The Formula
I beamed in astonished pride when the teacher praised me. I don’t think I was particularly gifted at physics, and I certainly wasn’t passionate about it yet. The only reason I’d earned a decent 80 percent score was because a friend of my parents’, an engineer, happened to be staying with us, and the night before the quiz he’d coached me through my
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Your success isn’t about you and your performance. It’s about us and how we perceive your performance.
Albert-László Barabási • The Formula
But if we come to competition assuming equal footing, we’re far more likely to succeed. Remember how Pierre Azoulay found that an
Albert-László Barabási • The Formula
Instead, we need to bring the corner office or that prestigious gallery or that hoped-for interview closer to us.
Albert-László Barabási • The Formula
And so, by analyzing the data differently, we discovered that fresh-faced thinkers disproportionately break through not because youth and creativity are intertwined. They do so because on the whole, they’re more productive. Undeterred by disinterest or failure, young people try again and again. That’s why scientists write most of their breakthrough
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Taking all this in and thinking about the young artists I admired, I had every reason to be concerned, especially for my friend Botond Részegh, a Transylvanian artist whom I’ve known for over a decade. His fantastic illustrations helped tie together the science and history narratives in my previous book, Bursts, and I’ve long admired his paintings,
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Realizing that success is a collective phenomenon throws that perception out the window. Once we defined success along external lines, a whole new set of possibilities opened up. We could measure and quantify it, using tools of scientific inquiry. And once we did that, we could unveil the laws that govern our success.
Albert-László Barabási • The Formula
and impact if you hope to make a difference in virtually any field. These success measures all have one thing in common: they are external, not internal; collective, not individual.
Albert-László Barabási • The Formula
With persistence success can come at any time.
Albert-László Barabási • The Formula
While the results are unequivocal that confidence and self-belief play a huge role in success, they have to match strong performance.