Ambivalence over Admiration
My husband has been listening to Warren Buffett lectures while he's been working recently. Last night, my husband showed me a segment of one of Buffett's talks, where he talked about his belief on what it takes to be successful. I'm borrowing text from a website that mentions this talk so I am recording it properly:
1. Rationality: According to Buffett, there is no shortage of IQ or Talent in the world. He compares IQ and Talent to the Horsepower (HP) of a motor. But Horsepower does not always equate to Efficiency (the overall output of the motor), i.e.
A Motor with 400HP can give out only 50HP output because it is not used efficiently.….most of the HP are simply wasted.
It is better to have a 200HP motor and get all 200HP output as compared to the preceding example.
That is the reason why IQ or Talent is not always a predictor a success.
According to Buffett, Rationality is what makes a person efficient in converting all his/her HP to output.
Further Buffett notes that Rationality is a function of a person’s Habits, Character, Temprament - not getting in your own way.
Buffett’s simple prescription for developing Rationality: Emulate the things that you like in the people you admire and discard the things that you dislike in people you don’t like.
2. Passion: The second factor that is helpful for success, and is talked about by many people is Passion or doing what you enjoy a lot. The simple reason for this is that success is never easy and requires a lot of hard work. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing you are most likely to simply give up.
Buffett recommended the following in this lecture: On a piece of paper, write down the person you admire most and some traits that you most admire about this person. On the other side, write down the person you despise the most and their traits why.
My husband did this sometime yesterday afternoon, but asked me last night who I admired.
The sad thing is, there is no one person I admire. There are individual traits that I like from many people around, but there is no one person who I find as a role model (P claims this is a cop out but asks me to think about it more).
I don't know, I've never really been the person who has been able to see where I want to be down the line or long-term planning. When I was younger, yes, I did have various ideas of what I wanted to be when I grew up, but now that I've "grown up" (i.e. done with school and loans, got married, got a house, got a job, away from family), what now? I feel like some of the steps I've taken recently for my job are more along the lines of what has been expected of me or just things that make sense to do (i.e. get my professional engineering license). I don't really see where I want my job path to go though. P and I are trying to get things together for us to have a family, but there are still times where I get freaked out (ex. me getting diagnosed with PCOS), but in general I am just ambivalent about the whole scenario.
I guess I'm just ambivalent towards where my life is going. I don't feel like I have much ambition towards doing anything for planning in the long-term, while I can be driven to meet more short-term deadlines. Some days I like my life, other days I just want to run away or just curl up in a book or movie to escape it. It's all is just "meh". I don't know if this is just a personality trait or me just being lazy.
Is it wrong to not have a role model? Is it wrong for me to be this ambivalent?
1. Rationality: According to Buffett, there is no shortage of IQ or Talent in the world. He compares IQ and Talent to the Horsepower (HP) of a motor. But Horsepower does not always equate to Efficiency (the overall output of the motor), i.e.
A Motor with 400HP can give out only 50HP output because it is not used efficiently.….most of the HP are simply wasted.
It is better to have a 200HP motor and get all 200HP output as compared to the preceding example.
That is the reason why IQ or Talent is not always a predictor a success.
According to Buffett, Rationality is what makes a person efficient in converting all his/her HP to output.
Further Buffett notes that Rationality is a function of a person’s Habits, Character, Temprament - not getting in your own way.
Buffett’s simple prescription for developing Rationality: Emulate the things that you like in the people you admire and discard the things that you dislike in people you don’t like.
2. Passion: The second factor that is helpful for success, and is talked about by many people is Passion or doing what you enjoy a lot. The simple reason for this is that success is never easy and requires a lot of hard work. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing you are most likely to simply give up.
Buffett recommended the following in this lecture: On a piece of paper, write down the person you admire most and some traits that you most admire about this person. On the other side, write down the person you despise the most and their traits why.
My husband did this sometime yesterday afternoon, but asked me last night who I admired.
The sad thing is, there is no one person I admire. There are individual traits that I like from many people around, but there is no one person who I find as a role model (P claims this is a cop out but asks me to think about it more).
I don't know, I've never really been the person who has been able to see where I want to be down the line or long-term planning. When I was younger, yes, I did have various ideas of what I wanted to be when I grew up, but now that I've "grown up" (i.e. done with school and loans, got married, got a house, got a job, away from family), what now? I feel like some of the steps I've taken recently for my job are more along the lines of what has been expected of me or just things that make sense to do (i.e. get my professional engineering license). I don't really see where I want my job path to go though. P and I are trying to get things together for us to have a family, but there are still times where I get freaked out (ex. me getting diagnosed with PCOS), but in general I am just ambivalent about the whole scenario.
I guess I'm just ambivalent towards where my life is going. I don't feel like I have much ambition towards doing anything for planning in the long-term, while I can be driven to meet more short-term deadlines. Some days I like my life, other days I just want to run away or just curl up in a book or movie to escape it. It's all is just "meh". I don't know if this is just a personality trait or me just being lazy.
Is it wrong to not have a role model? Is it wrong for me to be this ambivalent?