Pitt Bull or Poodle

Comments

# William said on December 25, 2004 8:38 PM:

Hey man, Merry Christmas! hope it's a good one.

Interesting article. Definitely more pitbull than poodle, but there are a few poodle answers in there, guess I'll have to work on that. If it were any other dog, okay...but I can't have any poodle in me...

# William said on December 25, 2004 11:12 PM:

Number 9 is good. "pusillanimous" is my new favorite word :)

# William said on December 28, 2004 9:07 AM:

Scott - You better hope that someone doesn't take your quote out of context: "If it were any other dog, okay...but I can't have any poodle in me..." That's just wrong and you are a sick sick man. :P

# William said on December 28, 2004 9:12 AM:

Skicow - that reminds me of a story. A guy I used to work with (he reads this blog regularly) once got busted for a DUI in Thompson Georgia. When he got thrown in the holding cell, he noticed the Trustees and guards going by his cell going "Mooo Mooo". The dude was totally messed up and Scott got a little inquisitive. So he asked the guy what he was in for. The dude told him he got caught by a farmer having 'relations' with one of his cows.

Only in Georgia...

# William said on December 28, 2004 11:22 AM:

Man, this guy is such a self-promoter. I love it when "personalities" write about success, because usually it's just a subtle way of saying "look at me, I'm successful!" The pundit's equivalent of bragging rights. :)

The best is Robert Kiyosaki, who always writes books (Rich Dad, Poor Dad, etc) about how to get rich. Of course, he got rich by writing books about how to get rich...:)

But anyway, I dunno--I always read advice like this about success, vis a vis time management and attitude and so on. It's very haughty and magnanimous, but I still find myself in the "consistently applied brilliance and talent" camp when it comes to major success factors. I've just known too many "smart" people with an intuitive grasp of their fields, to believe otherwise--ie no matter how hard I work, I can never be a Picasso. He may have worked harder than the next artist; but whether he was a pit bull or a poodle, he was still Picasso. And I'm a programmer, not a visual artist. :)

Plus success is relative. If you're worth a few million, are you really in a position to preach? It's a nice nest egg, but it's mostly the product of one or two good inspirations and a lot of "hamster wheel" type footwork.

What if you REALLY want the best; ie to be a billionaire? There's definitely more than scrappy ambition there; I think there has to be the raw, innate talent, too. You'd need to be a greyhound. :)

# William said on December 28, 2004 11:34 AM:

JMW - yes, I tend to agree with you on this. I find him a bit hard to stomach most of the time, but one thing I have found is that keeping positive is everything. I don't mean be pollyanna or anything, but staying focused and looking at setbacks or failures as things to be learned from, not lamented over.

To some degree, I think you can preach even if you can't do it yourself but I say that with a lot of caution b/c there's a lot of folks that pump total BS and act like you're deficient if you don't do what they do. Dr Laura was my favorite. She's lecturing people who ever had premarital sex, then the pics of her, with a married man showing pastrami flaps is all over the internet. I mean, certainly people that have learned the hard way are in a position to tell you what not to do, but most of the time these folks act like they never did anything wrong.

I read Maxwell Maltz Psycho Cybernetics a few years back and found it to be one of the most helpful books I ever read. Same for Harry Lorrayne's Memory Book - but that was more helpful in a specific way. Kind of dig Tony Robbins too but mainlyl b/c of the emphasis on NLP which has helped me out more in life than I can ever describe.

I used to read all sorts of self help books and as I read more - I figured out most are total BS or totally obvious with - as you point out - a bunch of Look how successful I am things in between. If you ever listen to Bill O'Reilly - he's the king of it. I remember reading part of his book and he was talking about a kid kicking the back of his chair - and his qoute was something like "Swift as a cheeta, I turned around and towered over the kid staring at him. Like an angry lion I told his mother, when I get back from the restroom - the kicking will stop - and it did"

I wanted to barf. Every now and then though - you get some folks that really can give you some good insight.

Speaking of Billionaires Alex Spanos wrote http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895261588/qid=1104251319/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-3349337-4780118?v=glance&s=books which I really enjoyed. The dude is totally humble and talks just as much about how his personality shortcomings caused a lot of his failure, and how if you want to be rich, let alone a billionaire, get ready to deal with failure b/c you'll have a lot of it in front of you. The cool thing about this book was that he got into the nitty gritty of how he did what he did - it's not one of those generic - be a billionaire type books.

# William said on December 28, 2004 11:59 AM:

Bill - LMAO! That's just funny...I've heard many times about 'relations' between human and animal but have yet to actually meet a person who has engaged in said 'relations'....*shudder*

# William said on December 28, 2004 12:10 PM:

Bill: thanks, I'll check that book out. :)

Do you read Mark Cuban's blog? He has various "success" pieces that I think are very worthwhile, and fairly specific. Granted I don't personally have much admiration for Cuban--most of his money just came from selling out. But he's still a very sharp guy, and he grew his first business from the ground up with little investment.

I also like reading about Martha Strewart (Free Martha!); there's a woman who literally worked day and night and had the talent and ambition to succeed. Sure she has a reputation as a bitch, but does it really matter?

O'Reilly kills me. I went to Barnes & Noble recently and I passed by the kids section and "The O'Reilly Factor For Kids" book caught my eye. Talk about a barf-fest.

There's something to be said for shameless self-promotion, though. Definitely most of the successful people I've known do it aggressively (and are borderline on lying about their accomplishments). The real danger is when you start to believe your own bull.

Anyway, I think most of the stuff I read about in self-help books (eg attitude, time management) comes from being successful. Personally I have the most drive when I have some success behind me. Like with working out; I don't think I'd have stayed with it had I not really seen some results early on.

I think my "success attributes" taxonomy goes something like:

1. Brilliance at something
2. Self-promotion (you and your business), marketing
3. Willingness and ability to use leverage when you have it (aka "balls to the wall")
4. Pragmatic, "Cool-hand Luke" mentality towards crisis, pain, difficulty, challenges, risk, etc. Not even necessarily "positive," just steely-eyed, steady-handedness.
5. Knowing how to filter and absorb information quickly

Note that most good programmers already have #1 and #5 down. :)