Comments on: ‘Living Up To Your Potential Is BS’

By: » Living Up To Your Potential Is BS

» Living Up To Your Potential Is BS — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 08:20:28 +0000

[...] Ive been catching up on my blog reading since returning from vacation. While I was gone, I missed Penelope Trunks post about what a load of BS the idea of living up to your potential is. As someone who spent years turning herself inside out with over-achiever stress, I tend to agree. […]Read More… [Source: Educated Nation | Higher Education Blog] [...]

By: alexa

alexa — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:03:23 +0000

I doubt it’s a coincidence that Ms. Trunk’s book and blog are both titled “The Brazen Careerist”.

As far as countering with Richard Feynman, I would highly recommend any of his books to any human. I read “Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynman’s Last Journey” by Ralph Leighton first, and quickly read everything else Feynman had written. I still haven’t gotten to James Gleick’s book about Feynman, “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman,” but it’s on my list. I love Gleick, too–he got me with “Chaos” when I was in middle school. Blew my little eighth-grade mind. I had to read it again when I was in college to make sure I hadn’t dreamed it all.

And as for Mr. Jefferson, slavery is unforgivable and there’s no way to get around that part, but I think his life, mind and contributions make excellent arguments for trying to see the world in more shades of grey that in simple black and white and right and wrong (as I am prone to do).

By: Simple Country Physicist

Simple Country Physicist — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:25:01 +0000

I have noted in reading Ms. Trunk’s blots that she seems to be speaking primarily to people who quantify their worth as humans with measures of economic and/or organizational success: salary/earnings; salary/earnings of people supervised (maybe excluding Gen Y;) and/or number of people supervised/managed/…. The obvious falsifiability of these measures is the difference between a “self made man” (pray excuse the genderism) and an eldest son. To be meaningful the measurement space has to be normalizable.

I would recommend as a counter Dick Feynman’s What Do You Care What Others Think? for a less quantitative but sounder (IMHO) view: that what counts is what we think counts. Despite his current unpopularity, I would draw your attention to the gravestone of Thomas Jefferson; the list thereon has some correlation with what he thought he did that mattered.

By: Mark Truman

Mark Truman — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:08:19 +0000

One thing I’ve noticed, as a reformed over-achiever, is that I’m not only happier when I relax, but more productive! Once I focus on the goals that I really want to get done and stop letting myself get distracted by doing too much, I actually make a difference in the world…