The true secrets to staying hungry for success

Vartika Kashyap
5 min readSep 14, 2017

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There is a world of difference in being successful and staying hungry for success. There are plenty of examples of people who really could not keep up their drive for success when it matter. This is the reason that they ended up from being success stories to forgotten faces.

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I recently read about one of the people who joined Facebook in its first year of inception — Noah Kagan. Being the 30th employee to join the rapidly growing company, taking success for granted and not knowing what he was doing prevented him from being a billionaire to someone who is trying to get as rich as possible.

This is not to say that he was not hungry for success. But this is just to exemplify that at one point in his career he lost his focus to stay hungry for success and ended up becoming just an ordinary IT guy.

So, the question is what is that one can do to stay inspired and hungry for success? Well, here are a few cents of knowledge that has inspired me to stay hungry for success:

Don’t let it get to head

Like it was in Kagan’s case, he let success get to the head. Kagan himself says,” I used to host startup gatherings at Facebook’s headquarters because I enjoyed showing off where I worked. I also wrote frequent posts on OKDork.com about Facebook’s business. There was this one point where Mark pulled me to the side and asked me to choose between Facebook and myself. But, I still did not get the hint.”

This is the perfect example of how one can easily get derailed from the track of success if one lets it get to the head. And, that’s the first secret to stay hungry for success — don’t let success get to the head. It’s okay to show off what you have achieved, but at the same time you must always remember that it’s just the first step. Getting success at work is the second hardest thing in the world, staying hungry for it even after succeeding is the hardest!

Read. A lot!

Reading is one of the most powerful habits that one can have in life. Take a look at all the great leaders in history, and even today, they all have been ardent readers. As a matter of fact, Elon Musk has even said that the only reason why he was able to build a rocket was because he read books.

This is not to say that you must read because people like Elon, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg all are reading, but because it is one habit that gives you a new perspective of looking at things. You have limited amount of time in life. Hence, you cannot have the luxury to experience on your own. But reading is the closest you can ever get to experience something that you have not done. That’s the best thing about it!

Be a little selfish

Selfish is a really harsh word, but I could not find a more appropriate word to describe this situation. The road of leadership is quite tough, it brings along with it some tough decisions. But to keep yourself hungry for success you need to become a little selfish. You need to leave the emotions aside while taking decision, and think what’s going to help you grow.

This might mean that sometimes you have to hurt the sentiments of others, but all in good spirit. Don’t do something intentionally to hurt someone. But, if it is needed for the business growth, be a little selfish.

Stay grateful for everything

Humility is something that will keep your vigor for success up. When you are humble you take success as a journey not as a destination. This is the reason why the richest and the most successful names in the world, the likes of Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Bill Gates, believe in being rich and not showing off that they are rich.

They embrace the fact that success is bound to come when you put sincere efforts. It is for those who think of success as destination that remaining hungry once they have reached that destination becomes difficult.

“Want to become happier at work? Stop relying on emails and switch to ProofHub!”

Originally published at LinkedIn

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Vartika Kashyap runs the marketing team at ProofHub — a project management software for teams of all sizes. She is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s been featured among LinkedIn’s Top Voices for the year 2016. Connect with Vartika on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.

Also follow our company page @ProofHub to get the recent updates about our tool, published articles, motivational quotes & presentations.

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Vartika Kashyap
Vartika Kashyap

Written by Vartika Kashyap

Chief Marketing Officer@ProofHub. Featured writer on LinkedIn. Contributor at Elearning Industry, Dzone, Your Story and Business.com.