
Why most people dream and only some do: The Go-Getter theory - wallflower
http://www.davykestens.be/self-improvement/why-most-people-dream-and-only-some-do-the-go-getter-theory
======
fennecfoxen
Not that this is a bad theory, but do consider: Some people may come to
realize that their ambitions and what actually makes them happy don't actually
coincide. It's one thing to be a go-getter, and it's another to be content.
You can go out and go get and make millions at business, but the money alone
isn't your friend, won't keep you warm at night, can't hold an intellectually
stimulating conversation... to say nothing of the sacrifices one makes for the
happiness and security of family and children.

So go out and go get if you'd like, but don't go and judge everyone who
hasn't. Maybe the factory pays well enough, the boredom is manageable, and the
guy's got friends and family and is happy. There's nothing fundamentally wrong
with that.

~~~
AVTizzle
Absolutely agree. Like many HNers I'm sure, I'm guilty of overblown ambitions,
both with startups and with life (I get off on big ideas, love the pull of big
cities, love the idea of living a worldly life, etc...)

I sat down with my cousin (buddhist) for breakfast when I was visiting him a
few weeks ago. He works hard, went through medical school near home, and works
at a practice near home. He's married now with 2 awesome kids, a lovely wife,
and the four of them spend 5-6 days a week with our grandparents in San Jose.
Just a super simple, super family-focused lifestyle.

It's something I've mulled over a couple times since then. It always makes me
wonder: that's a great fucking life. Why aren't I attracted to living like
that too? Am I better off for my ambitions?

~~~
carguy1983
Your cousin is a successful MD in the SF Bay area with a family, what planet
do you live on where this is considered non-high-achieving/non-ambitious?

He's basically at the apex of society's status pyramid, that's why he doesn't
give a fuck about any of the frivolous crap so many people chase around - he's
already achieved his dream and he is probably the envy of many.

~~~
AVTizzle
Hah. You make a good point. And if your question wasn't hypothetical, my
satirical answer would be that I live in New York City - a place with
sometimes laughably high standards for achievement and ambition.

And I mostly agree with you. He is probably the envy of many. Achievement?
Sure. But ambition? I thought for a while about how to best explain my whole
sentiment on this idea, and my mind kept coming back to an excerpt from PG's
"Cities and Ambition", where he lists common areas of ambition:

 _"So far the complete list of messages I've picked up from cities is: wealth,
style, hipness, physical attractiveness, fame, political power, economic
power, intelligence, social class, and quality of life."_

It's those kinds of things that I realized my cousin didn't give two shits
about. And I admit, there's more than a couple things on that list that I've
realized are root desires driving my ambition. Frivolous? Definitely. And I
guess that's the basis for my aforementioned wonderings.

~~~
carguy1983
You aren't thinking this through. A doctor with a successful career is
basically one or two steps away from extremely high levels of
success/achievement.

Think of medical device patents, positions of power on medical associations,
university positions, etc.

Many people achieve this sort of thing later in life, not during their 20s
like some kind of internet media darling. A lot of people actually have kids
and do the family BEFORE seeking their large-scale success. This is actually
what _most_ people do.

------
ekianjo
Another article trying to generalize the concept of success... Not much worth
reading there. The argument is those who apply the 80/20 rule are more
successful entrepreneurs or doers in general. Perfectionism is an obstacle. As
we say in french, "le mieux est l'ennemi du bien". Yeah, well, you can find
thousands of counter-examples to that kind of principle. No one would ever
have launched a rocket if they were not perfectionist at heart in the first
place. You would not have thousands of products with almost no defects in your
supermarket if there was no thorough QA system in place in every industry.
Heck, you would probably be scared to fly a plane if the safety records were
only 80/20 good enough.

Simple theories about life are elegant, but this one is simplistic at best. I
think it really depends on your line of work.

~~~
goblin89
In your example, plane safety has nothing to do with perfectionism of a person
who runs the airline, it's simply the essential thing: no safety—not enough
people flying to keep business profitable.

I agree that for a person who designs plane safety systems or performs QA,
perfectionism _might_ be a good quality. However, OP is talking about
entrepreneurs, who don't normally design safety systems or perform QA.
Entrepreneurs decide which things are necessary for a product to be “80/20
good enough”, but it doesn't necessarily mean that each of those things is of
80/20 quality itself. Now this is, actually, a bit simplistic.

Personally I tend to agree with the author, although the word “theory” may not
belong to the headline. My observations mostly match his, and it's
disappointing to frequently see cases when people with big potential just
_don't do things_ they (supposedly) love. Well, maybe they just have different
definition of “love” and “passion”.

(Forgot to add: Also, I don't think perfectionism is the only or the primary
point of the article, it's more about _doing_ and being passionate.)

~~~
ekianjo
Well, if you take the example of video games entrepreneurs, the market expects
you to be as good as the rest and you cannot just be "good enough". No matter
if you're an indie game developer with few resources. You product needs to be
polished to the very last bit.

The OP's point is mostly relevant when you are talking about new services, new
ideas, new concepts which have never, ever been explored. True innovations. In
such cases, you effectively have an advantage to rush it first on the market,
and worry about the polish later. Unfortunately, such ideas are very rare, and
following the author's advice will results in releasing half-baked not-so-cool
products and then move to the next thing, because one feels it's "good
enough".

There were tons of people in the past who thought their new products were
"good enough" and failed miserably in the market, even among entrepreneurs.
Because a lot of people have the same ideas at the same time, quality WILL
inevitably make a difference.

The problem with the OP's post is that he provides no examples to demonstrate
how good is his theory. Because it's just that. A theory, with no living
examples of it.

Being perfectionist is not about getting to the perfect product. It's about
trying your *ss off to create such a good one that everyone will say "Wow!".

~~~
ThomPete
And yet the team from Duke Nukem proves that you can in fact be too
perfectionist.

~~~
ekianjo
Well, a team that does not even deliver a product cannot be called
perfectionist. That's just procrastination. They only managed to deliver once
being bought over by Gearbox and given additional resources and time to just
ship the unfinished game. The end product speaks for itself : obviously noone
was satisfied with it, not even the ones who made it.

------
fusiongyro
I feel like I've been reading a copy of this article every six months for the
past ten years or so.

The problem with this article and its spiritual predecessors is essentially
that the author never read _Fooled by Randomness_. He's a successful
20-something; right now, his successes and others' failures look intentional
to him, like the natural result of hard work, talent or enthusiasm (or lack
thereof). Where's he going to be in ten years? Writing those other articles we
see every six months, provisionally entitled "how I screwed up and lost
everything." Of course, when that happens he'll probably blame his big setback
(and others' successes) on randomness rather than on a lack of hard work,
talent or enthusiasm.

~~~
invalidOrTaken
I'm a fairly big screw-up. Is there anyone interested in a blog post on how I
got where I am?

Asking for upvotes to indicate interest seems distasteful, so feel free to
comment here or email me (profile).

~~~
fusiongyro
Why not? It's bound to be interesting.

------
kenjackson
Not really sure I agree with the article. Most of the top entreprnrs I
know/heard of did rather well at school. While some may drop out, they didn't
drop out as 2.0 students, but rather generally bright and recognized students
who could have proceeded academically if so inclined (think Gates, Zuckerberg,
Brin, Page, Yang, Filo, etc...).

The perfectionism makes some sense, but seems at odds with the current
infatuation with Jobs. Jobs couldn't find the right beige from a set of 200
and had to design a new beige. He seemed like the ultimate perfectionist --
sometimes. I think maybe the point is better made that there are times to be a
perfectionist and times not to be. I think the hard part is figuring out when
those times are.

~~~
vladd
Jobs delivered. His company Apple delivered a new version every year. That
always was his trump card, perfectionism came within these bounds.

When FaceTime was the only feature he liked, he dropped everything else and
announced on stage that it is the only main thing that they've added (and then
went on about how cool it is). There's a video on the net [1] showing him as
NeXT CEO and even then he talked about the time they've got to make it work
and how they can fit into it.

[1] [http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/11/20/watch-steve-
jobs...](http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/11/20/watch-steve-jobs-
brainstorm-with-the-next-team-in-this-fascinating-video/)

~~~
ilaksh
It sounds like its about prioritization and selection of tasks as much as it
is about knowing when to stop improving things.

This gets into what (should be) basic project management knowledge. There is
only a certain amount of scope and level of quality that is possible given a
fixed set of resources and time.

I think a lot of groups try to do too many different things perfectly and
spread themselves too thin, ultimately sacrificing quality and letting
deadlines slip. They should be putting extra time and effort into the most
important things, leaving off of other problems when the solutions are good
enough, and dropping or deferring some unimportant tasks.

------
brico
I can't stand the "good enough" crowd, I hate it when people aim for
mediocrity.

It takes the same amount of time and energy to go from zero to "OK" as from
"OK" to "good". From "good" to "very good" is even harder. So a lot of people
(I see this a lot with artists, I'm sure it's the same with startups) stop at
"OK", then see how hard it is to stand out from the crowd and how much more
effort it takes and hope to being discovered (=someone doing the work and
taking them to the next level and making them rich) And then they start
whining because everybody tells them how talented they are.

------
Hyena
Life is easier when everyone else is a failed version of yourself, amirite?

------
csallen
Like a few others, I disagree with his point about perfectionism being a bad
quality. I suppose this may just come down to semantics (the definition of
perfectionism), but I don't think being a perfectionist necessarily means that
one is incapable of deciding when to release and move on.

I've been a perfectionist my entire life. In elementary school, I used to do
all my work in pen. It felt neater and more permanent. When I was forced to
use pencil, I would throw away entire sheets of paper rather than erase and
leave a smudge. In high school, my latin teacher called me "Mr. P", short for
"Mr. Perfection." He'd hold up my quizzes for the class to see, and laugh at
how I used a ruler to perfectly frame the declension tables I'd drawn, and how
I'd used my pencil to lightly shade the background of the title row.

Excessive? Yes. But I've learned to reign it in and use it to my advantage.

A huge percentage of the success of any creative endeavor (whether it's
painting, programming, song-writing, whatever) boils down to how much effort
its creator put into it. Often, the only difference between a good creator and
a great one is the amount of time they spend striving for perfection. If your
goal is greatness, a tendency to say "good enough" prematurely can be
disastrous. No, give me a pupil with an eye for perfection and the
perseverance to achieve it, prioritization skills be damned. I can _teach_ him
to prioritize.

A pragmatic perfectionist is a force to be reckoned with.

~~~
wccrawford
I used to use 'perfectionist' as my bad trait in interviews. (Apparently a lot
of people try this, though. I didn't know that.)

And I actually think it _is_ bad, if left unchecked. But I also think that
laziness is the same way. Unchecked, it's horrible. Kept in check, it makes
sure you do the minimum work needed to get something done.

Combine the 2 traits and you get things done properly with the minimum work
needed.

So maybe there aren't any bad traits, only traits that aren't being kept in
check?

------
bhoung
<http://www.davykestens.be/self-improvement/why-im-an-asshole>

His followup post is interesting also. After receiving hate-mail for putting
down 9 to 5'ers, he explains that he is jealous...

------
petermcd
I love the phrase, "Better done than done better." It's suitable for many
situations in life.

In the last few months, I've been running my life off a weekly task list that
includes both my personal and business tasks and objectives. I build the task
list each Monday morning based on goals I set out at the beginning of the year
(such as improve my Chinese, for a personal goal, or get software license
signed, as a business goal.) This has definitely pushed me to complete many
tasks that could have easily just not gotten done.

That said, I think he paints a binary picture of people who are either go-
getters who act now to achieve their goals vs. dreamers who never get anything
done. In my experience, these are two ends of a spectrum, where it's important
to move back-and-forth between each end to achieve goals and objectives.

By the way, he has a wonderful point about "The Go-Getter loves what he does
(and delegates the rest)" I am way too guilty of doing it all myself, when I
should instead spend a little bit of money to have other people do things for
me that are not key to what I want.

------
wccrawford
I think the 'passion' bit is wrong. It's no needed, and it's not always
helpful.

Go to any game dev forum and you'll find a ton of passionate posts by people
who have designed a game but don't have any skills and can't make it. Except
for a few of them, they aren't funneling that passion into anything that gets
the job done. They're just begging other people to do it for them.

------
meric
I disagree with the point about perfectionism being a bad "quality". Of course
its definitely not a good idea to make _everything_ perfect; A craftsman might
strive to make a perfect wooden closet but not when cooking the food he eats
while he is making the closet.

Here's two points I can _really_ relate to:

    
    
        - Don't waste effort on something that isn't important.
        - Focus on the next task, as in, execute in the best way possible.
    

They seem contradictory, but really this next point can resolve it:

    
    
        - Don't do anything unimportant.
    

In 2007 I really wanted to study a Software Engineering and Commerce degree
and the degree had a UAI requirement of 94.45.

I graduated high school that year with a UAI of 94.55.

(UAI stands for University Admission Index and was used in one of the states
in Australia.)

------
Swizec
So you're a go-getter type of person, you wake up every morning destined to
make life do exactly what you want it to.

What happens when you're trapped by your own choices because they were the
most logical choice to make? You feel every day like you're letting yourself
down, even though you are doing the exact opposite and should be proud of
yourself for sticking with it?

That's the situation I'm in - decided to finish school because I've only got a
semester and a thesis to go. And it's making me miserable, every couple of
days I get a cool idea I want to pursue, but de facto goes into the "not now"
bin.

~~~
vladd
You'll also have a cool idea every couple of days when you become an
entrepreneur. Being able to focus on what's needed now until you reach the
"good enough" stage is a great skill, and many fail simply because they don't
have the focus to go in the same direction for more than a few weeks. Look at
it as training for what's to come.

~~~
Swizec
To be honest, it felt much better when I was letting school fall by the
wayside a bit and focused more on a startup. Of course when that failed, it
made more sense to finish up school than dive head-first into the next
startup.

Still, I know in my brain this was the right decision, but I don't _feel_ it.

------
cowkingdeluxe
I think this theory points out some good things but you're still going to need
a good work ethic to do anything.

People who've made a 2.0 their entire life might not have the greatest work
ethic compared to 4.0ers.

~~~
djcapelis
> People who've made a 2.0 their entire life might not have the greatest work
> ethic compared to 4.0ers.

People who mind numbingly grind away at getting a 4.0 in today's education
system might not have the greatest amount of sense compared to some of the
2.0ers.

Look, usually your average 2.0 student isn't going to be better than your
average 4.0 student and everything will fit the model as expected. But, we're
not talking about the general person in the group, we're talking about the
outliers. They're not just clustered at the 4.0 end, they're kinda all over.
There's going to be those rare times when a 2.0 student will smoke the hell
out of a 4.0 person who won't even know what hit them because they're not
realizing that the 2.0 student is playing an entirely different game than the
4.0 student and the 4.0 student may not have even noticed the other game
exists.

------
jakeonthemove
"Good enough" is not good enough - you need to do better than the average. If
you make something good enough, you'll spend more time fixing s __t later.
Paying more attention to details now means you won't have to worry about them
later. At least that's what I found to be true... but yeah, breaking
everything down into small steps and working on them now is better than
dreaming about the big end...

------
iamabrony
I actually didn't read this, I just read the bold text, I think I have a
pretty good idea what the author was trying to communicate.

Sounds a bit like "getting things done". Anyway, it strikes me that there are
2 components to "accomplishing things". The first is the reason, which comes
out as passion. But where does it come from? Nobody talks about that. For me
it is religion. I think there has to be some preposterous irrational belief
that ties down all of that motivation. Nothing sane could support the
motivation of an ambitious person. Second is the how. And that can be studied
scientifically.

