This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.

@david:

I think the issue potentially becomes one of “when is it enough”. Being jealous of all those things around one can make it difficult to be content with what you have.

I think that being inspired by things around you is fine…i just don’t find that jealousy is the primary driver.

But how do you acquired this belief? This belief that you can do it too? If you were raised to not believe it was in you, or taught not to try, it’s very difficult to believe in your own strength.

Just looking for a little free psychotherapy… ;-)

Great post.

Interesting post. Jealousy is certainly not what I would call the best motivator. I get your point though.

I think I find jealousy offensive for a couple of reasons, other than it’s inherent ugliness and connotations. The first is precisely your last, David—I tend to find the most jealous are also the ones who tend to give disproportionate weight to the ‘cosmic conspiracy’.

The other reason I think I find it offensive is it’s awful hard to lead the way if you’re busy either taking inventory or ‘imitating’. In some ways it’s a self-fulfilling pathology.

As with most things, the Bard had some great insights/characters.

David,

Looking at what others have and striving to have the same is not really jealousy. Jealousy (IMO) is wanting what others have and also wanting them to be deprived of it (which is, I guess the biblical definition of ‘coveting’). True jealousy to me is directed at being ‘better’ than an individual and wanting them to suffer for it, or feel ‘worse’ than you. True jealousy only exists when there’s others to measure yourself by and is only interested in being better than someone else.

The desire to improve oneself is a gift, it’s what keeps us reaching, growing and trying new things.

I think the word you’re looking for is “inspiration.” You see what is possible in these high achievers and believe you can do it too.

Jealous or Envious?

I think the two different attitudes you describe are a) feeling emulous and b) being envious.

Emulation will motivate you to achieve the same or better than what you’ve observed in others. Then you can look for the next steps of your chosen ladder.

Envy involves the desire to destroy what others have, so that you don’t need to feel it anymore.

Helmut Schoeck wrote a great book on the topic, titled Envy.

This is very Nietzschean I say approvingly

DHH ,

I totally know what you mean. For example, I met this one guy who caught the ring tone “wave” & cashed out for $10M. I met this dude, and he was UBERLY unremarkable (not in a negative way).

I think most people have this idea in their head that “successful entrepreneurs” just I don’t know…float around all day, or hop over cars in a single bounce…when actuality more often than not, these successful entrepreneurs are just super duper regular people.

So I thought (and still think) to myself, “If this dude can make a Mill in his lifetime, why can’t I?!?”

Nitpick: envy is when you covet something that someone else has. Jealousy is when you have something and are afraid that others covet it. (Consider, e.g. a jealous husband.)

Thanks. You have no idea how much I needed to hear this today.

Julia Cameron talks about moving towards your jealousy – because it’s a deep indicator of what your true desires are.

If you’re jealous (envious?) of your friend who is working four days a week and creating art the other three days – maybe that’s what you really want?

Admiring others, and following hope with action, are powerful combiners. I’m uncomfortable with the term jealousy, but you make a good point.

DHH : Once you’re actually there, it’s usually not that interesting. That’s not a flaw, imo, but a feature.

I challenge that mode of thought. The destination is not the end result; I think most would agree with you there. I do.

Then is the pursuit itself the pursuit? That’s a circular and self-defeating train of thought. If neither the end result nor the pursuit is the pursuit, then what is it? What, besides “jealousy” or admiration, motivates you to excel in your career?

I’m interested.

From my experience motor racing is again a good example / metaphor for this one. As long as you’re focused on being jealous towards your competitors, of them having a faster car, better engines or being better drivers you won’t improve much. It is very easy in racing (and in business, life…) to get into the habit of thinking ‘if only this (much faster) dude would not be around I could actually win this race”.

In reality racing is not about the others at all. It is about your ability to defy physics a little better then everybody else – so physics is your real opponent. There is an absolute limit to how fast you can go around a track and it is all about how much you believe into your abilities and how hard you work on all the details that define the ‘package’ that allows you to get as close as possible to that limit. If your engine is not the best and you can’t afford a better one, you put more time into fine-tuning your chassis so you can floor it a little earlier out of the corner… In business, if you can’t afford big marketing budgets, you fine-tune your market focus and write a blog that fits that niche perfectly…

In racing, you don’t really fight others rather than the combination of the track, your vehicle and your driving skills.

Once you realize that, you can focus your (negative) jealous energy into tirelessly improving your racing (product, service…) package until all of a sudden competing with others on track (in business) becomes the icing on the cake.

In racing it’s 10% talent and 90% practice and execution. In business it’s 10% idea and 90% execution. In both worlds success depends 98% on how much you believe in your ability to execute well.

keep racing, focus on your package and you’ll do very well.

Hmm I agree with Matt. But still its a nice thought David.. IMO , a talent you possess can be converted to strength by training, focusing and pushing. Eg., If you are a great painter, you can easily become a great photographer or say a skillful designer, but on the other hand if you like to become a programmer, then thats not something you will be able to do easy…

“I’ve always wanted things that others had. Skills they possessed. Authority they held. Success they enjoyed.”

One example please.

David,

I totally agree. I see so many times people bemoaning the success of other people or organizations. Instead of them looking at that success as a model worthy of emulation whereby they can achieve their own success, they seek to denigrate that success as somehow unwholesome or undeserved.

The choice should be obvious. But more often than not, people will choose to denigrate the successful instead of emulate. They cheer their demise, eagerly waiting to see them toppled from their high horse, hoping their come-uppance will restore balance to the force since they have received more than their fair share of the pie /*as if only one pie existed */.

Though I prefer the phrase ‘constructive discontent’, I understand what you mean by productive jealousy.

It depends on what you do with your envy. Do you say:

“Some day, I’m going to have one of those too!”

or

“Some day, I’m going to get that ba$tard!”

Big difference.

Are you seriously contending that there are not a small number of people with orders of magnitude greater chances of social/monetary “achievement” than everyone else? That is so historically ignorant that it should be punishable by law.

If what you’re saying is just “we should still try our best”, I agree, but this sounds dangerously like an old-school patrician Christian “don’t worry about these families stay fat and rich off your hard work, generation after generation… you’ll get yours in heaven!”

And that’s just reprehensible. I hope that isn’t what you meant, because it is, stripping away the rhetoric, what you said.

I think you’re getting jealousy and envy mixed up. One is jealous of what one already has if one strives to prevent others from having the same, which seems to be the very antithesis of what you’re up to with Rails.

Wanting what others have is envy.

isn’t it just about being competitive ?

usually just by looking at the sheer number of people who “make it” for whatever definition of that you want to use. If so many people can make it happen, it just seems illogical to me that you, me, and everyone shouldn’t be able to do so as well.

i agree with you

Me, I do it for the chicks.

Hey David,

I’d say your post is about what is called positive thinking using a negative word to explain it :P

It’s not just being envious but truly believe in you to get what you really desire. It is something that is acquired through life’s struggles. Even if you were raised in a family that brought you down, it still is something that is possible.

Recently, it is being called “resilience”

here’s a good reading on the matter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience

I loved your post by the way

:)

Greed is good.

If you called this “Professional Jealousy” you’d be more properly titled and you’d be able to have Van Morrison quotes in your comments

I hope I’m not one of those who sadden you: I admire this blog and the work of 37 Signals.

Is chance missing from your picture here?

Blind luck, fortune, a happy acquaintance, fortuitous timing?

The successful person can always look down at the failures and tsk-tsk, “They didn’t want it bad enough,” but can he or she who struck gold on the first swing of the pick-axe really know that the failure didn’t try harder? Is the race really to the swift and the battle to the strong, or is that just part of our American, self-made ethic?

I feel that I’ve succeeded in many areas in my life and failed in many others. Sometimes both feel like chance.

My recipe for success: be jealous, be gregarious, be talented, be industrious, be persistent. But above all, be lucky.

I’m envious of people who can turn envy into ambition instead of resentment. =P

For more on the phenomenon, see http://tinyurl.com/5oc6pg

I applaud your raw honesty.

Yeah, I’ve been noticing times when I’m jealous (or when I fib/exaggerate) as places in my life where I’m longing for something I’m not giving myself. So, I take my moments of jealousy and try to use them as information for prioritizing and making room for new endeavors…..

@DHH

I was thinking that way during all my life, since I was a kid. I always been fascinated by others skills and intellect (material possesions always was a problem, but it was not worth being jealous). I have to say that it definitively works:

1. It makes you a better person: You have that you achieve by your own merits, by your own effort.

2. It makes you more productive: You don’t need to rise and rise without stop, you will learn to maintain a level, if you reach a point you will stay at that point and you never go back.

3. lt makes you more sociable: You will be challenging others to compare habilities, talking with persons that knows that you don’t.

4. It fill you with a feeling of ‘universal justice’ that you have that you deserve.

I hope you all had understood this message, it’s difficult to explain.

Bye

I think the word “ambition” should be in here somewhere – jealousy that produces ambition can be good, jealousy that produces resentment probably isn’t.

One of the core tenets of 37signals is “giving away”. David’s own example is that he doesn’t expect people to hoist themselves by their own bootstraps. In fact, David’s ambition/jealousy has provided fuel for the fire of others. Building tools for a better life for me, building tools for a better world, building tools that other people can use and adapt for their better life – those can be all of a piece.

It all comes down to one thing: How much do you really want it?