The Unique Behavior Successful People Share
It will help you achieve things that others never will – Issue #19
It’s easy to think that highly-successful people have some hidden advantage that sets them apart from the rest of us. In fact, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers does provide several examples of wildly-successful people who did have non-obvious advantages. They weren’t just smart, talented, and driven, although that does help.
I’m going to ignore both the obvious and hidden advantages that people like Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer, and Elon Musk have (or had) that propelled their career success. The number one behavior that the most successful people exhibit is easily accessible to you, me, and absolutely everyone:
They don’t ask for permission.
By “successful people” I don’t mean those who are featured on the front page of Time, Forbes, Rolling Stone, or Sports Illustrated. You know how I feel about that. I mean everyday people who are living well and living life on their own terms. That is something we all should aspire to achieve.
Some of the successful people I have in mind have had great success in their careers working for a company. Some have founded their own companies. Some are entrepreneurs spending their days as they wish. But, as I’ve watched all of their careers blossom over the past decades, I noticed that they don’t ask for permission to pursue what they want out of their career and life.
I know dozens of these people. You’d think that I might know hundreds after spending over two decades in the Tech industry in Silicon Valley. After all, isn’t that the birthplace of disruptive innovation? But, I don’t. Most of us fall victim to following the rules and assuming that we must ask for permission.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” — Henry David Thoreau
Rules, filters, barriers, and guards
These are in place to make the status quo easier to maintain. People like routine. They like the familiar. They don’t like change, stress, and unnecessary work. A gatekeeper’s default answer is “No” because it makes their lives easier.
Therein lies the inherent weakness of the “ask for permission” model. You will often hear “No.” You will especially be told no if you are seeking a stretch goal, or if you don’t fit the perfect image of what an easy “Yes” is for them. That’s why the majority of recruiters overlook great talent that doesn’t match their simple checkbox list, as Sonsoles Alonso recently pointed out in her article about talent.
Success in your life and career is going to require that you sometimes bend or even break the rules. It wasn’t always easy for me to do this. I was your typical first-born child. I always felt older than my age. I felt responsible. I wanted to please my parents, teachers, and coaches. I was a straight A student, participated in science fairs and spelling bees, put my head down and did what I was told in the military, and cranked on college and graduate school to get those degrees that I thought were so important.
But, I was in for a few surprise discoveries throughout my life, especially during my education. I also found out that playing by the rules may help you “meet expectations” in your job, but you must break a few rules to slip past the usual barricades if you want your career to skyrocket.
My first secret
I don’t know how to type. Let me clarify: I never took a formal typing class. I’m self-taught.
This may sound funny to you younger folks, but remember that we didn’t grow up with computers. Heck, most of us didn’t even have a typewriter at home. My first exposure to a QWERTY keyboard was an Apple IIe in a BASIC programming class in high school.
I wasn’t supposed to be there. The rule was that you took a typing class for a semester, and only later could you take the BASIC class. I jumped the queue.
I remember hiding it from the teacher when she occasionally walked the computer room. But, she mostly sat in her other classroom, getting caught up on her work.
But, one day she caught me “programming.” I would write my code by hand on paper with spaces between the numbered lines (in increments of 10) to insert code and make changes. I would “run” the code in my head, reading through it on paper to make sure the logic worked, erasing bugs, and rewriting.
She caught me, and she was furious.
“What are you doing?! You can’t type?!!!”
I explained and she almost kicked me out of the class. But, she let me stay if I could keep up with the homework and tests. In a short time, I actually ended up being the best programmer in class and she never mentioned it again.
Unbeknownst to me, this planted the seeds for my foray into the world of Tech much later in my life. If I had asked for permission to join the BASIC class, the gatekeeper would have denied me.
My second secret
I never had formal design training, yet I became a designer with a career at IBM, Apple Computer, eBay, Yahoo, and a number of other startups. Not only did I not have design training, I only took a couple of art classes in high school, and an art history course in college.
Again, I taught myself. I’ve always been artistic, sketching and drawing from a very young age. But it was only in graduate school that I started designing software interfaces for my own needs. I was using HyperCard for my psychology research, and I even taught a course in HyperCard and HyperTalk to professors and other graduate students. I voraciously read Danny Goodman’s HyperCard book from cover to cover (thank you, Danny). I educated myself.
I’m sure that it was my degree, prototyping skills, and network that got me in the doors at IBM and Apple. But, I had to devour every book I could on GUI design, read all of the Apple Technical Library books, learn fast, and prove myself.
The one thing that I didn’t do was ask for permission to be a designer.
My third secret
I do have a Ph.D. in Psychology, but I don’t have an MBA. So, how did I become the VP of Consumer Products for Yahoo Search without any formal experience as a product manager?
I had dabbled in product management at eBay. I was working on a big project as the lead designer with a product manager (PM) running it. It was a complex product, but the project was going well. Until the PM got called for jury duty.
Everyone was booked solid, so that PM’s manager asked if I could just run the project to get it launched. So, I finished writing the PRD, worked with engineering, and we launched successfully.
It probably helped that I had hands-on product experience and I’m kind of a weird hybrid designer who gets product management, analytics and statistics, and dabbled in some engineering. I could talk the talk (and somewhat walk the walk).
But, I didn’t wait for someone to ask me to be the Head of Product. I didn’t let my lack of an MBA or PM title hold me back. I saw an opportunity and went for it, before I had someone’s permission. I basically said “Yes” and then figured out how I was going to do the job.
Greater career success
I look back on the 24 years of my career and I see a pattern of why some of it worked out well.
I set my sights on a goal
I identified the gaps in my knowledge and skills
I worked hard to teach myself what I needed to know
I quickly seized an opportunity when it presented itself
I said “Yes” and then figured things out
I didn’t ask for permission to be who and what I wanted to become
Did this strategy succeed 100% of the time? No, of course not. I’ve had my fair share of failures, overreaching, and setbacks. But, if you never even go for it, your odds of success are 0%.
I meet a lot of people who are waiting before they can pursue a dream goal. They say that they need a specialized degree, a specific certification, or permission from their professor, parent, boss, or other authority figure.
No, you don’t.
Some of the best developers, designers, and product managers I’ve hired for my teams over the years have been self-taught. I didn’t care about their degrees or certifications. They demonstrated that they were smart, ambitious, and could do great work.
History is replete with autodidacts who didn’t need anyone’s approval or certification to pursue their calling. Note: I’m not sharing these famous people to tell you to emulate them and follow their paths. They are simply recognizable examples of successful people who didn’t let traditional barriers stand in their way.
The world-famous author Ray Bradbury never went to college
David Bowie taught himself to play numerous musical instruments
Frank Lloyd Wright did not have a degree in architecture
Buckminster Fuller was expelled from Harvard twice
Richard Branson was dyslexic and dropped out of high school
If you want something, find a way to get it. Find a different path that isn’t blocked by their rules and regulations. Come in through the side door or back door, walking past the locks and bolts and guards they’ve put on the front. Leverage all of your unfair advantages.
The one thing you cannot do is wait for someone’s permission.
Remote jobs
iOS Developer at 1 Second Everyday, which is a video diary app that makes it easy to create the movie of your life. In a couple of minutes, parents can relive the first year of their child’s life, look back at their last family vacation, or see their entire journey together. It gives anyone the power to reflect on school, friends, projects, and adventures. They are a small but growing company looking for an iOS Developer to join their 100% distributed team. You will be an integral part of the iOS team and will work with the product design team on projects. As you’ll be joining a small iOS team, you will help define the culture.
Senior Android Developer at Doist. Their mission is to inspire the workplace of the future by creating simple yet powerful productivity tools that promote a more fulfilling way to work and live. They are a multidisciplinary, fully remote team that’s passionate about creating products, like Todoist and Twist, that improve peoples lives. As a Senior Android Developer, you will join a five-person Android team to help build the Twist for Android client. In addition to improving the app and implementing new features, you’ll be working closely with designers as well as developers from other teams in order to have a consistent experience across platforms, while making the best possible Android app that also adheres to Material design.
Product Designer, Talent at Stack Overflow, which exists to serve developers. Whether they’re helping them get answers to their questions or find a new job, they build products that millions of developers use. As a designer at Stack Overflow, you’ll create and build products that directly impact the work and the lives of those developers. In this particular role, you’ll be working alongside a small team dedicated to the Talent and Jobs product. They’re constantly exploring new directions for their products and working towards creating a more enjoyable experience for recruiters and developers alike. This is a great opportunity to work on a product with a wide variety of features and complex problems with a team that’s excited to solve them.