Successful people
Rands (www.randsinrepose.com) spoke at ACM Reflections|Projections last year, and it was a fantastic talk. He's a project manager at a rather large, well-known software company. His most recent blog post is entitled "Hurry", and deals with ideas and success. Read it here (it's short): http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/10/02/hurry.html
It reminded me of one of the most motivational ideas that ever hit me: the idea that successful people are no different than everyone else. The ongoing impression is that these people are smarter or have some sort of innate "killer instinct". I don't think this is true. Since I've been in school, I've met several people who have been either mildly or wildly successful. Each time this happened, they were utterly normal. There were a few differences that I noticed, but these were differences not in talent or intelligence, but in attitude. These were people who talked about ideas, not about stuff or other people (unless they related to ideas). It's a well-uttered fact that success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, but it's hard to internalize this and believe it. It's true though, I think. Unfortunately, I have yet to experience wild success in this capacity, but seed funding groups like YCombinator routinely find lots of success by choosing who to invest in based upon that PERSON, sometimes more so than the actual IDEA. They judge these things based upon how passionate the applicant is and their attitudes. They've discovered (so far) that this is the best way to successful investment. The money doesn't lie. Once you discover that successful people mostly don't have any intellectual or innate edge over you, there are no longer any excuses to not follow your dream. It's sometimes easier to ask forgiveness than permission, so go for it. Deal with things as they come instead of trying to plan everything. It's the journey that matters, not the destination. But every once in awhile, the destination will be simply fantastic.
