Ask HN: Does learning self-improvement techniques help?

[SeanAnderson]

I'm starting to develop some software as a hobby. I've been in a rut for a few months and usually having an interesting side-project gets me fired up again. I'm developing a virtual pet, and pairing it with some lore, gamification, and other bits, to get myself checking in daily, practicing mindfulness, journaling, and meditating. It's gonna be like if a cyberpunk aquarium became your therapist!

Anyway.

Gaining a deep understanding of this problem space seemed important to me for two reasons. It's necessary to be customer-obsessed to build good software and, because I'm in a rut myself, I felt I stood to personally benefit from gaining a deeper understanding of techniques used to bring people out of ruts.

I'm not a stranger to the self-improvement space. I've read The Power of Habit, Atomic Habits, Thinking: Fast & Slow, and some others. I've attempted to apply these to my own life to varying degrees of success. I definitely experience a burst of motivation from having been inspired from the reading, or perhaps the reading is a side-effect of being in a burst of motivation, but, either-way and long-term, all I feel I come away with is a deeper awareness of how my mind works and not long-lasting, personal changes.

So, after reading and researching these areas more for my software, I began to hear this nagging voice in the back of my mind. It said that learning about self-improvement is a trap. That it feels good and is satiating, but is a poor and misleading substitute for action.

And I think I agree? I feel well-versed in techniques, but have seemingly only gained the ability to watch myself fail with a deeper understanding of why humans generally fail. It's not that I'm worried I'll continue to slip. I'm confident I'll bounce back at some point and trend positively for months or years, but I am starting to worry that my software will fail to achieve its goal.

If learning about self-improvement hasn't permanently affected me then perhaps doubling down and trying to affect change through software is fool-hearty? Or maybe I have improved, but am blind to it from my own perspective? Or maybe others meaningfully improve after self-help education and those people would write better software? Or perhaps there's no amount of learning that results in self-mastery and the belief that increased awareness reduces the friction between inaction and action is invalid?

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Learning is helpful, right? But it's not action. Is it possible to teach the skill of taking action on one's awareness?

[automatom]

I see reading self-improvement books in a similar way that an athlete or bodybuilder would approach to lifting weights, a means to an end. My early twenties I was all about it, the 4-hour work week, Thinking Fast & Slow (although this isn't a self-help, it's just a great analysis from two brilliant behavioral economists), all that jazz.

That being said, the voice in the back of your mind has some merit. The "self-help" industry is entirely based on this preface that people aren't happy with themselves, they are selling you ideas that solved their problems, so why not yours? It's easy to get stuck in this cycle of "self-improvement" where you're hyper-focused on being your better self and you miss out on enjoying life.

For me, my anxiety and emotional state improved when I realized I got a lot of joy and contentment from the _process_ of learning new things, and trying to gauge my improvement always meant comparing myself to others.

Read these books if they help you, but realize there is some survivorship bias with how those authors achieved their success or even got their book published. Enjoy the ride, keep working hard but don't feel like it's the end of the world if you aren't going as fast as you think you should be.

[SeanAnderson → automatom]

Thanks for this response. Yeah, agree on TF&S, just kinda lumped it in there since it's about understanding yourself for better results (to me)

Do you have insights on how you discovered joy/contentment in the process of learning new things? From a different perspective, it seems clear that the reward for effort isn't realized during the process. Unwrapping a chocolate bar is effort necessary to realize a reward of chocolate. It's clearly possible to feel good while unwrapping the chocolate in anticipation of the reward, but it seems challenging to enjoy the process of unwrapping the chocolate bar with the belief no reward is forthcoming.

[automatom → SeanAnderson]

Just seeing this, I'm new to HN so pardon me for missing your response.

>Do you have insights on how you discovered joy/contentment in the process of learning new things?

It took time. In fact "enjoying the ride" is something I still have to remind myself of. Really it was reflecting back on times where I was most happy, whether in college or in my early career. There were also times where I wasn't happy with my job or my given state in life, but I spent a lot of my time trying to learn skills so I could earn more money or get a promotion/better job. This was a grind.

The pandemic made me do a lot of self reflection, I saw a counselor, read a lot of existentialist philosophy (I would not suggest doing this if you're depressed), and pursued hobbies that I couldn't necessarily monetize. Piano lessons, playing chess, and writing short stories without the intention of publishing are a few examples. Playing instruments and games were activities that I did more often in college/high school, and I got so swept up in my career and investments that I seemingly lost a lot of joy in my life. Revisiting these passions from my past, I have no end goal with these other than to get better at them, because the better I get at them the more enjoyable it becomes.

Keep in mind this is my experience and what worked for me. Now knowing that I enjoy learning and improving even more than the outcome itself, it makes for learning professional skills more enjoyable as well. I will still occasionally crack open a self-help book, but I try to read them through the perspective that the insight the author provides is specific to their perception of reality and experiences, but sometimes it's nice to find anecdotes that we can apply to our own life.

To summarize, I stopped trying to discover how to be happy and just focused on making time to do things that I enjoyed, regardless of my expectations of myself or that time spent will have on my productivity or success.

[HomePhone]

I’ve learned about multiple self-improvement techniques and failed to implement all.

I don’t know why I’ve failed but I have a pet theory: I feel like a failure. I feel that I have capabilities that far exceed my current output - not just in work, but love, friendship, etc. The idea of changing that around (via self-improvement techniques) is incredibly appealing. Thus, I read about self-improvement as a way of escapism. Reading new techniques allows me to think that _this time_ I’m going to turn it around and live a life I’m proud of. But, ultimately, it’s not about reading. It’s about doing. But I can’t do because I have no self-esteem, I’m scared, I’m depressed, and I feel like I’m pretending to be an adult when really I don’t know what’s happening and I’m pathetic.

[SeanAnderson → HomePhone]

You're describing precisely the scenario I am interested in addressing.

Someone on another thread said it simply. "Winners keep winning. Losers keep losing. Are you winning or losing?" where a good number of people see themselves as losing and feel they are in a cycle that is compounding their losses.

I don't think calling attention to it is helpful. I think the person "in the driver's seat," so to speak, is more than aware of where they're at and obsessing over that deep awareness is preventing them from getting the ball rolling the other direction.

I don't know of a perfect solution, but, as best as I can tell, a solution is to "just start." Define a laughably small area you're going to "win" in, convince yourself you've won, then increase the difficulty and repeat. Upon failure, significantly step away from your current goal to avoid repeated failures building resentment. The rate in which you're able to iterate on this cycle is entwined with your emotional and physical vitality and people most often begin failing after having overleveraged self-determination at the cost of vitality. Self-determination is good, leaning into it heavily costs mental health, and it's easy to overlook mental health eroding while riding high on motivation and repeated successes. Eventually motivation dwindles, overexertion becomes apparent, and a tumble downward begins due to an unwillingness to accept the limitations of humanity. Eventually, acceptance and resignation occurs, a new area to win is defined, and the cycle repeats.

I'm building some gamification techniques around this cyclic pattern to provide long-term visual cues of where an individual is at, establish habituation around self-check-ins, and providing tools to help explicitly manage mental state.

Often times when I'm at my lowest I stop showing up for myself, but I'll still show up for others to not let them down. I'm hopeful giving people a virtual pet that they build endearment around, while surrounding them with positive mental health techniques and positive reinforcement, will keep people showing up for "themselves" more often.

Good luck with your mental health journey. If you'd like to talk about it more, or if you feel you need support, just reach out. Happy to talk.

[HomePhone → SeanAnderson]

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. I agree with what you said and it resonates with me deeply.

When you have a small win… how do you then tell yourself it’s powerful rather than “sure I did that, but it’s not a real win as it’s such a baby step”

[SeanAnderson → HomePhone]

A few thoughts here, but fair warning that I'm no psychologist. :)

I find it helpful to work towards accepting where I am at and judging myself from there. Relatively speaking, taking a small step is a huge step if I have not taken any steps lately. It's insufficient for absolute success, but for relative success it's great. I think it is surprisingly hard to know and accept where one is at and that it requires active reflection to get there. It's not hard to do, but it's easy for dissonance to seep in and not challenge it, like being surprised when you look yourself in the mirror, and it's difficult to build from an unstable foundation.

Sometimes I'll be running low, stop brushing my teeth, and then beat myself up over it. Later, I'll brush my teeth. After that, I'll go to be upset at myself for having not brushed, realize I did, and have a nice burst of happiness. I wasn't happy to have brushed my teeth because I considered that the bare minimum, but I sure was happy to not beat myself up over it again. The satisfaction was just a bit delayed.

In general, I think it's a lot more important to be concerned about direction and momentum than destination. Small wins correct your direction and increase your momentum. They keep you agile. What more to want? An energy/momentum cost/benefit analysis? Don't do small wins that take a lot of effort and clearly low effort wins are always great. Your desired destination is going to keep changing throughout life because you're an aging human. So don't sweat the destination too much - just focus on being robust.

[p0d]

I am in my 50s and have found most of my working life has been shaped by two things, learning and my connections with other people. I think you are deeply ensconced in the learning and probably don't need to add to that space. Keep hobbying but don't let it eat up all your time. Enjoy the world where you aren't looking at a screen or a page.