Oh man this is such a perfect example of productivity porn. Every action you take isn’t a vote for the type of person you wish to become, it is a vote taken by the person you are.
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.
> Every action you take isn’t a vote for the type of person you wish to become, it is a vote taken by the person you are.
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.
If the only reason a person is having a conversation with me is so they can be a better conversationalist tomorrow, than they can fuck off. I worked out today, I ate healthy today, I worked hard and did chores for my family, and praticed my art forms and I did it all for today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with planning for tomorrow, but there is a problem with seeing "every action you take" that way.
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 believe it's more along the lines of "I'm having a conversation with you today because I value and care about you and our friendship etc; I want to be the kind of person that shows up for others and leaves people I interact with in a better place/mood/etc."
Instead of being the person not aware of their moods and carrying resentment over the smallest slights so they end up bitching about it to everyone. If one never chooses, or "vote", for the positive/uplifting inter/action, then they are "voting" to keep being the person who always has something to complain about.
Similarly, the smoking example, choose to be someone who cares about their health or the person who could not care less. Better is defined by the user. But either way, it will certainly build, or describe, the type of person they are choosing or "voting" to be.
Though, its really just stating the obvious. The more you do or don't something the more those actions become you. The "votes" on those actions don't have to be overt. It's like they were trying to find a novel way to restate the self-help quote: "Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny." (-attributed to the usual suspects)
Some people are so driven towards being productive that they think their time is worth more than others.
Why should I waste my day taking to you when I could be working and being more productive?
Eventually all your relationships, friends family etc are tied down to how much money you will be making with that time as it could be better spent working, making money .
So sure every choice is a vote for an improved you. No one would question such an obvious statement. But the way this is framed, is that every decision should be a productive one, which will net you more income.
So stop wasting your time and be more productive or your self worth is delimiting. Aka productivity porn.
I can see how it is mostly viewed - even suggested - that way. I agree, these things tend to all nudge or write in a way that silently yells in that same direction for what "productivity" or "improvement" should mean. And I think we can end up taking those hints and running with it. It's exhausting.
What I failed to get across is that, if we read the subjective points with complete neutrality then the only thing really being stated is: what ever your purpose for doing something is the person you continue to become. Which, yea..
However, at its core it can be an actionable, and practical, statement that can simply be a reminder to be intentional in our actions. Advice completely devoid of the subjective judgment of that intent. But the energy needed to clean up the message to that point is not everyone's cup of tea.
Yes, I thought this way in my early twenties, and after that phase I learned to identify those (mutable) traits in others as hollow and immature. Often characterized by how arbitrarily they approach moments in life. Counter to this, I make a very deliberate effort to spend as much time as I feasibly can with specific people for no particular reason other than I enjoy their company and I want them to similarly feel like it's a relationship worth having around longer, because that's inherently virtuous. The activity could be arbitrary or specific. If it's specific, then I might choose the person specifically for it, but if the person is specific, then the activity arbitrarily serves the nature of spending time with the person. I'm never arbitrarily spending time with arbitrary people for a specific outcome though.
I strongly agree with this. I think you really have to begin to love the journey if you want to improve at something with slow incremental gains over time. But everyone has to start somewhere, and, honestly speaking, most people don't want to work out. Most people don't want to work hard. Or eat healthy. You have to force yourself initially to see that this is going to lead to you loving to do these things you currently hate.
> 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).
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.
It is a false dichotomy. Every action you take today is a vote by the you who exists right now. Every action you take today does build the history of the person you are tomorrow. It is not one or the other, but both.
Describing any action as a vote about your future identity is a way of thinking about the world. It makes sense within the particular framework this article is presenting, but it is not a universally held belief, and it's not self-evidently true. It's a metaphor.
Here's an example: if you choose not a rob a bank 10,000 times, that's 10,000 votes for not being a bank robber. Then if you choose to rob a bank just one time, you're suddenly a bank robber. 10,000 to 1, the number of votes doesn't actually matter.
That's a silly example, but what it means is that your identity isn't always the result of a bunch of small decisions. Often there's just one "vote", and that is the decision you make, the action you take.
One objection to this may be "but being a bank robber isn't who you are, it's just something you did." If so, I wonder how to square that with the example of becoming more of a smoker by smoking more cigarettes? Can I vote not to be a smoker, even if I smoke a lot of cigarettes? Or to be less of a smoker by smoking more cigarettes? That doesn't make sense to me.
Anyway, hope this clarifies my objection: "actions are votes about who you will become" is a metaphorical explanation, not a literal one, so that comment way upthread is not patently false in my opinion, even if it's arguable.
Choosing not to rob a bank 10 000 times still means you are a potential bank robber, like everyone else on this planet. At the 10 001 choice where it actually happens, this simply turns the potential to actual.
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.
These trends shift back and forth. A few years ago, certainly a decade ago, everyone was into productivity porn and life hacks and optimizing one's lives. Right now people are just generally burned out after the last couple of years.
> why such a strong aversion to people improving themselves?
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).
>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)
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.
It's sad that the idea of living in the now has been co-oped to mean acting impulsively and stupidity.
Being present has better connotations. Sometimes being present means stopping and assessing your life. It means engaging with your life in more holistic manner. It can mean planning, reflection, and listening to yourself.
I feel like many people code switch between being recklessly impulsive and intellectually abstract, while never actually living in the now.
These two avoidant behaviors are at the root most people's miseries.
You shouldn't have to fight yourself to do what is best for your future, or suppress your intellect to enjoy the present.
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.
The grind and building up of a perfect army (for the majority of the game), then wipe the map with it at the end, is only a strategy that works if you knew perfectly well what forces you'd face.
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.
Interesting it was completely the opposite for me. I loved getting resources and building the perfect army. Wiping the map always felt shallow afterwards.
I 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.
I think the point is that if you aren't mindful and deliberate with your actions, you'll descend into behaving according to habits and desires instead of what is in the best interest of your future self.
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.
I view life as a I do my farm. There is always work to do to make it produce; there are times of intense work and times where I enjoy just watching the chickens…not that I don’t enjoy the intense work too; but sometimes I don’t as well but it must be done. I am always looking to do things better and more efficiently…so over time the farm does produce more, it does get better, it is not the same farm as it was a year ago. The change is sometimes fast; sometimes slower but it is always there. I think the point here is to make the general direction of change for the better at a pace that is reasonable.
Ah, this is so well said, thank you. It's true, life is about cultivating yourself, growing relationships, nurturing knowledge and skills over time, watering the garden, taking out the weeds, feeding the animals, planting trees.
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 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 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.
Yeah, I really had to accept the "this is forever" part of getting healthier. Sure, the calorie deficit will eventually be able to end (sort of), but the lifestyle changes that allowed the weight loss have to be forever. Eating better has to be forever. Or at least be the general case rather than something done occasionally.
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.
“Strong opinions held weakly” apply here too. Work hard, but constantly check in with yourself and ask if your current goals still make sense and feel good.
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.
I was thinking something very similar the other day when someone came to me extolling stoicism as a route to personal improvement. People need to read a bit of Epicurus or something to level out. Sure grind when it's time to grind, but make sure you set aside time to make friends and enjoy your life. In the end, whether you enjoy yourself or spend your life grinding away, this one life is all we get. No amount of grinding will allow you to vote for a second life after this one.
The people who believe in these two-phase mentality rarely end up retiring early. They don't know how to relax. If you derive meaning from work and the accumulation of wealth, what do you do after you reach your happy number?
I don't bet my twenties and thirties on reaching that number early. I'll get there eventually but I'm not in a hurry. I prefer living a balanced life now.
Every decision you make feeds and strengthens some part of your neural network.
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.
OP here, thanks to everyone for all the comments on this post. They were interesting to read.
I appreciate the positive comments and can also certainly understand why some are not so positive.
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!
That's exactly what the title means, no? If you constantly just work, you don't become the person you want to be. You don't become the person who enjoys life. If you are in the spot that you're not spending time as the person you are, then you'll probably want to change, and framing every action as a vote is a pretty good way to think about it.
This is just “everything happens for a reason” translated into hustlespeak. You are free to fret over every second not spent leveling up an attribute, but it’s weird to project this LinkedIn ideology as some sort of universal maxim.
> This is just “everything happens for a reason” translated into hustlespeak.
What? That makes absolutely no sense.
It's a frank acknowledgement of the fact that nothing stays the same, including you. The decisions you make today affect your trajectory and where you'll be tomorrow, next week, next year, next decade, until death.
None of this assigns meaning, reason, or purpose to any of it.
Your reaction is a somewhat natural push back against the prevalent idea of selling people on things they don't yet have.
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?
Yes, I agree with this. I think a good life is finding that balance; how much of yourself goes into production, how much into consumption. How much do your push yourself to be better, and how much do you accept and live with your flaws? How much do you invest for the future verse consume in the present? Too much either direction will lead to a bad life.
This kind of content is better suited for LinkedIn.
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.
Woah I didn't know doing audiobooks at 3X was perceived as some kind of a virtue.
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.
It's part of the sigma grindset meme. A while ago Business Insider ran short videos about entrepreneur routines and it was a montage of this sort of nonsense. Then you look back and realise that all the guy did was answer two emails. It was derided and parodied.
Not everyone needs the same amount of rest and relaxation though.
Some folks just have what it takes to spend almost every waking moment maniacally focused on their chosen pursuit all the way until a ripe old age. These are the folks that usually end up putting a dent into the universe.
why don't you take action to get some rest. Take action to do something fun for recreation. Vote by action to be happier. They key is just take action that gets you closer to who you want to be.
I have a relative that has fallen into several pyramid schemes and is perennially addicted to so-called “self help” books, spending hundreds of dollars on them per month, every month, for about two decades.
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!
The headline is wrong too. Actions you take might be a vote for who you WILL become, but not who you WISH to become. In other words, one can fail to become who they wanted to.
I don’t have a comment on the article. But if I was the author, it would be pretty rough reading the comments here.
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!
The author was right and brave to put himself out there and express what he wants. (Even if the intention behind the post might have been to create vapid SEO content for the sake of furthering his Brand and to grow his Clout.) But others are right to criticize the blog post for its failings, as per their opinions. Everyone is just doing the best they can.
Unchained of any social responsibility, void of compulsory passions, maybe. I'm not going to run anyone down for the way they organize their life and I do take on conscious actions to form habits. However, these kinds of aphorisms do give me the willies a bit.
Exactly this. I just can't deal with this (I call it) SEOfication of the world.
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.
I feel the same way. It seems like a good chunk of content online is published just for an ultimately superficial purpose. One just has to take a quick look at LinkedIn to see many examples, but by no means is it limited to just there.
No mention of 'voting' to spend time with friends or family, getting outdoors, giving to charity with one's time or money, painting or trying to learn how to? Perhaps the author does these things or perhaps their context was restricted to work, but this kind of life seems a little hollow to me.
Only tangentially related but I think about "choices are votes" frequently when choosing where to spend money.
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.
I think the author might be missing the point of the book. Nothing on that list anything to do with forming habits. I suppose the mentoring bullet point could be a habit, but it's bit vague.
Yeah, that's the most annoying thing about this article. It's fine to make a recap about what he's working on and be all intentional about it... but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with Atomic Habits at all. That entire list is projects, not day-by-day little patterns.
Strictly speaking that's not true. Much of our day is not a series of thought-through decisions, but rather cruise control without much conscious input.
Our lives are not a democracy, they are dictatorships. You don’t have to “become” anything, you simply are what you are at any given moment, and that’s all you’ll ever be. Just try not to be someone that makes other people want to punch you in the mouth.
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".
If anyone is familiar with the quoted book, how does one quantify and measure the amount of “betterment”, or even define static “goodness”? Life is a complex affair on many simultaneous tracks. Prioritising one track often impedes the performance on another track in the long run. If you define the “perfect state” of yourself as having gone through thousands of tickets, bullet lists or redundant self-help books, you will certainly suffer in other areas.
It's about atomic habits. Like do it 1% better and you will be 100% better in 100 Days. Expand all areas and so one. SMART Goals. He does also sell a journal to track everything, so this is this.
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.
I bought two self-help books this month, one is "Atomic Habits" mentioned in the article, and another is "I Took the Only Path To See You".
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."
“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.”
I really dislike this type of thinking insisting that everything we do has some importance to it. I used to think like this in moral terms, my every action has consequences and I should be mindful of those consequences. And if anyone watched "The Good Place" then they know it is not a good way to live. I am paraphrasing but microoptimalisation is the root of all evil. I find it much better to just get a good understanding of what I wish to be and set a long time goals around it (Like a decade or lifetime long). Then every now and then I can asses if it is working or not. Since life is not a race and I am not competing with anyone I can settle for slow progression towards the good. I am the judge, the executioner and the audience of my life and therefore every aspect can be adjusted independently.
I've always thought that trying to optimize life is the ultimate denial. In golf we have these people who spend hours on the range optimizing their swing but they seldom play a round because of course their score is never as "optimized" and that make them feel bad. They can max out point data but never in a way that changes the aggregate, which based on the invested effort turned into a feeling of defeat.
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.
There’s nothing more real about playing a round of golf than hitting a ball on the range. It’s all just made up anyway.
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 find it a little strange that it seems like so many people are working so hard, all the time, to run away from the person they are today. I’m ambitious as anyone, but some of this stuff is too much.
Humans do not have the capacity to be perfectly consistent with their long term goals. Therefore, as you take actions through life you are also voting for the person you don't want to be simply through failure or randomness.
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.
I don't see these as mutually exclusive philosophies. You can choose to make an action out of relaxing by voting to not be a strung-out stressed person that is pressured to do things all the time. That person isn't fun at parties. You can vote to de-stress for a few hours or a whole day on occasion.
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.
These blog posts are such low effort too it makes me cringe.
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.
Having a mechanism to express your thoughts, whether publicly or privately, can be beneficial to the learning process. You try to express your ideas to others and see if you really understand it, sort of like the Feynman technique.
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.
I totally agree. Im not saying he shouldn't blog as for its good personal expression, similar to a diary. Just surprised to see it on HN as for it seems more that the author is someone seeking validation vs discussion.
It's not entirely wrong, but yeah, we aren't always making highly conscious decisions. There should be no shame in living a low-key yet morally integral existence and not always being intentional with every single action we take.
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.
I think you're interpreting the advice overly agressively. You can take it as chill advice in chill situations.
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 ate cereal for breakfast this morning. I'm sure I could analyze this decision, judge my future self, and change what/when/how I eat. But I'm not interested in that much introspection or self improvement. I'm just trying to get through the day.
People who practice intermittent fasting often report that their body's hormonal rhythms adjust to their eating habits over time, so it's only by skipping the meal and bearing through the hungar that one can become the type of person who simply doesn't think to eat before 10-12 (leaving out a lot of debated science, personal variance, and assorted nuances for the sake of time and contrarianism).
Edit: Ah well, you've edited your comment now, can't argue with just getting through the day ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is gaslighting. A child born into poverty with innately low intelligence and health issues didn't choose their genetics and social class before birth. Not all actions are caused by free will. Sometimes they are caused by genetics and social class.
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.
I'm not a psychologist or a sociologist, but I tend to agree with you. I might expand this farther than work though. You can find this any human activity that has very passionate people: religion, politics, self-help, tech (apparently). Ultimately, humans are susceptible to posturing ourselves compared to our peers. To me, the byproduct is morality of which a major component is judgement.
Religion, politics; really anything people get fanatical or self-righteous about. I do wish I had the background and vocabulary to express the commonality in the language and ideas from these camps, but it's not limited to them. Also, the reply above goes a tad deeper.
This reads like post of a teenager bragging about stuff they did - in a thinly veiled notion that it's about casting votes about the person they want to be. lol
"... The tl;dr of this book is a set of strategies to get 1% “better” each day..."
So after 10 years you will be 1.01^3650 = 5929448572069177.9 times better than you are today.. Good luck.
lmao, the author doesn’t explain how we naturally become 1% worse everyday so 1% daily improvement is just like an equilibrium point of net 0 improvement.
i would say the past has far greater bearing than the future on your actions...
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.
Yeah. I've personally been on a mission to throw 'bad', 'worse', 'good', 'better', and words to those effects out the window. They're meaningless and lazy at best. They need to be defined in every context, so it's easier to just skip to saying the definition.
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.
If a younger person trains and practice and puts in a ton of early mornings and late nights, they can become an Olympian. If they sit around and do nothing, they can't.
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.