Sorry, but this is the dumbest blog post I've read in a while. I'm not even sure why he even bothered posting this. Is it really to say "Hard work is never enough if you want to be the top person in the world at something"? Did he just recently come to the conclusion that he has been "lied" to in that hard work isn't enough some times, and that luck and natural advantage could somehow trump everything else?
Of course not everyone can become an Olympic athlete just by trying. And of course not everyone will be the next Steve Jobs or Zuckerberg no matter how hard they try, either. That's not the point.
The point is that most people don't even bother trying, and if you try, if you even just show up on a regular basis, you can probably reach above the 50th percentile in anything.
I would bet that almost anyone who puts a concerted effort into any endeavor could get to the top 25th percentile in just about anything. Hard work and hustle can bridge a lot of gap that natural ability and luck may create.
But if he is somehow just now coming to some epiphany that hard work can't trump luck and/or natural advantage (either thru ability or status), then my answer is: "Welcome to the real world." You need to temper any goals you have with maturity and realism. I'm a terrible basketball player, but I'm sure if I spent 1hr/day every day playing pickup for 1 year, by the end of a year, I'll be better than at least half of the regulars. But if my expectations are that I'll be able to dunk and beat Michael Jordan, I'd be delusional.
You haven’t actually criticized any particular point of this article only stated how obvious it is and how other stuff is more important. OK, it may be obvious to you but this might be quite enlightening to other people especially those who have been fed on the kind of self-help bullshit the author is debunking. A lot of people are into that, sadly, and not smart enough--or perhaps too desperate--to understand why it is bullshit. If it’s so beyond you then just move on. If you want to enlighten us do it without making slurs against other people less fortunate than yourself.
>You need to temper any goals you have with maturity and realism. I'm a terrible basketball player, but I'm sure if I spent 1hr/day every day playing pickup for 1 year, by the end of a year, I'll be better than at least half of the regulars. But if my expectations are that I'll be able to dunk and beat Michael Jordan, I'd be delusional.
I believe that's the point of the article. If you do your hardest, but still fail to beat Michael Jordan in a dunking contest, it's not because you were too lazy. It's not because you didn't try hard enough. It sure as hell isn't because you didn't bother trying.
It's just that you simply weren't lucky enough to possess some of the natural advantages Michael Jordan had. And it's important not to lose sight of that fact.
In winner-takes-all games, being even in the top 99th percentile is worse than useless.
To use your own example, true you might get better than half the regulars in basketball if you spent 1 hr a day at it, but you'd make exactly $0 being in the top 50th percentile of basketball players. You would be far better off if you had spent that 1 hr/day for a year on improving your coding skills further.
First, I think the blog post is grasping at something important which is that we have this "just do it" mentality which has some obvious deficiencies. However I still agree with you. I think one has to start with reasonable limits and accept that no matter how good you are there will always at least sometimes be someone better than you. That's not a problem though. The difficulty is in forming a way of thinking about the world that allows us to become extraordinary.
One major deficiency in the blog post is that it emphasizes natural advantages too much. One major pitfall there is that emphasizing natural advantages over effort means that success becomes more like an innate trait rather than the product of a lot of effort at improvement. Natural advantages do exist, but improvement is the key still and this takes effort.
My view is very different, abstract, and metaphorical. I think that a person's attitude should be seen like an aviator's attitude (if you don't get the reference, see http://www.marvgolden.com/bad-attitude-t-shirt.html). It's not how you react. It's your direction and where you are headed. The "bad attitude" T-shirt is funny because the bad attitude is flying at a bad angle towards the ground.
Another way to look at it is to borrow the old person-as-chariot metaphor found both in Plato and the Mahabharata, and update it for the times: I am the charioteer. My body is the chariot. My emotions are the horses. My thoughts are the reins. But, I am the charioteer.
One can also borrow the person-as-tree metaphor found in Greek and Norse myth. Grow like a tree and be not afraid of shadows: become grounded in the darkness of the earth below and then reach up towards the light above.
The nice thing about these metaphors is that they can be repurposed as needed, but doing that right depends on "attitude."
I can't quite make out the picture in your link, but if it is the same shirt that I had years ago, the plane is upside-down, headed for the ground, and in a flat spin. As my uncle said, "it certainly is a bad attitude."
"You can't win the lottery if you never buy a ticket." Doesn't mater how hard you work at predicting the winning numbers, if you didn't play those numbers, you don't win.
Of course not everyone can become an Olympic athlete just by trying. And of course not everyone will be the next Steve Jobs or Zuckerberg no matter how hard they try, either. That's not the point.
The point is that most people don't even bother trying, and if you try, if you even just show up on a regular basis, you can probably reach above the 50th percentile in anything.
I would bet that almost anyone who puts a concerted effort into any endeavor could get to the top 25th percentile in just about anything. Hard work and hustle can bridge a lot of gap that natural ability and luck may create.
But if he is somehow just now coming to some epiphany that hard work can't trump luck and/or natural advantage (either thru ability or status), then my answer is: "Welcome to the real world." You need to temper any goals you have with maturity and realism. I'm a terrible basketball player, but I'm sure if I spent 1hr/day every day playing pickup for 1 year, by the end of a year, I'll be better than at least half of the regulars. But if my expectations are that I'll be able to dunk and beat Michael Jordan, I'd be delusional.