How to Achieve Success – It's Not What You Think
I came across the following passage in Strauss Zelnick’s book Success, in which he identifies the characteristic most highly correlated with achieving success. He does a better job of expressing it than I could, so I’ll just quote him directly:
“When I talk to people about their careers, I often pose the question: ‘What factor is most highly correlated with success?’
Think about the very successful people you know, especially the ones whose success, even in retrospect, would not have seemed obvious. What do they all have in common? Intelligence? Certainly not: we all know the rich guy who isn't particularly smart. More to the point, we all know really smart people who aren't successful at all.
Education? Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard College after his freshman year. David Geffen didn't even finish his first year at the University of Texas.
Competence? Well, maybe, but there are plenty of very successful people who appear scattered or disorganized (and many who actually are scattered and disorganized).
Ambition? Perhaps, but undirected ambition yields no special result and, in fact, can be just plain annoying.
Perseverance? Almost certainly important, but perseverance in the absence of a goal or a plan won't get you anywhere:
Talent? A necessary but insufficient condition. We all know talented singers who have never performed publicly.
Passion? Another necessary but insufficient factor, since passion without talent is energy without an engine.
...
In my view, the most important driver of success, and the attribute most common among highly successful people, is: knowing what you want. What I mean by this is a focus on one's goals as well as an absence of attention to things that are not of primary importance. Knowing what you want means making choices and directing your attention, with great emphasis, to what matters to you most."
Most people don’t know what they want in life. Sure, they may have a vague idealistic notion of what they want like, “I want to be a millionaire.” But they have no idea how to pursue it, or even where to begin! We know what we don’t like, whether it’s particular foods, or a manager at work, or maybe even the job itself, but we most often don’t know what it is we actually desire.
Without knowing what you want in life and pursuing it with laser focus, you’ll keep spinning your wheels, permitting life to happen to you, and getting nowhere.