Yeah exactly, that's part of what I'm getting at. The post I replied to sounds wise because it appeals to negative stereotypes about successful people while giving non-successful people a way to feel superior about their non-success. The truth is a lot of successful people are nice, have good people skills, are generous etc.
Are you reacting to the blog post, or something else? I didn't see any anti-success rhetoric, only anti-monopoly rhetoric. But for the record, success isn't sacred, especially if people succeed at something that sucks. I'd be decidedly anti-success where genocidal dictators were concerned, for example. I'd be explicitly against their ambition, their drive, and their personal fulfillment and growth journeys, sorry.
stating as some kind of law that unless you work obsessively all the time you can not succeed is rather simplistic for something as vague and at the same time as complex as "success"
Did I do that? It seems to me that what I said was:
"you'll find many if not most are by ordinary people's standards excessively dedicated to their work."
I don't think it's that bad. Most of the successful people I've meant were actually brilliant and deserved their success. There are exceptions of course.
I actually intended to write a blog post about having a more expansive concept of success than just career success; but I found that I had so much to say about career success specifically, that I didn't bother to write anything about other aspects of success. I certainly agree with you that success is more than just what happens at work! There are relationships, creative projects, community involvement, and so on.
I don't have misplaced angst against managers or salespeople, and I respect people who are good at those things. I simply wanted to call attention to other kinds of success.
The original argument was about business success, and that's what my original comment was mostly about. But the reply to my original comment that I was replying to here, seemed to be taking the argument toward the general success of our species, and that's what I was responding to (although I did note even within that context how it related to business success).
Their point isn't that success is impossible. It's that "If you work hard you will succeed." is a fairy tale and that it's irresponsible to assert otherwise.
There appears to be an implicit assumption in many of these comments that success is measured solely by career progress. The vibe seems to be something like: "How can I successfully compete with these folks who do nothing but work?"
The truth is, maybe you shouldn't try. Clayton Christensen, author of the mega-influential book, "The Innovator's Dilemma," wrote another book that addresses this issue called, "How Will You Measure Your Life?" In it, he recounts how none of his bright, talented, and good-natured classmates from Harvard Business School graduated with plans to get divorced, become ostracized from their children, and end up in prison. Yet some of them did.
He claims that it's easy to optimize for career success because it's straightforward to measure, whereas success in relationships and raising children is only apparent after many years of hard work.
Ultimately, the book encourages its readers to determine their own definition for success and build a strategy to achieve it. If your definition of success includes a certain minimum level of career accomplishment, but also strong, happy relationships, and satisfaction from meaningful volunteer work, then you should not optimize solely for career accomplishment. And perhaps you shouldn't feel weighed-down by the need to compete with exclusively-career-focused individuals.
Quote from interview with Clayton Christensen putting this advice into practice:
"Most people have never thought through how they're going to allocate their time. You need to make a decision in advance. I never work on Saturday. I don’t ever work on Sunday either. If you make that decision on a macro level once, when all the incremental decisions arise on an incremental basis, life is easier."
http://www.businessinsider.com/clay-christensen-how-will-you...
reply