This article hits home. Five years ago, I created a SaaS app that did well, followed by one that did less so, and another that flopped (all eBay selling software).
New projects weren't having as much an impact and making me feel good, so I sat around reading books.
A turning point came when I read two: Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and On Writing by Stephen King. The first teaches we get optimal experience out of what we spend our attention on. It really got me psyched about chasing that feeling of being in the zone with my work. On Writing did that too. I saw another HN poster refer to King's "blue collar work ethic" -- totally true. He works hard because he loves to.
I recently started working again for pleasure, less encumbered by insecurities. I'm still working on it, still practicing. I created an open source framework for Amazon Echo development, and it's starting to get some traction. I think I was able to produce the work to get the traction because I've had a clearer mind.
I'm struggling with this as well. Working for the sake of pleasure. It seems that I'm so fixated on how the end result will turn out that I've forgotten the joy of actually doing the work.
Looking back on it, how much of the problem was the segment you were working on (ebay, retail, auctions), versus the specific product itself (its design, upkeep, et al)? Were you able to narrow those types of factors down when it came to what was creating the negative feeling?
I know why I did well to start. I had low expectations and no basis for self-comparison. I focused on the work instead of the results, so the results ended up being pretty good.
> I know why I did well to start. I had low expectations and no basis for self-comparison.
This happens to everybody who achieves an initial "success":
- A band or artist that puts out a great first album or single that is well received and then struggles to write any more hits. These guys are called "one hit wonders" - what a horrible name for somebody who achieved success even if it was once!
- An entrepreneur who launches a successful first business, sells out for millions, and struggles to come up with an idea for a second business let alone execute and replicate the success of the first.
- The writer that has a successful first book but can't come up with a story line for a second.
I'd estimate 99% of people never have one "success", let alone repeatedly create successful things - it seems unfair your brain beat you up for not having replicated your first success. Glad to hear it's getting better.
Can be also luck on first try, while all subsequent attempts are "regression towards the mean" as Kahneman puts it.
However I agree with the idea that being motivated by the process of creation is more robust than being totally goal-oriented, especially when chance of achieving a goal is low and it may take many unsuccessful attempts before producing a hit.
I just got a library card .. you can guess what mindset I'm in. For a few times MOOCs managed to boost my confidence by allowing a bit of challenge and groupwork/competition. But that faded as I tried more abstract ones. Maybe I should use my new card to rent your books instead of Prolog/OCaml ones.
My understanding of flow is that it is triggered when the task is neither too easy or too hard. It's a sweet spot that maximizes your engagement with the task at hand.
Engagement != learning. If anything, I'd say engagement is closer corelated to output.
According to studies done on musical students (for what
these studies are worth), the ones who practiced in "flow" progressed much slower than those who constantly and deliberately pushed themselves far outside their comfort zone.
I guess that's the point, to step back from the desire to always find something better. This somehow implies that you don't actively challenge yourself to learn new stuff. You could however learn new things nevertheless, but I guess the idea is not self-improvement, but getting at peace with yourself, and maybe also your limitations.
(Not advocating that, that's just how I would understand the concept)
Not at all. Flow is reached the moment I tackle a challenge that is just a bit above my skills. Then I learn. Learning something new does not have to be unpleasant. It is not easy to find the adequate challenge at each moment but it's possible and that's why some teachers, courses, books etc are much better than others.
It seems to me that the more you have a propensity to think (or over-think), the more likely it is that you may be able to construct rationalizations (excuses) before/during the moment as to why you might not be able to do something. More insidiously, you can construct these excuses after the moment passes, like an endless negative Nancy TiVo gone berzerk in your mind.
There is no one-size-fits all solution to self-doubt, lack of confidence, etc. Really, the only solution for nagging self-doubt is to generate contradictory evidence to self-doubt. That is, do something.
Motivation is not ideal either because usually it makes you think you can do something.
The more I work on meditation and visualization and other techniques - the more aware I am in the actual moment of when I am resisting doing something out of my comfort/risk zone. There is a lot to be said for Zen and Stoicism, as well. And in the end, only you (or your closest friends or partner) know when you are not pushing yourself.
> ... I am resisting doing something out of my comfort/risk zone.
Interestingly, we resist because we perceive a loss of options or in other words - freedom, caused by the paralyzing anxiety. We usually feel free by being in our optimized space, where we have already invested a lot.
And the purpose of going out of out comfort zone is exactly the same - to maximize freedom or diversity of options. By embracing novelty, new options might be discovered and more freedom acquired.
It's the classic trafeoff between exploration and exploitation. Both exploration and exploitation are necessary to maximize results, and the balance between them is not a trivial issue. Always going out of your comfort zone can do as much harm as always avoiding novelty.
By the way, Reinforcement learning algorithms such as AlphaGo deal with the same issue. The simplest solution is to follow the optimized policy ("be in the comfort zone"), but from time to time to do random exploration steps in order to discover more of the state space and possibly find better strategies. In the beginning of the training sequence, it's more exploration, but later, more exploitation.
While there are some things that I am very good at naturally, there are many things (especially in the social sphere) that I struggle with. The problem is that I've developed camouflage that makes my acquaintances and even some of my friends think that I am better in some of these areas than I know that I am.
Having bought (and eventually given most away) pounds and pounds of self-help/self-improvement books over many years, there are common patterns in each book. They are all marketing to fix X problem with Y techniques. All parts of every technique Y may not work for you. However, like agile/scrum, there are parts of it that may be worth using for you, personally.
Having someone that knows you help keep you accountable (even better if you are both keeping each other accountable - or a small group) may work for you. You can also hire a personal coach. The accountability doesn't have to be every day (that is micromanagement and would get exhausting on both sides). Something like once or twice a month can work well. A regular 8am meeting twice a month, for example. It doesn't have to be face to face, it can be over Skype.
Finally, you may encounter the strongest resistance from yourself. Simple stuff like going to a yoga class instead of, say, a tech meetup. Or trying to meditate or visualize every day (the key tip here is do it before you turn on your laptop or your phone - do it right away, in the morning, as you roll out of bed). Saying hi to that cute person or not - and regretting it until it fades. You can make excuses until "the cows come home". And in the end, just doing it is what matters.
I talked to some psychologists at a conference a while back and they were mildly opposed to "positive psychology" on the grounds of crowding out healthy negative thoughts with positive ones being potentially detrimental to learning and potentially harmful with non-understood side effects. They said the research isn't exactly conclusive and noted that there's a lot of snake-oil salespeople branding themselves with "positive psychology" (which makes sense as it's a prefect self help topic which tends to attract some of them). I never followed up on this by reading current studies.
The criticism section for the "positive psychology" article seems to suggest something similar. I'd be interested in more informed opinions.
That's interesting, I'd love for somebody with more knowledge to chime in.
As a layperson my response to a psychologist who was critical of positive psychology would be "okay fine, let's assume you're right - what would you recommend people do to help themselves get better if not mindfulness, CBT or some other form of mental programme to improve their mental wellbeing?".
I totally agree that there are people selling snake oil off the back of positive psychology becoming more mainstream. That's life unfortunately...
Personally I'd take "non-understood side effects" over feeling like there's nothing I can do in the event I suffered from depression/anxiety/low self esteem or one of the dozens of other mental health issues that society on the whole still aren't very good at recognising and treating.
This. At least the mindfulness I practice (rooted in Buddhist teachings, not tied to them however) is definitely not driven by an expected outcome of "positivity." Oddly enough, this has led me to a more positive outlook, generally speaking.
That's a great insight. When you experience the truth of yourself, you experience the joy in it. Not because you are "trying to find joy". It's more realizing the joy you already are. Or that's been my experience with meditation and mindfulness at least.
Positive psychology is really the study of what makes people do well and be happy in a similar way that regular psychology can study regular behaviour and things that can go wrong like depression. It's a bit up to the individual as to which findings they try to use in everyday life. No doubt there's snake oil out there and sound science also. As a field of study it makes sense. After all people want to be successful and happy so why not study what works?
Personally I've tried some stuff with success. CBT type stuff worked when I was a bit depressed - not sure if that's positive but anyhow... I tried some of the gratitude journal type things with moderate results. One thing I'm looking at now is I read somewhere the biggest difference between people who are averagely happy and top 10% is social skills and relationships. I think I got that from http://www.authentichappinessfacts.com/2016/02/happiness-fac...
In my experience, I've known people to take the techniques of positive reinforcement much too far. They do not acknowledge negative emotions and constantly try to stay as positive as possible which alienates them from people reacting to negative events (and can also make those people feel terrible because they're not as 'positive' as the other person). You can take anything too far, and I think the risk of positive psychology is being too happy in inappropriate times.
That said, for someone who is prone to depression, moodiness, rumination and anxiety training ones self to dig rails for positivity is incredibly important and necessary. I tend to think of my thinking and mood as either a snowball effect or like a very deep groove thats been built over time. Thats what causes even small negative experiences to drop me deep into depression - the depression is like a groove with somewhat high walls, easy to fall into. Digging an equally deep positive groove requires what the OP's article suggests, and can eventually help to move more easily between them.
I've noticed that procrastination seems to follow the exact same pattern - if I start my morning with news and trivia then its far more difficult to move off of it later.
I like to think I'm at least partially genius ;) - I had no idea about CBT or any of the steps mentioned in the article but I had developed a very similar process process mostly on my own.
The first step is to keep awareness of your thoughts and feelings. Next is to remove partiality towards thoughts - you learn to take every thought as is and you learn to not have feelings towards the negative ones. That is you realize that you're partial to negativity - for some it's an excuse or explanation, for others it is deeply engrossed beliefs in certain ideas. Whatever it is you have to realize that you're more gullible to some type of thoughts than others.
Next is evaluating the impact of the thoughts on your real actual life in terms of steps you can take. Often times there isn't anything you can do about those thoughts and you drop'em like hot coal. Sometimes you find you can do things differently or avoid certain circumstances to not let those thoughts recur. Some other times it's a longer term thing. Point is to map thoughts to concrete actions and drop the ones that cause you negativity but have no action possible to counter. In yet another words drop the madness and keep the actions.
Rest is practice - you'll initially fail but so long as you notice it it'll get better the next time. You can also use distraction initially if your thoughts are too overwhelming.
It's a slow process especially for adults but it works!
It was a tongue in cheek remark obviously but nonetheless bringing awareness is only the first step - then you're stuck being aware of your own limits - overcoming those are the real effort and it requires quite a bit of it to become habitually impartial to your own thoughts - the process, the making of that habit of detachment - that's where real progress is.
There's two really good approaches to this issue that I've learned. The one in the article is cognitive behavioral therapy (also, dialectical behavioral therapy, depending on the type of ruminations). Another approach that has been gaining more traction lately is mindfulness, which is basically using meditation to clear the mind of ruminating thoughts.
I've read bits of Feeling Good Handbook, which is an often recommended book for CBT, but I really felt like I connected more with the mindfulness approach. Mindfulness seems to work faster for me since I can use meditation to quickly clear out negative thoughts rather than trying to reason about them over time as with CBT. For mindfulness, I'd highly recommend Hardwiring Happiness, which goes into depth about using neuroplasticity (the ability to rewire the brain) to pave more positive neural paths using mindfulness techniques.
I'm sure both CBT and mindfulness are good approaches and can be used in conjunction, and there's likely other good alternatives to these as well. Ultimately the goal is to balance our evolved negativity bias with more positive thinking.
That app on android needs some strange permissions, access to photos and storage and access to device id and call information plus some other stuff. I can't see why it would need to know what numbers I call.
The actual permission is 'read phone status and identity', which I guess is used to pause a meditation session if you get a phone call. 'Access to photos' is needed to get access to external storage, presumably to download audio files.
Disclaimer: I'm not an Android dev, this is just what I've picked up from the internet.
The two approaches work well together in my experience.
Mindfulness makes you more aware of what's really happening (detrimental rumination) and CBT techniques help take the sting out of the negative thoughts once they are recognised.
I once heard Sam Harris talking about a similar process. Most people sort of are their thoughts. That is -- this is tough to describe plainly -- their thoughts and feelings are primary, driving their actions as if mechanically linked. But you can in a certain sense become aware of your thoughts and view them as an outsider, as something that's happening that you can see and choose how you react to. It's not just about self-assessment. It works during acute "attacks" too.
It's crazy, but hearing him say that made a huge impact on an anxiety problem that had been getting worse for me. Thinking of it this way has without exaggeration changed my life.
I've listened to Sam Harris' stuff too not long ago and I'm not sure if it changed my life, but it definitely blew my mind and is part of a broader interest in this type of stuff that is changing my life. I don't agree with all his opinions, but his interview with Tim Ferriss and his book Waking Up are both fantastic.
Harris was initially my least favorite of the Four Horsemen -- Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett -- but my opinion has completely changed over the last year. With Hitchens gone, he's playing the role of public intellectual better than anybody else I'm aware of right now. I highly recommend his podcast.
I was able to make it through about half of that before the irrelevant mewling about "privileged powerful male elites in U.S. society" became too much for me.
If anybody is interested in what Harris actually had to say, they should go read it for themselves:
Well when you are depressed/anxious or just in a bad state of mind it is very difficult to follow simply steps; But thankfully I didn't need to pay since my university offered free mental health support
I have extreme anxiety, caused by OCD where the compulsions are mental rather than physical rituals. Looking through this article, all of the tips are tremendously powerful.
Unfortunately, they're things that have taken me over 5 years to really become aware of, accept, practice--oh man, is persevering difficult--make mistakes, and finally get better at. Unfortunately, as with many mental habits, it's really, really hard to implement advice when other people just tell it to you. It's a much longer process than that.
> Unfortunately, as with many mental habits, it's really, really hard to implement advice when other people just tell it to you. It's a much longer process than that.
This is perhaps where a therapist can provide a lot of benefit. My experience is that knowing something usually has only minimal impact on actually affecting change. Having someone go through it with you, give you 'homework' and/or keep you accountable is crucial.
The world, and Silicon Valley startup culture in particular, is filled to the brim with oblivious narcissists. You can pry my nagging self-doubt from my cold, dead fingers, thank you very much.
There's a difference between "is this the right thing to do?" and "oh God I'm a fucking failure and nobody has figured it out". The latter is quite pervasive, and it's a killer (sometimes non-figuratively).
North American culture has a tendency to redefine all criticism, external or internal, as 'negativity' -- to the point that, from my observation, organizations will a) fail without realizing it b) fail unnecessarily due to inability to deal with criticism c) define unrealistic goals on the assumption that "I think I can" will get them there.
I think this is worse in California than other places, and infects Silicon Vally the worst.
I think it leads to a 'shotgun approach' where if enough people "try try try" then yes some do succeed spectacularly while everyone else around them crashes and burns. But for people who just want to get things done properly, being on the hurtling train of "YES WE CAN" is frustrating.
Growing up with an immigrant European (German) father, I have a hard time shutting off the critical voice, and it has led to lots of culture conflict for me within workplaces.
I think there is definitely a distinction to be made within oneself between needless and mean negativity and critique, but I think the crucial point is that when the latter is repeatedly ignored, it leads to the former.
Are you sure that this is an America/California/Silicon-Valley feature? That your own internal critical voice arose as a result of growing up with your father (a German) seems to indicate that you got it from either having an immigrant parent, a German/European parent, or a parent who was just a negative nancy. I don't mean to be critical of you or your father; I mean to point out that the criticism=>negativity idea doesn't seem to be a strictly American thing.
> I think it leads to a 'shotgun approach' where if enough people "try try try" then yes some do succeed spectacularly while everyone else around them crashes and burns.
This reminds me of the Orks in Warhammer 40k, wherein the sheer psychic power of an Ork can make a war machine function; the machine would collapse if a non-Ork attempted to operate it.
I think the negativity about / criticism of oneself and one's identity (e.g. the self-effacing comic) is unique to Western civilization. Do people outside the West (e.g. Africa, Middle East, Asia, and perhaps South America) view themselves as backwards for how their lives work? Plenty of people, whether on the right or left, are critical of Western policies, especially regarding military and economic campaign in non-Western countries.
I am genuinely curious if people in non-Western countries see themselves as Westerners do (e.g. more bad than good).
Take the right things for granted, and don't take the wrong things for granted. If you doubt everything, I doubt you'd be able to maintain a diet or drive a car, or leave the house for that purpose. If you can't see the depths to which that can go, you're operating on the shallow end of doubt.
I take some things for granted at times, but peel back what one would consider obvious and mundane to first principles routinely.
It turns out little of the human world makes much sense, other than in the context of precedent.
The physical world gets weirder yet, as this universe is, to the best of our knowledge and information currently available to us, tautological.
I of course suspend my disbelief for day to day activities, otherwise as you say I would not function, but fundamentally, I believe nothing, not even that I or anything else exists. Descartes was overly glib, apparent thought is no evidence of being, as it requires self-reference.
Some of that may be true, but to affect the world, you nonetheless need to do things. And to do those things, you need to take something for granted, assume something, to complete the task.
That set of things you're willing to take for granted is actually your relevant set of beliefs, because they inform your actions. That's where the important decisions are made, and this is the constant crisis of trying to figure out the right solution with nowhere near enough information.
We can all, in theory, believe that we're wrong about most things, and this is most likely true. But, ultimately, there are things one is willing to do even if they could be wrong about them, because not doing anything is often worse. Sitting in constant doubt is effectively deciding not to participate.
I would rather redefine don't make assumptions but don't doubt - just do to the best of your knowledge. Doubt takes you back , does not put you forward.
I have... zero self doubt. Any "I can't do this" anxiety I get is related to my lack of prep-time, not my concern for my aptitude. I believe I can accomplish anything, given some time and practice.
Does this mean I'm an oblivious narcissist? I hadn't even considered the possibility...
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy /by William B. Irvine/
It describes a couple of practical techniques to overcome negative emotions. I highly recommend it for everyone, even for the ones not suffering from self-doubt. Reading it was life changing for me.
I tried to read the book. It's a long read and the author shows the reader all of his thought processes. Example: The chapter about negative visualization goes back and forth for a while, almost as if you needed even more convincing.
But the concept of negative visualization isn't really that hard to grok, the benefits are obvious to a somewhat intelligent reader and quite intuitive and easy to implement from a summary. No lengthy convincing required.
Then there's the millennia-old version in the form of Buddhism. I've been looking into Buddhist 'psychology' and it's shocking how much of this was already practiced and theorized about way back then.
Every time you doubt yourself, ask yourself if you're on the right path. If not, make the adjustments, sometimes drastic. If you are and just are doubting yourself, put your head down and get back to work. Not busy-busy-work, actual work. Best quote I know is "If you think you can't, you can't". Hope this doesn't come as preposterous, it's common sense, but at some stage I needed to hear it too and that helped me. WORK is HEALTH.
Self doubt is a good thing. If more people doubted and considered their actions rather than maintaining the "I AM SO GREAT" attitude, and believing they are gods great gift and their actions are infallible, perhaps fewer shitty things would happen in this world.
As someone who has dealt with depression and self doubt for the majority of my short life, I will say I would be much more terrified of a world where everyone had the outlook on life and self worth that I hold than one where everyone had an "I'm so great" attitude.
Bu t at the same time, we need people who are dumb enough to believe they can achieve something because they're great. They tend to go first and, well, actually do stuff.
We need both those types. Unfortunately, history tends to favor the self-confident (and our current western culture maximize that ad nauseam)
Everything in moderation eh? You don't want a world full of anxiety ridden self doubting depressed people any more than you want a world full of power crazed self idolising maniacs.
It's all in the balance and fortunately most normal people float around the middle of those two extremes most of the time.
> Imagine that you have a friend who is exactly like you in every respect. Give him a name. Then pretend he is telling himself the same destructive thoughts you tell yourself.
You may also be interested by the IFS therapy method which allows one to stays in Self and discusses with his inner voices/personas with curiosity and goodwill. You can read http://www.selfleadership.org/ and the self-therapy a step by step guide.
I didn't get through the article so apologies if I missed the point.
I've run into a fair bit of this stuff recently: people who encourage me to "think positively" or "remind yourself how awesome you are."
I think it's all nonsense. I believe that self-doubt and self-interrogation are usually healthy. Obviously there's a line to be drawn. At some point self-doubt will impede your ability to act. But, in general, I think a skeptical internal dialogue is a healthy thing.
There's a huge difference between being skeptical and being self-deprecating. By all means one should play devil's advocate to their own impulses, but without practicing self-awareness, it's exceptionally difficult to come up with useful criticism of one's own thoughts and to unravel the complex interplay between thoughts, behaviours, and emotions. Because of this, many people give themselves poor/irrelevant feedback and form habits of thought that cause the same kind of negative self-evaluation to recur.
In addition, it's common for people to feel a sense of threat from their own negative thoughts, and the sympathetic nervous system doesn't very effectively differentiate psychological threats from physical. Subsequently, attacking oneself can lead to fight-or-flight response, which can cause a cascade of changes throughout the body, including the brain, which can manifest as cognitive biases, for instance attentional bias towards negative stimuli or interpreting ambiguous stimuli to be negative.
Hopefully you can see how the combination of these effects could create a negative feedback loop, causing typically rational skeptic to veer off into unfounded, inconsistent thoughts blaming oneself and generating further negative emotion.
So ultimately, I'd agree with you 100%, there's a line to be drawn. The unfortunate thing is that it's very fuzzy from within one's own mind to discern where that line should be drawn, and negative feedback loops can set up instability that overshoots that line, even when meaning well. For individuals with this kind of pathological negative self-examination, framing things positively can have a huge impact on how they are actually perceived and acted upon. And for people struggling with depression/anxiety, it can make a world of difference in outcome to simply reframe a thought like: "I should have worked harder on that work deadline. Now everyone hates me because I missed it and I'm going to get fired." as "I'll feel better about my work and my relationships with colleagues if I give myself extra time and raise concerns early about deadlines."
At the same time, an excess of positive thinking can absolutely create it's own share of psychological effects and reactionary feedback loops. For example, in bipolar disorder we see a grandiosity of thought and excess of confidence that leads to underestimating risks and inflated expectations, which collide with reality (often disastrously) leading to a large down swing in emotion, and the resulting post-manic depression.
You missed the point alright. The article wants you to write down & analyze your negative thoughts, instead of just looping them in your head. It's not about "think positive instead" at all.
I think there's room for both. I'm not totally convinced one way or the other -- but why write it off as nonsense immediately? That hardly seems fair. Maybe it works. It's not like the folks pushing this stuff are uneducated delusional people. These are doctors, scientists, etc. I'm skeptical myself, but I don't think you are doing yourself any favors by simply dismissing it entirely.
What did it for me was choosing to behave as if I lived a charmed life. I'd make my plans under the assumption that it would work out. Things would very rarely go wrong (thus reinforcing the charmed life angle), and if they ever did, it wouldn't be that hard to fix it anyway. People will forgive an amazing number of things, and the worst case scenario just doesn't happen in practice.
It's amazing how much baggage you can shed with this approach. And shedding the baggage makes you more pleasant to be around (even to yourself), thus giving you better opportunities and even more ready forgiveness.
This is so true, I'd like to add sometimes I get a bit frazzled or swept up in something I don't need and I mentally stand aside and ridicule and laugh how silly and pathetic that part of me is. And then we laugh together and suddenly everything is trivial funny and not worth any worry at all.
New projects weren't having as much an impact and making me feel good, so I sat around reading books.
A turning point came when I read two: Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and On Writing by Stephen King. The first teaches we get optimal experience out of what we spend our attention on. It really got me psyched about chasing that feeling of being in the zone with my work. On Writing did that too. I saw another HN poster refer to King's "blue collar work ethic" -- totally true. He works hard because he loves to.
I recently started working again for pleasure, less encumbered by insecurities. I'm still working on it, still practicing. I created an open source framework for Amazon Echo development, and it's starting to get some traction. I think I was able to produce the work to get the traction because I've had a clearer mind.