When I was younger, I heard an analogy about rowing teams. The strategy for winning races was to focus on your own behavior. The moment you started checking out the competition, you lost a bit of time and concentration.

I'd like to think that's how I approach work: success comes from focusing on my own work and providing value, surrounding myself with the best people and encouraging them to do their best. Not from actually fighting with the competition.

I'm with Random, that I'm not fond of the zero-sum game analogy. I think different people have different approaches to business and competition. For instance, at my husband's work they used a type of personality test that I'd never seen before - one of its components was judging how competitive/ruthless or caring/supportive a person was. The CEO of that company (one of Australia's largest banks) was a caring/supportive person - previously all CEO's had been the ruthless/competitive type. I know personality tests can be flawed but I think you can be successful in a business environment regardless of your appetite for conflict.

Hey Sebastian

I found your blog about two years ago when I was googling "self discipline blogs". At that time, your blog was the only one that talked about self-discipline, something I was trying to increase.

I enjoyed reading your blog because it came across as the diary of an ambitious young 20-something. It's rare to meet people in life who are openly ambitious, and that's the main reason I like reading your articles. Your philosophy is similar to mine, and your posts are a breath of relief from those who keep saying that wanting to get ridiculously rich is bad. Also, we all have those "loser friends" in life. The ones who will spend all their time playing video games and not doing anything good for themselves, and then complain about it and get jealous when you achieve something. You're like a virtual friend who's the opposite of those guys.

I'm one of the most frugal people I know. After suddenly "making it", I feel like my "frugality" is now just for show. Logically, I know frugality saves money, but when a few week's work brings in five figures, saving $2 here and there feels weird...

I know that my success is largely based on luck. But even with that knowledge, and that attempt at "frugality", it's hard to make financial decisions. One day you're skimping and watching your grocery budget, the next day you're a "success" making a decent income - when it's all a big shock and you have so many new options suddenly available to you, where do you draw the line on "splurging"?

Another effect of the "I'm so brilliant" fallacy that I'm seeing, is that I find making trivial decisions exhausting and pointless. Now I know why Steve Jobs always wore the same outfits!

Have been thinking about this a lot in the last couple of days, and ironically came to a conclusion similar to yours.

In particular, I was wondering how best to work most "efficiently" over the weeks/months. A great day is ok, but great days are usually followed by crashes. As a novelist, it's tempting to indulge in being "artistic" and have bouts of amazing writing days followed by days of being mentally exhausted.

Sadly, in creative work, there are very few methods to increase average productivity in terms of something tangible eg word count. Quality can go up, but that involves more than just writing. In addition, I don't want my day to be about only writing and editing non-stop. If I can fit in some exercise and down-time, I feel much better ("higher quality of life".) So I'd recently come to the conclusion that good weeks would be about balanced days. 

Unfortunately, I've also just decided to start working in a different genre with a different pen name. And yes, some of the initial costs are lower this time round than when I first started, but costs are much higher than that of continuing writing in my current genre. Short term costs will rise, income will drop slightly (ouch) - but I tell myself I'm doing this because the new genre is much more sustainable over the long run. Fingers crossed it works out that way.

I think paper is already a luxury good for many of us. I buy "nicer" notepads for $7ish and Moleskin ones cost a bit more I think. But then again, I use my notebooks a fair bit.

Loved Black Swan. Read it before I had to make any major life decisions - it taught me to try to minimize risk wherever possible (relationships, etc) so that I could take risks where I wanted to (relocation, career...)