The Anatomy of Determination

Written on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 by Siddharth PV

Some excerpts from a really thought provoking essay by Paul Graham.
--
Excuse: He did well because he's talented...
But while it certainly helps to be smart, it's not the deciding factor. There are plenty of people as smart as Bill Gates who achieve nothing.
In most domains, talent is overrated compared to determination—partly because it makes a better story, partly because it gives onlookers an excuse for being lazy, and partly because after a while determination starts to look like talent.

--
The Elements of Determination
Wilfulness:
"When you want something, you must have it, no matter what."
* A good deal of willfulness must be inborn. Circumstances can alter it, but at the high end of the scale, nature seems to be more important than nurture.
* Bad circumstances can break the spirit of a strong-willed person, but I don't think there's much you can do to make a weak-willed person stronger-willed.
* Willfulness clearly has two subcomponents, stubbornness and energy. The first alone yields someone who's stubbornly inert. The second alone yields someone flighty. As willful people get older or otherwise lose their energy, they tend to become merely stubborn.

Discipline:
* Determination implies your willfulness is balanced by discipline.
* The more willful you are, the more disciplined you have to be. The stronger your will, the less anyone will be able to argue with you except yourself. And someone has to argue with you, because everyone has base impulses, and if you have more will than discipline you'll just give into them and end up on a local maximum like drug addiction.
* The more willful you are, the more dangerous it is to be undisciplined.
* If you're sufficiently determined to achieve great things, this will probably increase the number of temptations around you. Unless you become proportionally more disciplined, willfulness will then get the upper hand, and your achievement will revert to the mean.

Ambition:
* Willfulness and discipline are what get you to your destination, ambition is how you choose it.
* Most people don't know how ambitious to be, especially when they're young.
* Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they'd get from ambitious peers, whatever their age.
... (which means, a man is truly defined by the company he keeps)

Summary:
Determination = willfulness balanced with discipline, aimed by ambition
And fortunately at least two of these three qualities can be cultivated. You may be able to increase your strength of will somewhat; you can definitely learn self-discipline; and almost everyone is practically malnourished when it comes to ambition (so you should always be on the lookout for ambitous people).
--
Practical application to daily work life:
Most types of work have aspects one doesn't like, because most types of work consist of doing things for other people, and it's very unlikely that the tasks imposed by their needs will happen to align exactly with what you want to do.
Indeed, if you want to create the most wealth, the way to do it is to focus more on their needs than your interests, and make up the difference with determination.

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2 Comments

  1. Vinit | September 19, 2009 at 4:27 PM

    I'd like to add a point in that Paul Graham is a guy who funds start-ups.......which means he speaks from experience and not just plain theory!

     
  2. Siddharth PV | September 19, 2009 at 4:59 PM

    Very true. And what is better is, being a technologist himself, he analyses all his experiences with the clinical attitude characteristic of a scientist. Makes his arguments all the more logical and easy to believe.

     

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The Anatomy of Determination

Some excerpts from a really thought provoking essay by Paul Graham.
--
Excuse: He did well because he's talented...
But while it certainly helps to be smart, it's not the deciding factor. There are plenty of people as smart as Bill Gates who achieve nothing.
In most domains, talent is overrated compared to determination—partly because it makes a better story, partly because it gives onlookers an excuse for being lazy, and partly because after a while determination starts to look like talent.

--
The Elements of Determination
Wilfulness:
"When you want something, you must have it, no matter what."
* A good deal of willfulness must be inborn. Circumstances can alter it, but at the high end of the scale, nature seems to be more important than nurture.
* Bad circumstances can break the spirit of a strong-willed person, but I don't think there's much you can do to make a weak-willed person stronger-willed.
* Willfulness clearly has two subcomponents, stubbornness and energy. The first alone yields someone who's stubbornly inert. The second alone yields someone flighty. As willful people get older or otherwise lose their energy, they tend to become merely stubborn.

Discipline:
* Determination implies your willfulness is balanced by discipline.
* The more willful you are, the more disciplined you have to be. The stronger your will, the less anyone will be able to argue with you except yourself. And someone has to argue with you, because everyone has base impulses, and if you have more will than discipline you'll just give into them and end up on a local maximum like drug addiction.
* The more willful you are, the more dangerous it is to be undisciplined.
* If you're sufficiently determined to achieve great things, this will probably increase the number of temptations around you. Unless you become proportionally more disciplined, willfulness will then get the upper hand, and your achievement will revert to the mean.

Ambition:
* Willfulness and discipline are what get you to your destination, ambition is how you choose it.
* Most people don't know how ambitious to be, especially when they're young.
* Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they'd get from ambitious peers, whatever their age.
... (which means, a man is truly defined by the company he keeps)

Summary:
Determination = willfulness balanced with discipline, aimed by ambition
And fortunately at least two of these three qualities can be cultivated. You may be able to increase your strength of will somewhat; you can definitely learn self-discipline; and almost everyone is practically malnourished when it comes to ambition (so you should always be on the lookout for ambitous people).
--
Practical application to daily work life:
Most types of work have aspects one doesn't like, because most types of work consist of doing things for other people, and it's very unlikely that the tasks imposed by their needs will happen to align exactly with what you want to do.
Indeed, if you want to create the most wealth, the way to do it is to focus more on their needs than your interests, and make up the difference with determination.