Global Nerdy

Continuing the recent run of lists of career tips — see What to Do if You’re Laid Off in the 2008 Recession and How to Work the Room — here’s 10 Secrets to Success.

It’s a list on PickTheBrain.com that originally appeared in Investors Business Daily. This list is based on answers to questions they asked “industry leaders, investors and entrepreneurs to understand the traits they all had in common”.

Here’s a simplified version of the list — to see the whole thing, read the article:

1. How you think is everything. “Think Success, not Failure. Beware of a negative environment. This trait has to be one of the most important in the entire list. Your belief that you can accomplish your goals has to be unwavering.”
2. Decide upon your true dreams and goals. “Write down your specific goals and develop a plan to reach them…Goals are those concrete, measurable stepping stones of achievement that track your progress towards your dreams.”
3. Take action. “Goals are nothing without action.”
4. Never stop learning. “Becoming a life long learner would benefit us all and is something we should instill in our kids. It’s funny that once you’re out of school you realize how enjoyable learning can be.”
5. Be persistent and work hard. “Success is a marathon, not a sprint.”
6. Learn to analyze details. Get all the facts, all the input. Learn from your mistakes. I think you have to strike a balance between getting all the facts and making a decision with incomplete data – both are traits of successful people. Spend time gathering details, but don’t catch ‘analysis paralysis’.
7. Focus your time and money. “Don’t let other people or things distract you.”
8. Don’t be afraid to innovate. Be different. Following the herd is a sure way to mediocrity.” (It sounds like a variant of my own maxim, “Do the stupidest thing that could possibly work.”)
9. Deal and communicate with people effectively. “No person is an island. Learn to understand and motivate others.””
10. Be honest and dependable. “Take responsibility, otherwise numbers 1 – 9 won’t matter.”

My buddy George has said this a number of times: “There’s power in re-stating what should be obvious.” Hence a re-statement of what should be obvious, even though a number of publications have yet to get it — Your Website Shouldn’t Be Just An Electronic Version Of Your Print Publication.

Dammit, Sandro Paganotti beat me to the punch on his blog, RailsOnWave.com. He and I are both reading O’Reilly’s Programming Collective Intelligence, in which all the code examples are in Python. He’s already posted his Ruby translations of the code from Chapter 2, Making Recommendations.

My guess is right about here:

Original image taken from the Wikipedia entry for Hype Cycle and modified by Yours Truly.

(Got work to do. More later.)

Mark April 29, 2008 on your calendar: that’s the day when Grand Theft Auto IV hits the shelves.

Here are some facts about the game that I’ve gleaned from the MTV.com articles ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ Details Unloaded In Lengthy Private Demo At Developer’s Headquarters and ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ Developer Talks Delay, Violence And Whether There Will Be Another ‘Hot Coffee’:

• “You can’t get fat anymore.” You can, however, get drunk, which makes the controls less reliable and the camera wobbly.
• The game’s look is pretty close to that of the trailers.
• “You can take a taxi anywhere on the map.”
• You have a cell phone and you can hit an internet cafe to surf the web.
• “There may be bums lying in front of a car on the street.” Some enemies may be playing dead (a la BioShock.)
• “Someone other than you might be getting chased by the police.” (I don’t think this is new; you see things like in the previous edition, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.)
• Load times are short.
• There’s a new physics model that makes character motion more natural.
• Line-of-sight is such that you can see buildings ten blocks away.
• Taxis and car services are now things you can hail, just like real taxis and car services. As with real life, cab rides cost money, and you can look out the window and see scenery pass by. You can pay more money to have the cabbie drive recklessly or to skip the ride sequence and auto-magically appear at your destination.
• Cars have GPS; the expensive ones have GPSs that talk.
• Police cars have police computers which you can use to find suspects.
• When police witness you committing a crime, a circle appears on your mini-map. That’s the area for which you are in trouble. Leave that area, and you’re home free. Having a shootout with the cops makes that circle bigger.
• The game has a new targeting system: using the left trigger activates a zoomed-in “free-aim” mode a la Gears of War.
• New dynamic car chases feature special events that are triggered under specific conditions. “These events won’t happen in completely predictable ways, and players won’t see them every time.”
• If you have to repeat a mission, the game may vary the dialogue to keep you from being bored by repetition. You can also “warp right back to the start of a mission” rather than have to drive back to the start point.
• There isn’t going to be a “Hot Coffee”, they say. There will be dates, however.

Over at FoundRead, Larry Chiang has some advice that you might find useful if you’re following Scoble’s advice for people who’ve just been laid off (particularly the parts about networking and attending business events). His piece is titled How to Work the Room.

Here’s a condensed version:

1. Be more of a host and less of a guest. Make introductions and make people more comfortable.
2. Avoid permanently joining a “rock pile” (a pack of people in a tight circle). Huddling feels safe, but it’s also antisocial.
3. Dress for the party. The basic rule: the more junior you are, the better you should dress.
4. Don’t “hotbox” (square shoulders front and centre to one person). In a one-on-one conversation, it’s okay, but it excludes others from joining.
5. Put your coat and bag down. It signals that you’re about to leave.
6. Mentor someone about your (or your company’s) core competence. “It transitions nicely from the what-do-you-do-for-work question. It also adds some substance to party conversations and clearly brands you as a person.”
7. Don’t forget to get mentored as well. The author suggests this trick: try to learn three new things at each event.
8. Be a good host while you’re someone else’s guest. Say “Hi” to wallflowers.
9. Manage the party host. “When you’re interacting with the host, ask simple questions requiring a ‘Yes/No’ response. I’ve heard disastrous questions in a vain attempt to out alpha-male the host. The best questions to ask of a host are upbeat, light and fluffy. If you want to be Mike Wallace/Chris Matthews with a hardball question, tread lightly. Also, help your host wiggle by wrangling them away from guests who are monopolizing or “hotboxing” them. They will thank you later.”
10. Always, always, always: Thank the host before you leave. If you only do one thing on this list, let this be the one (and work on the others!)