Sunday, April 20, 2014

Psychological traits of successful startup founders

Makes sense (Stanford, PDF via DavidJaxon):

Personal Exceptionalism. Definition: A macro sense that you are in the top of your cohort, your work is snowflake-special, or that you are destined to have experiences well outside the bounds of “normal”; not to be confused with arrogance or high self-esteem. Benefit: Resilience, stamina, charisma. Deadly risk: Assuming macro-exceptionalism means micro exceptionalism; brittleness.

Dichotemous Thinking. Definition: Being extremely judgmental of people, experiences, things; highly opinionated at the extremes; sees black and white, little grey. Benefit: Achieves excellence frequently. Deadly risk: Perfectionism.

Correct Overgeneralization. Definition: Making universal judgments from limited observations and being right a lot of the time. Benefit: Saves time. Deadly risk: Addiction to instinct and indifference to data.

Blank Canvas Thinking. Definition: Sees own life as a blank canvas, not a paint-by-numbers. Benefit: No sense of coloring outside the lines, creates surprises. Deadly risk: “Ars gratis artis”, failure to launch, failure to scale.

Schumpeterianism. Definition: Sees creative destruction as natural, necessary, and as their vocation. Benefit: Fearlessness, tolerance for destruction and pain. Deadly risk: Heartless ambition, alienation.
Related: 35 habits of highly productive people (with a somewhat dizzying infographic). (Entrepreneur)

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