33 awful (but smart) ways to succeed in life
On February 25, 2026 By thesuccessmanual Topic: Remarkable
Truth be said, most successful people in this world got there by a combination of luck, smarts, occassional spurts of hard work, and some underhand smarts. Otherwise, every ironsmith in this world would be a millionaire today. I culled this list from one of Seth Godin's absent-mindedly written (how uncharacteristic of him) blog posts. He titled it as 'how to succeed', which after my culling, is something else altogether.
- Go to college with someone who makes it big and then hires you
- Be born with significant and unique talent
- Network your way to the top by inviting yourself from one lunch to another, trading favors as you go
- Quietly do your job day in and day out until someone notices you and gives you the promotion you deserve
- Do the emotional labor of working on things that others fear
- Notice things, turn them into insights and then relentlessly turn those insights into projects that resonate
- Hire a great PR firm and get a lot of publicity
- Work the informational interview angle
- Perform outrageous acts and say obnoxious things
- Inherit
- Redefine your version of success as: whatever I have right now
- Flit from project to project until you alight on something that works out very quickly and well
- Be the best-looking person in the room
- Flirt
- Aggrandize, preferably self
- Be a jerk and win through intimidation
- Be a doormat and refuse to speak up or stand up
- Never hesitate to share a kind word when it's deserved
- Sue people
- Treat every gig as an opportunity to create art
- Cut corners
- Focus on defeating the competition
- When dealing with employees, act like Steve. It worked for him, apparently.
- Persist, always surviving to ship something tomorrow
- When in doubt, throw a tantrum
- Have the ability to work harder and more directly than anyone else when the situation demands it
- Don't rock the boat
- Rock the boat
- Don't rock the boat, baby
- Resort to black hat tactics to get more than your share
- Work to pay more taxes
- Work to evade taxes
- Find typos
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