Ask HN: Have you invested in self-development and done inner work?

It might help to consider the common language of what I believe you're talking about.

> self-development

> inner work

This is more commonly referred to as "self-improvement" or "self-help" (depending on if you think you're just improving yourself, or more specifically addressing something you consider to be a weakness or shortcoming.) It means developing your skills or learning new ones, and coming to a new understanding of a topic of interest.

You also might want to start by figuring out what role you want to be in, whether professionally or in hobbies. It's not clear if you want to be a problem solver or a creator. Having lots of aliases for what you mean isn't giving anyone clarity. Being a "maker" often means you have projects you work on because you're interested, and you want to tinker and build things. But a "creator" might be slightly different, as would a "creative." A "problem solver" in business is more likely someone that is called upon when there are problems. That's vastly different from being a "creator", "maker" or "creative."

In general, I think you're caught up in "programs" and buzz words. In my opinion, you need to take five steps back and think about what you really want to be doing and go from there.

IMO, people have the wrong idea about "self development" and "personal growth" - It sounds like some new age self-help, spiritual BS. This is not self development.

Self development has nothing to do with positive thinking, visualizing success or spiritual stuff. That's a load of horse shit.

Real self-development involves choosing difficult goals and focusing all your energy on attaining them; learning new skills and improving existing skills in the process. It's about mastering some useful skills in order to give yourself a sizable competitive advantage in the marketplace and in society - This is the best way to gain control of your future.

The emotional, spiritual, positive thinking and visualization aspects of 'self improvement' are nonsense. This doesn't yield any improvement, all it does is it shows everyone that you're a gullible, delusional fool. The world doesn't give a shit about your positive thoughts; in fact they tend to cause people to be neglectful. The world cares about results.

Inner work that actually matters (meaning it makes a genuine and relevant impact) isn't going to be specific to whatever you mean by "indie" and "maker" and such.

It may align with some particular philosophy that resonates with you; the nature of the "work" may fit what seems "right for you" within your particular context (not everyone needs, wants, or benefits from a psychedelic meltdown, or a ten year hardcore meditation retreat, or three months of sensory deprivation, or prayer, or splitting logs, or ...); but there is an "essential" core underlying the things that would actually matter.

"Self-development and inner work" largely amounts to clarity/awareness. Most of us are completely clueless regarding the values that drive us, and fewer of us are aware we can choose them. We don't examine the goals that drive our choices and behaviors. We don't actively monitor and adjust our physiology. We allow thinking errors in their wide variety to accumulate and distort. We over-identify with thinking/feeling/states/etc. We don't examine the beliefs we have about ourselves and the world, and again, we don't realize we can change these.

There are lots of ways to examine/inspect/alter the software you're running, installed by you, your family, your friends, your teachers, your culture, your country, your experiences, your environment, your everything else.

Find one that clicks and go for it. The idea that this will be somehow unique to "indie and maker world" is, ah, "not very helpful".

Personally, I mostly use hypnosis/self-hypnosis/some forms of meditation/inquiry and the like, but that's what suits my inclinations. (And I'm a hypnotist, so of course that's what I prefer.) I got interested in that when I was a wee teen and it's been a very fine tool. But your mileage varies because you're driving a different vehicle.

I did. Massively. I like to think it helped me in being a generalist that can specialize in software development. Also gave me a good defense system against ideological contamination and cultural pathologies and pollution. But by no means is work done. It's a permanent activity. Part of the lifestyle.

The most useful psychological technique I've found is Internal family systems (IFS). If you do it with a therapist, it can be very powerful, and mind bending, like a psychedelic trip. The way it helps productivity is when I can't motivate myself to do various tasks I use IFS to explore what's going on in my brain that fuels that procrastination.

It takes me to memories and dusty corners of my brain that I rarely visit that form the foundations of my identity. The only bad part about it is one really needs a therapist to guide oneself when one goes deep and visits what IFS calls "exiles".