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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

Self-discipline and endurance are big characteristics of many successful people. I agree with the article, but I'm not sure about the causality. I've observed that the same characteristics that make people good (not elite) at endurance sports are those that make them able to get ahead at work. Basically discipline and goal setting. It's not surprising that people who can stick to an exercise program like marathon training are also able to stick to work related goals that get them ahead. So yes, rich people may have more flexibility to pursue training (my experience though is that's not true, the demands on your time in professional jobs is much higher) but maybe they got rich because they were able to maintain focus on their goals.

I say this as a competitive age group (not elite) runner that has not found a way to translate the required discipline into my work life.

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Before you try to explain a phenomenon, you should define it and prove that it exists. Possibilities for "Why do rich people love endurance sports" include

1) They don't. 94% of rich people surveyed say they hate endurance sports. Or, 2) Because they love all sports. Rich people have time and money for sports. Poor people don't. And endurance sports are sports. Or, 3) They don't. We asked rich people to rank their favorite sports. Endurance sports were scattered randomly in the ranking. Or, 4) They don't. We define how much rich people like each sport by the average income of its participants and found that sailboat racing was most liked by rich people and playing tag on a playground was least liked. Or, 4) We define what rich people like this way: we surveyed one rich group and one poor group and ranked each sport by the percentage difference in participation by rich and poor. We find that the sports rich people like most (surprisingly, more than tennis or golf) are polo, yachting, and big game hunting.

>Self-discipline and endurance are big characteristics of many successful people.

You'd be surprised how many poor folks have tons of self-discipline and endurance - almost all miners, for starters...

>but maybe they got rich because they were able to maintain focus on their goals.

Family, education, connections, lucky breaks, friendly favours, and a standard work ethic and "focus on their goals" (which you can found on myriads of poor people) did it for most.

> Family, education, connections, lucky breaks, friendly favours

Definitely, good luck is always a factor. But don't discount how hard people in leadership positions have to work. Tech seems to have more variability, but go look at consulting or finance and anyone who is successful is paying a real price for how much they work. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it takes serious discipline, the same kind that keeps you going in endurance sports.

Surely there are rich people that have a cushy life, but they're not the ones who are endurance athletes.

It is probably the case that both rich and poor people possess the required discipline for endurance sports but poor people have much less opportunity to participate. Training, equipment, travel, etc are luxuries that the rich can afford to pay for. The same is not true of everyone else. If you think that rich people and poor people have similar access to time and resources for these sorts of activities I suspect it is because you've spent more time being in the former group than the latter.

How would you test this hypothesis? If, for instance, endurance sports were more prevalent in poorer countries what would that mean for your prior on the hypothesis.

To be honest I think all these posts are looking for a single causation, where it is more likely a combination of all the factors listed.

My thesis is that it just takes certain optimism, perservence and luck to suceed massively. The most succesful polish startup founder (Booksy) is guy who after 6 months of training ran 5x maraton in desert (he thought it would be just single one but continued anyway).

I also know some milioneres and they either don't care much and drop work on others or care and also do sports to unload. Those who don't are usually fat (eating from stess). This is my anecdotal experience.

IMO first strat is best as luck is dominating factor anyway.

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