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Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

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Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#5

Post by enkiv2 »

About ten years ago, after my grandmother died, I got really into Robert Anton Wilson. That sort of set the trajectory for the rest of my life.

While I think RAW was wrong about a lot of things, the meta-lesson of erring on the side of agnosis -- trusting that, when the world doesn't behave in line with your expectations (and often even when it does) it's because of unknown unknowns, and that the world is stranger and more complex than any of us can imagine -- has helped me a lot. It's helped me rein in my control-freak nature, deal in healthier ways with unexpected events, and get rid of some of my ego-based fixations on particular mental models that don't survive collision with reality.

Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#6

Post by superasn »

I think sticking to things I start has contributed the most personal growth for me. I think for anything to have any effect on you, you have to stick with it for at least 6 months or more (though it definitely depends on each activity).

In the last 2 years I have been able to lose 8kgs, increase my business, cure my chronic backache and become a lot happier using this one trick of sticking to things daily without fail.

One thing that has helped me tremendously to keep at it daily is a simple Google Sheet in which I put my progress daily and it gives me a "X days streak" using a formula (let me know if you want the template). After a month when I have a 30 day streak it makes me more and more committed to follow through and I rarely break my streaks.

P.S. The only thing which this never worked is sleeping at 10 a.mp.m. Can't even get a 2 day streak. I guess nothing works for that :D

Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#8

Post by Kiro »

superasn wrote: post #6

I think sticking to things I start has contributed the most personal growth for me. I think for anything to have any effect on you, you have to stick with it for at least 6 months or more (though it definitely depends on each activity). In the last 2 years I have been able to lose 8kgs, increase my business, cure my chronic backache and become a lot happier using this one trick of sticking to things daily without fai…

Reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld's method "Don't Break the Chain".

Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#9

Post by wastedhours »

Working in "edge" roles. I've always been the "digital" expert in teams I've worked in, and doing so has meant I've been partly responsible for building up organisational knowledge on all kinds of things that (as far as the org is concerned) have never existed before.

Now that "digital" is baked into most marketeer's roles, I'm looking for the next frontier to build across. Probably AR or machine learning.

My personal remit has always been to make myself redundant, it's always pushed me to explore the novel and build out the next set of skills to make myself relevant when my current "edge" becomes the norm.

Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#10

Post by danr4 »

enkiv2 wrote: post #5

About ten years ago, after my grandmother died, I got really into Robert Anton Wilson. That sort of set the trajectory for the rest of my life. While I think RAW was wrong about a lot of things, the meta-lesson of erring on the side of agnosis -- trusting that, when the world doesn't behave in line with your expectations (and often even when it does) it's because of unknown unknowns, and that the world is stranger an…

This is not the first time I see a RAW reference when it comes to personal growth/mental health. But he has written so much. What should I start with and how should I continue?
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