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Do hard things carefully

blog.depthsofrepair.com

31–40 of 60 posts

Re: Do hard things carefully

#31

These kinds of article push me over the edge. They introduce just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to be useful in order to sell you a book and course which will be more of the same bad quality content. In the article they define the edge as the transition zone between the comfort zone and the danger zone. And they more or less directly tell you to push it and stretch it with care. The proper underlying concept…

> If you follow the advices of these kind of articles, you typically see an initial success, followed by occasional bigger successes, followed by occasional crashes, followed by unrecoverable crashes. Aren't such articles only meant as food for thought? I find it difficult to imagine anyone actually driving their lives on it. Is that even possible for any kind of media, let alone such short articles?

Indeed, it gives ideas and food for thought. No psychological advice or life hacks can be simply or rigorously be followed as is.

Re: Do hard things carefully

#32
post #14
post #3

The concept he discusses of “the edge” is very similar to “edge of chaos” from physics, but has been studied extensively in complexity sciences, specifically complex adaptive systems. The theory proposes that all complex adaptive systems (CAS) naturally adapt to a state at the “edge of chaos” which is a transition zone between order(stability) and disorder. The theory proposes this is the zone where maximal learning/…

The boundary between predictable and chaotic is always there most interesting place to be.

For some reason this also made me think of the boundary of the Mandelbrot set...that place where all the interesting structure reveals itself.

Re: Do hard things carefully

#33
post #26

I don't think it's necessarily a "happy medium", but wisdom to know what kind of pain it is, and what the cost/benefit is of the situation. If you're lifting weights, the "burn" you feel after doing 20 reps of a light weight might be way higher in intensity than a little twinge in your shoulder; but the "burn" might be something you push through, while the twinge is something you just stop your workout for that day -…

I like the nuance you're bringing to this. When originally writing the article, I considered using a gym/weightlifting analogy, as it felt extremely relevant. I agree that the cost/benefit part can really be important. I might lean a bit more into my edge if I'm talking with someone I really care about, even if the cost/risk to me might be a little higher. I'm also much less likely to lean into my edge if I feel the person is a potential powder keg.

Re: Do hard things carefully

#34

I dislike the example of sharing personal information in the article. It's sometimes not only about your own comfort and boundaries, but also how much you want to put on another person.

I struggle sometimes with that, probably because I don't understand the 'put on another person' part. Would you (or anyone else reading this) care to give a recognizable example?

The "weight on one's 'shoulders'/'chest'" is a figure of speech from the psychosomatical relief one may feel when sharing troubles.

Inversely, the "burden" to respond, whether gravitas is implied or not, can be socially-exhausting to some, and not even conjured by others.

People with low self-esteem or self-worth / depressed / self-described "burdensome" people often assume the pity they may solicit costs the other party part of their own emotional well-being - they've burdened them further with expectations of a response or acknowledgement.

Re: Do hard things carefully

#35

I think it's hard to judge discomfort while you're in the situation. It's usually in the retrospect when you realise "it wasn't that bad" and you actually gained more than you expected at the time.

Yeah, I've gone from a place of not being able to judge my level of discomfort at all, to only being able to realize it hours after the fact, to eventually learning to notice it in the moment (after a lot of practice). I still don't do it perfectly, but it's a skill that I've found very valuable.

Re: Do hard things carefully

#36
post #32
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The boundary between predictable and chaotic is always there most interesting place to be.

For some reason this also made me think of the boundary of the Mandelbrot set...that place where all the interesting structure reveals itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30

Re: Do hard things carefully

#38
In a prior career as a firefighter-EMT about 90% of the work was pure boredom and routine, 5% was in a sweet-spot of complex and interesting or perhaps mildly but reasonably dangerous. The balance was represented some really difficult-ugly or wildly dangerous moments. It’s interesting how prevalent this is across so many fields.

Re: Do hard things carefully

#39
few bits..

* the Edge-zone/s (yes, plural) are many, per-aspect. One can be pretty ok with one aspect and at-same-time-and-place totally not-ok with another aspect

* being in edge zone is kind-a learning.. training.. ("if it hurts, do it more often") the more often there, further the edge border will move (Extending the comfort zone). Of course depending where it started ; loading a twisted ankle as-usual-before-twisting isn't safe

* as saying goes: there's no cannot, there is do not want ; and there's no have to, only want to. But YMMV

Re: Do hard things carefully

#40

These kinds of article push me over the edge. They introduce just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to be useful in order to sell you a book and course which will be more of the same bad quality content. In the article they define the edge as the transition zone between the comfort zone and the danger zone. And they more or less directly tell you to push it and stretch it with care. The proper underlying concept…

> If you follow the advices of these kind of articles, you typically see an initial success, followed by occasional bigger successes, followed by occasional crashes, followed by unrecoverable crashes. Aren't such articles only meant as food for thought? I find it difficult to imagine anyone actually driving their lives on it. Is that even possible for any kind of media, let alone such short articles?

Reader discretion is advised :)

The advice given by the current article is just after the "followed by occasional crashes" state of the state graph : The author has already noticed that the "edge" is context dependent and still recommends winging it (he also mention previous personal problems with substance abuse so we are definitely in the "here be dragons" territory).

The author seems to be in the wreck everyone around you and then repair it business.

**

There are various culture on the internet, notably pushed by influencers and other self proclaimed gurus, that often push it further that reasonable, often amplified by filter bubbles and echo chamber that algorithm like to recommend.

It's typically called Bro-Science in the fitness domain. This empirical science has the benefit of the wisdom of the crowd.

Typically in running or fitness, one follow a training program to make some gains. But the danger is often over-training, or bad posture resulting in an injury. Learning unguided is often the cause of injury.

Typically what happens is your mental model you are basing your training program on is missing some important levers : For example you didn't consider some cumulative nutrient deficiency or adaptation that occur when not respecting cycles by having rest weeks. But you push yourself because you don't see a reason why you shouldn't push yourself and then the injury occur.

**

Real science here would recommend taking a step back, and look for the missing lever instead of random pushing the levers in front of you.

You should be humble and start with the hypothesis that there is some additional unknown risk you aren't aware of. Reasonable progress isn't made working on the frontier trying to push it forward, but rather by exploring more diversity while staying comfortably in the comfort zone in order to be able to handle the occasional rough patches that natural variance will throw at you.

The science behind if you want to learn more is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration-exploitation_dilem... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit (Thomson sampling and no regret sampling). It typically consist of building an inner representation of the world (aka a world model) and acting on it conservatively. You may also look into martingale stopping time if you are inclined in probability theory.

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