101–110 of 119 posts
Don’t people have partners, kids, aging parents, hell even pets that depend on them? The authors version of being stuck seems like a luxury, an inward exploration to find out how you are holding yourself back. To even approach it from that angle you need to have no one depending on you. I can’t “shake things up” by trying a new career or taking impulsive vacations because other human beings rely on me being “stuck”.
If you feel stuck it means you need new habits because the old ones are not serving you well! Program your environment, set up commitment devices to lock in your future behaviour that is positive and effortless. Do not ever set goals, they are high-risk low pay off mental bets that will eat you if you fail (odds are against you).
Why does this feel like an AI wrote it? And the whole website feels the same. The OP is here commenting as well and, though polite, just gives off an AI vibe. Really off.
Pretty awesome article -- rock on
1) Build a small to medium size following writing about technical or entrepreneurial stuff
2) Make it to some kind of financial success (sell a company, advance at a big tech org)
3/4) Reflect and find yourself unhappy and make big personal life changes, leaving your wife/partner and leaving your company
5) Adopt an increasingly effusive, emotional, and untethered style of writing and living ("today I cried my way to a beautiful and uncomfortable conversation after a three-day retreat on an island with other former tech workers. Also I tried some drugs. I can't wait to reflect more!")
I guess this is kind of unkind, there are plenty of worse ways of living. And TFA is not fully an example of it. But it's strange to see it play out repeatedly. Maybe some component of emotional repression is more common in software people and when financial constraints fall away it presents itself as the next thing to optimize, or maybe nobody writes blog posts about living a conventional life committed to a small group of people, but it almost feels like a cliche at this point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These energy levels are all relative, though. If you’ve spent most of your life in a depressed state, then suddenly having energy (possibly because you’re dealing with your mental health for the first time) then a lot of things are going to look like “hypomania” in comparison and I feel like that is the case for a lot of people.
Hypomania is an unusual level of excitement and happiness; 'thinking straight' becomes difficult, but it doesn't feel that way in the moment. Happiness and hypomania are easily distinguishable.
I’m going to take a gander and say that happiness and hypomania are far from “easily distinguishable” in this case, which was my entire point. If you’ve spent your life depressed, then any amount of happiness is going to look a whole lot like hypomania.
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Did you know, the brain is hard-wired to be suckered by self-help books? One trick that I personally find very liberating and enlightening is to make a big pile of such material and burn it. It gives me a sense of warmth and inner joy.
I enjoy reading them, thinking I'll change myself. Then I'm done, I don't apply anything and put the book on the shelf. It's its own kind of horror for these books.
I did wake up one day to the realization that I had up to this point not been willing to take the next steps and put insight into action. And when I realized that, it was like opening floodgates. I started doing the things I had learned about, and they started to change my life. But there is a pretty important and major milestone to make this transition.
I don't think it's necessary or helpful to frame this as a kind of horror. I think it's more helpful to just change how you see the act of reading books. True change still has to start from within. Books in this context are just toolboxes. Toolboxes don't build anything by themselves either.
If you feel stuck it means you need new habits because the old ones are not serving you well! Program your environment, set up commitment devices to lock in your future behaviour that is positive and effortless. Do not ever set goals, they are high-risk low pay off mental bets that will eat you if you fail (odds are against you).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Over the last few months I've been experimenting with Buddhist meditation, which leans heavily into this metaphor. They phrase the metaphor differently, with a focus on flattening of the grooves in your mind. I've found these ideas helpful, but they're hardly novel. The Buddha lived over 2000 years ago. One big difference the objective. Most of these blogs are about hacking your mind to be more successful, whereas re…
I appreciate the point you're trying to make. However, my general experience of attempts to take "useful" parts of of religion and then sanitise them for secular mass consumption is that they're at best useless and at worst harmful. Sure, there might be some proximal benefits to (say) meditation but these are things that were done in a larger (often spiritual) context and I'm not sure that pulling them out of that is…
However, there's now tons of secular support for meditation. Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and one of the most anti-religion and anti-supernatural people out there, is basically leading the charge. I think that says something.
Just something from my experience - taking action is 1000x more important than challenging thoughts and core beliefs. The latter should be done, but quite often it is done as a form of procrastination. So the rule I have is - I only challenge thoughts after I've TAKEN ACTION in a way that has triggered those feelings. So facing those fears and discomforts is the meat of the matter, and the self-awareness just makes the whole process a bit more efficient and well-directed.