Weblog van Spruit
Goal in life: Create order, think lateral.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
The secret to success
What is the secret to success? One of life's big ones. My answer.
First you need to know what success is to be able to determine whether you are successful: success is making the decisions that maximize your happiness.
What these are depends on when YOU are happy. You can go for the hedonistic life style and make the decisions that make you happy in the immediate future. Personally I like the Epicurean life style. You make the decisions of which you think they will make you happy, but also look at the long term consequences of the decision. For example, I need to go to Rotterdam for a party. It will be late. I can take the car because I like driving, but I know I have a family visit the day after and I am already very tired. So I can better take the train and sleep on the way.
Next you need some means to make good decisions. That is, decisions that will have the outcome you desire. For that you mostly need to be well informed. If you have the right information you can make the right decisions. When you are at the train station at the end of the day and want to go to Rotterdam, it helps if you know that the train to Rotterdam leaves from platform twelve.
Finally, there are many ways to be well informed. However, the most important one is being a good observer. If you can't read the signs at the station, you can listen to the people talking on the platform. Thus, you might find out that the most people with a Rotterdam accent go to platform twelve.
So the secret to success is good observation. This is probably even more important than intelligence, because when you have the right information the most decisions are not hard to take at all!Labels: secret, success
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