Memories of the 28th Century

I probably should have decided to consume some alcohol instead, but I decided to look into this matter. I didn’t know what to expect when I looked at such lists (which I have never looked at before), so I wasn’t too disappointed.

Maybe my standards are too high. When I think of “highly successful people” I think of Warren Buffet, Paul Allen, Bill Gates, and some of the pioneers of the PC business and the electronics industry. The most prominent characteristics of such people are that they were in the right place at the right time. But they also had concepts of success that might have been different from what others might think. Buffett built his view of value based investing from what others had done, but he was ready to stay in the market when it turned into a real bull after WWII, but his boss and mentor worried that the Dow had recapitulated every year since 1933. Buffett won, his mentor did not. O.K., Buffett had his own ideas of how to operate and he remained true to those. Paul Allen may have had a vision of a microcomputer boom, but in 1980 IBM went to Micro Soft, because Gary Kildall of Digital Research was in Germany trying to sell CP/M to Siemens and other German companies. A huge amount of money suddenly fell into the laps of Allen and Gates, so they had to scurry around and find someone to writ an operating system, which Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Works did by rewriting his 86-DOS, AKA QDOS. They were very, very lucky. Luck is the story in many cases of people who have become highly successful, and sometimes the story in bad luck, when they fall.

I did look at some of the relevant literature, and I found some amusing, but some of it is downright silly. The 50 Habits article is too long to be useful, but it does include some of what appears elsewhere. The 7 habits article is from Horatio Alger, so some or the seven are worthwhile. The 11 Habits are also time-honored, starting with rising early. Whether those eleven will help a particular person is up in the air. But one very nice thing about rising early is that there aren’t a lot of people around, so it is quieter, and I find it easier to concentrate. The place where I differ from the eleven is that the list says “See time as finite/limited,” while I regard them as infinite and unbounded. But this list does suggest that one ask questions, and I heartily second that. Asking people is an excellent way to learn something. Even when the person turns out to be completely wrong, you have learned something.

The 10 Habits are much like the 11, and the 7 for Exceptionally Rich People are also similar, so some of those might be worthwhile. But I’d be a careful, because I engage in most of the things listed, and I am rather distant from being exceptionally wealthy. My research and experience strongly suggest that there is an element of luck involved. I’m not claiming that Warren Buffett’s success in stocks is based on luck, but he did start at a good point, and that’s usually enough to allow one to build a cushion. Ned Johnson of Fidelity investments did about as well as Buffett for a number of years, and I believe that his company is somewhat larger than Berkshire Hathaway. Going long in a bull market is usually a ticket to wealth.

All of those articles have something useful in them; although I think the one who wrote 50 Habits probably should have edited it down to about half that number, at most.

The only thing that I can add to these lists is that one should be sure to acquire adequate capital before becoming an entrepreneur, and remember that one must have enough to cover the unforeseen contingencies. I neglected this the last time, but I won't the next time. Otherwise, I wonder whether the fact that many of the habits mentioned are habits that I have should be be considered.

What do you think?


50 habits
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lif...ul-people.html

7 habits
http://www.fastcompany.com/3040136/7...cessful-people

11 habits
http://www.inc.com/murray-newlands/1...ul-people.html

10 habits
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennifer...ople-swear-by/

7 for exceptionally rich
http://www.inc.com/murray-newlands/7...ch-people.html