Want to be CEO? It's Easy. Luck, Talent, and Work Your A*@ Off
What does it take to ratchet your way up to CEO? Luck? Skill? Talent?
Prepare to be disappointed. It's work. Work hard. Work, work. And never stop.
Or so says Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, at smartplanet.com. Pfeffer examined the habits of over 150 successful writers, artists and scientists. Pritchett writes in his findings that "the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing," Charlie Osborne writes. In total, most clocked in 60 - 65 hours of work a week.
What's one of the biggest ways to succeed? Learning how to say 'no' is a key skill that most successful people master, according to Osborne.
Guess what? It's luck. What's that old saying? Success is where luck and talent meet? Something like that.
"Hard work and saying no are all good and well, but how do you explain the lucky breaks that successful people seem to have? According to author of 'The Luck Factor,' Richard Wiseman, certain personality types have more 'luck' than others," Osborne notes.
He says that Wiseman believes that, by being outgoing, open to new ideas, following your instinct and staying optimistic, you can create opportunities for yourself. All well and good. But what if you, like I, at one time, had a boss who really just didn't like me? Nothing I did was ever good enough (until I learned to just do my best and not care what he thought. Ding! Suddenly he started liking me.)
To test his theory, Wiseman created a "luck school" which taught these precepts -- and found that on average, people who attended said their "luck factor" increased by almost half through following these ideas.
Lastly, make mistakes. Fail, but learn from them. Then move on. Experimenting and being willing to fail can, in the long run, open you up more to entrepreneurial and creative ideas -- and will often yield impressive results. And here's my favorite: learning from your mistakes is key, but also learning from others can only improve your own chances of success.
Prepare to be disappointed. It's work. Work hard. Work, work. And never stop.
Or so says Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, at smartplanet.com. Pfeffer examined the habits of over 150 successful writers, artists and scientists. Pritchett writes in his findings that "the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing," Charlie Osborne writes. In total, most clocked in 60 - 65 hours of work a week.
Guess what? It's luck. What's that old saying? Success is where luck and talent meet? Something like that.
"Hard work and saying no are all good and well, but how do you explain the lucky breaks that successful people seem to have? According to author of 'The Luck Factor,' Richard Wiseman, certain personality types have more 'luck' than others," Osborne notes.
To test his theory, Wiseman created a "luck school" which taught these precepts -- and found that on average, people who attended said their "luck factor" increased by almost half through following these ideas.
Lastly, make mistakes. Fail, but learn from them. Then move on. Experimenting and being willing to fail can, in the long run, open you up more to entrepreneurial and creative ideas -- and will often yield impressive results. And here's my favorite: learning from your mistakes is key, but also learning from others can only improve your own chances of success.
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