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Trick Yourself into Breaking a Bad Habit
- fixthisplz 3y agoThere’s a Mexican saying: “Show me who you’re with, and I’ll tell you who you are.” It's from Spain
- konart 3y agoI think most of the proverbs can be found in different languages in similar forms. But with nuances. The russian saying is similar: "С кем поведёшься, от того и наберёшься" (literally: "You learn from the people you take up with"). One way to same the same thing is "a man is known by the company he keeps", but the best english equivalent would be: "You lie with dogs, you wake up with fleas"
- fixthisplz 3y agoDime con quién andas y te diré quién eres We also have Cría cuervos y te comerán los ojos In case you want to warn of dangerous acquaintances https://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/refranero/ficha.aspx?Par=58521&Lng=0#:~:text=Dime%20con%20quién%20andas%20y%20te%20diré%20quién%20eres.,personas%20con%20quienes%20se%20junte https://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/refranero/ficha.aspx?Par=585....
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoSo maye much be spyed also, by the company and pastyme that he useth. (Heinrich Bullinger, 1541, translated to English by Bishop Myles Coverdale). Though surely the idea goes back to antiquity and someone like Seneca would have something to say about it (but not in English)!
- samstave 3y agoThis is an amazing prescient quote of the current state of employee monitoring, and its 500 years old.
- w4lker 3y agoI thought it was from Brazil
- Zecc 3y agoAnd I thought it was be from Portugal, but when I read it's from Spain I adjusted to "from Iberia". But now someone else mentioned Italy. I wouldn't be surprised if it traces its roots to ancient Rome or Greece.
- samstave 3y ago"No, the spainards came and fucked all the Mayans and turned them into Mexicans" -- Frank Reynolds
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- toyg 3y ago"Dimmi con chi vai e ti dirò chi sei" in Italy. (On the same subject we also have "chi va con lo zoppo impara a zoppicare", which is probably not pc-enough to safely translate these days.)
- Abby0 3y agosame in arabic: "قولي من تصاحب اخبرك من انت" translates to "tell me whose your friend and i'll tell you who you are."
- neilv 3y ago> For example, if you want to cultivate a more positive attitude about big changes in your company, lunch more often with those who are leading the charge and less often with those who are forming the opposition. Sounds like very familiar best-practices advice for the stereotypical corporate boot-licking yes-person. Speaking of framing, as the article does, the writer seems to be implicitly framing failures to being the best manipulative, sharp-elbowed status climber you can be... as "bad habits".
- agumonkey 3y agoReminds me of books about knowing how to have power over people. Inversion of values to me to think that manipulating people is grand.
- helmholtz 3y agoThat book is life changing, if it's 'How To Win Friends'. Maybe for an older person, this stuff is trivial, but for a younger me, it taught me just how much we as a species think only of ourselves, how you can never win an argument, how you cannot browbeat someone into submission. You can at best hope to make the other person want to do something. Look at things from their perspective. Stephen Covey seemed to hate Carnegie's book too, as if the book was written by a moustache-twirling supervillain. It's not. It's just a very lovely look into human psyche, beautifully illustrated by tonnes of examples (rather than the platitude-filled bullshit that is inside modern books by Ryan Holiday and company).
- agumonkey 3y agoMaybe I was too biased when I skimmed through it. I understand that people all have complex psychologies and being aware of the recurrent traits is useful. But to me it lacks real warmth.. I'll try reading it again.
- NikolaNovak 3y agoMy initial attitude toward that section was similar. But in the spirit of doing a charitable interpretation - in every company there are those who want to do good and make a change. And there are those who just want to say No to everything. Just everything. Just no. There are always ten million reasons to not do anything new and just keep being the same. And the article is suggesting that if you spend more time with those who want to change things you will adopt their attitude by osmosis. Doesn't say anything whether any given change is a good one. If you are an alcoholic, being around people who drink a lot is not helping you. I choose to interpret that paragraph to mean you shoild be around people with attitude you want to adopt. More broadly I see articles main point to be adopting a systemic approach. Don't think hope or try to magically make yourself "a better person who doesn't do bad things ". Rather come up with systems and methods to enforce behaviour you want in yourself.
- swayvil 3y agoYou ever consider how much of the smooth-functioning your world relies upon your obliviousness and ignorance? Get a little smarter and everything breaks. Suddenly all your good habits are bad habits. Heck, science might not even work anymore.
- sleeplessworld 3y agoNice. How do you break out of the Matrix, when your knowledge of the Matrix and the desire to break out is part of the Matrix and your programming? Hmm.
- swayvil 3y agoStep 1 would be careful observation. This might imply something special in the way of self-control.
- medler 3y ago> For example, what you eat is shaped far more by what you see than by what you search for. The linked study is co-authored by the disgraced researcher/fraudster Brian Wansink. I guess this was one of the studies that didn’t get retracted, but I still wouldn’t put a lot of faith in anything with his name on it.
- gtirloni 3y agoDo you have an objection to the claims though?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- medler 3y agoDigging into the study now. It was very small: the subjects were 16 office workers. They analyzed between-subjects rather than within-subjects, which seems a little suspicious given that within-subjects is more interesting and given Wansink’s history of p hacking. Finally, the results comparing visible vs non-visible food (the part alluded to in the HBR article when it says “seeing is eating”) had a p-value of 0.03, so they barely reached significance. My gut says this study is not likely to replicate.
- gtirloni 3y agoThat's interesting, thanks for taking the time to investigate this further (I lack the knowledge about this field and the statistical methods and it was an honest question).
- _the_inflator 3y agoIndirectly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Wansink#Cornell's_investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Wansink#Cornell's_invest...
- toss1 3y agoGood to point out a flaw But is that a nit that changes nothing (e.g., there is significant other valid evidence that supports the same point) and so could be simply updated, or is it the linchpin of the entire argument, without which the entire premise and argument fails? If it is the latter, it's good to draw our attention to it, but if the former, then this is kind of a meaningless distraction. I haven't got the time ATM to sort it out. Perhaps someone with knowledge could add the needed insight?
- mellosouls 3y ago(2016) with broken links
- oatmeal1 3y ago> We are profoundly shaped by outside forces that manipulate, distract, arouse, and impede us. Every time I read an article like this, I think it would be better to spend time learning to meditate so your decisions can be more rational and thoughtful in general. The best case from this article is that while other people are tricking and manipulating you, you can also trick and manipulate yourself. Not to say that people who meditate don't use these same strategies, but they are less of a necessity and used in a less underhanded way.
- Name_Chawps 3y agoI learned to meditate recently, and it allowed me to quit biting my nails. I had actually given up on meditation, thinking it wasn't doing much for me practically. But then a month later I tried to quit biting my nails, which I have tried dozens of times in the past, and this time I succeeded. I didn't even try that hard. I just used mindfulness to separate out the desire to bite my nails from the appearance of my unbitten nails, and the urge faded. I'll probably get back into meditation some time soon.
- csense 3y agoThe author actually used "soda pop." I've heard plenty of people say "soda" or "pop." But I usually associate "soda pop" with the way people talked in the 1920's - 1940's. Wikipedia has an entire article on Names for Soft Drinks in the United States [1], but it only says "soda pop" is first attested in 1863, and "is used by some speakers, especially in the Mountain West" without a source for that specific claim. A Merriam-Webster search [2] says Steve Forbes used it in his magazine in 2021, but his biography says he grew up in New Jersey and has mostly lived on the East Coast. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_soft_drinks_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_soft_drinks_in_the_U... [2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soda%20pop https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soda%20pop
- Ins43b 3y agoThis has worked really well for me. For instance, I deliberately work standing up in the garden with some fitness gear around. Every time I need to wait for something, like a build process or before the next email to write, I do a few bench presses, or push ups. Almost automatically. When I'm seated at a regular office desk, I tend to distract myself with some mindless internet browsing instead. Just creating the right environment can be enough to alter behavior.
- T3RMINATED 3y ago[dead]