I don't think it is bad to try to make money doing what you want, but I do think it is unhealthy and antisocial to define success in life as only doing what you want at all times.
To compare it to your basketball analogy, it is fine to pursue becoming the best basketball player of all time, but if you think you have failed if you don't achieve it is not good.
They could be saying "by the metrics and values of this thing I'm criticizing, I'm successful by not doing that."
Also, financial success is on-topic here, as this forum originated for Silicon Valley bros seeking wealth. In past lives, we were "greed is good" Wall Street bros. I'm sure some percentage of our earlier counterparts started out really loving spreadsheets, before the schemes.
The problem with this reasoning is that it assumes “financial success” is the one and only form of success. A common mentality, indeed so common that to even suggest that you are okay with being financially unsuccessful (if it means you can achieve some other form of success) is usually met with blank stares.
Picasso didn’t become a world-class painter without decades of practice. Stanley Kubrick didn’t become a world-class filmmaker without decades of practice. Ditto for basically every artist, filmmaker, philosopher, craftsman, architect in history.
Maybe quality isn’t important when you’re running a project management SAAS, but if your chosen skill requires time and effort to master it, you will have to put in a lot of hard work.
Success as a synonym for making money always felt like a hijacking of the word to me. Good life outcomes and slaving to get rich are different things. Being intense about your own thing is yet a third idea, frequently associated with sacrifice of financial security (eg pursuit of the arts or non moneyed academia fields)
Being "successful" also means, at least for me, having a clear conscience.
I don't want to do business with people who will do whatever it takes to make a profit. Life is not a zero-sum game. Even if it were, there are limits to what a gentleman should and shouldn't do and Carnegie did a lot of the latter in his pre-philanthropist life.
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.
Heh. To me, it indicates that success is a function of something other than self-control and determination (ie largely luck, circumstance and nepotism).
article seems to just focus on the idea of wealth or making money (more likely on fire). doesn't account for what success is defined as or what people want in their life other than money. eg. lots of people rather be their own boss than be a corporate drone.
Unless for the OP, it truly is about the money. I know plenty of driven people that use that (money) as their only motivational force. As an opinion I disagree with that definition of success - though it is an opinion and I have been told many times that mine was 'wrong'.
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."
Which should be the #1 comment for this article that's based on the currently popular of guilt, and pride in feeling guilty.
We build on own success - each one of us. Being successful is not making a debt to someone - and even more so to society. And being successful is sexy!
You got at least my mod point, and hopefully more will come, but IMHO we should be very worried that such misconceptions are getting so popular :-(
That does appear to be frowned on today.
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