On Modesty | Max Marmer

In wake of the press the Startup Genome Project has received over the last week, a friend complimented me on my modesty and hoped I would continue to retain it. He was confident I would.

My philosophical tendencies urged me to understand what caused this disposition of mine.

Here are three thoughts:

1) As the circle of what I know expands, what I know I don’t know expands faster (the circumference of that circle).

2) I don’t gain satisfaction by looking behind me to see peers I have passed. But I do gain inspiration by looking forward to see the peers, mentors and role models I can learn from. I measure my accomplishments against it’s impact on the world, not other people’s contributions. And I went through a long exploration to make sure I was working on the most important thing I could, so jealousy is not an option. I have my path, others have theirs.

3) What I’ve done is minuscule compared to what I will do. I know continued progress will require overcoming many humbling challenges.

http://twitter.com/irrg Robb Irrgang

Modesty — You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

http://maxmarmer.com/ Max Marmer

What do you think it means?

http://twitter.com/irrg Robb Irrgang

“the quality of being modest; freedom from vanity,boastfulness, etc.”

Your blog is a fine example of an A+ exercise in boastfulness. A temple to your ego. Everything you write sounds presumptuous and meaningless. You have yet to actually accomplish anything, but you have gotten quite good at bragging about your hypothetical future accomplishments.

That, and you failed to recognize a paraphrased quote from the Princess Bride. For Gods sake, where Is your inner child?
Seacrest out.

http://maxmarmer.com/ Max Marmer

There is a fine line between self reflection, self confidence and arrogance. On my blog sometimes I walk the line. My writing persona is also probably perceived differently than my persona in person. I can never know for sure how am I perceived but I wrote this post because a number of friends praised my modesty. I trusted their perception and wanted to explore the cause.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Rachel-C-Ybarra/591453915 Rachel C. Ybarra

Max, You will have many folks over your lifetime that will say things to you loudly or softly against your vision and your purpose. None of us get out this world without carrying things…in the case of vision and goodness comes those that criticize and belittle. Having knowledge means you must share and that is what I believe you were doing in your post. A confident person can see it for what it is and for what it is not without distain. If someone doesn’t agree with your thoughts and comments, they are entitled to voice their opinion respectfully. They should not be respectful because of who they speak to but they should be respectful of themselves and how they demonstrate themselves to others and the world.

I would encourage you to continue your journey. Only you are called from within to the journey you are on. We all have our own journey to greatness if we are herculean enough to look within.
http://maxmarmer.com/ Max Marmer

Thanks Rachel. Well said. I appreciate the sentiment.

Ray

I’m so modest that I’m going to tell you all about it.
http://twitter.com/cervus cervus

A lovely New Year’s resolution that I picked up somewhere: “To become more modest than anyone else.” (;
http://twitter.com/Johanisma Johan Ismael

Hi Max !

Found out about your post on Facebook but couldn’t comment it there so doing it here…

What you’re saying about modesty in interesting and your points 1 and 2 particularly resonate with me, particularly the sentence “I don’t gain satisfaction by looking behind me to see peers I have passed. But I do gain inspiration by looking forward to see the peers, mentors and role models I can learn from”.

Being like that myself, I’ve come across a drawback of this mindset : little by little, I became unable to acknowledge my accomplishments and was always looking for more, better, higher. I could never be satisfied with what I had done. On the one hand, this is a strength because it’s a great incentive to keep working and making progress but on the other, it can also be very stressful because you always feel like you should be doing more to accomplish your high objectives. Even worse, it can affect your self-confidence and make you jealous.

Have you felt this tension before ? any thoughts about it ?

Thanks for sharing !

http://maxmarmer.com/ Max Marmer

I’ve experienced that phenomenon as well. It’s the same idea as the hedonic treadmill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill. I focus mostly on the positive effects of setting my sights higher and higher.

With regard to stress, there’s little value in looking to the past and wishing you would have done more. That just creates anxiety about things in the past you can’t change. I try to focus on the present and how I can make the most of each day. As long as I know I’m putting my energy in the right places then it’s just about reminding myself to have patience.

Progress is often a series of plateaus followed by quick jumps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibriumThis clip from Brian Tracy is also pretty good, although sometimes he’s a bit over the top. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yolpT66hnyE&feature=player_embedded

The hard part is where you’re sort of in the grey zone in between horizontal and vertical of the T Model - http://maxmarmer.com/2009/12/the-t-model/. For more than a year I knew I was working on the right problem: increasing the success rate of startups (sep/09). But I could I feel I didn’t have the right solution with regard to approach or team. It just took faith to believe that if I kept pushing forward and remained flexible I would figure out the right approach and attract the necessary people and resources. Increased certainty, confidence and satisfaction increased with the milestones of forming blackbox(dec/10), launching the startup genome (feb) and releasing the report (may). As I alluded to in the post jealously leaves almost completely once you find your path.

Twinsdistgustme

u arrogent dik!!!
http://www.skmurphy.com/ skmurphy

“2) I don’t gain satisfaction by looking behind me to see peers I have passed.”
I think it can be very hard to tell if you have passed someone or they are on a different path.