> “17. Self praise stinks! From my mother when I did my touchdown dance after building something. Great advice (although I still dance once in a while when something works the first time. Sometimes I just can't help myself.)”
In contrast, in the book Tiny Habits by Stanford psychology professor BJ Fogg, self-praise is actually described as critical for making new habits and behaviour change stick, as it allows for positive reinforcement [1]. Anecdotally, I’ve observed friends who never celebrate major positive improvements in their life, and they seem to have depressive symptoms.
Though on the other hand, it’s quite possible that people view self-congratulatory celebratory gestures as negative. Perhaps it’s good to celebrate your achievements, but mostly in private or just with close friends to avoid attracting competition or challenge from others (I wish it was less risky to celebrate in public or among coworkers, but in practice, not everyone is celebratory of others’ success).
[1] More context from Fogg about why he thinks celebrating minor successes is important: https://ideas.ted.com/how-you-can-use-the-power-of-celebrati...
Personally I am very surprised you think some of these held up: pos mental attitude, writing things down, value of mba, and - most especially - almost anyone can do anything.
OK then please allow me to give you a recent example of ALL 4 OF THESE that made my (Fortune 50) employer hundreds of millions of dollars in real profits...
I built specialized supply chain software that did what nothing else (including SAP and JDA) could do. It supported 10,000 daily orders in 240 warehouses.
Our Big 4 Accounting Idiots spent 9 months and $2 million to conclude that it could not be done. I knew better because my users knew better. (I had already earned my own worthless MBA and had worked as an employee for the same Big 4 firm years prior and knew their weaknesses, which were not hard to spot.)
3 different divisions could not agree on anything. I just pulled them together in the same room at corporate headquarters until they got to know each other and hammered out a good design.
I built the prototype in 6 weeks because I knew I could. I got buy-in from the people that mattered because it's what they wanted in the first place.
12 offshore programmers built production ready software in less than a year. Everyone else had given up on them and their giant firm because of previous failures but I knew better. I never met any of them, in person or online (because of the time zone difference). Everything was written down. That's the only way this could have been done.
The 20 items I presented in my original post are solid gold. Not because of me. But because I learned from brilliant mentors.
Personally I am very surprised that you are are very surprised. The tech only takes us so far. I was lucky to have mentors who taught me the soft stuff too. Their advice changed my life much more than any tech advice.
Hope this helps. :-)
"If you think you can't do something, you can't." Is another way I've heard the same thought expressed. Maybe even more semantically respectable would be "Almost everyone who decides they can't do something, is wrong."
The native american expression is one I like a lot: "If you don't know how to do something, that's because you don't want it enough."
(1) grinding is a particular type of experience that deserves explanation. It is not merely working at something- it is the subjective personal experience of the work. I can code for an hour and be psychologically rejuvenated by it and my cousin could feel like she was in a prison for months. You will never grind your way to a satisfactory life; grinding is a symptom that you need to change the “soil” and that the “want” you have was memed into you and is unsuitable for you.
Otherwise, I think we are agreeing, neither I nor the guy I'm in effect defending think that soils (privilege, fer instance) don't matter, or that humans aren't unequal. Four-year-old blocking not equal to 24-year-old blocking. I think I covered that. There are sometimes advantages in not being fully literal, which is lucky because language cannot but be vague (it's just a matter of degree.) Hence the tradeoffs, impressing the message firmly matters because the temptation to give ourselves excuses is difficult to fully elide.
Some one once told me another version of your No. 3 - "A pocket full of thankyous is nice, but won't pay your bills".
On No. 17, I think it's important to get a little fist pump in sometimes. It make's up for the other days when I call myself an idiot for silly mistakes!
And on going with your gut, I do this much more these days. Unfortunately I don't get to find out if I was right on the oppotunities I let go.
I'm too lazy to write a blog post about this at the moment, so here's a quickie reply: