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Comment by bhasi | Hacker News Reader

Loved this line:

    Every great man that I have known has had a certain time and place in their life that they use as a reference point; a time when things worked as they were supposed to and great things were accomplished.

This has inspired me to work harder so that I find myself in such a flow state in either a work situation or a life situation in the not too distant future, say, a decade.

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Fantastic post (despite its age and recurring postings on HN, I had not come across it before), and this indeed is a great line.

I've met a few people who overdo this, though: they try to map everything new to a past success situation, but sometimes this is obviously a bad idea/poor match. So great people also have an internal compass that tells them "this situation is _different_."

I aspire to work with people that carry the ambition to seek such seminal events in their lives (rather than "business as usual" and finishing early), events that are worthy of serving as such reference points later. Life is short, and you only have one, so you had better not waste it.

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