Michael Crichton’s and John Grisham’s ambition types

https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2022/10/28/on-michael-crichtons-busy-ambition/

by 1123581321 • 4 years ago

117 84 4 years ago

causi• 4 years ago

I like to think that if Crichton hadn't died so young he would've eventually given up being a climate denier.

ggm• 4 years ago

The take down on his footnote riddled state of fear is good. Shame about the politics because is was a great airport thriller. Full of mcguffins left right and centre.

evv5552• 4 years ago

Was he a climate denier or a critic of the emerging scientism in the climate change debate? There are unintended consequences to arriving at the right conclusion(climate change is real) for the wrong reasons. It undermines societies ability to move forward viable solutions.

notahacker3• 4 years ago

No, he was a full blown denier, fond of making outlandish claims like the Antarctic ice area actually increasing, misrepresenting what the scientists had actually predicted in order to claim their predictions had failed, as well as writing an entertaining-but-silly novel about eco-terrorists faking natural disasters full of nonsense gotchas like "look, the temperature record in this place is lower than it was x years ago"

He just was smart enough to caveat it with "maybe the world is getting a little bit warmer but we can't be sure why" and to focus on attacking the notion of scientific consensus and modelling rather than defending alternative hypotheses in any detail.

pessimizer• 4 years ago

Seems unlikely, he was typical of a cluster of opinion that has become more widespread since. Climate denial wasn't his only thing, for example, he also was a "the real sexism is against men" guy.

xenonite2• 4 years ago

I don’t think that he spread such a plain opinion. I think he rather tried to add balance to a one sided discussion.

0xcde4c3db• 4 years ago

See also: Scott Adams, who seems to be on a similar arc.

1990s Dilbert: Office workers express skepticism and frustration surrounding their boss's incompetence and how meaningful their work really is.

2020s Dilbert: A robot indignantly asks "did you just assume my gender?" after having a "wokeness chip" installed [1].

I expect that within another decade he'll go full Mallard Fillmore and just have Dilbert's head in the corner with the rest of the comic being a giant speech bubble filled with a barely-coherent rant against people who only exist in his imagination.

[1] https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-09-05

gerbler• 4 years ago

Comparing their personal lives is also interesting - Crichton, married 5 times, Grisham married once.

Not morally judging someone for getting divorced, but I suspect such an ambitious life (Crichton) left little room for personal relationships.

dan00• 4 years ago

I would interpret it differently. A man getting that easily bored by just one project, might as easily get bored by just one wife.

proamdev1233• 4 years ago

That’s a poor analogy. He wasn’t married to multiple women at the same time. And one can have multiple relationships simultaneously without getting married five times.

I think the parent’s reply is more likely.

gsatic• 4 years ago

And there is Type 3 - over flowing with energy and drive to succeed but zero imagination or creativity.

They waste everyones energy and time and ideally should be shot of into space to leave the rest of the chimp troupe in peace.

bjornsing7• 4 years ago

That’s unfortunately a common archetype in the “tech” startup world, yes…

synu• 4 years ago

Quite common in rise and grind hustler culture in any industry as well.

mongol3• 4 years ago

Then, by induction, there must be Type 4, that lacks both ambition and talent.

theGnuMe2• 4 years ago

Of course.

slowmovintarget• 4 years ago

If they're employed at all, it's in middle ranks in government or unionized jobs.

smugma2• 4 years ago

From the Wikipedia page:

The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties.

Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions.

theGnuMe2• 4 years ago

You put these people into sales.

apohn4• 4 years ago

Unfortunately this is what happens in real life. And those people have the ability to completely derail sales opportunities because they don't know when to stop selling because they a) can't recognize when they can't win the deal or b)don't realize they have won and make such a mess they end up wrecking it.

apohn4• 4 years ago

There was a German General who classified people into 4 categories based on if they were hardworking, lazy, smart, or stupid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Cl...

His comment on Type 3 - "One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."

I once had a manager and his manager who were both like this. I've never seen a dynamic duo with more skill in turning a group of good ICs in a bunch of dancing monkeys churning out pointless work. But hey, while problems solved was zero, number of PowerPoints in the shared drive was over 9000.

cableshaft• 4 years ago

But hey, while problems solved was zero, number of PowerPoints in the shared drive was over 9000.

Vegeta would be impressed.

philipov• 4 years ago

A classic example of Type 3 is Emperor Nicholas II of Russia. So determined to work hard and do his duty that he was completely unwilling to delegate, with no effort spared in coming up with the worst possible solution to every problem.

ghaff3• 4 years ago

I wouldn’t go so far as to call them stupid but I once had a colleague—not my manager thankfully—whose approach to doing everything was essentially shotgun frantic activity.

jbigelow76• 4 years ago

There was a German General who classified people into 4 categories based on if they were hardworking, lazy, smart, or stupid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Cl...

Interesting read of his wikipedia.

He is regarded as "an undisguised opponent" of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.

As far as epitaphs go, you could certainly do worse.

bjornsing7• 4 years ago

This is wonderful advice. I wish I would have received it (and been receptive to it) 15 years ago.

Back then I was a Crichton, but have realized I’m just causing myself unhappiness and anxiety on that path. Now I want to try to be more of a Grisham.

One challenge though: How can you be a Grisham in the “deep tech” startup space? The whole culture is so geared towards Crichtons. Is there a beaten path, or will I have to create it?

WJW2• 4 years ago

I doubt it will be possible, as the concept of SV-type startups is to be as Crichtony as possible. In fact, when they start to become boring you can often see VCs pressure the management to take more risk as a mere 2-5x return on investment is not enough to make the VC model work.

I expect that being a Grisham in deep tech either involves finding work in the research department of a more stable big tech company, or else in a research institute/university. If that is not possible and you can find/want only startup work, you can always try to uncouple your financials from work via FIRE methods and try to find autonomy that way. Be aware that you will find a growing friction with management and even your coworkers if you try that though.

bjornsing7• 4 years ago

Crichton is the cultural norm, I realize that. But does it have to be?

For example: I don’t mind the high risk / high reward thing, as long as it’s not me working 80 hour weeks under incredible stress to try to avoid bankruptcy. There are plenty of Crichton wannabes with all the necessary drive, energy and business acumen, but which lack the imagination and creativity to really succeed. Why can’t one of them do that job? I can be the creative guy behind the scenes.

Sure you can be an “expert” and live out your days in a corporate research lab or something. But that means you’ll have a 9-5 job with zero financial incentives until you retire. I think we’re heading into an economy where creativity, imagination and foresight really is the bottleneck. Is it sound that that work is then not incentivized at all?

proamdev1233• 4 years ago

Well maybe not in the “deep tech startup world”, but there are examples of successful long-term tech entrepreneurs, especially in SaaS.

A couple that immediately come to mind are the creator of the Epsilon editor and the creator of Pinboard.

I’m sure there are many others.

Eduardo3rd• 4 years ago

I would argue that outside of the Elon Musk tier of the deep tech world (and there's really only one person like that) almost every other person I know making measurable progress in hard technology is extremely focused on one thing at a time. The Crichton style 100-things-at-once approach grabs more headlines, retweets, and attention - but most of the engineers I know working on fusion reactors, electric vehicles, carbon capture, artificial intelligence, space travel, and medical advances are not trying to be VCs, entertainers, authors, and philanthropists at the same time they move their field forward.

Focus on running towards what actually moves the world forward and you'll discover the other people who are keeping up with you quickly. Don't worry about all of the noise around busier people working on other things. None of that will last.

tomcam5• 4 years ago

Crichton was not a great author but his books are perfectly crafted, entertaining all the way through, and low-key super creative. He loved the research and it shows. The result was potboilers that never condescended and read smooth as butter. Like Lee Child or Robert B. Parker he made it look easy.

rjsw• 4 years ago

The one Grisham book that I have read felt like the author had not done enough research. It was set mostly in Europe and contained a lot of minor details that were wrong.

vlunkr2• 4 years ago

So what makes him not a great author then?

Barrin922• 4 years ago

because ultimately everything he's written is forgettable. He wrote the same techno-thriller over and over and because it's easy to digest it became a good template for movies but other than that there's nothing really about any of his books that'd make you read them more than once.

tomcam5• 4 years ago

Very little character development. In great literature characters are changed by their circumstances.

TBH I do think his books are classics, but your high school English teacher would disagree.

paulcole• 4 years ago

With his Type 1 and Type 2 ambitions, the author has stumbled upon the established SCARF model, which involves five domains of human social experience: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.

You can apply this to a lot of things: ambition, leadership, engagement at work, etc.

In this case, through their ambition, Grisham seeks autonomy (and to an extent certainty) and Crichton status.

Xenoamorphous• 4 years ago

Two of my favourite authors. I know that their books the equivalent to blockbuster movies in cinema but man, I loved their books during my teenage years.

I already loved dinosaurs as a kid (whick kid doesn’t love them, though) and Jurassic Park the novel and then the movie (I was 10 and 13 when they came out) blew me away. I just started reading Jurassic Park again, this time in English (I couldn’t as a kid) and damn, so many memories…

Never cared for The Lost World though, neither the book nor the film.

ProjectArcturis2• 4 years ago

For me, Crichton went off the rails with Rising Sun and Disclosure, which are mainly driven by animus against Japanese business practices and women filing sexual harassment claims. Like, if you were a rich white guy in the early 90s, those were two things that right-leaning media outlets would have you worry about. Crichton by that point had lost the imaginative independent thinking that drove his early work, and basically ate up and regurgitated the media panic of the day into two novels that have aged incredibly poorly.

ghaff3• 4 years ago

Latterly, Crichton’s books started to read more like screenplay treatments than novels—which they sort of were.

Rising Sun though I think you have to see through the lens of the time.

V_Terranova_Jr• 4 years ago

Counterpoint: Crichton's Airframe is a great book that illustrates how journalists reporting on complex subjects they don't understand can cause great harm regardless of their intent or convictions.

apple4ever2• 4 years ago

I thought they were both great books and movies. I don't get into the reasons behind them, they were good stories.

thenerdhead2• 4 years ago

This article speaks to me that the author himself is struggling to unblock his creativity by looking to other processes.

Both these authors were ambitious and ruled the 2000s best sellers list. Sure they had different processes, but we’re comparing books on the range of science topics to that of legal thrillers.

There’s other very consistent authors out there. The Danielle Steel, Nicolas Sparks, etc types are overlooked because of their book topics but they have similar stories of ambition in their late 20s where they decided to pursue writing full time.

I don’t really get what the take away is here. Each of these people are ambitious and live different lives to realize it. So what? What’s the takeaway?

proamdev1233• 4 years ago

The takeaway is clearly stated at the end: two extremely successful authors took very different paths to success and currently live two very different lifestyles — all based on their personality types.

Cal Newport is sharing these examples to the reader to impart the idea that you should try to match your career _style_ to your personality. You can pursue the exact same career as someone else, but if the __way_ you pursue it doesn’t match your personality style, you probably won’t be happy.

thenerdhead2• 4 years ago

Thanks for reiterating it. I’m saying “so what?” to the takeaway.

It is putting one ambition type above others because it is most relatable to the author. It doesn’t mean it is the right one as proof by other successful authors who are constantly juggling many projects at a time.

There are these types of ambition in all professions. You can’t just assume a type you disagree with is not happy. That’s what I’m saying “so what?” to.

I’m fine with being downvoted, but wanted to provide more context to what can be perceived as cynicism.

mirker2• 4 years ago

One of the takeaways is some people enjoy pressure and some people use work to avoid pressure. You can find billionaires who have enough money to retire many times and they are still working 80 hour weeks. Why is that? They clearly enjoy the grind.

lovelearning• 4 years ago

My problem is that I'm definitely type 2, but my mind wishes to become type 1. It took me two days just to write a Python script for managing spam, but when I go on GitHub, I find people regularly contributing to 3-4 critical projects every week from months.

mirker2• 4 years ago

If you spend the time to contribute one patch, I don’t see why you couldn’t repeat this process to the point where you are highly productive. It’s just hard work getting to that point.

UIUC_06• 4 years ago

Crichton's and Grisham's books are both forgettable but quite enjoyable reads. In both cases, their formula is easily learned, and the 2nd and nth books you read just seem to scream out "formula." That's why I've read one or two of their books and don't feel the need to read any more.

It's a good formula. It can make very good movies. Sir Walter Scott [1] was hugely popular in his day. Some people do still read him. In 200 years, some analogous paragraph to this will appear for Crichton & Grisham.

Following the Modernist movement in literature in the aftermath of the first World War, Scott’s rambling and verbose text (indeed he was alleged to omit punctuation in his writing, preferring to leave this to the printers to insert as required) was no longer in vogue.

[1] https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/Sir-...

michaelwww• 4 years ago

I haven't read Grisham but that's how I felt about Crichton's books. His books were treatments designed to made into a movie and read like that.

notahacker3• 4 years ago

Ironically Jurassic Park was an exception (made a great movie, but Spielberg must have been very happy to lose the book's preoccupation with details of chaos theory and computer systems in the screenplay)

pfortuny• 4 years ago

Same about Ishiguro, very surprisingly.

2143• 4 years ago

I had read a couple of Grisham's works some years ago and found them enjoyable.

I thought I had never read Crichton (just not into dinosaurs) until I realised that I have infact read his State of Fear many years ago. However, I have no recollection whatsoever of its story.

Another author who uses formula seems to be Dan Brown: everything happens within 24 hours, there's a hero with lots of travel (atleast an Atlantic crossing and back — which if you think about it screws up the 24 hour timeline IRL) a pursuing villain who's low-key psychopath, a parallel storyline...

It's quite enjoyable if you're reading him for the first time, but by the time you're into 3rd book you'll start to see the formula and then whatever you're reading instantly loses its appeal.

I have decided that, life's too short to be reading low-quality work, and now I try to read classics and other renowned works.

Of course, with this strategy you might end up missing good works by independent authors. So, keep an open mind.

6stringmerc2• 4 years ago

Speaking of formula and the beauty in hack work, the craft in O. Henry stories really holds up. I’ve got a collection in paperback that is almost falling apart. Some better than others but talk about using a formula with brilliance on the regular - can’t wait to revisit some now that I think about it.

apple4ever2• 4 years ago

I disagree. Crichton's are both enjoyable and quite memorable. Sure they have a formula, but that's fine for me. I love all his books.

(I never read Grisham so I can't speak to them)

Michael Crichton’s and John Grisham’s ambition types

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