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The intolerable rise of perfectionism

theguardian.com

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Re: The intolerable rise of perfectionism

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whenever someone brings up the fact a sizeable portion of the population is forced into an unnatural sleep rythm; inevitably someone will chime in with a "I forced myself with method X and now I'm normal". It completely misses the underlying point.

I'm not sure it does. Their "natural" habits aren't necessarily all that natural either. For all you know, a diet change really did correct an underlying issue causing the strange habit.

We're talking about 1/5th of the population suffering needlessly. The comment I replied to merely reinforces the stereotype that there is something wrong with them - "If only you lived better you would get to sleep at a normal time". On its own, its great they have improved their life. But in context its disrespectful.

Re: The intolerable rise of perfectionism

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it does. Their "natural" habits aren't necessarily all that natural either. For all you know, a diet change really did correct an underlying issue causing the strange habit.

We're talking about 1/5th of the population suffering needlessly. The comment I replied to merely reinforces the stereotype that there is something wrong with them - "If only you lived better you would get to sleep at a normal time". On its own, its great they have improved their life. But in context its disrespectful.

If you're insulting a plausible opposing opinion as disrespectful, you should be backing up your claim with facts. You suggested that people are "naturally" night owls, the other side suggests that nightowlism may be caused by lifestyle choices and that many night owls are unaware of this causality. There is nothing disrespectful about either side of the argument, both are just hypotheses at this point (and a bit of anecdata).

Re: The intolerable rise of perfectionism

#73
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems more that one has to be cautious with who one displays those characteristics towards because it can easily provocate insecurity in others, unintentionally. This sentence seemed to irk me; because at what point does someone have to police themselves to ensure they don't "hurt someone else's feelings"? My generalization is a bit crass, but that's how this sentence came off.

> This sentence seemed to irk me; because at what point does someone have to police themselves to ensure they don't "hurt someone else's feelings"? Only to the point they appreciate being well liked by others. The people I know who do this the least definitely have a much harder time with other people then the people I know who do this the best.

Yea, but it also depends. I'm a developer. I like talking on HN at work because I find it helpful to take intermittent pauses between code. I could be paranoid that people are reading my comments. That's a preference I can't expect everyone to understand why if it was happening, it would bother me. It would bother me because it would be double reinforcing my own perspective, which makes it hard for me to interact fluidly with people around me, because I'm not used to people agreeing with me. I'm used to people shrugging off my introspection as insightful but mostly pointless. Everyone validating my own perspective is a dynamic I am unaccustomed to and would prefer not to engage with if it's not grounded in pragmatism, real data.

Well liked is difficult to define from the perspective of someone who devotes less resources to processing social information. Social information becomes hard to process when there is extreme diversity or extreme uniformity in perspectives. Extreme diversity means, it makes no sense to process social information internally because it's easier to just listen to people when they have things to say. There's the expectation that people will all behave in assertive manners. Extreme uniformity is additionally difficult to process because it's a blind spot. There's always that tiny little margin of error that occurs when people engage in group think. An overload of uniformity compels the individual to establish a difference. These differences add up over time, and can be generalized as 'being difficult' but that trivializes the phenomena and attributes all that build of behaviors to an individual when it really could just be that an individual is manifesting a collected set of behaviors of a group dynamic in the attempt to maintain some sense of external consistency and cohesion.

Furthermore, it consistently doesn't account for the person's perspective who has the hard time with other people. No one bothers understanding that person. Why would anyone try to? It would seem logical to assume having empathy or understanding for that person would lead to social ostracism. But it doesn't always have to - that's a choice people can make when understanding turns into awareness, and that's just the point. It would be nice to feel as though one were not constantly teetering on a balance of everything devolving into chaos.

This duality of categorizing behaviors into well liked behaviors and disliked behaviors, it is a problem that has no solution, because it doesn't have to be a problem if it's not a problem.

Perfectionism, silly. People are people. Can't please everybody. It leads to a lot of inconsistencies. Forming expectations about people. Good or bad. Perspective, hindsight bias. It is inconsistent reasoning. Uses the past to interpret the present. It misses a portion of the present in exchange for an understanding of the past. Future prediction, mind can not work that way. It is perpetually terrifying to live an existence this way, sometimes. Bad things sometimes happen. Can't control everything.

Re: The intolerable rise of perfectionism

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather tangential to this, but I've always had trouble getting up early and maintaining that schedule. A little over a month ago I changed my diet to reduce carbs as much as possible, and I've never felt so alert and awake. Waking up early went from a grueling task to something that just happens naturally. I know this is just one anecdote, but I wonder if some of the mentioned people might also benefit from trying di…

whenever someone brings up the fact a sizeable portion of the population is forced into an unnatural sleep rythm; inevitably someone will chime in with a "I forced myself with method X and now I'm normal". It completely misses the underlying point.

I naturally like to conserve energy and eat sugar but I can motivate myself to move and eat healthy to the point it becomes more natural.

I think people are naturally predisposed to certain behaviors but it's not a sealed fate. Diet, exercise and environment might even be more dominant factors.

Re: The intolerable rise of perfectionism

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about 1/5th of the population suffering needlessly. The comment I replied to merely reinforces the stereotype that there is something wrong with them - "If only you lived better you would get to sleep at a normal time". On its own, its great they have improved their life. But in context its disrespectful.

If you're insulting a plausible opposing opinion as disrespectful, you should be backing up your claim with facts. You suggested that people are "naturally" night owls, the other side suggests that nightowlism may be caused by lifestyle choices and that many night owls are unaware of this causality. There is nothing disrespectful about either side of the argument, both are just hypotheses at this point (and a bit of…

There is evidence of a genetic cause for night owlism: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121116124551.h...

Further nobody questions the legitimacy of "early risers" and blames it on lifestyle. In fact most consider it a positive and something to aspire to. When you go your whole life having to dispel the initial impression of laziness due to your natural sleep rythmn it becomes personal. I'm fortunate that I've come to a place in my career where I can simply live with my natural rythmn, but most people don't get the chance.

Re: The intolerable rise of perfectionism

#76
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whenever someone brings up the fact a sizeable portion of the population is forced into an unnatural sleep rythm; inevitably someone will chime in with a "I forced myself with method X and now I'm normal". It completely misses the underlying point.

I naturally like to conserve energy and eat sugar but I can motivate myself to move and eat healthy to the point it becomes more natural. I think people are naturally predisposed to certain behaviors but it's not a sealed fate. Diet, exercise and environment might even be more dominant factors.

Having setup my life so I can simply sleep and rise naturally I'm living a perfectly normal and happy life - more productive than ever. There is nothing wrong with me and its not a terrible "fate".

What is terrible is that we don't accept that some people have different sleep schedules.

Re: The intolerable rise of perfectionism

#77
Maybe I've been working with too many millennials lately, but personally, I wish more people I worked with were perfectionists! My subjective observation is overall commitment to quality has generally decrease over the last decade of my career.

I know I have OCD tendencies, and I've found that if I can harness it properly (mostly by just being aware of when I am in a obsessive state) I can really internalize the topic at hand and add the new knowledge/skill to my everyday repertoire.

Re: The intolerable rise of perfectionism

#78
I think the problem I have with perfectionism, is that in a fairly connected world of 7+ billion people, the people that get "acclaim" are truly some of the most talented/lucky/good people in the world.

You never see mediocrity anymore, everyone has curated Instagram and Facebook feeds of their best moments. If you do see it, it's the process of something like America's Got Talent where it's laughed at.

Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters said it really well [0]. Everyone that we see doing almost anything online is really really good at it, so people get intimidated that they can't do what 8 year old prodigies are doing. There is such a gap between good and great that people are afraid of taking the time to make the jump since the other side feels so far away. It's ok to be bad at things, it's ok if your art or passion doesn't change the world. It's ok if you enjoy the journey and the destination isn't the top of the charts or a world championship in whatever.

[0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/dave-gro...

Re: The intolerable rise of perfectionism

#79

Maybe I've been working with too many millennials lately, but personally, I wish more people I worked with were perfectionists! My subjective observation is overall commitment to quality has generally decrease over the last decade of my career. I know I have OCD tendencies, and I've found that if I can harness it properly (mostly by just being aware of when I am in a obsessive state) I can really internalize the topi…

Are you sure its not Millennials but instead your expectations? Perhaps they are at their desks wondering why you are so commited to low value details.

Re: The intolerable rise of perfectionism

#80
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a native French speaker, fluently thinking in English. There's a vast pool of vocabulary that is common to both languages, from which I draw words indiscriminately (Latin roots and the same formula to derive verbs/nouns/adjectives, with minor variations for each langage (e.g. add "-ate" for verbs in Englsih and "-er" in French)). Some of these are so-called "false friends", with different meanings in both languag…

Thank you, I wasn’t quite sure. As a native English speaker who has learned French, I’ve often run into “faux amis”. Perhaps the most embarrassing was “préservatifs”, which I expected to mean preservatives but actually meant condoms.

Ooh, yes, that one must have been embarrassing indeed :-)

"Préservatif" is such a weird euphemism.

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