Measuring personal growth
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Measuring personal growth
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Re: Measuring personal growth
#2This post is about personal growth in-the-large (or, strategy). I think that the other side to this--which is equally important--is personal growth in-the-small (or, tactics).
What I mean by personal growth in-the-small is something like Atomic Habits. Iterating on your habits to increase your effectiveness in the day-to-day opens up time and energy that can then be spent on the larger goals.
I really like the post, and just want to point out that this + Atomic Habits would be a good pairing!
Re: Measuring personal growth
#3While I agree in general with much of this post, there are a few other things I'd keep in mind:
* If you always focus on growth, sometimes you focus less on maintaining what you already have. It tends to be the case that when you're really growing on some things, you're sometimes neglecting other things.
* I like to keep a small allocation of my time/energy to growth, but most of it on maintenance because I want to keep much of the good things I already have. Obviously this allocation varies by individual (based on your goals/desires/energy/time)
* Focusing on maximal optionality can be good, but of course an option is only useful when exercised. Collecting options is just a cost (premiums paid). At some point you need to truncate the options (let them expire/have doors close) and exercise/execute on a select few
Re: Measuring personal growth
#4While I agree in general with much of this post, there are a few other things I'd keep in mind: * If you always focus on growth, sometimes you focus less on maintaining what you already have. It tends to be the case that when you're really growing on some things, you're sometimes neglecting other things. * I like to keep a small allocation of my time/energy to growth, but most of it on maintenance because I want to k…
All great points as well, thanks for sharing :)
Re: Measuring personal growth
#5I like this blog post, and like other commenters I agree. It's also interesting that it doesn't so much distinguish between external and internal 'achievement' so much.
For a very different take on the topic... I too was interested in the question of "measuring personal growth." So much so that I enrolled in graduate school and am now getting a Ph.D. researching personality development / change in "individual differences" over time. Another way to conceptualize / measure personal growth could be via decreases in one's level of Neuroticism over time.
Re: Measuring personal growth
#6I like this blog post, and like other commenters I agree. It's also interesting that it doesn't so much distinguish between external and internal 'achievement' so much. For a very different take on the topic... I too was interested in the question of "measuring personal growth." So much so that I enrolled in graduate school and am now getting a Ph.D. researching personality development / change in "individual differe…
What about kids? They don't seem to start with any neuroticism until they learn it or maybe the more neurotic parts of the brain start to mature/engage
Re: Measuring personal growth
#7I like this blog post, and like other commenters I agree. It's also interesting that it doesn't so much distinguish between external and internal 'achievement' so much. For a very different take on the topic... I too was interested in the question of "measuring personal growth." So much so that I enrolled in graduate school and am now getting a Ph.D. researching personality development / change in "individual differe…
What about kids? They don't seem to start with any neuroticism until they learn it or maybe the more neurotic parts of the brain start to mature/engage
Good question. We typically don't think of young kids as having neuroticism so much as an aspect of temperament we call "negative emotionality." Some children seem to have more of it than others. Taken at a slice in time, roughly half of the between-person personality variation on a given trait can be attributed to genes, the other half is environmental. (Strictly speaking, this doesn't quite account for variation in the change of traits over time though.)
Also, there's a well-studied effect where adolescents typically experience decreases in neuroticism / negative emotionality as they change and mature as they move into young adulthood.
Re: Measuring personal growth
#8Does maximizing options maximize empowerment? I've found I feel much more empowered in a situation where I've already deeply committed to some specific thing than when I have dozens of options but haven't chosen one. Intentionally closing the door on thousands of options is actually the only path I've found that's made it possible for me to grow at all. If I maximize options, I can just escape when faced with a growth opportunity, not actually have to grow through it.
I remember sitting up late one night in my twenties overwhelmed by the sheer number of doors I would never open. Not metaphorical doors--actual, physical doors to physical buildings and rooms. It had hit me earlier that day that the number of doors I would even encounter in my life is infinitesimal compared to the total number of doors, and the ones I would open of that tiny subset were orders of magnitude smaller still.
I suppose I could have responded to this by making some strange life rule where I always try the handle on every door, but I think I grew a lot more by deciding it doesn't matter, that opening all the doors, or even maximizing my chances to open doors, would be a waste of my life. So I guess they doubled as metaphorical doors after all.
I don't know how measurable it would be, but I would rather measure my personal growth by the peace I've managed to find with the realities I can't change and the choices I've made. For instance, I'm not infinite. I'm going to die. There will be things I dislike about the world that won't change during my lifetime. Stuff like that. That seems like a better measure to me of how much I'm growing.
Re: Measuring personal growth
#9> Quynh, an old friend who runs a publishing house in Vietnam, believes that there are three big problems in life: career, family, and finance. It usually takes people a decade to figure each out.
I have a really hard time relating to this (except if you frame problem as "something to be solved somehow"). I'm much more focused on solving the problems of: finding activities that are worth living for (programming, drawing, music, reading, writing, sports, nature) and friendships and intellectual exchange.
I find myself growing as I am able to focus my attention on these topics and feel that I am doing so in a sustainable way, and feel content (almost) every day.
Re: Measuring personal growth
#10Does maximizing options maximize empowerment? I've found I feel much more empowered in a situation where I've already deeply committed to some specific thing than when I have dozens of options but haven't chosen one. Intentionally closing the door on thousands of options is actually the only path I've found that's made it possible for me to grow at all. If I maximize options, I can just escape when faced with a growt…
I think it's not so much as having many options but more so of having a lot of backup plans for when things eventually go wrong. There's analysis paralysis after all. It would be better to say that empowerment is maximized when there is a definitively best choice and there are several good backup choices (complete with sensible rankings down the chain of backups, ideally definitive) if the original choice suddenly becomes unavailable due to the arbitrariness of life.