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Optimism

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Re: Optimism

#111

Post by braythwayt »

tinco wrote: post #95
braythwayt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is: First, there was a dramatic immediate improvement. I feel like some of that was the material, and some the "Hawthorne Effect:" Anything that forces you to inspect yourself has a short-term beneficial effect. For example, if you tell someone to count their calories, they usually eat better for a month or two simply because counting the calories forces awareness. Second, I have slipped from time to ti…

Do you know if pessimism/optimism come naturally to people? Does the CBT strategy you described fully change your attitude or do you feel you have to rationally correct yourself when you experience something negative? I'd like to help someone who I feel is overly pessimistic, but they are very skeptic of self-help books and therapies, did you feel that way? Do you have any tips to help overcome that?

CBT is like eating healthily: You don't just eat healthy for a year, get fit, and you're done. You adopt a healthy eating diet and keep it for life.

So... You adopt CBT, maybe you do more of it right away, but you're adopting something that will become part of your life.

Re: Optimism

#112

Post by lowmagnet »

mathgenius wrote: post #88
braythwayt wrote: post #9

Author here. Ask Me Anything.

When pessimism works it leads to action. Hopefully effective action. My concern with the attitude of "oh this is a temporary problem" is that it could lead to apathy. A kind of "waiting for godot" situation.

Or perhaps, "This is a temporary problem, but caused by specific actions or attitudes. How do I improve?"

Re: Optimism

#113

Post by steveklabnik »

dahart wrote: post #81
ryanobjc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a ton of research in this area and an entire field of clinical therapy called "cognitive behavioral therapy". There's literally too much to cite :-)

In that case, I'm sure there's a good survey paper and some decent places to start for interested non-experts. Googling for surveys, this was the top result: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ (Conclusion: "In general, the evidence-base of CBT is very strong. However, additional research is needed to examine the efficacy of CBT for randomized-controlled studies.") And as much as I want to resist lin…

See also "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy".

(I am sorta-kinda a CBT skeptic, at least personally. But I know a lot of people for whom they claim it's been life-changing, and this is what they recommend.)

Re: Optimism

#114

Post by steveklabnik »

mrec wrote: post #66
braythwayt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Q: Why the heavy-ass .md? ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12299756 ) A: I use an OS X presentation application called DeckSet. DeckSet uses markdown files as its persistence model. That is very convenient for a number of reasons, including the fact that I can manage my presentations with git/github, something that is inconvenient with apps that use a proprietary binary format. The presentation is available in…

Is there a text-only version? The pictures aren't really adding anything and IMO break the reader's flow of thought. We can obviously get around it with something like Array.from(document.getElementsByTagName("img")).forEach(img => img.parentNode.removeChild(img)); in the console, but seriously. Medium has a lot to answer for.

Alternatively, you can click on "raw" and get https://raw.githubusercontent.com/raganwald/presentations/ma...

Re: Optimism

#115

Post by donw »

holman wrote: post #36

I think this might be one of those times where the title might lead to confusion in the comment section and leads people a bit astray. I saw this talk in person at Nordic Ruby, and it was one of the best talks I've seen (and I've seen a bunch). Strangely enough, I don't really think back and think much about "optimism" when I think of the talk, though, even though the talk is about optimists. My takeaway was the type…

The best advice I received on this topic was that feedback should be actionable, specific, and kind.

Actionable and specific mean that the person on the receiving end has a set of concrete actions to take to implement.

For example, "get better at programming" isn't specific, and "get a PhD in Computer Science" probably isn't actionable, but "work on improving your ability to write readable code by working through the exercises in this book" is something that can be worked with (especially if you can spend some time to mentor that person!)

Kindness matters a lot, though, and it is different from niceness.

When giving feedback, some people say that they are brutally honest, but often the emphasis is on the first word, rather than the second. Things like "The module you wrote is crap because your code sucks and is hard to maintain." doesn't help in any way, shape or form.

On the other hand, others that focus on being nice often heap on the praise, while excluding or downplaying the criticism. "You worked really hard on that module, and maybe should should spend a more little time refactoring and cleaning things up" is too nice.

Kindness means sharing the good and the bad, but without being aggressive or accusatory: "Thanks for the hard work on that module. It does exactly what it needs to, but I'm really struggling to understand what's going on in there, as there are some really big methods and classes. Breaking those apart into smaller separate objects and functions would help a lot."

Re: Optimism

#116

Post by dominotw »

ryanobjc wrote: post #77
dominotw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is research backing this thesis. Is there a way for a layman to assess the quality of this research. I've read many assertions of research on HN on topics similar to this. eg: Meditation is supposed to help with depression(among other things) but seems like most research is extremely poor quality [1]?. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19123875 Most clinical trials on meditation practices are generally ch…

There is a ton of research in this area and an entire field of clinical therapy called "cognitive behavioral therapy". There's literally too much to cite :-)

I did some googling around on the topic for past couple of hours. Seems like the jury is still out on it? This[1] article cites some research contradicting its past reliability.

It seems too hard for a layman to make heads or tails of it. Let alone make recommendations to others, which seems irresponsible and dangerous to say the least.

https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/blog/details/705/is-c...

Re: Optimism

#117

Post by jlgaddis »

braythwayt wrote: post #101
jlgaddis wrote: post #91

Way off-topic but I'm intrigued... anyone know what's up with the presenter and several members of the audience (primarily in the front row) and their clothing (dress?)? I've no idea where this was at, geographically/physically, so maybe it's a local custom or style or something?

The conference is http://www.nordicruby.org . It was held at a Japanese-styel spa. When you check in, they give you the robe and slippers, and lots of people choose to retain them throughout the conference.

That's very interesting, reading about it now. Thank you!

Re: Optimism

#118

Post by tedmiston »

holman wrote: post #36

I think this might be one of those times where the title might lead to confusion in the comment section and leads people a bit astray. I saw this talk in person at Nordic Ruby, and it was one of the best talks I've seen (and I've seen a bunch). Strangely enough, I don't really think back and think much about "optimism" when I think of the talk, though, even though the talk is about optimists. My takeaway was the type…

Any chance the talk was recorded?

Edit: Found it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xjntzo-mYc

Re: Optimism

#119

Post by gridspy »

PSeitz wrote: post #62

TLDR; To be more optimistic assess good stuff as personal, general, and permanent and negative as impersonal, specific and temporal. Make notes everyday about your assessments and correct them. There is research backing this thesis.

Also, assess others in an optimistic way also.

I.e.

praise: personal, general, and permanent

criticism: impersonal, specific and temporal

Re: Optimism

#120

Post by DHMO »

braythwayt wrote: post #9

Author here. Ask Me Anything.

Are you a strong believer in putting a caret in front of every point?

I understand the association with up and optimism, but in this document, I think that it could be distracting the reader from the content you are presenting.

Thank you for writing this, though!

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