I hate this mindset of “I am constantly working towards becoming someone else”. When do we spend time as the person we are? When do we enjoy the fruits of our labor? I feel like some people who take this mindset see their lives as being two distinct phases… the building/growth phase where you grind and learn and work non stop, and then a later phase that comes after where you enjoy what you built.
I don’t think life works like that, and you will burn yourself out if you do it. Life needs to be built and enjoyed together, through your whole life.
This is patently false. If you start smoking cigarettes occasionally and start doing it more, you are becoming more of a smoker. The actions you take or don't take are the clearest input to the person you become. It's true that this is also the person you are, but that distinction seems meaningless if you're trying to become someone better (whatever better means to you).
On a more general note (and this is what you are saying), you can both prioritize the things you need to do to progress and the time you need for enjoying yourself and your current life. These things are only mutually exclusive if you're pushing past your personal limits and there's a lot of inputs to that equation and whether that's worth it to each individual.
So my next question is: why such a strong aversion to people improving themselves? There is no problem with being competitive. However competitive you want to be, be. Do it for yourself. Don't know the author of the post, but people who are hyper competitive usually aren't telling others to also be hyper competitive (unless it's a Gary V or someone similar). From my experience, they're usually just doing their own thing.
Why do you sense this as a strong aversion to people improving themselves, and not a strong aversion to people trying to guilt people into seeing only one mindset to self improvement?
I don't know about 'patently false': it's literally true. The things you do reflect who you are when you do them, the person you are becoming is a hypothetical who does not exist. For example, I am the one splitting hairs in this comment, not the future me who wants to be named world's biggest pedant.
What your example points out is someone who is doing more of something over time. A smoker who smokes more is a trend, not an action.
I'd say there definitely is if you do everything in life that way. You seem to be assuming it's possible to be meaningful competitive without it affecting how you interact with other people. But competitive-minded people often make it abundantly clear to those around them how much they're "winning" and even make it a point of pride that others aren't doing so well. So yes, there definitely can be problems with being competitive. But our competitive instinct can be positive motivating force - we've all pushed ourselves that little harder knowing the reward will be a higher spot on the results table. How to combine that with not being an asshole about it seems to be the challenge.
They are the clearest input to the person you *are*. I agree with the OP you replied to.
What if this is not true without exception?
> From my experience, they're usually just doing their own thing.
The "just" seems off - actions can affect the state of the system we all live in, and sometimes these effects are negative.
crab bucket mentality
It's fine to be competitive or trying to improve. But it seems to me that people reading this type of self-improvement articles are wasting their time (ironic if they want to be more productive).
Do, or do not. There is no try.
This is a meaningful distinction, even if it is a nuanced one. There's a profound difference between focusing on who you want to be tomorrow versus who you want to be today.
One mindset takes you out of the present and is an act of self denial. The other embraces the present and affirms positive self identity.
I remember realizing this really early on because of how I played real-time strategy games like Red Alert. Hear me out...
My usual routine was to grind collecting resources and building up the "perfect" army. This part was never really fun for me. It was most of the playtime.
Then I'd take my amassed troops and wipe the map. This part was fun but lasted only a few minutes. It also meant my experience didn't feel very original after a few games.
After that, I tried to be a bit more free with my play-style. Played using riskier strategies, tried different approaches, etc. I can't say every attempt worked out or every time was more fun. But I'd like to think I had a fuller game experience.
I wish I could say I adopted that latter philosophy in life ever since then, but I'd be lying. I do try to stay aware of it and nudge myself in the right direction. But it's also a lot easier to just stay in the comfort zone.
At least for me, it wasn't until I started making self-reflection part of my routine that I started seeing how stagnant I had become and doing something about it. And yes, as I type that, I'm aware that sentence screams "productivity porn." Like most things, I think there's a balance to be struck. Yes, grow, but also live while you grow.
I reckon if you tried this with a competitive human player, you will almost certainly lose.
And i would imagine life is the same - if you laid out a plan and grind to get rich to enjoy it at the end, you are making the assumption that the world doesn't change under you in the mean time.
For some people, this worked, but i think increasingly, the world is changing faster and faster, and any plan that someone might make is going to crumble in the face of the "enemy".
Being adjustable on the fly, and changing plans and goals, as well as balance, is the key imho.
- Enemy would scout your greedy boom
- Enemy would attack while you've committed to your economy instead of military or defenses
- You loseI think I really just wanted/needed was a pleasant building experience like simcity, but with a little action and a definite end within a finite amount of time. When it got too easy I would add more (computer) opponents.
Without being mindful, you'll just have another handful of chips instead of remembering you're trying to be not fat.
Without being mindful, you'll watch another Youtube video instead of doing something on your todo list.
Without being mindful, you'll jerk off instead of reading a book or interacting with another human being.
It's not that doing any of the above is inherently bad in isolation, it's that if you aren't mindful in the aggregate and just default to impulse, you'll find yourself drifting much farther from what you think you will eventually become than you otherwise realize.
We live in a world where distraction and dopamine hits are so accessible (sometimes even out of our control) vs even just 50 years ago, so we find ourselves needing to be more deliberate in our actions.
You can be mindful of who you are and what you want now.
A life of always suffering for tomorrow is arguably as bad as a life of mindless indulgence.
You can get to the end without ever enjoying it.
It is better to not want chips than always want chips and restrain yourself.
It is better to enjoy exercise than suffer through it.
And I suppose I agree with the posted article's title, that every action is an investment of energy into developing better selves, others, the surrounding environment as an interconnected living system.
I actually just had this realization when I was lifting weights.
Initially I just wanted to lose weight and I had this idea of where I’d be once I did. Then I got to my goal weight and that wasn’t it. Now if I stop lifting, exercising and eating healthily all of my progress will eventually be gone; it’s a life long process not just something to do for awhile until I reach some goal.
I think it’s something I should apply to my professional life as well but it can be scary to take your foot off of the gas. I’ve done it in the past for the wrong reasons and wound up regretting it.
I watched my grandfather decline dramatically over his last few years due to a lifelong neglect of his health and I've resolved myself to do everything in my power to try to avoid his fate.
After a decade of false starts, I really had to get to the point where I was doing it for me. Years ago would've been better, but today is better than next year. 60 pounds down in the last 9 months. Could've done more probably, but I really had to figure out a rhythm to it and learn to love it. Ironically, this time around is the first time I preserved enough to get to the point where I can recognize the positive effects. My mood is dramatically more positive after exercise, etc. I never believed I could get to that point.
I made a lot of ideals and goals when I was younger and didn’t know myself or the world, and it caused me to chase things that ultimately didn’t bring my happiness.
I’m much better now loving my harmless, wierd, silly bits, and working on improving the prickly bits that hurt others around me and myself, but I’m still learning what those all are and that’s ok. That’s growth.
Using the "Thinking fast and slow analogy" book analogy these are my geeky definitions:
Fast (automatic, unconscious) thinking is always a vote towards what you are and slow thinking is 50% vote for what you are and 50% on what you are becoming. What you are becoming is a combination of what you want and what your environment pushes you to. Abuse or hedonism makes you working towards places where you better not be. Forming a habit is moving an action from slow thinking mode to fast thinking mode.
For some context ... the blog itself was scoped to a very small portion of what I intend to write as time goes on (probably won't be submitting those to HN as I agree in hindsight that it doesn't match the preferred content for HN readers).
Someone else also commented "Are there any votes you cast that you’re not proud of? What kind of person do those votes tell you that you wish to become?" Yes, I'll be writing that and expanding beyond work scope because as a family oriented person (which doesn't come across in the post, nor did I intend it to), I'm glad to work at a place that advocates for a healthy work-life balance.
Burn out is a very real thing, and I 100% agree with the "Life needs to be built and enjoyed together, through your whole life." that's spot on!
:-)
Some people that have a larger gap here, likely could benefit from more mindful decision making.
But you probably need to temper your reaction. Surely you would expect someone to work on improving themselves. That's what education is. That's how people develop skills.
James Clear in Atomic Habits is definitely not just talking about productivity. He's talking about your health and fitness and your mental health too.
Also, why do you have become "someone else" to be a better version of yourself?
I'm not a machine. I need rest and recreation to function properly. I sometimes get sick or sleep poorly. I sometimes get bursts of inspiration. There's no telling what condition I'll be working with on a given day.
But perhaps you're right. Perhaps I'm casting my vote against being some sigma grindset, 4 AM cold showers, audiobooks at 3X speed kind of guy. The other guy seems more chill.
Not sure if it was posted in earnest, but either way the dude is trying too hard. Hard work is a virtue, a bullet list of your own isn't.
I do it out of pure laziness. Particularly, all youtube things (with 'Video Speed Controller ' extension) at 2 or 3x because I just can't can't can't put up with normal speed.
I like to relax and binge netflix occasionally to decompress but that doesn't mean I'm voting for myself to become a lazy bum.
I also like to play music but I don't want to become a working musician.
Life is more than ACTIONS there's also experiences and things you enjoy that have nothing to do with future planning.
I personally find this philosophy useful and follow it myself. I intentionally choose what I spend my time on. I make a list of priorities, then I allocate time to those priorities on a spreadsheet. If I run out of time, I drop priorities and make more time. I factor in social time where I can choose to go out or stay in, depending on how I am feeling that day.
What I don't appreciate it the philosophy that most people seem to embrace which is "externalize everything but my job and what feels good". I feel like it's important to hone a variety of skills, and sometimes doing that isn't exactly fun. I think it's more justifiable to delegate once you know how to do a job well. There are exceptions, but there really are not a lot of them.
1) Read $popular_book
2) Have it tell you what to do
3) Blog about chapter, quote, section of said $popular_book
4) Keep you in the loop for SV/VC/Hacker/Founder-sphere because if you don't have a presence your startup doesnt matter.
I'm overly generalizing a bit, and I think the blogger probably had good intentions (i.e. me overreacting) but I feel like these types of posts are more virtue signaling and a waste of time vs smart people wanting an online book club.
Beyond that, if its cringe to you or not worth your time, just ignore it and move on. Just because it's not worth your time doesn't mean its not worth the time of the author.
My contention with that philosophy is similar to that of all the messaging we get on social media about success and how our lives are supposed to be. No, I don't travel and dine out as much as other people, and perhaps I'm not as conventionally successful as most others in my cohort, but I have enough life experience to inform me that I am both content and not really "missing out" on things like others might. To "live like you'll die tomorrow" seems stressful and unsustainable to me. I much prefer the chill feeling of knowing that I'll wake up with a new day and that I don't necessarily need to be hustling or achieving to be a human.
It's okay to want to be the kind of person who enjoys a show and watches it enthusiastically. It's great to be the kind of person who relaxes and takes care of themselves. It's wonderful to want to be musical without pushing yourself to do so commercially.
Take actions to be the kind of person who enjoys being you.
I guess it’s worth remembering that for every blog post out there that perhaps we don’t like, there are a million that are never written in the first place for fear of being exposed to criticism.
So maybe there is virtue in just having the courage to put yourself out there and invite the world to cast their judgement on you, if nothing else!
I can get behind that :)
Yeah, I can’t say I’ve done as much as this guy, but the quote is helpful in framing small actions when building toward habits.
Poor guy…I’m voting to take a nap and not join in on the dog pile.
> firm believer that structure dictates behavior
So every action you take is a vote and structure dictates your behavior. This sounds oddly familiar.
Would the author do these things absent the post-hoc moralizing?
Maybe we are seeing what it looks like when we concoct narratives to order our life, and it hits a bit too close to home. After all, how coincidental is it that the thing that brings ultimate fulfillment (career) is also the thing that we’ve been told all our life to put so much into.
Can you spell out your associations plainly for those of us who haven't made the conceptual leap?
1. Got a meaningless certificate. Also expanded his "wildly successful business leaders" network.
2. Added people to a project in order to get it completed faster. (The ghost of Fred Brooks is making it hard to type here now.)
3. Proposed re-orging Red Hat engineering.
4. Had a meeting.
5. Wrote strategy doccies.
6. Mentoring. (1 out of 7 isn't bad.)
7. Had a meeting about advertising copy.
I'm afraid I absolutely, positively, do not wish to become whatever sort of person this is, thank you very much.
Even if you find the headline thought provoking, the article puts no effort into sharing it or exploring it.
It’s just a list of self-enrichment things the OP is proud of having done lately. This is effectively just resume spam.
This is not even worthy of being called an "article" : just some self-promotion thrown without any effort.
Content like this always rubs me the wrong way. Not genuinely written because it must be said, because of a deeply felt need to express oneself. But to present oneself in a very specific but essentially superfluous and artificial way.
Maybe it is me being more and more disillusioned by all this kind of superficial content. Maybe it is just me having a different opinion was I could regard as deep content.
Life is mostly out of your control, if you think that the solution is to try and assert more control you're the reason the myth of Sisyphus is popular.
Maybe they feel bad about their golf game but feel even worse about the rest of their lives? Let them have a couple hours on the range, it doesn’t particularly matter anyway.
I liked the book and the mindset. Reminded me of Arete [0]. But for me it's more like an ideal and a reminder. A bit of fake it till you make it and what would a person who already obtained the goal do or did do in my stead.
Edit: Ah well, you've edited your comment now, can't argue with just getting through the day ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, you can keep that. I'm focused on getting 1% happier each day.
At worst, they sound incredibly judgmental, presumptive, or pushy. It irks me to no end when others try to decide what good is on my behalf.
I won’t mince words. It is an embarrassing addiction. I often feel secondhand embarrassment when I interact with them. The level of naïveté required is astronomical, but somehow there it is.
It is also one of the funniest phenomenons to see on this website, because it’s not just acceptable here, or even just popular here, but apparently a critical part of the culture to the extent that weird articles about dealing with ~Being super smart~ or ~Optimizing your life~ make it to the front page on a nearly daily basis, beating hundreds of submissions every day.
I am happy to see that people are being critical of it today though!
Sometimes trying to not be stupid is easier than trying to be smart. Maybe that's another quote I read from somewhere else.
Every dollar spent at a business is a vote for that business to continue existing.
This framing pushes me to support more local businesses, even if it's a couple $ extra. Same with attending the local events that you want your community to continue offering.
If every action you take is for something else as a means to an end, you are doing nothing because of the value of the doing the thing itself. That sounds like a pretty shitty life regardless of what you end up "becoming".
Nope! Big career fireworks instead. Props to this guy anyway, sounds like he's enjoying whatever he's doing.
There is one insightful short story about "The Tale of The Two Wolves" right after the Table of Contents of the latter book:
"One evening, an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My Son, the battle is between two 'wolves' inside us all."
"One is Evil. It's anger, envy, jealousy, doubt, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
“The other is Good. It's joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, forgiveness, truth, compassion, and faith."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?"
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Luckily there is a REPL for human behavior: feedback from the environment that the decision you made did or did not support your long term goals
This REPL allows you to iterate toward increasing the percentage of your effort that goes to long term goals.
This assumes you have measurable long term goals.
"you are what you do"
..which evokes the deepest ontological question - does being doing?
you might want to be confident and outgoing, but your ability to vote for or express that action, is constrained by your life experiences and even biological things.
- Survive