[HN Gopher] How to Keep Winning
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How to Keep Winning
Author : daviducolo
Score : 50 points
Date : 2025-11-03 08:13 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (amasad.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (amasad.me)
| smy20011 wrote:
| Just don't play the game have winner and loser. Play the game
| that both side can win.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| At first glance I thought this was just an extended "Live, Laugh,
| Love" style post, but it's more of an autobiographical piece
| about what worked for the author - albeit with examples
| retrofitted into the chosen categories, and clearly not generally
| applicable.
| renjieliu wrote:
| Not knowing who the author was until now. I just read some
| articles from the website. For me, he's like Derek Sivers. I will
| keep reading his posts.
| tester756 wrote:
| It reads as if written by teenager...
|
| >For me, I would stand there and keep reciting difficult words.
| And although I was slightly dyslexic, I still won every freaking
| spelling bee. With this simple trick, I dominated it so much to
| the point that my teachers, who loathed me for being a slacker,
| once tried to rig it in favor of their obedient A-students (I
| still won).
|
| >I used to be a pro gamer, and when my friends and I picked up a
| new video game, everyone would follow the game's instructions and
| do the obvious thing. On the other hand, I would explore the
| edges of the game. I'd explore every weird build, every different
| weapon, and frankly look like a noob for a long time. That's
| good. They'll underestimate you. But you're compounding. And
| eventually, you'll go vertical, creating a massive distance
| between you and the next participant before they know what hit
| them.
|
| You just put way more effort, that's it. That's the real advice -
| put effort into things and make consistent progress. Be curious.
|
| >Think of Apple and how taking privacy and security seriously--
| despite competing against Microsoft, which didn't care about
| either at the time--created a lasting consumer trust advantage.
|
| Yea, because Apple is saint :D
| anechouapechou wrote:
| I'm not quite sure if his goal with writing this was to help
| someone or to brag about how much he wins at life.
| dosinga wrote:
| This advise against quitting you find everywhere is just wrong.
| Sure you should give it a fair shake, but if you are on a dead
| end, never quitting means never winning. If something doesn't
| work, it's possible you should just stop doing it and try
| something else.
| hashemian wrote:
| I donno, I've come across or read about fair number of people
| who worked on a crazy idea for a very long time, as if they
| were planning to throw their life away chasing that idea. Some
| had a breakthrough and ended up being a huge win. But I'm sure
| there are many many more who just ended up nowhere. So, I guess
| it's a gamble.
| chistev wrote:
| If you persist and win, they'll write good things about you.
| If you lose, they'll say you were stubborn.
| chistev wrote:
| But how would you know when you've gotten to that point of
| trying something else?
| BeetleB wrote:
| "Winners never quit and quitters never win, but those who never
| win and never quit are idiots"
| __s wrote:
| Steve Levitt pushes this point, did some experiments around it:
| https://bfi.uchicago.edu/news/to-quit-force-a-moment-of-trut...
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| This advice seems especially interesting because replit has
| certainly pivoted, so in that sense they kind of did quit?
| bdangubic wrote:
| you might be taking "quit" a little too literally :)
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| Problem is that you never know if you are on a dead-end. It is
| something you can only know in retrospect and even then only
| sometimes
| Bjartr wrote:
| Advice is situational. Some people need to hear "don't give up"
| and some people need to hear "move on".
| jexe wrote:
| Half of the founders will say never quit. The other half will say
| you have to fail fast.
|
| Choose your gurus wisely.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Context is everything. Ultimately you have to use your own
| judgement about what makes sense because no one can see all
| ends. Generalized advice from someone without skin in the game
| is at best a weak datapoint for any significant life decision.
|
| That said, let me give mine. Persistence over generally pays
| more dividends that constantly chasing quick wins. The modern
| information economy has cheapened success and skewed
| perceptions of how much effort and luck is behind outlier
| winners. The success I've had in startups was not quick, was
| not a straight line, and honestly probably didn't net me as
| much as if I had joined Google or Facebook early career, but
| the benefits in terms of broad skills and success that I can
| credibly claim on a personal level are actually more valuable
| to me than a larger number in my bank account.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| I found this article to be inspiring in some ways! I feel like I
| will go back to some of its wisdom to keep me pushing on in some
| upcoming hard moment. Not sure just which parts yet, but it is
| there in my brain for me to dig back on when I get there.
| MattGrommes wrote:
| > I looked around me and all the other kids were talking and
| joking around. I thought that was strange. How could you ever win
| if you're not in the mindset of winning. If you're not locked in?
|
| I'm generally not a competitive person so this is so strange to
| me. Even as an introvert on the spectrum, this sounds terrible.
| It's a game, it's supposed to be fun. I'd rather do my best to
| study ahead of time, have fun, and see where it takes me during
| the competition.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Is he actually competitive or is he anti-competitive? Read this
| and find out:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195
|
| "Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project" (2021)
| junkaccount wrote:
| IMHO parallel coding is very unwise to spend resources upon.
| Humans (and agents) will never code in parallel. Merging and
| conflict resolution was invented for a good reason.
| 48terry wrote:
| This entire article is the dude jerking himself off about how
| smart he is with amazing anecdotes like a third grade spelling
| bee.
| Snoozle wrote:
| Are you really winning when your win is being anxious and working
| all the time?
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