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The goal of standards is to improve our future actions

260 points by neelnanda 5y ago

rationalfaith 5y ago
retitle to: My Ego is Too High....
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
drewcoo 5y ago
Oh, yeah? Well you should focus more on improving yourself than on the perceived faults in others! Start with better definitions for things. Sort out goals from standards, maybe. Also, maybe rethink "anchor points." And the intermittent boldness, while possibly a metaphor for your struggle, is annoying.
ehutch79 5y ago
Please change your font. it's too small for that fontface at the very least
nine_k 5y ago
The gist: «And the crux of it is the word could have, the standards we hold ourselves to. This mix of guilt, insecurity and unrealistic standards is a major loss of productivity, and a major source of unhappiness.» Embrace imperfection, because perfection is unattainable anyway.
- raman162 5y ago
  That snippet resonated well with me. I think the primary thing I need to personally work on is insecurity. I'm currently learning R in a course I'm taking and I feel as if I'm moving at a snails pace when working on the programming assignments. It's demotivating since I feel like I should be moving faster and I end up feeling. The reality is that I have to accept that there aren't shortcuts and accept the grunt period before I become comfortable with the language. That's just part of life.
- H8crilA 5y ago
  Ahh, the obsession with Productivity. Productivity is only required if it is required. This reminds me of Little Prince meeting The Inventor, who tells him that he invented pills that completely eliminate the need for drinking. The Inventor is happy about saving up to 20 minutes of a person's life with their product. The Prince just thinks to themselves - "weird, if I had an extra 20 minutes I would happily stroll towards a well, then drink very slowly". What's wrong with being unproductive some of the time, or most of the time? I usually enjoy it a great deal.
  - waynesonfire 5y ago
    completely agree, but unfortunately, Arbeit macht frei!
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > What's wrong with being unproductive some of the time, or most of the time? I usually enjoy it a great deal. "Productive" is a bit of an overloaded word. Myself, when I obsess over my productivity, it's really an obsession over being able to do the things that I set out to do. It's an obsession over being in full control of my own faculties. It has nothing to do with work and business per se.
    - H8crilA 5y ago
      Well, to be honest I don't think there is that much of a difference. Both in business/at work and in your private life you have to accept the "failure" of reducing your objectives. Then proceed to drink your water, slowly :).
  - scollet 5y ago
    I like to challenge the stereotype with "Live slow, die whenever."
daxuak 5y ago
Not being specific to this post, but I find writings that have bold or italic in almost every sentence harder to read.
singingboyo 5y ago
Sorry, but the font and vaguely bolding are very, very off-putting. Especially when all but the last letter are bolded, or you have a link that includes the space after it, things start feeling wrong, somehow. What I did read also had a lot of rambling. That's not necessarily a bad thing in general, as it's a valid style and probably easier to get out there than trying to compress and perfect, but I'm not sure it's going to get you much traction on HN.
- mpalmer 5y ago
  I don't know if it was very, very off-putting, but I agree that the length of the piece together with the bolding made it harder to engage with the ideas. If the author is open to advice, mine would be this: 1. Consider your audience How might an audience of knowledgeable adults read into a piece that visually emphasizes every idea or phrase the author has decided is important? Might they feel that the piece is condescending to them? It's possible, and that is indeed how I felt reading the piece. 2. You have a lot of tools to emphasize important ideas. Don't use them all. Throughout the piece there is a lot of bolding, a lot of italics, and several ideas. Where each distinct clause is a sentence. Where each clause modifies the first subject. Pick one of these. Maybe two. But don't do everything, or the impact is lessened. 3. Edit yourself mercilessly Honestly, you're already on the way to editing this down - the important parts are bolded. Cut around them and see how much you can actually afford to lose.
  - afarrell 5y ago
    I disagree with this as good advice. I think the post is at a point where any more self-editing would be navel-gazing. Instead, I’d advise first posting it to 1-3 editors whom you trust. “Consider your audience” is good…but also not very actionable until you make your audience specific.
    - mpalmer 5y ago
      You're welcome to disagree, but what you're saying is pretty subjective. Self-editing is not "navel-gazing" if you do it right. > but also not very actionable until you make your audience specific He posted it to HN himself. Do I really need to be more specific?
soheil 5y ago
To listen https://per.quest/651b73f3bb5d1690d76add9d0064904e.mp3 https://per.quest/651b73f3bb5d1690d76add9d0064904e.mp3
MauranKilom 5y ago
A few years ago, I made a new year's resolution to be more forgiving to myself. At the time, I would feel miserable at the end of the day for, say, not doing laundry even though I had resolved to do so. I would downright hate myself for not getting this simple task done despite having had the time. So, that year, whenever I would have such a thought, I'd tell myself that I forgive my past self. "It's ok!" And it has been extremely effective! I don't think I procrastinate less (or more) on laundry nowadays, but I can't remember the last time I went to bed feeling terrible about myself. It almost feels absurd to me now to think about, but it's actually been life-changing. And it required no money, no explicit commitment, no lifestyle changes, no time taken out of every day. Just a small but persistent voice objecting to the self-loathing. Downsides might include being overall more apathetic and possibly less motivated - but that might also be an illusion. I don't know, it's hard to compare to beforehand, and I don't think terrorizing yourself is particularly effective in the first place. But even if I had to choose, I would definitely pick "slightly less productive" over "self-hatred". People say to love/respect yourself. Not hating yourself is a pretty foundational step in that :)
- sharkjacobs 5y ago
  When I punish myself I find I shrink or cringe away from the subject of concern, rather than motivated to engage with it Depression is the greatest enemy of doing anything, feeling bad is basically always a net negative on productivity
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I identify strongly with this. I’m overall functional, even reasonably successful, in work. But in work and even more strongly in personal matters, I can shrink away from unpleasant items well past the point of it being reasonable. I’ve literally wasted dozens of hours avoiding a task that ends up taking 15 minutes. Could be a phone call, dealing with some minor tax or DMV issue, writing a simple but important email, or whatever. Often paperwork or tedious phone call related, but it’s clearly not productive behavior.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
I'm seeing a 404 Not Found.
ggggoz 5y ago
Don’t fear perfection, you’ll never meet it. - Dali
- clpm4j 5y ago
  I heard/read this one recently: "Perfection is a child's fantasy."
SCUSKU 5y ago
Lots of hate on the font, italics, and writing style. I for one really enjoyed and related to this post. This post does a great job of capturing and elaborating on and providing actionable advice for people who probably tend to beat themselves up when they don't achieve what they expected. I struggle with setting my expectations of myself too high, failing, and then feeling dumb, lazy, etc. So thank you Neel for writing this up and sharing.
personjerry 5y ago
If you suffer from this kind of perfectionism and find it affects your productivity (i.e. in the form of procrastination) I highly recommend reading The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. It's helped me to not only be more productive, but also to feel less guilty and more confident about myself no matter how much I actually get done.
afarrell 5y ago
> At this point in this conversation, some part of me starts to feel concerned about complacency. I know that my standards are unrealistic. But they also serve as a big part of my motivation system. And I feel concerned that if I just removed them, that I'd be complacent, and never do anything. And that feels terrifying. This past year, I’ve noticed in myself a tendency to assume I am naturally unmotivated and need some source of fear, pressure, or extrinsic motivation to get work done. I’ve also been reading about Taylorism and realized how unhealthy that is. Since realizing it, I have started to work on trusting myself more.
- Noumenon72 5y ago
  Funny, I've been a devoted fan of Taylorism ever since I read _Cheaper by the Dozen_ as a kid. To me it just means doing things better and faster each day. To you it seems like more of a harsh taskmaster?
  - zebraflask 5y ago
    Probably not the time or place for extended discussions of Taylorism, but in its original form, it was meant to be applied to product manufacturing, right? Bit of a disconnect to apply any of that to personal improvement considerations, at least as I see it.
tellersid 5y ago
Not me. To me, what this article is describing is just poor mental health. On the other hand, I grew up in a nice middle class family but a family that was basically trivial to do better than. Maybe things would be different if I had a chip on my shoulder from growing up dirt poor or a chip on my shoulder from an ultra successful parent that is almost impossible to live up to.
- MauranKilom 5y ago
  > Maybe things would be different if I had a chip on my shoulder from growing up dirt poor or a chip on my shoulder from an ultra successful parent that is almost impossible to live up to. Neither of these are necessary conditions for poor mental health and/or having high standards for yourself (i.e. being in the target audience of the article). But they can of course have a significant impact.
- fswwi 5y ago
  > poor mental health This. And you can't change it simply by convincing yourself that your thoughts are irrational.
  - bitexploder 5y ago
    Labeling thoughts at all can be fraught with peril. Sometimes it’s just best to let them be thoughts. They come and go. I just try to guide and shape them on the “right” path that I think aligns with my goals.
lhorie 5y ago
It strikes me as weird to address an issue of unrealistic standards by implementing a bunch of productivity systems (pomodoro, etc) and data collection schemes, since these systems are fallible, which feeds right back to the anxiety loop. I feel like it's appropriate to bring up meditation, and specifically self-awareness. There's something about seeing yourself as a third party that helps put things into a larger context and helps us "let go".
- Forge36 5y ago
  It's good to have data. "I'm unproductive" vs "I choose to spend my time doing X". It's a lot easier to be more productive by "watching 15 minutes less of tv" when you know you watching 3 hours a night. Pomodoro isn't a productivity system. It's "I'm going to focus for ~15 minutes", and that's much easier to do than "spend 8 hours working".
  - lhorie 5y ago
    Having more data isn't always better. For example, there are certain medical diagnosis protocols that basically involve going down a predetermined list of rote checks precisely because studies show that getting extra information ends up leading the doctor to make poorer diagnoses. Looking at the article, one example of data collection is "I know that I write at about 20-30 WPM" (the implication being that the author feels pressured to write at a minimum level of "efficiency"). Coupled w/ pomodoro, it essentially becomes a pressure to write X words in Y minutes, lest feelings of inadequacy hit later upon reflection. This to me feels borderline unhealthy: "what if I forgot to measure", "what if I under-deliver", etc are all possible psychological sinkholes. What meditation promotes is asking yourself what exactly happiness means to you personally, and observing how expectations and accomplishments play a role towards your objectives. Sometimes yes you just need to recognize that you need to get off your ass and do the work, but sometimes it's a matter of prioritization, sometimes less is more.
    - lazyjeff 5y ago
      I found when I tried doing this "calibration" phase, that it's not just about sheer time spent on a task. A task that took three 1-hour sessions is often not doable in one 3-hour session, because you lose creative productivity after a bit of time. That was my first mistake when trying to estimate how long things would take. Instead, now I calibrate based on time as well as sessions, so I know preparing a new 80-minute lecture (for a class) takes two 5-hour sessions: the first 5-hour session to outline the class and activities, gather the major sources and bullet points I want to make; then the second 5-hour session to put together the polished version of slides and activity script, and do a 60-minute mental run-through. Same with a lot of other tasks. Some are short but need multiple sessions, like writing recommendation letters that will be closely read. Even though it's easy to write the 2 pages in about 30 minutes, it rarely gets the right tone, and needs at least one or two more 20-minute sessions to capture the applicant's character as clearly as possible.
timmg 5y ago
When I was an awkward high school student trying to meet girls, I had a friend with more experience. His advice to me was, "When all else fails, lower your standards." I just find that so amusing in retrospect.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  Your friend was a smart guy - you should hang out with him more. Today, there's an epidemic of women 30 - 40 who will die alone because they don't want to "settle" or "be less than." This is a mathematical certainty because female hypergamy focuses on the top 10% of men, and there's not enough to go around, creating harems (polyginy.) Yes, you would be right if you think that means the end of Western Civilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygyny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygyny
etcet 5y ago
Eliminate the "shoulds"! You'll be much happier if you can keep the voice of the foul mouthed Bronx born therapist Albert Ellis in your head: https://youtu.be/u109sVn8zGA?t=1077 https://youtu.be/u109sVn8zGA?t=1077
WaitWaitWha 5y ago
I do not believe the problem is "standards are too high". It is more about unable to mentally cope with failure properly. Maybe it also has something to do with the author's world view, where they are who they supposed to be versus who they think they are.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  That depends. If your standards weren’t too high you might be able to call it success instead of failure.
belter 5y ago
“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” ― Oscar Wilde
cardosof 5y ago
There's you, who you think you are and who you think you're supposed to be or become, but only one of them is real.
xyzelement 5y ago
The blogger is a recent grad (hence his example of reflecting how he did on an exam) but the idea he pointed out is universal - some expectation that "what I am doing should feel easy, and if it doesn't then there's something wrong." I can relate to that feeling but it's also something that is an important (positive!) clue in our work. Speaking plainly: if you're in a place where everything you're doing feels easy, then you're living well bellow your potential. If everything is easy, it means you're only doing things you know how to do already, which means you're not stretching and growing. When you are feeling a little bit like "I am struggling and borderline failing" - then you know you're pushing, growing and learning. The important thing is to go through it a few times, so that you recognize that feeling and interpret it as "growing pains" rather than "impending doom"
didntknowya 5y ago
it's easy to get caught up in the tech grind, where you are expected to "hustle" or build a world-changing product 24/7. I used to get anxious in my free time- like why spend my weekend washing my car when I could work and earn enough per hour to hire someone that could do it instead? but truth is I like doing the mundane tasks as it relaxes me and it's the simple things in life that makes it.
xedrac 5y ago
If you haven't read the book: "Mindset" by Carol Dweck, do yourself a huge favor and read/listen to that book. It completely changed my perspective in life.
giantg2 5y ago
Companies don't actually have standards. They have a list of expectations that are completely subjective. Sometimes the only thing that changes is the person rating you, yet your rating changes drastically. There have been a few times over my relatively short career that I know company/HR policies were violated. It takes a toll.
the_arun 5y ago
During every RCA for an incident caused by me, I go through immense guilt & sadness. Makes me feel how can I make this silly mistake when I expect higher bar for everyone else around me.
kirse 5y ago
Perfectionism is typically a defense mechanism of some sort. This post is trying to fix all the damaged fruit springing from the roots of perfectionism, like trying to stamp out every ant instead of killing the queen. Sometimes you grew up in a family with a harsh & critical parent, or rewards for progress were minimal, so a spirit of "well done!" is absent. Or maybe you had a personal trauma and the striving is an attempt to avoid pain ever happening again. Or maybe your personal search for significance in life so strongly identifies with something that anything less than perfection in that area reflects badly on you. Or maybe you have shame in your past and you're trying hard to compensate. Whatever it is, perfectionism is not "solved" with a blueprinted flowchart or life system but by digging deep into a wellspring of grace and worth. For those of us who are Christian, we believe in Jesus' work on the cross as our source of unlimited grace and forgiveness, believing that God has taken care of the perfection gap of our failures. For the rest of the world, well I don't have an answer for you except you may want to take a trip through Paul's letter to the Romans.
- bitexploder 5y ago
  Most of the techniques for “life philosophy” in the Bible are cribbed from Greek philosophy with a heap of mysticism stirred in to obscure it all. Just go to the source: the stoics and other Greeks. The dichotomy of control (serenity prayer) predates the Bible by some time, for example.
  - kirse 5y ago
    Sure, if you want to extract the various proverbs, there's plenty of practical and related wisdom. But the stoics had nothing to do with Christ, who is the target of faith in the Bible. Further, the stoics hardly had disciples who were completely broke and yet carried their message far enough to end up sawn in two, tarred and lit on fire, crucified upside-down, beheaded, gutted by swords, etc.
    - jkhdigital 5y ago
      Indeed—the power of an idea is not fully captured in the words that describe it, but rather it gains full force in the stories and images that one associates with it.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
I was diagnosed in my thirties with a congenital condition. I decided "I need to start making more Bs if I'm ever going to get anywhere." Twenty years later, I look back on my high expectations and realize that I was inculcated with them in childhood and also got a lot of support in childhood for being able to hit those performance marks in school. Growing up and leaving home meant I still had high expectations but I didn't necessarily have the support I needed to meet them. I still have high standards but I'm more able to embrace ideas like "The perfect is the enemy of the good" and "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." I'm happy at the moment with some of my accomplishments that probably don't look especially impressive to a lot of outsiders. Maybe they seem unpolished or not slick or not meeting some metric some outsider thinks matters. But they are meeting metrics I think matter, metrics that are hard to hit at all. And sometimes the fact that others think it's messy or second rate is a feature, not a bug, for my purposes.
- daveevad 5y ago
  > Anything worth doing is worth doing badly TIL - Thanks for sharing that kernel.
- mlac 5y ago
  Along these lines, I find it to be really important to have things that I do not do well, and that I do not optimize. I tend to research and over-optimize every activity I do. Part of that is the fun I find in a hobby - I like to learn how to do it at the absolute best level (or how the professionals do it). But in doing so, I've found that I need to be OK not being the best, and when I don't hit that mark, improve my appreciation for those who can (and justify paying the professionals to do it). An example is BBQ. I did tons of research, and there are setups that run $1,000s. One can spend days cooking, and months to procure and dry wood. It can range from fully manual to fully automated. I enjoy making good BBQ, but have accepted the fact that enjoying the research and the process is as important as the end product, and if the end product is great, then it's a bonus. Usually I can be consistently good, if not a little dry. Same thing with cooking. I am not often restaurant quality with most of my dishes, because restaurants can use ingredients that don't make sense at home. But I try to aim for excellence, and when I miss, I get slightly better, and appreciate when someone serves a truly excellent meal. Music is another thing. Few people know that John Mayer is playing a $15,000+ guitar [1] through a $7,000 pedal (among others) [2] hooked up to an amplifier that you cannot purchase unless the guy decides to make it for you, at which point it could be $150k or more [3]. Do I need that equipment to play guitar? Absolutely not, but learning about it was interesting and gave me a better appreciation for what I'm seeing on stage (and why spending $100 to see it and hear it in person may be worth it). I also find starting with the extremes and dialing it back allows me to better decide the potential for a given hobby. If I don't do research, I may be running into pain that I didn't realize was easily fixed (e.g. getting a glove in golf). That said, being OK with being OK is something I'm working on. [1] https://reverb.com/item/5564625-prs-john-mayer-super-eagle-ii-2017-hemp-green https://reverb.com/item/5564625-prs-john-mayer-super-eagle-i... [2]https://reverb.com/p/klon-centaur-horsie https://reverb.com/p/klon-centaur-horsie [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumble_Amplifiers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumble_Amplifiers
jteppinette 5y ago
I like this font.
- Demeno 5y ago
  I also like the font. I just checked and there are two different fonts, the headers use "granville" and the running text uses "brandon-grotesque".
gerdesj 5y ago
"I’m a perfectionist" What the blazes is that fount?
simonw 5y ago
Something that helped me enormously with blogging was when I realized that I had so many posts that I never write finished and published because I didn't think they were perfect enough. So they I set myself a goal of always hitting publish before I was happy - and always feeling like it could have been better if only I had spent more time on it. One example: I used to really sweat over having a good closing paragraph. My policy now is to publish without even having that closing paragraph - just write until I run out of things to say and put it live. This has worked so well for me! I actually publish the things that I write now.
zhoujianfu 5y ago
Why can’t I find Amanda Huginkiss?
maroonblazer 5y ago
e.e. cummings wrote a poem about this, called "Here Is Little Effie's Head" https://www.poeticous.com/e-e-cummings/here-is-little-effie-s-head https://www.poeticous.com/e-e-cummings/here-is-little-effie-...
jraph 5y ago
Put "Good Enough" next to your first name and be proud. If you find yourself perfectionist at work, maybe it is just a matter of caring less about work, just enough [1]. It will probably help you meet the deadlines, push less time pressure on everything and everybody and overall get you better outcomes. If something needs to be improved it will. Or it won't, but maybe it's not your problem anymore then. Worse is sometimes better. Sure, keep a high enough standard, but I don't need to tell you that if you are perfectionist, right? Maybe ask people around about that in case of doubt. In your hobbies, if you find yourself wanting to achieve results you don't reach often enough: first, they are hobbies. You already win if you enjoyed doing something. Then, lower the bar. Take all the time you want on part that interest you. Over-engineer as hell those things if you take pleasure in doing it. But otherwise make it work even if it's worse. If you program in your hobbies, just write this ugly thing that works. Copy paste that spaghetti code and make it work. It's misaligned but usable? Don't care. Put FIXMEs and move on. You'll have all the time to refine later if it's important to you, when you won't have the burden to make it work anymore and you'll have achieved something, reached a motivating and gratifying step where something works even partly. Save yourself from cognitive load caused by the need to solve everything at the same time, perfectly and that will stand in your way. It's less efficient, but it's more efficient. [1] I wrote about this two days ago in another context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28365945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28365945
- mgkimsal 5y ago
  > push less time pressure on everything and everybody and overall get you better outcomes. If something needs to be improved it will. Or it won't, but then maybe it's not your problem anymore. Most of what I do I'm either solely or primarily responsible for, and when something breaks, it comes back to me. I've rarely been in situations where something wasn't my problem. By the time it was a 'problem', if someone was contacting me, it was almost definitionally my problem. Not sure how to square that with the advice above, as tempting as it sounds.
  - jraph 5y ago
    The bar is then probably: "can be ugly if it's too much work to do it by the state of the art, but robust enough not to (unexpectedly) break on you at the worst time" Maybe it's a matter of handling nominal cases, shipping/releasing and only then handling the cases more at the edge (just) after, but with nominal cases out of the way with someone waiting for results and putting pressure while you are working on your stuff. You win the occasion on working on your stuff will less stress, which might as well end up in a more robust result. For some problems, maybe it's acceptable to handle them when they occur. It could have allowed someone who rely on a feature to use it earlier and be more productive despite this problem, instead of waiting for the perfect solution. It may allow more communication, and therefore more insight, which may help producing better results too.
dwaltrip 5y ago
The author seems to be discussing a form of the “inner critic”. In my personal experience, a severe inner critic seems to be a symptom of unresolved emotional issues due to difficult life experiences / circumstances and unmet needs (in many cases, one could potentially use the word “trauma”, but it is a heavy and loaded word). Practicing self-compassion, learning how to better process emotions, re-assessing how to live a good life, and changing my circumstances have all been really important for me to get better. The processing of really difficult emotions has been very hard at times but it seems to be necessary part of the process, at least for me :). I’m not sure if any of this applies to the author, but thought it was worth sharing.
- 6510 5y ago
  I think the emotional issues are from pushing to hard. There is a time and place for idleness and like sleeping it helps organize the brain and emotions therefore it is highly productive. Cut enough of it and everything you do or make seems to suck - because it does.
lazybreather 5y ago
Up until a few years ago, the first thing I would do when I find good content written by someone younger to me is to see if it was a real person. And then I was really pissed off at myself for some reason. Happy at least that part changed. All in all, very well articulated, especially for a recent grad. Cambridge does that I guess. Following your blog and musings now on.
ludston 5y ago
A word for this desire to fulfill self-imposed expectations is "ego". The book "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle is essentially about the same realization as the author of this article, along with some management strategies that have a high degree of success (at least for me).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bee_rider 5y ago
Ok, but if you follow this person's advice and set realistic goals, you probably won't toil your whole life toward some unobtainable perfection only to be discovered posthumously, like all the true greats.
- GDC7 5y ago
  Well if they are so great why are they dead? /s If you are not there to take your bows, then it's kinda pointless anyway...isn't it? Nobody does the work for the sake of doing the work. People do the work because they want to be recognized.
saadalem 5y ago
standards should be as high as possible without hitting mentally unhealthy.
GDC7 5y ago
Sometimes I feel like the only cure for perfectionism is to sabotage or rewire the part of our brain which catalogues, sorts and is able to pick one thing as being better/worse than some other thing. Perfectionism comes from the ability to look around and see the difference between self and the #1 person at that particular task. The only way to effectively give it a try is not being aware of how awful you are.

260 points by neelnanda 5y ago

rationalfaith 5y ago

retitle to: My Ego is Too High....

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

drewcoo 5y ago

Oh, yeah? Well you should focus more on improving yourself than on the perceived faults in others! Start with better definitions for things. Sort out goals from standards, maybe. Also, maybe rethink "anchor points." And the intermittent boldness, while possibly a metaphor for your struggle, is annoying.

ehutch79 5y ago

Please change your font. it's too small for that fontface at the very least

nine_k 5y ago

The gist: «And the crux of it is the word could have, the standards we hold ourselves to. This mix of guilt, insecurity and unrealistic standards is a major loss of productivity, and a major source of unhappiness.» Embrace imperfection, because perfection is unattainable anyway.

raman162 5y ago
That snippet resonated well with me. I think the primary thing I need to personally work on is insecurity. I'm currently learning R in a course I'm taking and I feel as if I'm moving at a snails pace when working on the programming assignments. It's demotivating since I feel like I should be moving faster and I end up feeling. The reality is that I have to accept that there aren't shortcuts and accept the grunt period before I become comfortable with the language. That's just part of life.
H8crilA 5y ago
Ahh, the obsession with Productivity. Productivity is only required if it is required. This reminds me of Little Prince meeting The Inventor, who tells him that he invented pills that completely eliminate the need for drinking. The Inventor is happy about saving up to 20 minutes of a person's life with their product. The Prince just thinks to themselves - "weird, if I had an extra 20 minutes I would happily stroll towards a well, then drink very slowly". What's wrong with being unproductive some of the time, or most of the time? I usually enjoy it a great deal.
- waynesonfire 5y ago
  completely agree, but unfortunately, Arbeit macht frei!
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > What's wrong with being unproductive some of the time, or most of the time? I usually enjoy it a great deal. "Productive" is a bit of an overloaded word. Myself, when I obsess over my productivity, it's really an obsession over being able to do the things that I set out to do. It's an obsession over being in full control of my own faculties. It has nothing to do with work and business per se.
  - H8crilA 5y ago
    Well, to be honest I don't think there is that much of a difference. Both in business/at work and in your private life you have to accept the "failure" of reducing your objectives. Then proceed to drink your water, slowly :).
- scollet 5y ago
  I like to challenge the stereotype with "Live slow, die whenever."

daxuak 5y ago

Not being specific to this post, but I find writings that have bold or italic in almost every sentence harder to read.

singingboyo 5y ago

Sorry, but the font and vaguely bolding are very, very off-putting. Especially when all but the last letter are bolded, or you have a link that includes the space after it, things start feeling wrong, somehow. What I did read also had a lot of rambling. That's not necessarily a bad thing in general, as it's a valid style and probably easier to get out there than trying to compress and perfect, but I'm not sure it's going to get you much traction on HN.

mpalmer 5y ago
I don't know if it was very, very off-putting, but I agree that the length of the piece together with the bolding made it harder to engage with the ideas. If the author is open to advice, mine would be this: 1. Consider your audience How might an audience of knowledgeable adults read into a piece that visually emphasizes every idea or phrase the author has decided is important? Might they feel that the piece is condescending to them? It's possible, and that is indeed how I felt reading the piece. 2. You have a lot of tools to emphasize important ideas. Don't use them all. Throughout the piece there is a lot of bolding, a lot of italics, and several ideas. Where each distinct clause is a sentence. Where each clause modifies the first subject. Pick one of these. Maybe two. But don't do everything, or the impact is lessened. 3. Edit yourself mercilessly Honestly, you're already on the way to editing this down - the important parts are bolded. Cut around them and see how much you can actually afford to lose.
- afarrell 5y ago
  I disagree with this as good advice. I think the post is at a point where any more self-editing would be navel-gazing. Instead, I’d advise first posting it to 1-3 editors whom you trust. “Consider your audience” is good…but also not very actionable until you make your audience specific.
  - mpalmer 5y ago
    You're welcome to disagree, but what you're saying is pretty subjective. Self-editing is not "navel-gazing" if you do it right. > but also not very actionable until you make your audience specific He posted it to HN himself. Do I really need to be more specific?

soheil 5y ago

To listen https://per.quest/651b73f3bb5d1690d76add9d0064904e.mp3 https://per.quest/651b73f3bb5d1690d76add9d0064904e.mp3

MauranKilom 5y ago

A few years ago, I made a new year's resolution to be more forgiving to myself. At the time, I would feel miserable at the end of the day for, say, not doing laundry even though I had resolved to do so. I would downright hate myself for not getting this simple task done despite having had the time. So, that year, whenever I would have such a thought, I'd tell myself that I forgive my past self. "It's ok!" And it has been extremely effective! I don't think I procrastinate less (or more) on laundry nowadays, but I can't remember the last time I went to bed feeling terrible about myself. It almost feels absurd to me now to think about, but it's actually been life-changing. And it required no money, no explicit commitment, no lifestyle changes, no time taken out of every day. Just a small but persistent voice objecting to the self-loathing. Downsides might include being overall more apathetic and possibly less motivated - but that might also be an illusion. I don't know, it's hard to compare to beforehand, and I don't think terrorizing yourself is particularly effective in the first place. But even if I had to choose, I would definitely pick "slightly less productive" over "self-hatred". People say to love/respect yourself. Not hating yourself is a pretty foundational step in that :)

sharkjacobs 5y ago
When I punish myself I find I shrink or cringe away from the subject of concern, rather than motivated to engage with it Depression is the greatest enemy of doing anything, feeling bad is basically always a net negative on productivity
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I identify strongly with this. I’m overall functional, even reasonably successful, in work. But in work and even more strongly in personal matters, I can shrink away from unpleasant items well past the point of it being reasonable. I’ve literally wasted dozens of hours avoiding a task that ends up taking 15 minutes. Could be a phone call, dealing with some minor tax or DMV issue, writing a simple but important email, or whatever. Often paperwork or tedious phone call related, but it’s clearly not productive behavior.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago

I'm seeing a 404 Not Found.

ggggoz 5y ago

Don’t fear perfection, you’ll never meet it. - Dali

clpm4j 5y ago
I heard/read this one recently: "Perfection is a child's fantasy."

SCUSKU 5y ago

Lots of hate on the font, italics, and writing style. I for one really enjoyed and related to this post. This post does a great job of capturing and elaborating on and providing actionable advice for people who probably tend to beat themselves up when they don't achieve what they expected. I struggle with setting my expectations of myself too high, failing, and then feeling dumb, lazy, etc. So thank you Neel for writing this up and sharing.

personjerry 5y ago

If you suffer from this kind of perfectionism and find it affects your productivity (i.e. in the form of procrastination) I highly recommend reading The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. It's helped me to not only be more productive, but also to feel less guilty and more confident about myself no matter how much I actually get done.

afarrell 5y ago

> At this point in this conversation, some part of me starts to feel concerned about complacency. I know that my standards are unrealistic. But they also serve as a big part of my motivation system. And I feel concerned that if I just removed them, that I'd be complacent, and never do anything. And that feels terrifying. This past year, I’ve noticed in myself a tendency to assume I am naturally unmotivated and need some source of fear, pressure, or extrinsic motivation to get work done. I’ve also been reading about Taylorism and realized how unhealthy that is. Since realizing it, I have started to work on trusting myself more.

Noumenon72 5y ago
Funny, I've been a devoted fan of Taylorism ever since I read _Cheaper by the Dozen_ as a kid. To me it just means doing things better and faster each day. To you it seems like more of a harsh taskmaster?
- zebraflask 5y ago
  Probably not the time or place for extended discussions of Taylorism, but in its original form, it was meant to be applied to product manufacturing, right? Bit of a disconnect to apply any of that to personal improvement considerations, at least as I see it.

tellersid 5y ago

Not me. To me, what this article is describing is just poor mental health. On the other hand, I grew up in a nice middle class family but a family that was basically trivial to do better than. Maybe things would be different if I had a chip on my shoulder from growing up dirt poor or a chip on my shoulder from an ultra successful parent that is almost impossible to live up to.

MauranKilom 5y ago
> Maybe things would be different if I had a chip on my shoulder from growing up dirt poor or a chip on my shoulder from an ultra successful parent that is almost impossible to live up to. Neither of these are necessary conditions for poor mental health and/or having high standards for yourself (i.e. being in the target audience of the article). But they can of course have a significant impact.
fswwi 5y ago
> poor mental health This. And you can't change it simply by convincing yourself that your thoughts are irrational.
- bitexploder 5y ago
  Labeling thoughts at all can be fraught with peril. Sometimes it’s just best to let them be thoughts. They come and go. I just try to guide and shape them on the “right” path that I think aligns with my goals.

lhorie 5y ago

It strikes me as weird to address an issue of unrealistic standards by implementing a bunch of productivity systems (pomodoro, etc) and data collection schemes, since these systems are fallible, which feeds right back to the anxiety loop. I feel like it's appropriate to bring up meditation, and specifically self-awareness. There's something about seeing yourself as a third party that helps put things into a larger context and helps us "let go".

Forge36 5y ago
It's good to have data. "I'm unproductive" vs "I choose to spend my time doing X". It's a lot easier to be more productive by "watching 15 minutes less of tv" when you know you watching 3 hours a night. Pomodoro isn't a productivity system. It's "I'm going to focus for ~15 minutes", and that's much easier to do than "spend 8 hours working".
- lhorie 5y ago
  Having more data isn't always better. For example, there are certain medical diagnosis protocols that basically involve going down a predetermined list of rote checks precisely because studies show that getting extra information ends up leading the doctor to make poorer diagnoses. Looking at the article, one example of data collection is "I know that I write at about 20-30 WPM" (the implication being that the author feels pressured to write at a minimum level of "efficiency"). Coupled w/ pomodoro, it essentially becomes a pressure to write X words in Y minutes, lest feelings of inadequacy hit later upon reflection. This to me feels borderline unhealthy: "what if I forgot to measure", "what if I under-deliver", etc are all possible psychological sinkholes. What meditation promotes is asking yourself what exactly happiness means to you personally, and observing how expectations and accomplishments play a role towards your objectives. Sometimes yes you just need to recognize that you need to get off your ass and do the work, but sometimes it's a matter of prioritization, sometimes less is more.
  - lazyjeff 5y ago
    I found when I tried doing this "calibration" phase, that it's not just about sheer time spent on a task. A task that took three 1-hour sessions is often not doable in one 3-hour session, because you lose creative productivity after a bit of time. That was my first mistake when trying to estimate how long things would take. Instead, now I calibrate based on time as well as sessions, so I know preparing a new 80-minute lecture (for a class) takes two 5-hour sessions: the first 5-hour session to outline the class and activities, gather the major sources and bullet points I want to make; then the second 5-hour session to put together the polished version of slides and activity script, and do a 60-minute mental run-through. Same with a lot of other tasks. Some are short but need multiple sessions, like writing recommendation letters that will be closely read. Even though it's easy to write the 2 pages in about 30 minutes, it rarely gets the right tone, and needs at least one or two more 20-minute sessions to capture the applicant's character as clearly as possible.

timmg 5y ago

When I was an awkward high school student trying to meet girls, I had a friend with more experience. His advice to me was, "When all else fails, lower your standards." I just find that so amusing in retrospect.

redis_mlc 5y ago
Your friend was a smart guy - you should hang out with him more. Today, there's an epidemic of women 30 - 40 who will die alone because they don't want to "settle" or "be less than." This is a mathematical certainty because female hypergamy focuses on the top 10% of men, and there's not enough to go around, creating harems (polyginy.) Yes, you would be right if you think that means the end of Western Civilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygyny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygyny

etcet 5y ago

Eliminate the "shoulds"! You'll be much happier if you can keep the voice of the foul mouthed Bronx born therapist Albert Ellis in your head: https://youtu.be/u109sVn8zGA?t=1077 https://youtu.be/u109sVn8zGA?t=1077

WaitWaitWha 5y ago

I do not believe the problem is "standards are too high". It is more about unable to mentally cope with failure properly. Maybe it also has something to do with the author's world view, where they are who they supposed to be versus who they think they are.

Aeolun 5y ago
That depends. If your standards weren’t too high you might be able to call it success instead of failure.

belter 5y ago

“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” ― Oscar Wilde

cardosof 5y ago

There's you, who you think you are and who you think you're supposed to be or become, but only one of them is real.

xyzelement 5y ago

The blogger is a recent grad (hence his example of reflecting how he did on an exam) but the idea he pointed out is universal - some expectation that "what I am doing should feel easy, and if it doesn't then there's something wrong." I can relate to that feeling but it's also something that is an important (positive!) clue in our work. Speaking plainly: if you're in a place where everything you're doing feels easy, then you're living well bellow your potential. If everything is easy, it means you're only doing things you know how to do already, which means you're not stretching and growing. When you are feeling a little bit like "I am struggling and borderline failing" - then you know you're pushing, growing and learning. The important thing is to go through it a few times, so that you recognize that feeling and interpret it as "growing pains" rather than "impending doom"

didntknowya 5y ago

it's easy to get caught up in the tech grind, where you are expected to "hustle" or build a world-changing product 24/7. I used to get anxious in my free time- like why spend my weekend washing my car when I could work and earn enough per hour to hire someone that could do it instead? but truth is I like doing the mundane tasks as it relaxes me and it's the simple things in life that makes it.

xedrac 5y ago

If you haven't read the book: "Mindset" by Carol Dweck, do yourself a huge favor and read/listen to that book. It completely changed my perspective in life.

giantg2 5y ago

Companies don't actually have standards. They have a list of expectations that are completely subjective. Sometimes the only thing that changes is the person rating you, yet your rating changes drastically. There have been a few times over my relatively short career that I know company/HR policies were violated. It takes a toll.

the_arun 5y ago

During every RCA for an incident caused by me, I go through immense guilt & sadness. Makes me feel how can I make this silly mistake when I expect higher bar for everyone else around me.

kirse 5y ago

Perfectionism is typically a defense mechanism of some sort. This post is trying to fix all the damaged fruit springing from the roots of perfectionism, like trying to stamp out every ant instead of killing the queen. Sometimes you grew up in a family with a harsh & critical parent, or rewards for progress were minimal, so a spirit of "well done!" is absent. Or maybe you had a personal trauma and the striving is an attempt to avoid pain ever happening again. Or maybe your personal search for significance in life so strongly identifies with something that anything less than perfection in that area reflects badly on you. Or maybe you have shame in your past and you're trying hard to compensate. Whatever it is, perfectionism is not "solved" with a blueprinted flowchart or life system but by digging deep into a wellspring of grace and worth. For those of us who are Christian, we believe in Jesus' work on the cross as our source of unlimited grace and forgiveness, believing that God has taken care of the perfection gap of our failures. For the rest of the world, well I don't have an answer for you except you may want to take a trip through Paul's letter to the Romans.

bitexploder 5y ago
Most of the techniques for “life philosophy” in the Bible are cribbed from Greek philosophy with a heap of mysticism stirred in to obscure it all. Just go to the source: the stoics and other Greeks. The dichotomy of control (serenity prayer) predates the Bible by some time, for example.
- kirse 5y ago
  Sure, if you want to extract the various proverbs, there's plenty of practical and related wisdom. But the stoics had nothing to do with Christ, who is the target of faith in the Bible. Further, the stoics hardly had disciples who were completely broke and yet carried their message far enough to end up sawn in two, tarred and lit on fire, crucified upside-down, beheaded, gutted by swords, etc.
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    Indeed—the power of an idea is not fully captured in the words that describe it, but rather it gains full force in the stories and images that one associates with it.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

I was diagnosed in my thirties with a congenital condition. I decided "I need to start making more Bs if I'm ever going to get anywhere." Twenty years later, I look back on my high expectations and realize that I was inculcated with them in childhood and also got a lot of support in childhood for being able to hit those performance marks in school. Growing up and leaving home meant I still had high expectations but I didn't necessarily have the support I needed to meet them. I still have high standards but I'm more able to embrace ideas like "The perfect is the enemy of the good" and "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." I'm happy at the moment with some of my accomplishments that probably don't look especially impressive to a lot of outsiders. Maybe they seem unpolished or not slick or not meeting some metric some outsider thinks matters. But they are meeting metrics I think matter, metrics that are hard to hit at all. And sometimes the fact that others think it's messy or second rate is a feature, not a bug, for my purposes.

daveevad 5y ago
> Anything worth doing is worth doing badly TIL - Thanks for sharing that kernel.
mlac 5y ago
Along these lines, I find it to be really important to have things that I do not do well, and that I do not optimize. I tend to research and over-optimize every activity I do. Part of that is the fun I find in a hobby - I like to learn how to do it at the absolute best level (or how the professionals do it). But in doing so, I've found that I need to be OK not being the best, and when I don't hit that mark, improve my appreciation for those who can (and justify paying the professionals to do it). An example is BBQ. I did tons of research, and there are setups that run $1,000s. One can spend days cooking, and months to procure and dry wood. It can range from fully manual to fully automated. I enjoy making good BBQ, but have accepted the fact that enjoying the research and the process is as important as the end product, and if the end product is great, then it's a bonus. Usually I can be consistently good, if not a little dry. Same thing with cooking. I am not often restaurant quality with most of my dishes, because restaurants can use ingredients that don't make sense at home. But I try to aim for excellence, and when I miss, I get slightly better, and appreciate when someone serves a truly excellent meal. Music is another thing. Few people know that John Mayer is playing a $15,000+ guitar [1] through a $7,000 pedal (among others) [2] hooked up to an amplifier that you cannot purchase unless the guy decides to make it for you, at which point it could be $150k or more [3]. Do I need that equipment to play guitar? Absolutely not, but learning about it was interesting and gave me a better appreciation for what I'm seeing on stage (and why spending $100 to see it and hear it in person may be worth it). I also find starting with the extremes and dialing it back allows me to better decide the potential for a given hobby. If I don't do research, I may be running into pain that I didn't realize was easily fixed (e.g. getting a glove in golf). That said, being OK with being OK is something I'm working on. [1] https://reverb.com/item/5564625-prs-john-mayer-super-eagle-ii-2017-hemp-green https://reverb.com/item/5564625-prs-john-mayer-super-eagle-i... [2]https://reverb.com/p/klon-centaur-horsie https://reverb.com/p/klon-centaur-horsie [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumble_Amplifiers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumble_Amplifiers

jteppinette 5y ago

I like this font.

Demeno 5y ago
I also like the font. I just checked and there are two different fonts, the headers use "granville" and the running text uses "brandon-grotesque".

gerdesj 5y ago

"I’m a perfectionist" What the blazes is that fount?

simonw 5y ago

Something that helped me enormously with blogging was when I realized that I had so many posts that I never write finished and published because I didn't think they were perfect enough. So they I set myself a goal of always hitting publish before I was happy - and always feeling like it could have been better if only I had spent more time on it. One example: I used to really sweat over having a good closing paragraph. My policy now is to publish without even having that closing paragraph - just write until I run out of things to say and put it live. This has worked so well for me! I actually publish the things that I write now.

zhoujianfu 5y ago

Why can’t I find Amanda Huginkiss?

maroonblazer 5y ago

e.e. cummings wrote a poem about this, called "Here Is Little Effie's Head" https://www.poeticous.com/e-e-cummings/here-is-little-effie-s-head https://www.poeticous.com/e-e-cummings/here-is-little-effie-...

jraph 5y ago

Put "Good Enough" next to your first name and be proud. If you find yourself perfectionist at work, maybe it is just a matter of caring less about work, just enough [1]. It will probably help you meet the deadlines, push less time pressure on everything and everybody and overall get you better outcomes. If something needs to be improved it will. Or it won't, but maybe it's not your problem anymore then. Worse is sometimes better. Sure, keep a high enough standard, but I don't need to tell you that if you are perfectionist, right? Maybe ask people around about that in case of doubt. In your hobbies, if you find yourself wanting to achieve results you don't reach often enough: first, they are hobbies. You already win if you enjoyed doing something. Then, lower the bar. Take all the time you want on part that interest you. Over-engineer as hell those things if you take pleasure in doing it. But otherwise make it work even if it's worse. If you program in your hobbies, just write this ugly thing that works. Copy paste that spaghetti code and make it work. It's misaligned but usable? Don't care. Put FIXMEs and move on. You'll have all the time to refine later if it's important to you, when you won't have the burden to make it work anymore and you'll have achieved something, reached a motivating and gratifying step where something works even partly. Save yourself from cognitive load caused by the need to solve everything at the same time, perfectly and that will stand in your way. It's less efficient, but it's more efficient. [1] I wrote about this two days ago in another context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28365945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28365945

mgkimsal 5y ago
> push less time pressure on everything and everybody and overall get you better outcomes. If something needs to be improved it will. Or it won't, but then maybe it's not your problem anymore. Most of what I do I'm either solely or primarily responsible for, and when something breaks, it comes back to me. I've rarely been in situations where something wasn't my problem. By the time it was a 'problem', if someone was contacting me, it was almost definitionally my problem. Not sure how to square that with the advice above, as tempting as it sounds.
- jraph 5y ago
  The bar is then probably: "can be ugly if it's too much work to do it by the state of the art, but robust enough not to (unexpectedly) break on you at the worst time" Maybe it's a matter of handling nominal cases, shipping/releasing and only then handling the cases more at the edge (just) after, but with nominal cases out of the way with someone waiting for results and putting pressure while you are working on your stuff. You win the occasion on working on your stuff will less stress, which might as well end up in a more robust result. For some problems, maybe it's acceptable to handle them when they occur. It could have allowed someone who rely on a feature to use it earlier and be more productive despite this problem, instead of waiting for the perfect solution. It may allow more communication, and therefore more insight, which may help producing better results too.

dwaltrip 5y ago

The author seems to be discussing a form of the “inner critic”. In my personal experience, a severe inner critic seems to be a symptom of unresolved emotional issues due to difficult life experiences / circumstances and unmet needs (in many cases, one could potentially use the word “trauma”, but it is a heavy and loaded word). Practicing self-compassion, learning how to better process emotions, re-assessing how to live a good life, and changing my circumstances have all been really important for me to get better. The processing of really difficult emotions has been very hard at times but it seems to be necessary part of the process, at least for me :). I’m not sure if any of this applies to the author, but thought it was worth sharing.

6510 5y ago
I think the emotional issues are from pushing to hard. There is a time and place for idleness and like sleeping it helps organize the brain and emotions therefore it is highly productive. Cut enough of it and everything you do or make seems to suck - because it does.

lazybreather 5y ago

Up until a few years ago, the first thing I would do when I find good content written by someone younger to me is to see if it was a real person. And then I was really pissed off at myself for some reason. Happy at least that part changed. All in all, very well articulated, especially for a recent grad. Cambridge does that I guess. Following your blog and musings now on.

ludston 5y ago

A word for this desire to fulfill self-imposed expectations is "ego". The book "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle is essentially about the same realization as the author of this article, along with some management strategies that have a high degree of success (at least for me).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bee_rider 5y ago

Ok, but if you follow this person's advice and set realistic goals, you probably won't toil your whole life toward some unobtainable perfection only to be discovered posthumously, like all the true greats.

GDC7 5y ago
Well if they are so great why are they dead? /s If you are not there to take your bows, then it's kinda pointless anyway...isn't it? Nobody does the work for the sake of doing the work. People do the work because they want to be recognized.

saadalem 5y ago

standards should be as high as possible without hitting mentally unhealthy.

GDC7 5y ago

Sometimes I feel like the only cure for perfectionism is to sabotage or rewire the part of our brain which catalogues, sorts and is able to pick one thing as being better/worse than some other thing. Perfectionism comes from the ability to look around and see the difference between self and the #1 person at that particular task. The only way to effectively give it a try is not being aware of how awful you are.