Forget self improvement • Hacker News Board

Re: Forget self improvement

#11

Post by Swizec » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 9:44 PM UTC

"Maybe you aren’t supposed to bother with the tedious stuff. Perhaps the reason you haven’t done it yet, is that you weren’t meant to. "

I don't like being meant to do anything, I choose what I work on and falling back to "well maybe I wasn't meant to" is using magical thinking and silly escapism to avoid a simple truth: You. Are. Lazy. And. Procrastinating.

Here's what I suggest to everyone who gets discouraged by some schlep work: Either find somebody else who will do it, or just get it over with, the sooner you are done with the enablers the sooner you can get to doing the things you love.

For instance: Most business owners find it tedious, boring and utterly painful to do accounting. But accounting is important. They don't say "Well maybe I wasn't meant to be a business owner", no, they hire a bloody accountant.

Re: Forget self improvement

#12

Post by misterbwong » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 9:50 PM UTC

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #7

comlag wrote: post #3

"I play tennis for a living even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion and always have."- Andre Agassi What if the things you are good at are not the things you love? What about the opposite? It is too complex to boil down to 'do what you love'.

What is the point of doing something you are good at if it makes your life worse? Andre Agassi is one of the most interesting people, though.

My guess is that they are doing something that makes life worse in certain ways and better in others.

Re: Forget self improvement

#13

Post by dkarl » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 9:53 PM UTC

On the other hand, you might consider simply finding what you love, and letting the rest take care of itself.

Yep, this works great for me. Because I'm never bored by what I love, never discouraged by what I love, never heedlessly irresponsible about what I love, never sick of what I love, never resentful of what I love, never scared to death of what I love. I'm never distracted by what I don't love, never seduced by what I don't love, never fooled by what I don't love. I'm never foolish in my love, never shallow in my love, never fickle in my love, never maturing or changing in my love. And of course I never, ever love more than one thing at a time.

Re: Forget self improvement

#14

Post by stephengillie » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 9:58 PM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #13

On the other hand, you might consider simply finding what you love, and letting the rest take care of itself. Yep, this works great for me. Because I'm never bored by what I love, never discouraged by what I love, never heedlessly irresponsible about what I love, never sick of what I love, never resentful of what I love, never scared to death of what I love. I'm never distracted by what I don't love, never seduced by…

"Do what you love, and you'll never have to work again"

Some act like this is a joke, saying: "Yea right, you still need a job to survive." Yes, you do need income to buy food and shelter. But the income doesn't even need to come from a job, and it certainly doesn't have to come from tasks you dislike.

If you hate your job, you are probably in the wrong career or working in the wrong field. If you really hate your job, people close to you know, and it affects them.

Re: Forget self improvement

#15

Post by endlessvoid94 » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 10:04 PM UTC

It's the journey, not the destination.

Re: Forget self improvement

#16

Post by endlessvoid94 » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 10:04 PM UTC

comlag wrote: post #3

"I play tennis for a living even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion and always have."- Andre Agassi What if the things you are good at are not the things you love? What about the opposite? It is too complex to boil down to 'do what you love'.

There's a good talk by Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" about this very subject. He finds perfectly happy people doing the dirtiest jobs on earth.

Re: Forget self improvement

#17

Post by joeld42 » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 10:05 PM UTC

This is good advice, but I think he's missing a distinction between "finding what you love" and "being good at something". I see a lot of people who seem to feel a ton of pressure to find what they're good at struggling and becoming frustrated.

Find something you like to do, even if you don't feel like you're naturally good at it. Don't worry about being good at it, just make sure it continues to make you happy and eventually you'll realize that you're better than most.

Re: Forget self improvement

#18

Post by antihero » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 10:13 PM UTC

This is fucking bullshit. In the words of Jake, sucking at something is just the first step to being kinda good at something. Often when you are bad at something, you don't enjoy it, often when you are good at something you still don't enjoy it, but the ability to self-discipline, to get good at something despite not enjoying it, translates to power over oneself.

If we all just gave up because we didn't enjoy shit initially, nothing we love would ever have happened.

Re: Forget self improvement

#19

Post by sliverstorm » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 10:17 PM UTC

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #16

comlag wrote: post #3

"I play tennis for a living even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion and always have."- Andre Agassi What if the things you are good at are not the things you love? What about the opposite? It is too complex to boil down to 'do what you love'.

There's a good talk by Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" about this very subject. He finds perfectly happy people doing the dirtiest jobs on earth.

Job satisfaction is so much more than whether you take pleasure in your day-to-day work.

Re: Forget self improvement

#20

Post by apaitch » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 10:18 PM UTC

Let's say I'm lazy. Sure, maybe I "haven't found what I'm meant to do" quite yet, but if I'm lazy AND armed with the "I don't want to do it - the universe is telling me not to!" rhetoric then how will I ever find something I love? You have to be willing to invest effort into things that hold your interest, but until you've done something for a while the aspect that holds your interest is the result and not the process. For example, I didn't get into programming because I loved programming. I got into programming because I didn't know what to do and I thought making video games would be cool. After a couple of semesters (yes, this was late in my life >."Self-help books and workshops arm us with ways to trick ourselves into doing things we perhaps should, but generally don’t want, to do."

That seems like quite a generalization. I get that it's hard to create a catchy title without making some form of generalization, but... really? I guess the author is talking about workshops like "How to write and sell your awesome novel in 7 days", but what comes to my mind when hearing "self-improvement" is something like the 7 habits. I hardly saw the latter as an attempt to trick myself into doing things I don't want to do.