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No More “Insight Porn”

jakobgreenfeld.com

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Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#81

Post by [deleted] »

startupdiscuss wrote: post #60
MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #28

I got super lucky. I started a company and didn’t really have any meaningful traction. I was about to shut it down. Walking out of the grocery store one night after work, I passed by my former manager when I was an intern. We got to talk for about 30 seconds, mentioned my company, she asked me to email her. I did, and that very quickly led to my first big customer which makes me about double what a FAANG swe would ma…

Note: you had to be kind and nice enough for the former boss to care enough to: - ask you to email - read it and understand what you do - follow up and spend the company's money edit: simplicity

[deleted]

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#82

Post by juve1996 »

strken wrote: post #52

It's genuinely useful to know that making $X a year is the same as Y clients paying $(X / Y / 52) a week, if you've never thought about a business in concrete terms before. Obviously this is old and repetitive if you're a working software engineer who's been reading HN for years and has seen a ton of motivational LinkedIn bullshit, but it's the kind of thing a career councillor might go over to make running a busines…

> One of the later tweets is "pick business partners...with integrity." They're both good bits of advice.

Really? This is good advice? Is "don't work with a known thief" also good advice? Most people know this already. They make it seem like it's this grand knowledge. it's not. It's worthless advice dressed up to sound good.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#83

Post by [deleted] »

layer8 wrote: post #80
recyclelater wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jocko willinck (and many others I am sure) likes to state that you can’t rely on motivation because it comes and goes. Rely on discipline, build habits using discipline if you want to get anything done. A trite but in my opinion helpful statement is discipline equals freedom.

That sounds like insight porn. How do you build discipline if you’re undisciplined? How do you decide what to be disciplined about?

[deleted]

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#84

Post by abecedarius »

minihat wrote: post #7

I think the invitation to subscribe to the author's newsletter at the bottom of the page is ironic. Love the label "insight-porn" though. Concisely captures the nauseous feeling of ingesting your 100th self help book.

The term was coined, afaik, by Sarah Perry in this blog post: https://web.archive.org/web/20180104183908/http://theviewfro...

Words will evolve, but I wanna say she was going for something higher level than self-help.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#85

Post by daniel-cussen »

ycombinete wrote: post #2

Jonathan Haidt speaks about something similar in The Happiness Hypothesis . Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour. This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies. Even the lamest examples listed in the OP article can probably give someone a boost in p…

Yeah epiphanies don't actually do any work for themselves.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#86

Post by Swizec »

danaris wrote: post #64
bombcar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Get lucky" is always the key - however, you can increase your "luck surface" by doing certain things (for example, you couldn't have gotten lucky if you hadn't started the company, nor if you hadn't bothered to talk to people).

> you can increase your "luck surface" by doing certain things ....and your chances of being able to do those things (without severe risk of poverty and homelessness) are increased dramatically by having been lucky enough to be born wealthy, or at least upper-middle-class.

> ....and your chances of being able to do those things (without severe risk of poverty and homelessness) are increased dramatically by having been lucky enough to be born wealthy, or at least upper-middle-class.

While this is true, it also isn’t helpful. Play the cards you have, not the cards you wish you had.

You always gotta start somewhere. Might as well start with what you’ve got and go from there.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#88

Post by sanggonlee »

bambax wrote: post #59

I'm confused, it seems insight porn is this guy's business. His article even ends with this: > If you’d like to get more honest strategies and proven frameworks for winning in life and business, then simply join my free newsletter here. Is he simply trying to trash the competition?

His point is not really abandon all the insight porns - but rather pick only those that you can experiment with. And if all his advice do provide something actionable, he's living up to his words.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#89

Post by bitexploder »

layer8 wrote: post #80
recyclelater wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jocko willinck (and many others I am sure) likes to state that you can’t rely on motivation because it comes and goes. Rely on discipline, build habits using discipline if you want to get anything done. A trite but in my opinion helpful statement is discipline equals freedom.

That sounds like insight porn. How do you build discipline if you’re undisciplined? How do you decide what to be disciplined about?

Stuff that you value. It is a simple and long term system specifically to maintain long term consistency. It just isn’t easy to do.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#90

Post by thenerdhead »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #28

I got super lucky. I started a company and didn’t really have any meaningful traction. I was about to shut it down. Walking out of the grocery store one night after work, I passed by my former manager when I was an intern. We got to talk for about 30 seconds, mentioned my company, she asked me to email her. I did, and that very quickly led to my first big customer which makes me about double what a FAANG swe would ma…

While most would call it luck, most self-help "insight porn" from the 1800s would say it is "fortunate" because you are in control of influencing it with your previous actions.

If a complete stranger became your big customer from the same scenario, that would be luck.

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