49 ms·

No More “Insight Porn”

568 points by jakobgreenfeld 4y ago

ycombinete 4y ago
Jonathan Haidt speaks about something similar in The Happiness Hypothesis. Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour. This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies. Even the lamest examples listed in the OP article can probably give someone a boost in productivity for a while, as long as that epiphanic rush lasts. I've felt this in myself over the years. I'd hit a low point and try to hoist myself out of it, with some sombre new ethical code for creating a work ethic; some new note taking system; or epiphany gleaned from Shakespeare or Nietzsche. You can see it in the Jordan Peterson clips that haunt my YouTube shorts.
- deleted 4y ago
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- ipython 4y ago
  Damn. Now I need to read that book next…
- philipodonnell 4y ago
  "Epiphanic rush" is such a accurate but bittersweet term for this. It must be so ingrained in human psychology from the days of shamans, prophets and sages.
  - jackling 4y ago
    "days of shamans, prophets and sages" Are these really examples of what is described? The spiritualism gained from those entities persist to this day. Wars were fought and people continue to live by what those entities taught. Sounds different from the short lived rush that is being discussed.
  - andrewflnr 4y ago
    Pretty sure "shamans, prophets and sages" are effects, not causes, of that particular piece of psychology.
- BoredPuffin 4y ago
  I didn't read/listen to Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis, but from what you described, he sounded spot on. But can I also say that as long as it works, there's nothing wrong with it? Some people wind down by jogging, playing video games, watching action movies etc; yours happened to be reading self-help book. The problem is when one overdoes it, regardless of the activities they've chosen.
- WA 4y ago
  Just consume new epiphanies until you die and you lived a very happy life.
- recyclelater 4y ago
  Jocko willinck (and many others I am sure) likes to state that you can’t rely on motivation because it comes and goes. Rely on discipline, build habits using discipline if you want to get anything done. A trite but in my opinion helpful statement is discipline equals freedom.
  - layer8 4y ago
    That sounds like insight porn. How do you build discipline if you’re undisciplined? How do you decide what to be disciplined about?
    - deleted 4y ago
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    - bitexploder 4y ago
      Stuff that you value. It is a simple and long term system specifically to maintain long term consistency. It just isn’t easy to do.
    - recyclelater 4y ago
      I don’t consider that to be insight porn, which is why I found it personally valuable. I feel this is a fundamental law of getting anything done. There’s almost nothing that I actually want to do for extended period of times, but I want the result from having done that thing a bunch. For example, it’s really hard to go outside and practice archery every day, but I have to do that in order to have the result of those skills - a successful archery hunt. How do I get the results when I am way past the first month or so where motivation is waning? I have to have the discipline to work toward my goal, regardless of how I feel in the moment. I found this insight for lack of a better word to be so fundamental that I was floored when I read it in jocko’s kids book. I saw my dad do this, he clearly embodied this value and demonstrated it while raising me, but no one ever explained it to me. For a goofy comparison, I would consider “discipline equals freedom “ to be love making between a happily married couple, and blog spam insight porn to be actual porn.
    - anotheruser092 4y ago
- wholinator2 4y ago
  Yeah, I agree. Though I will say that doesn't mean epiphanies aren't valuable long term. A little boost to get you started might translate into a huge change in personal circumstances 10 years after that small boost. Without a couple months with Jordan Peterson relaying not just the possibility but the nobility of looking people in the eyes, entering the forest at the place that looks darkest to you, etc. I would almost certainly not be here typing this. Such basic truths spruced up with a gleaming coating of old reverent narrative and ancient godlike significance through vigorous sermon is exactly the small boost I required to make the most significant and important change I've ever made in my life. I know he's quite controversial these days but you cannot deny the man has channeled something very powerful (at least as the non-explicitely-political material goes, I choose not to watch his politics)
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  - jackling 4y ago
    What always surprised me about Peterson was the fact that so many people swear by his videos. There's multiple claims about how his videos changed their lives or saved them. However, his methodology couldn't keep his own life from going awry.
    - wholinator2 4y ago
      What exactly has gone awry? I mean, he had some serious troubles when his wife came extremely close to death very suddenly from a terrible illness but who could stay fine watching their high school sweetheart and only love ever rapidly wither right as their lives started to take off together. Or are you talking about the political aspect? If so I really see nothing going 'awry', he's making choices, certainly not begging for money. Someone may not like what he says or who he talks with but that does not constitute a life 'going awry' inasmuch as his supposed teachings would help avoid
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  Yeah epiphanies don't actually do any work for themselves.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  > Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour. Funny, I've experienced the same thing with philosophy. In my teens, I've had this existential crisis where the world just didn't make sense to me. Eventually I have discovered philosophy and started reading it, and for a while the world made sense to me. However, every epiphany I've had about the world only kept my enthusiasm up for a while - after some time I'd still know all the things I learned, but they just wouldn't seem as important as before. The world made sense... But I just didn't like the way it made sense. That's when I realized that the problem is me, not the world, and that the problem cannot be solved by pure knowledge - there is an animal inside me which doesn't give a rat's ass about all my theories of why and how, and requires a different approach.
  - omghilarious 4y ago
- SkyPuncher 4y ago
  > This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies. I read a lot of business books that could be categorized as "self-help". I tend to continuously read them because 1. I'm aware how difficult behavior change 2. It's valuable to have more than 1 perspective. 3. Few things have had an outsized impact on my career. I do not know what those are until weeks/months/years after reading a book. For me, I'm not looking to read a single book to emulate it fully. I'm looking to read 4 or 5 books, shape my overall perspective, then have 2 to 4 things stick very, very deeply. Lastly, I can always come back to a specific book when I loosely remember it being applicable.
saltmeister 4y ago
enos_feedler 4y ago
Out of the 3 "Insight Porn" examples linked in the article, I think the Paul Graham essay seems out of place. I know I know, this is hacker news. Yet another person sticking up for pg. But I just don't think this essay (or others) is really trying to boil some dream/goal into steps. In fact, in the "How to get startup ideas" referenced in this post, pg says: "So if you can't predict whether there's a path out of an idea, how do you choose between ideas? The truth is disappointing but interesting: if you're the right sort of person, you have the right sort of hunches. If you're at the leading edge of a field that's changing fast, when you have a hunch that something is worth doing, you're more likely to be right." To me, he is doing the opposite of insight porn. Basically saying this might not even be for you. He doesn't even suggest that you go become an expert in something. Rather, he just throws his hands up. He tries to spare you from the disappointment of hearing this by calling it "interesting". That contrasts _a lot_ with what most of the insight porn is trying to convince you of. They rarely try to disappoint you and mostly just hype/pump you up.
- feet 4y ago
  To me that sounds like "you need insight into a field to have good hunches"
- lumost 4y ago
  Consider how ineffective this advice is then. What decisions can you make? You could take this to mean that you should follow your gut, or not. Does it share anything useful for formulating a decision? And why is this approach better than the alternatives?
  - startupdiscuss 4y ago
    The point is, this was not meant to be advice! This was anti-advice. You can't use the criterion: if it is insightful it has to be actionable on an insight that says "I have no actions for you". The difference is, it is not trying to trick you.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
OrangeMonkey 4y ago
I read a story where the main protagonist ran a business who did nothing but provide solutions to people. They would come in, pay a fee, and he would dispense a solution to their problem that would make things better if only the advice was followed. I thought it delightful. A problem I have that I can simply ask for a solution and get it? That would be great. The reason these bad actors exist is that they recognize the same: people struggle and just wish someone would offer real advice. If everyone wishes to dig for gold, sell shovels right? Well if everyone is dealing with failure, feelings of inadequacy, and a desire to change why not sell them the hope that if you do these simple things everything will be better. It is a desirable thing, even for me who should know better.
- boomskats 4y ago
  I, too, am a huge fan of Nathan for You [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_for_You https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_for_You
  - suction 4y ago
    Best comedy on TV. Basically anything Fielder has touched so far, was gold. Or maybe it's because his brand of comedy really works for me, personally.
    - wnolens 4y ago
      The latter. I can barely watch him. I'll admit he's incredibly original and I really appreciate a skit or two. But he borders on sociopathic, and his latest movie is a great encapsulation of that.
      - suction 4y ago
        Movie? I guess you meant show? A friend of mine thinks like you, he feels extremely uncomfortable watching Fielder and his brand of comedy, and any sort of "cringe" comedy about sociopathic individuals, e.g. Curb Your Enthusiasm. I really can't empathize, because after all he's playing a character which should be very obvious. I think for my friend, the stuff depicted in this sort of comedy hits a bit too close to home, i.e. this sort of comedy doesn't work for people who are socially awkward because it reminds them of IRL too much, and conjures up bad memories, while normal people just laugh at the exaggeration of the awkwardness.
thenerdhead 4y ago
Life is always changing. What advice you read about today may not stick nor apply to you right now, but it may in the future. Things don’t change, we do. > Many people that truly accomplished amazing things, when asked for the key to their success come up with some framework or playbook that they, in fact, never used themselves. This comment feels like a rant with no justification. I know many highly accomplished people who will tell you what they did to achieve the promotion, land the deal, or deliver the project. Are they fleeting generalizations in a self-help book? Not usually. But there are visions, systems, and frameworks they have developed over the years, simply summed up as their personal philosophy. Insights can be profound to one and dumb to another. Does it make insights a bad thing? Absolutely not. Some people are ready for them, some people are not. Some people 10x their life with a simple idea like a vision board. Some never try it because they think it’s dumb. I’m of the opinion that unless you try everything at least twice, you can’t know if it works for you or not.
minihat 4y ago
I think the invitation to subscribe to the author's newsletter at the bottom of the page is ironic. Love the label "insight-porn" though. Concisely captures the nauseous feeling of ingesting your 100th self help book.
- anthropodie 4y ago
  When there's is so much to consume one does wander do we really need this much to survive or to be a better self? I mean people have been living on this planet for 1000s of years without access to as much info as today.
  - ChildOfChaos 4y ago
    We also have such limited time/attention/energy. If you take the time a lot of people spend consuming content, like insight porn / productivity porn etc and instead spent that time doing more and reflecting more, you'd still likely be in a better place than the consumer
- jjulius 4y ago
  It would be one thing if it was just something like, "Hey, subscribe to my blog if you wanna!", but it's actually: >PS: Looking for More? >If you’d like to get more honest strategies and proven frameworks for winning in life and business, then simply join my free newsletter here. ... which yeah, sounds like, "Sign up for some insight porn!".
- keyle 4y ago
  I laughed at that too. It feels like his blog is the revenge porn of hindsight porn! I did enjoy the article though. A lot of commonsense but no real actionable takeouts though... wait a minute...
- abecedarius 4y ago
  The term was coined, afaik, by Sarah Perry in this blog post: https://web.archive.org/web/20180104183908/http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.com:80/2012/09/trying-to-see-through-unified-theory-of.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180104183908/http://theviewfro... Words will evolve, but I wanna say she was going for something higher level than self-help.
yamrzou 4y ago
My guess is that a big chunk of the "insight porn" and self-help landscape would fade away if it was subject to a data driven evaluation. Given a piece of advice or a self-help book, how many people did actually change their behaviour after reading it? And did the change persist long-term? Unfortunately, such data is not available.
- Torwald 4y ago
  Tony Robbins says in one of his audios (can't remember which, otherwise I would link), that 80% of the books he sold are just collecting dust, because people just buy them in order to pat themselves on the back for having done something for their personal development.
  - ChildOfChaos 4y ago
    Ironically said in a self-help audio course itself. I feel like a lot of that content seems to mention similar, either in a slight moment of self-awareness that their content will likely j just be that or perhaps in a slightly deluded way to try and suggest that this course / book is somehow different. Content creators make a lot of money and have nice careers selling all this stuff, even streamers, how many of them would actually spend hours watching someone else's stream a day? Most of them wouldn't go near that stuff, but they happily stream for hours a day have thousands of people watch them and consume the content then cash that check. It's a great life for the creator, not so much the consumer. The same is with productivity YouTubers or self help authors, it's a create business to be in, but really your just selling out the other person. It was not lost on me, when a popular self development podcast host, a few years ago talked about how they set up there twitter and social accounts to post via a third party app, because they absolutely must not see the timeline or engage in it in any way. These people are happy to use to tools out there to profit and capture other peoples attention, but guard there own so tightly because they know how important it is. That is likely a better lesson than anything they where actually 'tweeting' about.
  - wnolens 4y ago
    Maybe that says something about the quality of his words. He is a kingpin of insight porn.
swayvil 4y ago
>Many people that truly accomplished amazing things, when asked for the key to their success come up with some framework or playbook ... It’s just that people love to say things that make them look good. Or they really are trying to package their trick in a way that's universally useful, but failing. Because that's hard. Because people differ widely in the way they see and think. It's SO much easier to assume that they don't. But they do. One size does not fit all. A truly sciency approach might be the missing link. Firmly establish a common context and such. But that might be tedious and off-putting.
- notacoward 4y ago
  > Or they really are trying to package their trick in a way that's universally useful, but failing. ...or their "trick" was really 100% incidental to their success, which sprang from causes they'd rather not reflect upon.
  - swayvil 4y ago
    Oh, and he's got a newsletter. It's beside the point but seriously lol.
mft_ 4y ago
I'm totally with the author - what he calls 'insight porn', I think of as 'grind porn' - as underneath the 'insights', I believe what the genre is really selling is the paradigm that you're not achieving enough, and you need to work harder, and because there are only so many hours in the day, you need to work smarter too, and to do that you need our insights to help you be much more efficient. So I'd take it a step further - not just avoid insight-/grind-porn, and grind-adjacent-porn too. By this, I mean the equally large industry around life optimisation - and consider it adjacent because of course you need to optimise your health, wellbeing, sleep, weight, muscle volume, whatever, to be a fully productive human and achieve the heights that are expected of you. Take (possibly) the Daddy of the all: Tim Ferriss' blog/podcast. I believe it's basically well-meaning, but holy hell if you wanted to learn from and apply the life optimisations of all of his guests, you'd almost need to make it a full-time activity. (I guess that's why some of them --Peter Attia, for example-- are really appearing on the podcast to advertise their business, which [if you're rich enough] will take most of the hard work out of figuring everything for yourself.) And of course, don't get me started on trying to follow any of the advice while living in the Europe, without easy access to many of the items recommended. And some of this slips out of the recrational space into the professional, too. A while back, I became aware of a professional/life coaching business[0] which was more holistic than the usual behaviourally-focussed professional coaches I'd experienced. Lots of well-meaning advice... until it hit me: maybe if I need to employ all of the little lifestyle marginal gains --green tea, optimised sleep, optimised diet, exercise-- just to cope with my f*cking job, the toxic demands of job itself is the problem? Is it possible we've gone too far towards accepting and adapting to the grind... and maybe it's time to wind it back a little? [0] https://tignum.com/ https://tignum.com/
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  I think what's really being sold is "simplicity" > It’s so, so simple. Complexity is overwhelming us all. Who doesn't want simplicity? Simplicity is to thinking what convenience is to labour. All you must do is reject all that baggage of education, moral struggle and "overthinking" things, and embrace the banal. Behind many "Epiphanies", IMHO, is a message to "Let us do your thinking for you".
- 4y ago
bearjaws 4y ago
Gotta hand it to The Secret (2006) for kick starting near two decades of bull shit "Insight Porn". I know a few people who got sucked into that universe and continue to read & share this kind of media today.
- whilestanding 4y ago
  The foundational ideas of the secret was found in think and grow rich, an old book.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    A book (and author) referenced in this very piece!
EmilyHughes 4y ago
Why does everything have to be some kind "porn" nowadays. Does anybody seriously think this is funny?
- suoduandao2 4y ago
  I suspect we use 'porn' as a shorthand for 'hypernormal stimuli' and I suspect we have so much of it because humans have fewer evolved defenses against manipulation by hypernormal stimuli on the internet.
  - nottorp 4y ago
    Well, car magazines were there before the internet. I still buy one. I've always called them "car porn".
- CRConrad 4y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/
- suction 4y ago
  Does everything nowadays? I think the analogy to porn at least here is fitting. The idea porn as a word to mean "of no substance, for easy consummation, from morally questionable sources, to make a quick buck off desperate people" quite accurately describes all these "insight gurus", which to me are grifters.
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    That's not what it means. Look at subreddits like /r/historyporn or /r/earthporn. These do not mean porn in any kind of derogatory sense. It literally means nothing more specific than "lots of content that people like". It really does not carry a derogatory connotation, or at least it is most widely used in positive ways
    - acuozzo 4y ago
      > It literally means nothing more specific than "lots of content that people like". I think it's a bit more than that, something like: "lots of content that people like and will waste a ton of time consuming for little hits of dopamine".
saxelsen 4y ago
This is a perfect post on what I hate (and can't seem to quit) on my Twitter feed. If you follow anyone in the startup space, the profiles and recommendations they generate will fill up your entire feed with useless, like-farming threads on "how to be successful in 3 easy steps". The part about it being extra dangerous because you feel productive even though you didn't do anything, is so true. It's like a new form of addictive, useless SoMe content for people over 25.
nicbou 4y ago
Some types of insight is still valuable, and tends to stick longer: * "Your perception of [practice] is wrong". Networking isn't sales or marketing, it's helping each other and building things together without sending invoices. * "You value the wrong things". You are paid to create value, not write code. Negotiation skills pay more than technical skills [1][2] * "The world doesn't work that way". A lot of the content you read is sponsored [3] * "You're doing something unpleasant". Don't ask to ask [4] [1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr... [2] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ [3] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html [4] https://dontasktoask.com/ https://dontasktoask.com/
- matwood 4y ago
  > You are paid to create value, not write code. When I was in college in the late 90s I was fortunate enough to figure this out through experience. First, there was a real fear all programming jobs were going to be outsourced. So I decided I needed programming + something else (in this case business). Second, as a sophomore I got a job at a small custom software shop in town (it was the late 90s - if you had a pulse you get a 'programming' job). Our clients didn't care about the code, the language it was written in or anything else technical. They only cared about what it did, and if it solved their problem. It also connected 'solve customer problem' to 'getting paid' in a very direct way.
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feintruled 4y ago
His six hour day thing reminds me of a wheeze a manager tried in my old company when it was coming up to crunch time. He sent an 'inspirational' email where he said that if we all were to simply work an extra few hours after work each day, then four hours on each of Saturday and Sunday, then - voila - we would magically find ourselves with the equivalent of an 8-day week. I don't think many took him up on this. Though to be fair to him, it was very specific and actionable advice!
- koonsolo 4y ago
  This resembles a meeting I had in the past. The manager said we all had to work a little harder because the company was doing bad. He suggested to stay an extra hour every day. He then concluded with "Oh yeah, and Li is going to take over my tasks for the next 2 weeks, because I'll be on holiday". No kidding!
- 202206241203 4y ago
  "Are you guys working? Yes, sir, Mr. Simpson. Could you, um, work any harder than this?"
  - shepherdjerred 4y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8miwsWtzRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8miwsWtzRw
BoredPuffin 4y ago
Another piece of "Insight Porn" labelled as "No more insight porn", how ironic. And when do people like the author start labelling any over-doing, over-indulging behaviour "porn"? Should I expect in a few decades time that people binge-watching documentary will give birth to "doco-porn"? Catchy marketing at its worst. On the topic though, beneath whatever words he put on top it's an age-old idea that until you start doing something hands-on, it'll be hard to tell what you already know and what you don't. The advice giving and taking is not a new concept, and data-driven is not going to change it. If one doesn't like handling slimy things, no matter how good a piece of cooking advice is - it's not going to help. Imagine capturing meat can be slimy in datasets.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  It is indeed quite ironic. This article would have landed much better had it not tried to make a better version of the insight porn that it criticises so much. Just listing the problematic content would have been better.
  - BoredPuffin 4y ago
    If the content doesn't change, the title is not going to help. >Just listing the problematic content would have been better. Just Like you said. This, afterall, is not an informative piece of writing; but rather more akin to clickbait. Looking at OPs username and assuming he isn't taking the piss, he should be happy to have generated enough traffic by now.
MOARDONGZPLZ 4y ago
I got super lucky. I started a company and didn’t really have any meaningful traction. I was about to shut it down. Walking out of the grocery store one night after work, I passed by my former manager when I was an intern. We got to talk for about 30 seconds, mentioned my company, she asked me to email her. I did, and that very quickly led to my first big customer which makes me about double what a FAANG swe would make. My advice: get lucky. My insight porn version: 10 easy steps I used to get $500K ARR and how you can do it too
- deleted 4y ago
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- bombcar 4y ago
  "Get lucky" is always the key - however, you can increase your "luck surface" by doing certain things (for example, you couldn't have gotten lucky if you hadn't started the company, nor if you hadn't bothered to talk to people).
  - rograndom 4y ago
    Not just getting lucky, but being ready to get lucky. If they didn't have the company or the product already, bumping into the former manager wouldn't be enough. And I think I've just given the type of advice TFA is railing about :)
    - manmal 4y ago
      Well it’s true, you can’t win the lottery without buying the ticket. Only that way you don’t know what prize you’re playing for.
    - zigman1 4y ago
      Ross Brawn said in his book about strategy that the luck is preparation waiting for opportunity
  - danaris 4y ago
    > you can increase your "luck surface" by doing certain things ....and your chances of being able to do those things (without severe risk of poverty and homelessness) are increased dramatically by having been lucky enough to be born wealthy, or at least upper-middle-class.
fouric 4y ago
I really like this idea! You can find it in all sorts of places. Here's one in video games: there are a lot of League of Legends videos by a channel called "Skill Capped" that each claim to have "one neat rule" or "5 mistakes to watch out for" to help you get better at the game. The only problem? The "one rule" is something like "don't do this thing unless you know that there's an 80% chance that it'll work" - and that's the hard part, that the video does nothing to help with. I think that this is another flavor of "insight porn" where the video portrays itself as boiling down something hard into a simple insight - yet that insight is tautological, not useful, and/or skips the hard part.
- bombcar 4y ago
  That's actually actionable - don't do this thing. The key is that you'll see the pros doing it because they can recognize the 80% areas, but if you can't, you shouldn't even try to do it, because you're likely putting yourself at a disadvantage. Part of the problem is not all games can be broken down into certain definitive chunks you can work on directly (turn-based ones often do have these).
closedloop129 4y ago
>When I’m consuming non-fiction content, I try to write down specific experiments I can try that put the things I “learned” into practice. Could you turn this into a social network where people cooperate to do these experiments? It could be used to figure out which ideas are helpful and it could be used to help people when they are stuck implementing an idea.
- hammock 4y ago
  We could get the government to fund the experiments with research dollars, and build institutions around the country where people run these experiments with young people eager to learn and apply science and get experience with such things. Then the results could be published first in science journals for the other institutions, and then the best ones written up in popular book form for the masses to consume. Wait a minute…
  - closedloop129 4y ago
    Exactly. However, the incentives are different. Academics do not necessarily care about the same questions. They are also not personally affected but just research a topic. With a social network, people with problems can come up with their own answers. They already do, in existing networks. I think, organizing a social network by research question could be an improvement on the status quo.
anonu 4y ago
Nice meta blog post. Some great insights on insights.
strken 4y ago
It's genuinely useful to know that making $X a year is the same as Y clients paying $(X / Y / 52) a week, if you've never thought about a business in concrete terms before. Obviously this is old and repetitive if you're a working software engineer who's been reading HN for years and has seen a ton of motivational LinkedIn bullshit, but it's the kind of thing a career councillor might go over to make running a business seem approachable. Equally obviously it would be much better advice if it came with a real-world example of a forecasting spreadsheet and a link to your government's "how to start a business" website. That doesn't make it bad advice. The example thread from Naval is the same. Second tweet is basically "conspicuous consumption wastes money, buy appreciating assets instead," but couched in pornographic insight. One of the later tweets is "pick business partners...with integrity." They're both good bits of advice. Just because you already know a piece of advice, and just because it's given by a charismatic writer over far too many individual tweets, doesn't make it bad advice.
- juve1996 4y ago
  > One of the later tweets is "pick business partners...with integrity." They're both good bits of advice. Really? This is good advice? Is "don't work with a known thief" also good advice? Most people know this already. They make it seem like it's this grand knowledge. it's not. It's worthless advice dressed up to sound good.
  - strken 4y ago
    One of my (distant and now deceased) family members got ripped off by a business partner who fled the country, who he knew was slimy but decided to trust for some reason. Yes, it would have been good advice for him. It's not grand knowledge unveiled by the Secret Brotherhood of Hidden Twitter Masters, it's just...normal good advice. You shouldn't go into business with crooks. People do it all the time, and it often ends poorly for them. "Eat your vegetables" and "take your car in for a service when it makes weird noises" are also good bits of advice, for the right audience.
    - juve1996 4y ago
motohagiography 4y ago
Sure, there's a lot of crappy insight out there, and there are also styles of writing designed to take your time. It's like Proust with product placement. But when you look at psychology as a tool to dissolve artifacts of our internal logic that are causing suffering, using a neutralizing theory that temporarily dissolves meaning, the usefulness of some cliches and deepities becomes more apparent. These aren't positive instructions, they're a way to provoke a mind out of a kind of writers block or negative feedback loop about its idea of self. An insight that reframes your perception of something can unlock what felt like a double bind or an inescapable situation. "I can't feel some joy because I am a this or that," is an example belief that an insight can unblock by reframing someones perspective to question the premises of that belief. Showing that your negative self beliefs are inconsistent enough for you to question them can be enough to relieve the suffering they cause, just long enough to do something about them. It's a precision tool. It's relevant to look at the quality of insight and beliefs we're having delivered by some carefully orchestrated psychological techniques, but this one felt bit like witnessing the birth of a new thought terminating cliche.
bambax 4y ago
I'm confused, it seems insight porn is this guy's business. His article even ends with this: > If you’d like to get more honest strategies and proven frameworks for winning in life and business, then simply join my free newsletter here. Is he simply trying to trash the competition?
- engineer_22 4y ago
  Yea, it's kind of his shtick.
- keyle 4y ago
  Give an addict a solution drug to his drug problem... you do the math.
- sanggonlee 4y ago
  His point is not really abandon all the insight porns - but rather pick only those that you can experiment with. And if all his advice do provide something actionable, he's living up to his words.
- duckmysick 4y ago
  I noticed a common pattern in self-help publications: 1. Claim a common self-help method is ineffective. 2. Show why it's ineffective. 3. Present a different self-help method. Point number 2 is really important. It could be anything: an anecdote, some data, a paper. But the strongest signal is if the readers themselves already tried the ineffective solution. If it was effective, there's no need for them to research more. But it wasn't working and there's this person who says there's no way it would work. And they are right, so let's hear what else do they have to say (or sell). You've the walking proof something didn't work and there's someone who's agreeing with you. You did all the hard work and the author is tagging along. The beauty of it is the original method might be fine, it just didn't work out for you for whatever reason. Including if you read about it, but didn't try.
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  This article actually provides a framework for deciding if a productivity tool is useful, by running an experiment, or at least identifying experiments, on the advice provided to see if it works for you. They clearly highlight as "insight porn" stuff that doesn't provide actionable advice. At the end, they invite you to apply this new "is this useful, not useful or not even bad" decision process to their own services/products.
nailer 4y ago
You can be a billionaire in only 3 years by following this simple advice: every day, before you go to bed, save one million US dollars.
kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
This gives me a whole new perspective on the multiple “insight porn” articles on HN’s front page right now.
czernobog 4y ago
This is really interesting. I like the blog, I don't want to subscribe for emails but I would like and RSS but I don't see it
sagaro 4y ago
Pretty much all of Linkedin is insights porn and self patting.
015a 4y ago
W.r.t the "imagine your day is 6 hours long, then you could fit 3 days in one" 'advice'. I haven't read the original article, and won't, but I'm imagining what they mean by that is 6*3=18 (+6 hours of sleep = 24). I have two jobs right now; primary gig + ~10hr/week contracting, both tech. I'm actually a big fan of this model of thinking, though not as extreme; I'll elaborate: Classify 3 days a week as "hell days"; 9a-6p job1 + 7p-9p job2. Tweak the numbers as you will for your own situation, but critically, for every hell day there's a heaven day: Monday you're working 12 hours, but Tuesday you're only working 6 hours, and alternate. I've found this model to work well, even when it was only applied to a salaried 40-hour-per-week job; Mon is 6h, Tue is 10h, etc. If you've got the right gig that can support something like this (many remote SE roles can). It averages out to the same (sometimes more) hours per week, you can plan for more fluidity (e.g. i'm going out drinking with friends thursday evening, so lets front-load some hell days early in the week so we get a heaven day friday), and it tends to really vibe well with engineering workloads (hell days are great for deep focus, centralize as many meetings as possible on heaven days, whatever works for you, etc). And sure, I'm being a little vague in how to attain this for yourself, if its something you'd even want; the sin of Insight Porn. It really comes down to "find a job that allows you to do it", and boom, Luck has entered the chat (with some mitigating "Skill" in being in a desirable field, knowing the right questions to ask in an interview, etc). All that considered, I still like the advice. If I want to spend my free time with loved ones; its so much more valuable & meaningful, to me, to spend an entire afternoon and evening every other day, or even only once/twice a week, than just an evening some/most evenings. Everything is better without interruption; work & play; and classifying your days as "WORK/play" versus "PLAY/work" rather than trying to evenly split every day, has just been better for me. YMMV.* Of course; extending this idea to "3 work days per day, that's 15 work days per week" or "6 hours of sleep per night" is crazy and no one should live like that.
fastball 4y ago
Not sure I agree about Naval's thread[1]. There is a lot of actionable stuff in there. [1] https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936 https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936
anon25783 4y ago
A crackhead never says "I have no money, I guess I'm not smoking any crack today". Instead, they will go to an abandoned building and strip all the copper wiring out of it. Don't let a crackhead out-hustle you today.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Truly inspiring.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  This would be horrible advice if it were not completely useless. As it is, it's only disgusting. I don't find it inspirational, and there is nothing actionable.
  - helixfelix 4y ago
    I think you missed the sarcasm/ humor in the post you are responding to.
hamiltonians 4y ago
another piece useless insight porn is to say 'no' to anyone or anything you dont want to do
deleted 4y ago
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antonymy 4y ago
I've never tried to give advice to people in my life since my career is mostly founded on a series of coincidences and lucky breaks. I know that luck factors into a lot of people's experiences, but in my case luck is the foundation of everything I have accomplished outside of school. I've built on top of this foundation, to be sure, but it's like saying fishing is all about waiting for the fish to jump in your boat.
- ghaff 4y ago
  >my career is mostly founded on a series of coincidences and lucky breaks I think you'll find that's true of a lot of people. Yes, there are people who graduate from a mid-tier school in engineering, go to some large company, work their way up the career ladder, maybe switch to one of two other big companies over time doing more or less the same thing, are reasonable happy and healthy in their personal life, etc. But a lot of people have much more circuitous routes that include barely navigating some difficult situations.
mmaunder 4y ago
“Many people that truly accomplished amazing things, when asked for the key to their success come up with some framework or playbook that they, in fact, never used themselves.” And they rarely share the messy awkward embarrassing reality of their journey.
- diehunde 4y ago
  This is why I'm not a big fan of "Things that any [insert career] should know" or "things I wish I'd known" type of articles. The path to mastering something is always unique, messy, and unstructured. It's impossible to replicate your journey by telling someone to read X, read Y, and do Z. All of that needs to be internalized as part of a slow journey that can't be accelerated too much. Your brain needs to learn how to filter noise, find patterns and get used to thinking a certain way. You might lose a year learning something that became obsolete; guess what? You still learned tons from that. We don't need to babysit junior people too much. They can find their way into becoming great SWE just like any great SWE who complains they learned something too late in their careers or that nobody told them something before did.
madrox 4y ago
There is very little advice that's good, but if you make a living producing content, you gotta get your quota up. The algorithm prioritizes new content. People want something to read every day over coffee, even if there's nothing new to read that's good.
superasn 4y ago
The corollary being that people who are not peddling insight porn are often dismissed and have much much harder time to get their content shared. I mean on one hand there is this guy with an incredibly feel good story about how all you have to do is just fill the gaps between the problem and solution and get rich. Then on the other hand there is this guy giving advice that looks like a steep uphill climb from your comfort zone where you to measure every single unique issue in your product and call customers 10 times a day to understand what's not working and why they're leaving, etc. Most people will pick A since it makes em feel good and such wisdom like "if your why is big enough the how takes care of itself "
greenie_beans 4y ago
it's a shame that our society causes us to optimize our time spent to make the most amount of money. we need to do the opposite of this: https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936 https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936
mkl95 4y ago
Actual insight can be tough to hear. No one wants to be told they would be doing better if they had worked their ass at some innovative company early in their career instead of taking an office job with a lower ceiling. Learning they can pull off some "life hack" to become rich will give them a much needed dopamine boost.
sebastianconcpt 4y ago
Good post. The metaphor is fair. I remember being annoyed by way to many "insights" and "words of advice" that sounded plausible but in environments that were way too unattainable for me at the time, hence: A) Not really plausible at all. B) Too much self-referential and tautologic. They pretended too much to be useful good advice but was actually just either show-off of success in disguise (false modesty/success porn) or tautologic; like "To be a multimillionaire just need to spend less than you earn but not earn low enough". Huh? Even a pigeon is smart enough to not need to hear that.
upupandup 4y ago
The biggest insight porn is indiehackers
zcw100 4y ago
“It’s advice that sounds plausible and breaks down a goal many people dream about into actionable steps.” Sounds like scrum.
nottorp 4y ago
> When I’m consuming non-fiction content. So non-fiction content is not worth reading. And doesn't qualify as a book either.
felipelalli 4y ago
Put the word "porn" on the title and get trillion upvotes.
luord 4y ago
Well, how sad. I have liked what Jakob wrote quite a bit but not only does this article betray a lack of self awareness as it describes quite a few of his own posts—not that there's anything wrong with that as he has published truly insightful things too and the fluff I still liked for the positivity—but then he used an essay by PG as an example of this. And now I'm not one of those people who think that everything PG writes is gold, but it's hardly "insight porn". In fact, if that particular essay is "advice", it's the advice to not even try as it's likely just not for you, so it almost seems like Greenfeld misrepresented it just because of a single sentence.
dafty4 4y ago
TLDR; any mention of Tim Ferriss?
ndgold 4y ago
Thank you for this. Seriously, it had to be said.
peso4ek 4y ago
Totally agree with author. I hate the popular books about successful success, like "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". I said it to every fan of this bullshit for 10 years maybe.

Jonathan Haidt speaks about something similar in The Happiness Hypothesis. Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour. This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies. Even the lamest examples listed in the OP article can probably give someone a boost in productivity for a while, as long as that epiphanic rush lasts. I've felt this in myself over the years. I'd hit a low point and try to hoist myself out of it, with some sombre new ethical code for creating a work ethic; some new note taking system; or epiphany gleaned from Shakespeare or Nietzsche. You can see it in the Jordan Peterson clips that haunt my YouTube shorts.

deleted 4y ago
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ipython 4y ago
Damn. Now I need to read that book next…
philipodonnell 4y ago
"Epiphanic rush" is such a accurate but bittersweet term for this. It must be so ingrained in human psychology from the days of shamans, prophets and sages.
- jackling 4y ago
  "days of shamans, prophets and sages" Are these really examples of what is described? The spiritualism gained from those entities persist to this day. Wars were fought and people continue to live by what those entities taught. Sounds different from the short lived rush that is being discussed.
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  Pretty sure "shamans, prophets and sages" are effects, not causes, of that particular piece of psychology.
BoredPuffin 4y ago
I didn't read/listen to Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis, but from what you described, he sounded spot on. But can I also say that as long as it works, there's nothing wrong with it? Some people wind down by jogging, playing video games, watching action movies etc; yours happened to be reading self-help book. The problem is when one overdoes it, regardless of the activities they've chosen.
WA 4y ago
Just consume new epiphanies until you die and you lived a very happy life.
recyclelater 4y ago
Jocko willinck (and many others I am sure) likes to state that you can’t rely on motivation because it comes and goes. Rely on discipline, build habits using discipline if you want to get anything done. A trite but in my opinion helpful statement is discipline equals freedom.
- layer8 4y ago
  That sounds like insight porn. How do you build discipline if you’re undisciplined? How do you decide what to be disciplined about?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - bitexploder 4y ago
    Stuff that you value. It is a simple and long term system specifically to maintain long term consistency. It just isn’t easy to do.
  - recyclelater 4y ago
    I don’t consider that to be insight porn, which is why I found it personally valuable. I feel this is a fundamental law of getting anything done. There’s almost nothing that I actually want to do for extended period of times, but I want the result from having done that thing a bunch. For example, it’s really hard to go outside and practice archery every day, but I have to do that in order to have the result of those skills - a successful archery hunt. How do I get the results when I am way past the first month or so where motivation is waning? I have to have the discipline to work toward my goal, regardless of how I feel in the moment. I found this insight for lack of a better word to be so fundamental that I was floored when I read it in jocko’s kids book. I saw my dad do this, he clearly embodied this value and demonstrated it while raising me, but no one ever explained it to me. For a goofy comparison, I would consider “discipline equals freedom “ to be love making between a happily married couple, and blog spam insight porn to be actual porn.
  - anotheruser092 4y ago
wholinator2 4y ago
Yeah, I agree. Though I will say that doesn't mean epiphanies aren't valuable long term. A little boost to get you started might translate into a huge change in personal circumstances 10 years after that small boost. Without a couple months with Jordan Peterson relaying not just the possibility but the nobility of looking people in the eyes, entering the forest at the place that looks darkest to you, etc. I would almost certainly not be here typing this. Such basic truths spruced up with a gleaming coating of old reverent narrative and ancient godlike significance through vigorous sermon is exactly the small boost I required to make the most significant and important change I've ever made in my life. I know he's quite controversial these days but you cannot deny the man has channeled something very powerful (at least as the non-explicitely-political material goes, I choose not to watch his politics)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jackling 4y ago
  What always surprised me about Peterson was the fact that so many people swear by his videos. There's multiple claims about how his videos changed their lives or saved them. However, his methodology couldn't keep his own life from going awry.
  - wholinator2 4y ago
    What exactly has gone awry? I mean, he had some serious troubles when his wife came extremely close to death very suddenly from a terrible illness but who could stay fine watching their high school sweetheart and only love ever rapidly wither right as their lives started to take off together. Or are you talking about the political aspect? If so I really see nothing going 'awry', he's making choices, certainly not begging for money. Someone may not like what he says or who he talks with but that does not constitute a life 'going awry' inasmuch as his supposed teachings would help avoid
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Yeah epiphanies don't actually do any work for themselves.
bheadmaster 4y ago
> Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour. Funny, I've experienced the same thing with philosophy. In my teens, I've had this existential crisis where the world just didn't make sense to me. Eventually I have discovered philosophy and started reading it, and for a while the world made sense to me. However, every epiphany I've had about the world only kept my enthusiasm up for a while - after some time I'd still know all the things I learned, but they just wouldn't seem as important as before. The world made sense... But I just didn't like the way it made sense. That's when I realized that the problem is me, not the world, and that the problem cannot be solved by pure knowledge - there is an animal inside me which doesn't give a rat's ass about all my theories of why and how, and requires a different approach.
- omghilarious 4y ago
SkyPuncher 4y ago
> This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies. I read a lot of business books that could be categorized as "self-help". I tend to continuously read them because 1. I'm aware how difficult behavior change 2. It's valuable to have more than 1 perspective. 3. Few things have had an outsized impact on my career. I do not know what those are until weeks/months/years after reading a book. For me, I'm not looking to read a single book to emulate it fully. I'm looking to read 4 or 5 books, shape my overall perspective, then have 2 to 4 things stick very, very deeply. Lastly, I can always come back to a specific book when I loosely remember it being applicable.

saltmeister 4y ago

enos_feedler 4y ago

Out of the 3 "Insight Porn" examples linked in the article, I think the Paul Graham essay seems out of place. I know I know, this is hacker news. Yet another person sticking up for pg. But I just don't think this essay (or others) is really trying to boil some dream/goal into steps. In fact, in the "How to get startup ideas" referenced in this post, pg says: "So if you can't predict whether there's a path out of an idea, how do you choose between ideas? The truth is disappointing but interesting: if you're the right sort of person, you have the right sort of hunches. If you're at the leading edge of a field that's changing fast, when you have a hunch that something is worth doing, you're more likely to be right." To me, he is doing the opposite of insight porn. Basically saying this might not even be for you. He doesn't even suggest that you go become an expert in something. Rather, he just throws his hands up. He tries to spare you from the disappointment of hearing this by calling it "interesting". That contrasts _a lot_ with what most of the insight porn is trying to convince you of. They rarely try to disappoint you and mostly just hype/pump you up.

feet 4y ago
To me that sounds like "you need insight into a field to have good hunches"
lumost 4y ago
Consider how ineffective this advice is then. What decisions can you make? You could take this to mean that you should follow your gut, or not. Does it share anything useful for formulating a decision? And why is this approach better than the alternatives?
- startupdiscuss 4y ago
  The point is, this was not meant to be advice! This was anti-advice. You can't use the criterion: if it is insightful it has to be actionable on an insight that says "I have no actions for you". The difference is, it is not trying to trick you.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago

OrangeMonkey 4y ago

I read a story where the main protagonist ran a business who did nothing but provide solutions to people. They would come in, pay a fee, and he would dispense a solution to their problem that would make things better if only the advice was followed. I thought it delightful. A problem I have that I can simply ask for a solution and get it? That would be great. The reason these bad actors exist is that they recognize the same: people struggle and just wish someone would offer real advice. If everyone wishes to dig for gold, sell shovels right? Well if everyone is dealing with failure, feelings of inadequacy, and a desire to change why not sell them the hope that if you do these simple things everything will be better. It is a desirable thing, even for me who should know better.

boomskats 4y ago
I, too, am a huge fan of Nathan for You [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_for_You https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_for_You
- suction 4y ago
  Best comedy on TV. Basically anything Fielder has touched so far, was gold. Or maybe it's because his brand of comedy really works for me, personally.
  - wnolens 4y ago
    The latter. I can barely watch him. I'll admit he's incredibly original and I really appreciate a skit or two. But he borders on sociopathic, and his latest movie is a great encapsulation of that.
    - suction 4y ago
      Movie? I guess you meant show? A friend of mine thinks like you, he feels extremely uncomfortable watching Fielder and his brand of comedy, and any sort of "cringe" comedy about sociopathic individuals, e.g. Curb Your Enthusiasm. I really can't empathize, because after all he's playing a character which should be very obvious. I think for my friend, the stuff depicted in this sort of comedy hits a bit too close to home, i.e. this sort of comedy doesn't work for people who are socially awkward because it reminds them of IRL too much, and conjures up bad memories, while normal people just laugh at the exaggeration of the awkwardness.

thenerdhead 4y ago

Life is always changing. What advice you read about today may not stick nor apply to you right now, but it may in the future. Things don’t change, we do. > Many people that truly accomplished amazing things, when asked for the key to their success come up with some framework or playbook that they, in fact, never used themselves. This comment feels like a rant with no justification. I know many highly accomplished people who will tell you what they did to achieve the promotion, land the deal, or deliver the project. Are they fleeting generalizations in a self-help book? Not usually. But there are visions, systems, and frameworks they have developed over the years, simply summed up as their personal philosophy. Insights can be profound to one and dumb to another. Does it make insights a bad thing? Absolutely not. Some people are ready for them, some people are not. Some people 10x their life with a simple idea like a vision board. Some never try it because they think it’s dumb. I’m of the opinion that unless you try everything at least twice, you can’t know if it works for you or not.

minihat 4y ago

I think the invitation to subscribe to the author's newsletter at the bottom of the page is ironic. Love the label "insight-porn" though. Concisely captures the nauseous feeling of ingesting your 100th self help book.

anthropodie 4y ago
When there's is so much to consume one does wander do we really need this much to survive or to be a better self? I mean people have been living on this planet for 1000s of years without access to as much info as today.
- ChildOfChaos 4y ago
  We also have such limited time/attention/energy. If you take the time a lot of people spend consuming content, like insight porn / productivity porn etc and instead spent that time doing more and reflecting more, you'd still likely be in a better place than the consumer
jjulius 4y ago
It would be one thing if it was just something like, "Hey, subscribe to my blog if you wanna!", but it's actually: >PS: Looking for More? >If you’d like to get more honest strategies and proven frameworks for winning in life and business, then simply join my free newsletter here. ... which yeah, sounds like, "Sign up for some insight porn!".
keyle 4y ago
I laughed at that too. It feels like his blog is the revenge porn of hindsight porn! I did enjoy the article though. A lot of commonsense but no real actionable takeouts though... wait a minute...
abecedarius 4y ago
The term was coined, afaik, by Sarah Perry in this blog post: https://web.archive.org/web/20180104183908/http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.com:80/2012/09/trying-to-see-through-unified-theory-of.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180104183908/http://theviewfro... Words will evolve, but I wanna say she was going for something higher level than self-help.

yamrzou 4y ago

My guess is that a big chunk of the "insight porn" and self-help landscape would fade away if it was subject to a data driven evaluation. Given a piece of advice or a self-help book, how many people did actually change their behaviour after reading it? And did the change persist long-term? Unfortunately, such data is not available.

Torwald 4y ago
Tony Robbins says in one of his audios (can't remember which, otherwise I would link), that 80% of the books he sold are just collecting dust, because people just buy them in order to pat themselves on the back for having done something for their personal development.
- ChildOfChaos 4y ago
  Ironically said in a self-help audio course itself. I feel like a lot of that content seems to mention similar, either in a slight moment of self-awareness that their content will likely j just be that or perhaps in a slightly deluded way to try and suggest that this course / book is somehow different. Content creators make a lot of money and have nice careers selling all this stuff, even streamers, how many of them would actually spend hours watching someone else's stream a day? Most of them wouldn't go near that stuff, but they happily stream for hours a day have thousands of people watch them and consume the content then cash that check. It's a great life for the creator, not so much the consumer. The same is with productivity YouTubers or self help authors, it's a create business to be in, but really your just selling out the other person. It was not lost on me, when a popular self development podcast host, a few years ago talked about how they set up there twitter and social accounts to post via a third party app, because they absolutely must not see the timeline or engage in it in any way. These people are happy to use to tools out there to profit and capture other peoples attention, but guard there own so tightly because they know how important it is. That is likely a better lesson than anything they where actually 'tweeting' about.
- wnolens 4y ago
  Maybe that says something about the quality of his words. He is a kingpin of insight porn.

swayvil 4y ago

>Many people that truly accomplished amazing things, when asked for the key to their success come up with some framework or playbook ... It’s just that people love to say things that make them look good. Or they really are trying to package their trick in a way that's universally useful, but failing. Because that's hard. Because people differ widely in the way they see and think. It's SO much easier to assume that they don't. But they do. One size does not fit all. A truly sciency approach might be the missing link. Firmly establish a common context and such. But that might be tedious and off-putting.

notacoward 4y ago
> Or they really are trying to package their trick in a way that's universally useful, but failing. ...or their "trick" was really 100% incidental to their success, which sprang from causes they'd rather not reflect upon.
- swayvil 4y ago
  Oh, and he's got a newsletter. It's beside the point but seriously lol.

mft_ 4y ago

I'm totally with the author - what he calls 'insight porn', I think of as 'grind porn' - as underneath the 'insights', I believe what the genre is really selling is the paradigm that you're not achieving enough, and you need to work harder, and because there are only so many hours in the day, you need to work smarter too, and to do that you need our insights to help you be much more efficient. So I'd take it a step further - not just avoid insight-/grind-porn, and grind-adjacent-porn too. By this, I mean the equally large industry around life optimisation - and consider it adjacent because of course you need to optimise your health, wellbeing, sleep, weight, muscle volume, whatever, to be a fully productive human and achieve the heights that are expected of you. Take (possibly) the Daddy of the all: Tim Ferriss' blog/podcast. I believe it's basically well-meaning, but holy hell if you wanted to learn from and apply the life optimisations of all of his guests, you'd almost need to make it a full-time activity. (I guess that's why some of them --Peter Attia, for example-- are really appearing on the podcast to advertise their business, which [if you're rich enough] will take most of the hard work out of figuring everything for yourself.) And of course, don't get me started on trying to follow any of the advice while living in the Europe, without easy access to many of the items recommended. And some of this slips out of the recrational space into the professional, too. A while back, I became aware of a professional/life coaching business[0] which was more holistic than the usual behaviourally-focussed professional coaches I'd experienced. Lots of well-meaning advice... until it hit me: maybe if I need to employ all of the little lifestyle marginal gains --green tea, optimised sleep, optimised diet, exercise-- just to cope with my f*cking job, the toxic demands of job itself is the problem? Is it possible we've gone too far towards accepting and adapting to the grind... and maybe it's time to wind it back a little? [0] https://tignum.com/ https://tignum.com/

nonrandomstring 4y ago
I think what's really being sold is "simplicity" > It’s so, so simple. Complexity is overwhelming us all. Who doesn't want simplicity? Simplicity is to thinking what convenience is to labour. All you must do is reject all that baggage of education, moral struggle and "overthinking" things, and embrace the banal. Behind many "Epiphanies", IMHO, is a message to "Let us do your thinking for you".
4y ago

bearjaws 4y ago

Gotta hand it to The Secret (2006) for kick starting near two decades of bull shit "Insight Porn". I know a few people who got sucked into that universe and continue to read & share this kind of media today.

whilestanding 4y ago
The foundational ideas of the secret was found in think and grow rich, an old book.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  A book (and author) referenced in this very piece!

EmilyHughes 4y ago

Why does everything have to be some kind "porn" nowadays. Does anybody seriously think this is funny?

suoduandao2 4y ago
I suspect we use 'porn' as a shorthand for 'hypernormal stimuli' and I suspect we have so much of it because humans have fewer evolved defenses against manipulation by hypernormal stimuli on the internet.
- nottorp 4y ago
  Well, car magazines were there before the internet. I still buy one. I've always called them "car porn".
CRConrad 4y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/
suction 4y ago
Does everything nowadays? I think the analogy to porn at least here is fitting. The idea porn as a word to mean "of no substance, for easy consummation, from morally questionable sources, to make a quick buck off desperate people" quite accurately describes all these "insight gurus", which to me are grifters.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  That's not what it means. Look at subreddits like /r/historyporn or /r/earthporn. These do not mean porn in any kind of derogatory sense. It literally means nothing more specific than "lots of content that people like". It really does not carry a derogatory connotation, or at least it is most widely used in positive ways
  - acuozzo 4y ago
    > It literally means nothing more specific than "lots of content that people like". I think it's a bit more than that, something like: "lots of content that people like and will waste a ton of time consuming for little hits of dopamine".

saxelsen 4y ago

This is a perfect post on what I hate (and can't seem to quit) on my Twitter feed. If you follow anyone in the startup space, the profiles and recommendations they generate will fill up your entire feed with useless, like-farming threads on "how to be successful in 3 easy steps". The part about it being extra dangerous because you feel productive even though you didn't do anything, is so true. It's like a new form of addictive, useless SoMe content for people over 25.

nicbou 4y ago

Some types of insight is still valuable, and tends to stick longer: * "Your perception of [practice] is wrong". Networking isn't sales or marketing, it's helping each other and building things together without sending invoices. * "You value the wrong things". You are paid to create value, not write code. Negotiation skills pay more than technical skills [1][2] * "The world doesn't work that way". A lot of the content you read is sponsored [3] * "You're doing something unpleasant". Don't ask to ask [4] [1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr... [2] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ [3] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html [4] https://dontasktoask.com/ https://dontasktoask.com/

matwood 4y ago
> You are paid to create value, not write code. When I was in college in the late 90s I was fortunate enough to figure this out through experience. First, there was a real fear all programming jobs were going to be outsourced. So I decided I needed programming + something else (in this case business). Second, as a sophomore I got a job at a small custom software shop in town (it was the late 90s - if you had a pulse you get a 'programming' job). Our clients didn't care about the code, the language it was written in or anything else technical. They only cared about what it did, and if it solved their problem. It also connected 'solve customer problem' to 'getting paid' in a very direct way.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

feintruled 4y ago

His six hour day thing reminds me of a wheeze a manager tried in my old company when it was coming up to crunch time. He sent an 'inspirational' email where he said that if we all were to simply work an extra few hours after work each day, then four hours on each of Saturday and Sunday, then - voila - we would magically find ourselves with the equivalent of an 8-day week. I don't think many took him up on this. Though to be fair to him, it was very specific and actionable advice!

koonsolo 4y ago
This resembles a meeting I had in the past. The manager said we all had to work a little harder because the company was doing bad. He suggested to stay an extra hour every day. He then concluded with "Oh yeah, and Li is going to take over my tasks for the next 2 weeks, because I'll be on holiday". No kidding!
202206241203 4y ago
"Are you guys working? Yes, sir, Mr. Simpson. Could you, um, work any harder than this?"
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8miwsWtzRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8miwsWtzRw

BoredPuffin 4y ago

Another piece of "Insight Porn" labelled as "No more insight porn", how ironic. And when do people like the author start labelling any over-doing, over-indulging behaviour "porn"? Should I expect in a few decades time that people binge-watching documentary will give birth to "doco-porn"? Catchy marketing at its worst. On the topic though, beneath whatever words he put on top it's an age-old idea that until you start doing something hands-on, it'll be hard to tell what you already know and what you don't. The advice giving and taking is not a new concept, and data-driven is not going to change it. If one doesn't like handling slimy things, no matter how good a piece of cooking advice is - it's not going to help. Imagine capturing meat can be slimy in datasets.

bowsamic 4y ago
It is indeed quite ironic. This article would have landed much better had it not tried to make a better version of the insight porn that it criticises so much. Just listing the problematic content would have been better.
- BoredPuffin 4y ago
  If the content doesn't change, the title is not going to help. >Just listing the problematic content would have been better. Just Like you said. This, afterall, is not an informative piece of writing; but rather more akin to clickbait. Looking at OPs username and assuming he isn't taking the piss, he should be happy to have generated enough traffic by now.

MOARDONGZPLZ 4y ago

I got super lucky. I started a company and didn’t really have any meaningful traction. I was about to shut it down. Walking out of the grocery store one night after work, I passed by my former manager when I was an intern. We got to talk for about 30 seconds, mentioned my company, she asked me to email her. I did, and that very quickly led to my first big customer which makes me about double what a FAANG swe would make. My advice: get lucky. My insight porn version: 10 easy steps I used to get $500K ARR and how you can do it too

deleted 4y ago
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bombcar 4y ago
"Get lucky" is always the key - however, you can increase your "luck surface" by doing certain things (for example, you couldn't have gotten lucky if you hadn't started the company, nor if you hadn't bothered to talk to people).
- rograndom 4y ago
  Not just getting lucky, but being ready to get lucky. If they didn't have the company or the product already, bumping into the former manager wouldn't be enough. And I think I've just given the type of advice TFA is railing about :)
  - manmal 4y ago
    Well it’s true, you can’t win the lottery without buying the ticket. Only that way you don’t know what prize you’re playing for.
  - zigman1 4y ago
    Ross Brawn said in his book about strategy that the luck is preparation waiting for opportunity
- danaris 4y ago
  > you can increase your "luck surface" by doing certain things ....and your chances of being able to do those things (without severe risk of poverty and homelessness) are increased dramatically by having been lucky enough to be born wealthy, or at least upper-middle-class.

fouric 4y ago

I really like this idea! You can find it in all sorts of places. Here's one in video games: there are a lot of League of Legends videos by a channel called "Skill Capped" that each claim to have "one neat rule" or "5 mistakes to watch out for" to help you get better at the game. The only problem? The "one rule" is something like "don't do this thing unless you know that there's an 80% chance that it'll work" - and that's the hard part, that the video does nothing to help with. I think that this is another flavor of "insight porn" where the video portrays itself as boiling down something hard into a simple insight - yet that insight is tautological, not useful, and/or skips the hard part.

bombcar 4y ago
That's actually actionable - don't do this thing. The key is that you'll see the pros doing it because they can recognize the 80% areas, but if you can't, you shouldn't even try to do it, because you're likely putting yourself at a disadvantage. Part of the problem is not all games can be broken down into certain definitive chunks you can work on directly (turn-based ones often do have these).

closedloop129 4y ago

>When I’m consuming non-fiction content, I try to write down specific experiments I can try that put the things I “learned” into practice. Could you turn this into a social network where people cooperate to do these experiments? It could be used to figure out which ideas are helpful and it could be used to help people when they are stuck implementing an idea.

hammock 4y ago
We could get the government to fund the experiments with research dollars, and build institutions around the country where people run these experiments with young people eager to learn and apply science and get experience with such things. Then the results could be published first in science journals for the other institutions, and then the best ones written up in popular book form for the masses to consume. Wait a minute…
- closedloop129 4y ago
  Exactly. However, the incentives are different. Academics do not necessarily care about the same questions. They are also not personally affected but just research a topic. With a social network, people with problems can come up with their own answers. They already do, in existing networks. I think, organizing a social network by research question could be an improvement on the status quo.

anonu 4y ago

Nice meta blog post. Some great insights on insights.

strken 4y ago

It's genuinely useful to know that making $X a year is the same as Y clients paying $(X / Y / 52) a week, if you've never thought about a business in concrete terms before. Obviously this is old and repetitive if you're a working software engineer who's been reading HN for years and has seen a ton of motivational LinkedIn bullshit, but it's the kind of thing a career councillor might go over to make running a business seem approachable. Equally obviously it would be much better advice if it came with a real-world example of a forecasting spreadsheet and a link to your government's "how to start a business" website. That doesn't make it bad advice. The example thread from Naval is the same. Second tweet is basically "conspicuous consumption wastes money, buy appreciating assets instead," but couched in pornographic insight. One of the later tweets is "pick business partners...with integrity." They're both good bits of advice. Just because you already know a piece of advice, and just because it's given by a charismatic writer over far too many individual tweets, doesn't make it bad advice.

juve1996 4y ago
> One of the later tweets is "pick business partners...with integrity." They're both good bits of advice. Really? This is good advice? Is "don't work with a known thief" also good advice? Most people know this already. They make it seem like it's this grand knowledge. it's not. It's worthless advice dressed up to sound good.
- strken 4y ago
  One of my (distant and now deceased) family members got ripped off by a business partner who fled the country, who he knew was slimy but decided to trust for some reason. Yes, it would have been good advice for him. It's not grand knowledge unveiled by the Secret Brotherhood of Hidden Twitter Masters, it's just...normal good advice. You shouldn't go into business with crooks. People do it all the time, and it often ends poorly for them. "Eat your vegetables" and "take your car in for a service when it makes weird noises" are also good bits of advice, for the right audience.
  - juve1996 4y ago

motohagiography 4y ago

Sure, there's a lot of crappy insight out there, and there are also styles of writing designed to take your time. It's like Proust with product placement. But when you look at psychology as a tool to dissolve artifacts of our internal logic that are causing suffering, using a neutralizing theory that temporarily dissolves meaning, the usefulness of some cliches and deepities becomes more apparent. These aren't positive instructions, they're a way to provoke a mind out of a kind of writers block or negative feedback loop about its idea of self. An insight that reframes your perception of something can unlock what felt like a double bind or an inescapable situation. "I can't feel some joy because I am a this or that," is an example belief that an insight can unblock by reframing someones perspective to question the premises of that belief. Showing that your negative self beliefs are inconsistent enough for you to question them can be enough to relieve the suffering they cause, just long enough to do something about them. It's a precision tool. It's relevant to look at the quality of insight and beliefs we're having delivered by some carefully orchestrated psychological techniques, but this one felt bit like witnessing the birth of a new thought terminating cliche.

bambax 4y ago

I'm confused, it seems insight porn is this guy's business. His article even ends with this: > If you’d like to get more honest strategies and proven frameworks for winning in life and business, then simply join my free newsletter here. Is he simply trying to trash the competition?

engineer_22 4y ago
Yea, it's kind of his shtick.
keyle 4y ago
Give an addict a solution drug to his drug problem... you do the math.
sanggonlee 4y ago
His point is not really abandon all the insight porns - but rather pick only those that you can experiment with. And if all his advice do provide something actionable, he's living up to his words.
duckmysick 4y ago
I noticed a common pattern in self-help publications: 1. Claim a common self-help method is ineffective. 2. Show why it's ineffective. 3. Present a different self-help method. Point number 2 is really important. It could be anything: an anecdote, some data, a paper. But the strongest signal is if the readers themselves already tried the ineffective solution. If it was effective, there's no need for them to research more. But it wasn't working and there's this person who says there's no way it would work. And they are right, so let's hear what else do they have to say (or sell). You've the walking proof something didn't work and there's someone who's agreeing with you. You did all the hard work and the author is tagging along. The beauty of it is the original method might be fine, it just didn't work out for you for whatever reason. Including if you read about it, but didn't try.
Ensorceled 4y ago
This article actually provides a framework for deciding if a productivity tool is useful, by running an experiment, or at least identifying experiments, on the advice provided to see if it works for you. They clearly highlight as "insight porn" stuff that doesn't provide actionable advice. At the end, they invite you to apply this new "is this useful, not useful or not even bad" decision process to their own services/products.

nailer 4y ago

You can be a billionaire in only 3 years by following this simple advice: every day, before you go to bed, save one million US dollars.

kwertyoowiyop 4y ago

This gives me a whole new perspective on the multiple “insight porn” articles on HN’s front page right now.

czernobog 4y ago

This is really interesting. I like the blog, I don't want to subscribe for emails but I would like and RSS but I don't see it

sagaro 4y ago

Pretty much all of Linkedin is insights porn and self patting.

015a 4y ago

W.r.t the "imagine your day is 6 hours long, then you could fit 3 days in one" 'advice'. I haven't read the original article, and won't, but I'm imagining what they mean by that is 6*3=18 (+6 hours of sleep = 24). I have two jobs right now; primary gig + ~10hr/week contracting, both tech. I'm actually a big fan of this model of thinking, though not as extreme; I'll elaborate: Classify 3 days a week as "hell days"; 9a-6p job1 + 7p-9p job2. Tweak the numbers as you will for your own situation, but critically, for every hell day there's a heaven day: Monday you're working 12 hours, but Tuesday you're only working 6 hours, and alternate. I've found this model to work well, even when it was only applied to a salaried 40-hour-per-week job; Mon is 6h, Tue is 10h, etc. If you've got the right gig that can support something like this (many remote SE roles can). It averages out to the same (sometimes more) hours per week, you can plan for more fluidity (e.g. i'm going out drinking with friends thursday evening, so lets front-load some hell days early in the week so we get a heaven day friday), and it tends to really vibe well with engineering workloads (hell days are great for deep focus, centralize as many meetings as possible on heaven days, whatever works for you, etc). And sure, I'm being a little vague in how to attain this for yourself, if its something you'd even want; the sin of Insight Porn. It really comes down to "find a job that allows you to do it", and boom, Luck has entered the chat (with some mitigating "Skill" in being in a desirable field, knowing the right questions to ask in an interview, etc). All that considered, I still like the advice. If I want to spend my free time with loved ones; its so much more valuable & meaningful, to me, to spend an entire afternoon and evening every other day, or even only once/twice a week, than just an evening some/most evenings. Everything is better without interruption; work & play; and classifying your days as "WORK/play" versus "PLAY/work" rather than trying to evenly split every day, has just been better for me. YMMV.* Of course; extending this idea to "3 work days per day, that's 15 work days per week" or "6 hours of sleep per night" is crazy and no one should live like that.

fastball 4y ago

Not sure I agree about Naval's thread[1]. There is a lot of actionable stuff in there. [1] https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936 https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936

anon25783 4y ago

A crackhead never says "I have no money, I guess I'm not smoking any crack today". Instead, they will go to an abandoned building and strip all the copper wiring out of it. Don't let a crackhead out-hustle you today.

TremendousJudge 4y ago
Truly inspiring.
pwinnski 4y ago
This would be horrible advice if it were not completely useless. As it is, it's only disgusting. I don't find it inspirational, and there is nothing actionable.
- helixfelix 4y ago
  I think you missed the sarcasm/ humor in the post you are responding to.

hamiltonians 4y ago

another piece useless insight porn is to say 'no' to anyone or anything you dont want to do

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

antonymy 4y ago

I've never tried to give advice to people in my life since my career is mostly founded on a series of coincidences and lucky breaks. I know that luck factors into a lot of people's experiences, but in my case luck is the foundation of everything I have accomplished outside of school. I've built on top of this foundation, to be sure, but it's like saying fishing is all about waiting for the fish to jump in your boat.

ghaff 4y ago
>my career is mostly founded on a series of coincidences and lucky breaks I think you'll find that's true of a lot of people. Yes, there are people who graduate from a mid-tier school in engineering, go to some large company, work their way up the career ladder, maybe switch to one of two other big companies over time doing more or less the same thing, are reasonable happy and healthy in their personal life, etc. But a lot of people have much more circuitous routes that include barely navigating some difficult situations.

mmaunder 4y ago

“Many people that truly accomplished amazing things, when asked for the key to their success come up with some framework or playbook that they, in fact, never used themselves.” And they rarely share the messy awkward embarrassing reality of their journey.

diehunde 4y ago
This is why I'm not a big fan of "Things that any [insert career] should know" or "things I wish I'd known" type of articles. The path to mastering something is always unique, messy, and unstructured. It's impossible to replicate your journey by telling someone to read X, read Y, and do Z. All of that needs to be internalized as part of a slow journey that can't be accelerated too much. Your brain needs to learn how to filter noise, find patterns and get used to thinking a certain way. You might lose a year learning something that became obsolete; guess what? You still learned tons from that. We don't need to babysit junior people too much. They can find their way into becoming great SWE just like any great SWE who complains they learned something too late in their careers or that nobody told them something before did.

madrox 4y ago

There is very little advice that's good, but if you make a living producing content, you gotta get your quota up. The algorithm prioritizes new content. People want something to read every day over coffee, even if there's nothing new to read that's good.

superasn 4y ago

The corollary being that people who are not peddling insight porn are often dismissed and have much much harder time to get their content shared. I mean on one hand there is this guy with an incredibly feel good story about how all you have to do is just fill the gaps between the problem and solution and get rich. Then on the other hand there is this guy giving advice that looks like a steep uphill climb from your comfort zone where you to measure every single unique issue in your product and call customers 10 times a day to understand what's not working and why they're leaving, etc. Most people will pick A since it makes em feel good and such wisdom like "if your why is big enough the how takes care of itself "

greenie_beans 4y ago

it's a shame that our society causes us to optimize our time spent to make the most amount of money. we need to do the opposite of this: https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936 https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936

mkl95 4y ago

Actual insight can be tough to hear. No one wants to be told they would be doing better if they had worked their ass at some innovative company early in their career instead of taking an office job with a lower ceiling. Learning they can pull off some "life hack" to become rich will give them a much needed dopamine boost.

sebastianconcpt 4y ago

Good post. The metaphor is fair. I remember being annoyed by way to many "insights" and "words of advice" that sounded plausible but in environments that were way too unattainable for me at the time, hence: A) Not really plausible at all. B) Too much self-referential and tautologic. They pretended too much to be useful good advice but was actually just either show-off of success in disguise (false modesty/success porn) or tautologic; like "To be a multimillionaire just need to spend less than you earn but not earn low enough". Huh? Even a pigeon is smart enough to not need to hear that.

upupandup 4y ago

The biggest insight porn is indiehackers

zcw100 4y ago

“It’s advice that sounds plausible and breaks down a goal many people dream about into actionable steps.” Sounds like scrum.

nottorp 4y ago

> When I’m consuming non-fiction content. So non-fiction content is not worth reading. And doesn't qualify as a book either.

felipelalli 4y ago

Put the word "porn" on the title and get trillion upvotes.

luord 4y ago

Well, how sad. I have liked what Jakob wrote quite a bit but not only does this article betray a lack of self awareness as it describes quite a few of his own posts—not that there's anything wrong with that as he has published truly insightful things too and the fluff I still liked for the positivity—but then he used an essay by PG as an example of this. And now I'm not one of those people who think that everything PG writes is gold, but it's hardly "insight porn". In fact, if that particular essay is "advice", it's the advice to not even try as it's likely just not for you, so it almost seems like Greenfeld misrepresented it just because of a single sentence.

dafty4 4y ago

TLDR; any mention of Tim Ferriss?

ndgold 4y ago

Thank you for this. Seriously, it had to be said.

peso4ek 4y ago

Totally agree with author. I hate the popular books about successful success, like "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". I said it to every fan of this bullshit for 10 years maybe.