off HN frontpage)

~~~
Synaesthesia
The article says just that! "Beware of advice about successful people and
their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike. Your dreams of
creating a dry-cleaning empire won't be helped by knowing that Thomas Edison
liked to take naps."

~~~
marincounty
It says that to cover the fact he's still giving advise. The rich have been
giving out advise to the poor forever. The one little act they alwys leave out
is the amount of support they received along the way. It's always conviently
left out.

~~~
Synaesthesia
He also mentioned what a huge role luck plays. I found the article's honesty
refreshing personally.

------
SCdF
It's interesting how different people define success.

It sounds like Mr. Adams defines success by how much money you have.

My definition of success is enough income to allow me to mostly ignore
money[1] and instead can spend my days doing things that genuinely interest
me, with people I genuinely like.

[1] eg not having to worry about working out which yoghurt is the best value
for money at the supermarket, not being afraid to go to the doctors because I
can't afford it, having enough saved up that if I want to take a few months
off employment to do my own thing I can, stuff like that.

~~~
icelancer
[1] Is the same definition as Scott's if you word it that way. That's millions
of dollars before you can think that way.

~~~
SCdF
I don't have millions or dollars (or even close) and I _do_ think that way.
All those examples were actually things I've done in the past.

Are you American? Is the American healthcare system so bad that you feel you
need millions of dollars to survive it?

Or is it just that for you to be able to ignore money you need to have so much
of it that you can snap purchase ferraris?

FWIW when I say don't think about money I mean for mundane every day things,
like going to the supermarket or the doctors, or not being tied down to work a
job you hate because you need need need that paycheck that comes every month.

I'm talking about flexibility, not the ability to buy everything you've ever
wanted :-)

------
exo_duz
This statement really hits a chord with me.

"To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That's literally true most of the
time. For example, if your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you will spend every
moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were
short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of
nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary.

If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you
realize that you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your
options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your
success until they bore you, or to set new goals and re-enter the cycle of
permanent presuccess failure."

I've always been taught that there are 3 people in the world:

1) People who live in the past

2) People who have a dream and stop having dreams when they achieve that dream

3) People who have dreams and set new dreams once they achieve their current
dream

Opens up the eyes based on another person's perspective. I wonder if that goal
oriented purpose of life, getting the bigger house, better car etc. is just
part of how society measures success.

------
nvarsj
I remember talking to a car parking attendant, and it turned out he was the
owner of the lot. Out of curiosity I asked him how much he made - he turned
around and pointed at a few nearby lots which he also owned - and gave me a
staggeringly large sum.

The dichotomy Adams presents is interesting, of passion versus making money.
It's obvious really, but I never thought about it as explicitly. The battle
between these two forces are evident all over the place. Taking gaming for
instance. Freemium, addictive, social games versus indie games made with
passion. One rakes in millions a day, the other may barely subsist a living.
But I'd argue one is far more beneficial to the human experience than the
other.

------
alister
Speaking of Scott Adams' business ideas, I've always liked his "Rules for
Filtering Out Bad Ideas":

[http://filters.pen.io/](http://filters.pen.io/)

My favorite is #3: _It doesn 't matter how many people dislike an idea. All
that matters is how many like it._ So you should ignore the odd person who
says, _" Personally, I don't like the idea of an antigravity invention, so you
probably ought to spend your time doing something more useful."_

I would have phrased it as: Some good ideas will be viciously hated by a
few/some/many, but it's still good if adored by some.

~~~
RogerL
Plenty of people like segregation, the death penalty, imprisonment for drug
use, _add your own absurdity or dislike here_.

Not trying to Godwin the thread, but really, like/dislikes are a _terrible_
measure of the value of an idea.

~~~
alister
If we were talking about "idea" in a totally general way, your point is fine.
(I'd add astrology to your list.)

But I, and I'm pretty sure that Scott Adams also, were talking about
_business_ ideas; i.e., are there any people willing to pay for this product
or service, and how badly do they need or desire it.

~~~
RogerL
My business idea is to collect your social data and sell it to the highest
bidder, in exchange for letting you play some free games.

Some people _love_ that. I personally cannot then conclude that the business
plan is 'good' (for what I consider a reasonable value of 'good' \- certainly
it will make me buckets of cash).

------
mixmastamyk
> Success caused passion more than passion caused success.

I found that interesting.

~~~
guynamedloren
It is interesting, but I completely disagree. At least in my own case. I've
worked on projects that I've not been passionate about ("This is gonna make me
super rich!"), and I always end up throwing in the towel and moving on.
Passion is what drives me to keep going when there's simply nothing else.

~~~
CamperBob2
Yeah, the problem is, no matter how good you are at doing something, there is
somebody somewhere who is just as good or maybe better at the same thing, and
he or she _likes_ it. That person will kick your ass if you follow Scott
Adams's advice.

(Advice that he apparently learned from an anonymous lending officer at a bank
that isn't around anymore:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocker_National_Bank](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocker_National_Bank))

~~~
ashutoshm
If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just
stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if
you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:

1\. Become the best at one specific thing. 2. Become very good (top 25%) at
two or more things. -Scott Adams
[http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-
advice.html)

------
aurelius83
I disagree. I think that you have to take ownership of your own career and
advancement. Until you reach a level, where you can really take ownership
within a company.

Employers these days will not raise your salary at market rate without you
jumping from company to company.

For example, person A stays at one company for 5 years and person B jumps from
company to company every 1 to 2 years. At the end of the 5 years, person B
will be making a lot more than person A.

~~~
vladimirralev
Depends on the employers. It would be really stupid not to keep the salaries
up to date. It's been said over and over again, it's taught in business
schools, hell you can even google a lucky "management tutorial" right now and
it's written there. Management should know this, this is their job. If the
employers are incompetent then, yes you should leave.

~~~
aryastark
reminds me of a person I know. She will cross the street and never look. She
almost got hit by a car one day. I stop her and tell her she needs to look
before crossing. She says "I have the right-of-way, if they hit me it's their
fault."

Yeah. I couldn't disagree. But I had to remind her that physics is the real
law of the land. Doesn't matter much who is at fault, if you're dead.

Point being, academic theory never matches reality.

~~~
vladimirralev
We don't disagree. My point is there are plenty of employers who will keep
your salary up to date. Of course if they fail to do so, you should leave and
move on to a higher salary. They are at fault, so they should take the loss
and redo their hiring experiments all over again. Simple as that.

------
tokenadult
Previous submission (no comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6537381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6537381)

~~~
erichocean
I wish that comments about previous submissions of the same article could be
added to the HN commenting guidelines as "noise", and to be avoided, unless
they were very far back, and actually contain useful comments.

Telling us it's been submitted previously, and with no comments (!), seems
like a particularly useless bit of information. Am I supposed to care? Click
over to it? Up vote it? Comment over there? Exactly how did you hope to enrich
the comment feed here by posting that?

~~~
tokenadult
Your question is fair. Here, noting that the article has been submitted before
is perhaps an illustration of the role of luck ("survivorship bias") in
attaining success. I appreciate such notices (and regularly upvote them, from
anybody) because I like a reality check on the feeling "Haven't I seen this
article before?"

~~~
erichocean
Alright. If people are getting value out of these public notices, keep 'em
coming. :)

------
pasbesoin
_What I learned from that experience is that there is no such thing as useful
information that comes from a company 's management. Now I diversify and let
the lying get smoothed out by all the other variables in my investments._

I've found that this can be as true for internal communication as external, at
least once it goes beyond the communication of immediate assignments and
expectations.

You know those "business unit", "segment", "all hands" and the like "state of
the business" meetings? Yeah, those.

Actually, sometimes those are not exactly zero content. The more they try to
convince you that something isn't, the more you may be inclined to assume that
it actually is.

------
herdrick
This is great. I just wish he hadn't stopped listing failures.

~~~
anishkothari
Agreed. This is a teaser for his upcoming book, I'm sure there are more
failures listed there. Here's another similarly-themed article[1] he wrote in
2011

[1]
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870410160457624...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704101604576247143383496656.html)

~~~
yskchu
Thanks for the share, great read; this alone deserves it's own HN submission.

------
mindcrime
_If you drill down on any success story, you always discover that luck was a
huge part of it. You can 't control luck, but you can move from a game with
bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it easier for luck to find you.
The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game. If your current get-rich
project fails, take what you learned and try something else. Keep repeating
until something lucky happens. The universe has plenty of luck to go around;
you just need to keep your hand raised until it's your turn. It helps to see
failure as a road and not a wall._

I think that says it all, vis-a-vis the "luck" thing. Well said, Mr. Adams.

------
triplesec
This is good advice... for _some_ people.For those who might make the mistakes
he's alluding to. Other people will have a different character where passion
is indeed what makes them make good decisions and succeed.

So, like all advice, this works for some of the people, some of the time. As
he said himself in the text: "Beware of advice about successful people and
their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike. "

~~~
larrys
I liked the article.

But the irony is that if he had written the exact same thing prior to
achieving success with Dilbert it would mean absolutely nothing to the masses
and hardly be taken seriously at all. But yet I'm sure he would admit that
Dilbert succeeding was total luck after so many "failures".

There are many people who are successful with many good things to say but
nobody would ever take anything they say seriously before that lucky event (by
that I mean on a wide scale basis I'm not saying that an individual might not
listen to another offering some good advice.)

~~~
erichocean
I think that's fair, though. There are enough people who are old enough alive
at any given time to have seen their system through to success or failure that
it makes reasonable sense to prefer their experience over people just starting
out.

As a basic filter, you could do worse.

------
dianeloviglio
Love reading stories about how people failed, it helps to know that everyone
has ups and downs. FailCon - a conference just focused on hearing failures
stories from successful startup founders is Oct 21st in SF and there are still
a few tickets: www.thefailcon.com - me and my co-producer, Cassie, started it
because we wanted to make talking about failure less taboo. I think it's
working. :)

------
pshin45
> _Dilbert started out as just one of many get-rich schemes I was willing to
> try. When it started to look as if it might be a success, my passion for
> cartooning increased because I realized it could be my golden ticket. In
> hindsight, it looks as if the projects that I was most passionate about were
> also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my
> success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success._

I'd argue that Scott Adams' argument about passion isn't telling the whole
story. I think Tom Kelley of IDEO said it best - He said to imagine a Venn
diagram with three circles (1) What you love, (2) What you're great at, and
(3) What makes money. Finding something that satisfies all three is ideal (but
probably unattainable for most), while Scott Adams seems to be arguing that
having (2) and (3) without (1) is the "best bet". Both are fair points, I
think.

------
danso
> _On the other hand, Dilbert started out as just one of many get-rich schemes
> I was willing to try. When it started to look as if it might be a success,
> my passion for cartooning increased because I realized it could be my golden
> ticket. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects that I was most passionate
> about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level
> moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused
> success._ > > _So forget about passion. And while you 're at it, forget
> about goals, too._

This is the generalized version of: "It's not the ideas, it's the execution".
And I have to say, I agree. It's not that ideas don't matter...but unless you
already have some amazing foundation of wealth or opportunity, you need a good
_process_ to get to the point where reaching your idea is feasible.

------
bradleysmith
This was a really good read.

I think his "have a system" is really better explained as keeping your goals
dynamic, like "make my repeating income grow" or "always look for a better
job." . I loved the piece, but was confused by the choice of "have a system"
like some other comments have pointed out.

I think this mindset is akin to Taleb's antifragile concept. If your goals are
always trying to better yourself in some way or another, than any random
events that cause your situation to get worse will increase your motivation to
succeed. benefit from randomness, good or bad.

------
aurelius83
What exactly does "system-oriented" mean? The article seems sort of
contradictory to me. On one hand he is saying having goals is for losers and
you need to be system-oriented instead, but on the other he is saying that his
goal was to make it rich and he just tried a bunch of stuff until he reached
that goal.

The example of the person constantly looking for a better job is also
confusing. Isn't the goal of that person to have a better job and he is just
repeating the same goal over and over?

~~~
Kurtz79
I don't see any contradiction.

Goal : Lose 10 pounds. System: Eat healthily and exercise every day, without
looking at the scale.

Goal : Find a better job (when you think you need it) System : Be always on
the lookout for a better job (even you are content with you current one)

------
Sam121
Get fan of you but still i will walk on my success path. i thing it is not
necessary to read article from other to become successful. yes we can take a
idea but every man have own dream ,own ideas and own work power. Steve not
read others idea,Same Gandhi didn't read other to be successful. They work own
their dreams with their idea and knowledge.So i want to sat stick with dreams
and take idea from that type articles but not implement all they say.

------
hortfort
This sounds like great advice, but seems to contradict his (past?) use of, to
quote him, "...something called affirmations, where you write your goals
daily." (see
[http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/dilbert_20/](http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/dilbert_20/))

Obviously his system oriented approach has room for overall goals, but the WSJ
article comes across as totally anti-goal.

------
sillysaurus2
YC, Hacker News, Arc, and PG's essays are all counterexamples to "success
causes passion." The passion came first.

~~~
SkyMarshal
YC not necessarily, PG pre-selects already highly successful people. They're
just not startup millionaires yet.

~~~
lgieron
Hghly successful people? Isn't he mostly targeting graduates?

~~~
SkyMarshal
Of top tier schools, or who have worked for top tier companies. Remember his
goal shifted recently from funding the best ideas to funding the best people
and then finding them a good idea.

~~~
lgieron
What I meant, I don't consider someone who just graduated from Standford
and/or worked for a few years at Google "highly successful". It means they're
capable and motivated, and that's probably what PG's selecting for.

~~~
SkyMarshal
We're using two different definitions of "highly successful". I'm comparing to
the populace at large, where getting into Harvard/Stanford/MIT or worked at
Google very much = highly successful.

I think you're probably using the metric, did they found a startup that hit a
billion dollar valuation, or something along those lines.

------
impart
"Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal." \- Earl
Nightingale

That's the definition I have adopted. Have a worthy ideal? Yes. Making
progress, even through setbacks? Yes. Therefore, I feel successful due to my
belief. The feeling of success attracts more of it. Win.

------
b1daly
Man, I could use some actionable advice about how to improve my lot right now,
but I can never seem to find it in such articles!

Scott Adams is also an edge case, in that he is a world class cartoonist.
Without that level of talent, I don't think his "systems" would work.

------
headgasket
"Let me start with some tips on what not to do. Beware of advice about
successful people and their methods. For starters, no two situations are
alike."

Is there a potential "mise en abyme" here? :-)

great article, best I've read is while though, cheers. F

------
plainOldText
While reading the part where he gets into details about passion, I felt like
the author uses "passion" as a substitute for "excitement".

For instance:

 _" I've been involved in several dozen business ventures over the course of
my life, and each one made me excited at the start. You might even call it
passion.

The ones that didn't work out—and that would be most of them—slowly drained my
passion as they failed."_

I believe passion just exists. It cannot be drained. You either have or you
don't. Now of course, you can discover it, after all you cannot be passionate
about things you haven't experienced, but once discovered I don't believe
passion can be lost. Granted though, "passion" and "enthusiasm" are synonyms,
so the distinction is slightly tricky.

------
jeffreyjflim
on passion vs grinding: don't you think that this guy is presenting a false
dichotomy here? Couldn't I (and I would!) lend to the guy who loves his job...
AND is prepared to work hard at it?

------
martincmartin

        If you're already as successful as you want to be, both personally and professionally, congratulations!
    

The secret to being that successful is to be happy with whatever you have.

------
moya
You might want to check out this talk by Bret Victor, "Inventing on
Principle": [http://vimeo.com/36579366](http://vimeo.com/36579366)

------
kgosser
Tell me again how this is different than Malcolm Gladwell? Same format, same
insight-porn result, yet this guy is heralded by you all and Gladwell is
eviscerated. Confusing, really.

------
tedmiston
As we think about success as habits vs. goals, a good app to consider in
practice is Lift [1], available for the web and iOS.

1: [http://lift.do](http://lift.do)

------
mogrim
A hundred years earlier: "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine
percent perspiration."

------
vxNsr
I was waiting for this to hit HN, it was basically written for this community.

(It was first published in the friday WSJ)

------
ffrryuu
he told me he was the CEO of a company that made screws. He offered me some
career advice. He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately
started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one
did when necessary. It was a continuing process.

------
Dirlewanger
I hate to be nitpicky, but the part about always looking for a better job is
horrible advice in terms of marketing yourself. It's pretty well-known that
bouncing around from job to job turns pretty much every employer off.

But then again, the type of person Adams is describing is more of an
entrepreneur type and not the typical desk jockey.

~~~
bluedino
I don't understand how people would stay at a low-paying or (what I see as)
non-fulfulling job for very long. Don't these people want to grow? Aren't the
curious as to what else is out there? Forget the chances for more pay,
benefits, etc.

~~~
draugadrotten
> I don't understand how people would stay at a low-paying or (what I see as)
> non-fulfulling job for very long. Don't these people want to grow?

A lot of people see work as a necessary evil to support their real life, away
from work. They want to grow, too, but perhaps they prefer a mountain hike or
going to soccer training with their daughter instead of reading the release
notes for the next OS X.

You should try it.

~~~
bluedino
I don't know where you're coming from but you're missing the point.

Why stay at SuperBurger forever when MegaBurger opens up or you could even
move up to making burgers at the fancy sit-down place down the road? You're
not affecting father-daughter time since you're not at home working on burgers
with all your free time or going to burger conferences instead of having
daddy-daughter time.

~~~
rafcavallaro
Point is, the more fulfilling job often requires much longer hours which
certainly do cut into parent-child time. Remember, when highly successful
people are asked "if you had it to do over, what would you do differently?"
one of the most frequent answers is "spend more time with my children."

~~~
erichocean
And then there's the reverse: unsuccessful people, who spent mountains of time
with their children, friends, and family, say "I wish I'd taken more risks."

Statistically-speaking, that is _by far_ the most common response, because
most people are not "highly successful people".

------
goggles99
_Forget passion. Goals are for losers._

Imagine if Steve Jobs followed this path. Imaging if everyone did. Does
financial success while doing something arduous for 40 years make for
happiness? This seems counter intuitive.

We would have no innovation if there was no passion. We wouldn't even have
electricity...

