10 ms·

Take Ownership of Your Future Self (2020)

210 points by makerdiety 3y ago

mdrzn 3y ago
An extension on "dress for the job you want, not the job you have"?
- Beijinger 3y ago
  Is this true? When I was a desperate graduate I came with a suit, tie and gel in my hair to companies. Today I would not bother to wear a suite or something. When people are surpised by this I explain them, that I always expect the other party to need me as much as I need them. And wearing a suit would just make me look like I don't bring enough to the table. Do you really think Bill Gates could not come to a meeting in underwear and people would still take him completly serious? Unfortunately I am not BG.
  - mdrzn 3y ago
    It's an interesting point. The concept of "dressing for the job you want" might have evolved. With more accessible fashion and changing workplace norms, dressing sharply doesn't necessarily equate to competence or value like it might have in the past. Authenticity and skills often weigh more than appearance in many sectors.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Dress for the job you want, not the one you have, is not about interviewing really, but about what you do when you have a job. It's not only about what you wear either. It's that if you want to be promoted, start doing some of the things that would be your job duties if you had the promotion. Doesn't work in all situations, but when you can say 'of course I can do the job, I've already been doing it', it can make the process easier, sometimes. Also, I'll echo the sibling point that dress standards have changed a lot over time, at least where I have worked. In an interview situation it's best not to come over dressed or under dressed, but it takes experience to know the right things to ask to know. Used to be a suit was right for every interview, but it's way overdressed at a shorts and sandals style company.
chrisweekly 3y ago
See also Dr Ben Hardy's "Be Your Future Self"
begueradj 3y ago
> Your personality, skills, likes, and dislikes change over time Not true about personality: if you experienced a serious trauma at a young age, most likely you will remain traumatized forever. If you were a manipulative child, most likely you will remain the same at adulthood: the only change you will see in yourself is that now you are a malignant narcissist with a job attracting people like you. Not only the core of your personality remains the same, but you also can easily notice that most of your behaviors and feelings are those of your parents. And you will transmit many of your personality traits to your kids. This article ignores fundamentals of biology, inheritance and determinism (Robert Sapolsky)
- bearika 3y ago
  I came here, also, to comment on complex trauma. However, I have a different take. Formerly traumatized children, even those with treatment-resistant personality disorders, can improve how they work with their system through therapy. Experiential therapies like IFS are proving to be groundbreaking modalities with great outcomes. They also reframe the goal: the goal is not to heal, but to understand, work with, and create space between the self and the system that creates automatic responses to the world at large. In doing so, one expands their window of tolerance over time. I actually found this article to be very inline with trauma healing and my own personal experience of healing complex-PTSD.
- thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
  >> if you experienced a serious trauma at a young age, most likely you will remain traumatized forever. This is exactly what the article is arguing against--letting one's past block the present mind from reaching toward the goals of the future self: "Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished." A person traumatized at a young age can overcome it. In fact, therapy and healing demand introspection and decision: "Am I going to let this trauma define me?" The dialectic view of oneself is to accept that the past event happened while choosing to overcome it in all ways that are possible. "Taking ownership of your future self" is an excellent description of the idea and how it can empower people to make better choices and move forward toward their goals and who they want to be.
- 3y ago
satisfice 3y ago
My past self doesn’t own me. My past self is gone. My future self is a thing that doesn’t exist. My present self is all the matters. My story about my identity is intended to freeze it where it is. That’s not a bug. That’s called staying alive.
- FergusArgyll 3y ago
  העבר אין העתיד עדיין ההווה כהרף עין דאגה מנין Not worth translating unfortunately, it would lose its charm EDIT: Sorry all! I'll do my best. The past is no longer, the Future is not yet. The present is like a blink of an eye, So, where does worry come from? But it rhymes and has a great whimsical feel which is very much lost in translation
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    "Ndiyo, naweza kufanya tafsiri kwa Kiswahili. Tafadhali niambie sentensi au neno unalotaka kutafsiri, na nitakusaidia." I'd translate, but it isn't worth it.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    if you do not translate it, then this bit of wisdom turns into a taunt for those not a Member of The Tribe I invite you to speak to all readers here
  - flextheruler 3y ago
    01010000 01110010 01100101 01110100 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101001 01101111 01110101 01110011 Not worth translating, it would lose its je ne sais quoi so to speak
    - FergusArgyll 3y ago
      00111010 00101001
- greggsy 3y ago
  These techniques and mantras for grounding yourself in the present are useful for panic attacks and anxiety, but being honest about your past and future direction are more powerful.
doctorhandshake 3y ago
I’ve been practicing a version of this for years. I describe it as being on the lookout for stories you tell yourself about yourself - things like ‘I can’t draw’ and ‘kids don’t like me’ and ‘I’m bad with money.’ As this article points out, phrasing those statements in the present tense, as though they were immutable absolutes that must persist into the future, is a static mindset. It takes only a small shift - ‘up to now I haven’t been able to draw but I’m going to learn’ - to re-frame your idea of yourself as dynamic and malleable. This opens the door to actively shaping your future self, and it’s hard to overstate how different that is from a static perspective.
3abiton 3y ago
It's a really interesting article that skipped my reading list! Any other good recommendations from HBR?
- famahar 3y ago
  I liked their article about how to be a good listener. Breaks down listening into different levels. I think just reading it makes you become more conscious of giving the space for others to be heard. The people I enjoy being around the most are incredible listeners which makes conversations become an enjoyable experience and building friendships easier. https://hbr.org/2016/07/what-great-listeners-actually-do https://hbr.org/2016/07/what-great-listeners-actually-do
- elteto 3y ago
  They also publish books: https://a.co/d/dY4a2Ta https://a.co/d/dY4a2Ta This link is for an older boxed set, but you can buy them individually from Amazon too.
dcpit 3y ago
OK, nothing to do with Rust ;-)
- spot5010 3y ago
  I chuckled. Thank you, just what I needed to start the week :)
- faitswulff 3y ago
  What, this isn’t about async &mut self?
HenryBemis 3y ago
(not affiliated in any way) Something similarly useful is the https://www.selfauthoring.com/ https://www.selfauthoring.com/ I remember listening to Jordan Peterson a couple years ago and he was promoting it. I haven't used it, as I have my journaling all set up and helping me, but that seems to be similar to what the article speaks (except from the "tell people..." towards the end).
hammock 3y ago
Truly if we are to make our only concerns those which we can control, past AND current self are useless to own except as they impact, and we are constantly told past returns are not indicative of future performance, your future self, which is the only self that we can have active influence over
Extasia785 3y ago
I've started doing something similar around a year ago, after noticing that I reached basically all goals I set out for myself after school. I was at a point where I felt like I stopped growing as a person and found myself unhappy with my life, yet was seemingly stuck. What I did was to have a very strong introspection over a few weeks. I thought about each important aspect of my life - social life, family, career, hobbies, health, even my daily structure - and formulated a very specific target for each area. Basically a well thought out fantasy character. This was hard work, it took many nights of thinking and it's honestly a process that never stops, even nowadays I still update that document from time to time. Once I had a list I was reasonably happy with, I started thinking of the type of person that would reach that goals and what kind of habits they had. And then I started implementing them. The most important part here is a habit of doing stuff. I can not stress enough how important that is, everything else pales in comparison. I recommend reading Atomic Habits and personally follow the "Getting Things Done" system. But once you have written down everything you need to do and actually do it, you have a superpower and the ability to transform every part of your life in a few months. I found that most "hard" things in life are actually quite easy to do, it's just that doing stuff consistently is extremely hard. I agree with the author, simply telling people about your future self also helps massively. The first time it will feel extremely weird, like talking about a fantasy character. You will talk about some guy you seemingly have nothing in common with and talk about future achievements with absolutely nothing to back it up. But do it 2-3 times and suddenly that future self will feel familiar. Do it some more, take some steps to be that person and suddenly you'll be far more similar to that guy than you could've ever envisioned. At least for myself this process was the most important thing I've ever done in my life. I've gone from a pretty shy, boring, somewhat depressed and risk-averse guy to moving across the country for an awesome job, restarting my entire social life and solo-travelling across the world. And most importantly, I'm happy now, it feels like I'm finally me and not just the product of my upbringing and surroundings.
- klysm 3y ago
  I’m so incredibly far from this level of self actualization that it scares me. I think it’s mostly the ADHD traits that make habit formation difficult: I’m usually stuck fighting for the bottom of my Maslows pyramid
ErigmolCt 3y ago
"...let your desired future self be the thing predicting your current behavior — not your past" - really well said. But it's important to know the person you are now to become the person you wanna be
chrisoconnell 3y ago
See also, Hal Hershfield's "Your Future Self". I recently made a few major changes to my life that I felt were my responsibilities as a founder. Mainly, taking care of my health. I heard Hal's Ted Talk, and decided to give getting into shape another chance. being that it takes a ton of time to begin to see major results, it was always a detriment to putting the time in. "I'm still going to be fat tomorrow." However, if you spend 30 days working towards something that's incredibly difficult, and put in all of the effort possible, and review your progress after those 30 days, you'll realize you're actually making a ton of progress if you can justify the hardships as a necessity for future success. If you're a founder, that might sound familiar, especially if you're a bootstrapped founder. After those first thirty days, I was incredibly proud of the past me for not giving up. I had lost 20lbs. That's amazing. I felt amazing. Future me would be even more proud if I kept going. Almost a year later, I've lost over 100lbs, and am in the best shape of my life. My company is growing, and I'm free of almost all health conditions. The idea of doing something for "Future You" isn't necessarily what worked for me, but instead, becoming the future me and having respect and being proud of the person I was to work hard for the person I would become. But, it's the little things. Like going out drinking, and waking up to a gatorade on your nightstand with a little note you prepared for your hungover self the next day saying "Hey, I'm sorry. Drink this."
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
shermantanktop 3y ago
I’m American with European family. This self-help attitude is close to how I think about myself. But is 180 degrees from the mindset of older relatives who lived through war and hard times. People blog about grit and resilience as a part of the self-help ethos. But in my experience people who have survived real hardship tend to have a much more fatalistic and realpolitik view of life.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  The older I get the more I credit luck (both good and bad) for most of what happens to people
  - shermantanktop 3y ago
    The American sports self-help response is “you make your own luck.” And I do think there’s something to that; “luck” is by definition an event in which the individual lacks agency. But some lucky events have preconditions that the individual can influence. Sometimes it’s merely a matter of rolling the dice as many times as you can. That said, having tanks roll across your country’s border is not going to be influenced by anyone’s can-do attitude.
    - bonestamp2 3y ago
      There is a famous music producer that I follow and he once said something that I think applies to everyone trying to be successful in any industry. He said he knows people who are more talented than he is, but they tried to be successful from their keyboard alone, and he became wildly successful because he hates sitting behind his computer all day. Early in his career he was out at clubs meeting people, which led to volunteering in recording studios, which taught him a solid foundation, which led to getting hired for larger gigs, concerts, and then music festivals, a Las Vegas residency, etc. Like you said, he persistently rolled the dice on as many game boards as he could find and his number eventually came up. Now, another person could have done all of the same things and not been as successful, and those are the two different sides of making your own luck I suppose -- even in making your own luck, there is an element of luck.
Spooky23 3y ago
I can identify with some of this, but my Achilles Heel is looking forward. It’s a superpower in some cases, but often it’s tempting to live in the future at the expense of today. When I lost my wife suddenly to cancer, I lost that ability for awhile… in survival mode, the future isn’t available to you. Only the present. It was a horror, but also an opportunity. I chose to focus on my fitness, my son’s fitness, health, and nurturing relationships that I allowed to back burner as busy people do. My offering is that you should be aspiring and working towards the future, but the prerequisite for tomorrow is today, and you may not have a tomorrow. So make today the best today it can be, now. Tomorrow will wait, as it does.
- lenwood 3y ago
  I'm sorry for your loss.
lenwood 3y ago
I'm usually skeptical of this type of content, but this seems useful. I accidentally did something similar, which has been very instructive. I play guitar as a hobby, and aspire to able to play improvisationally. I've struggled with this and at one point had all but given up. I realized the silliness of giving up because I can't do it now, and wondered is it possible for me to do this in 10 years? And if so, what can I practice today to be a better player next month? This has worked. I'm less than a year into this and I'm already a better player. I'm more disciplined in my practice, I'm enjoying it more-and therefore more motivated to stick with it. When I sit in with a band I feel more prepared and am slowly getting comfortable experimenting. I still have a lot of work to do, and I'm more eager than ever to do it. I've been wondering what other areas of my life would benefit from this attention.
zoogeny 3y ago
I think a lot about frequency. I think about the frequency I clean my house, or the frequency I maintain my yard. There were a lot of jokey TikToks about how frequently men change their bed sheets or how frequently they wash their bathroom towels. Habit seems to be a quick way to say "an activity repeated with some frequency over a long period of time". I think about learning an instrument and how playing X minutes a day is often a recommendation. I think about American Thanksgiving and how it gives a yearly frequency for large family gatherings. It is interesting for me to consider the activities that I do on different frequencies: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. One major change I have considered is to reframe importance away from "how much time do I spend on this" into "how frequently do I do this". Articles about "goal setting" like this one often seem to fall flat for me. I've set all the goals, many times. What I've found many times over is that once I establish the rhythm of life around the activities, I realize that my lived experience doesn't match my expectations. I guess what I'm saying is, goals aren't enough. You have to understand the frequency of activity you are signing up for when you take on the goal. And if you cannot stomach the frequency of the activities that are required to achieve your goals then no amount of planning will help you. Striking that balance, between goals and the frequency of effort towards them, is the real difficult task. I believe that is partly responsible for some spiritual ideas around freeing oneself from desire for particular outcomes. There is some value in focusing solely on the activities you engage in frequently without focusing on your attachment to the outcomes.
- donjigweed 3y ago
  In behavioral psych terms what you've identified would technically be referred to as "rate of responding." Its identification as the primary focus of observation in the clinical setting ( and in fact a variable even worth examining!) might be Skinner's greatest contribution to the field.
- polishdude20 3y ago
  This connects with the fact that we don't have infinite time in a day, month, year to do things. We must sacrifice 99% of all possible activities all the time. Most of our daily activities are also non-unique and don't feel grand. Eating, sleeping, relaxing, cleaning, meeting with friends. These are all things we all need to do and are less of the goal and more of a basis for a solid foundation to achieve other goals. I often wonder how successful people manage their foundational activities. And by successful, I don't mean popularly successful. But people really content with their lives and happy.
aheyaue 3y ago
I got excited about an async rust article, borrow checking `Future<Self>` or something...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bennettnate5 3y ago
"Take ownership of Future Self" sounds like something I would look up on Stack Overflow while working with async Rust code...

210 points by makerdiety 3y ago

mdrzn 3y ago

An extension on "dress for the job you want, not the job you have"?

Beijinger 3y ago
Is this true? When I was a desperate graduate I came with a suit, tie and gel in my hair to companies. Today I would not bother to wear a suite or something. When people are surpised by this I explain them, that I always expect the other party to need me as much as I need them. And wearing a suit would just make me look like I don't bring enough to the table. Do you really think Bill Gates could not come to a meeting in underwear and people would still take him completly serious? Unfortunately I am not BG.
- mdrzn 3y ago
  It's an interesting point. The concept of "dressing for the job you want" might have evolved. With more accessible fashion and changing workplace norms, dressing sharply doesn't necessarily equate to competence or value like it might have in the past. Authenticity and skills often weigh more than appearance in many sectors.
- toast0 3y ago
  Dress for the job you want, not the one you have, is not about interviewing really, but about what you do when you have a job. It's not only about what you wear either. It's that if you want to be promoted, start doing some of the things that would be your job duties if you had the promotion. Doesn't work in all situations, but when you can say 'of course I can do the job, I've already been doing it', it can make the process easier, sometimes. Also, I'll echo the sibling point that dress standards have changed a lot over time, at least where I have worked. In an interview situation it's best not to come over dressed or under dressed, but it takes experience to know the right things to ask to know. Used to be a suit was right for every interview, but it's way overdressed at a shorts and sandals style company.

chrisweekly 3y ago

See also Dr Ben Hardy's "Be Your Future Self"

begueradj 3y ago

> Your personality, skills, likes, and dislikes change over time Not true about personality: if you experienced a serious trauma at a young age, most likely you will remain traumatized forever. If you were a manipulative child, most likely you will remain the same at adulthood: the only change you will see in yourself is that now you are a malignant narcissist with a job attracting people like you. Not only the core of your personality remains the same, but you also can easily notice that most of your behaviors and feelings are those of your parents. And you will transmit many of your personality traits to your kids. This article ignores fundamentals of biology, inheritance and determinism (Robert Sapolsky)

bearika 3y ago
I came here, also, to comment on complex trauma. However, I have a different take. Formerly traumatized children, even those with treatment-resistant personality disorders, can improve how they work with their system through therapy. Experiential therapies like IFS are proving to be groundbreaking modalities with great outcomes. They also reframe the goal: the goal is not to heal, but to understand, work with, and create space between the self and the system that creates automatic responses to the world at large. In doing so, one expands their window of tolerance over time. I actually found this article to be very inline with trauma healing and my own personal experience of healing complex-PTSD.
thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
>> if you experienced a serious trauma at a young age, most likely you will remain traumatized forever. This is exactly what the article is arguing against--letting one's past block the present mind from reaching toward the goals of the future self: "Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished." A person traumatized at a young age can overcome it. In fact, therapy and healing demand introspection and decision: "Am I going to let this trauma define me?" The dialectic view of oneself is to accept that the past event happened while choosing to overcome it in all ways that are possible. "Taking ownership of your future self" is an excellent description of the idea and how it can empower people to make better choices and move forward toward their goals and who they want to be.
3y ago

satisfice 3y ago

My past self doesn’t own me. My past self is gone. My future self is a thing that doesn’t exist. My present self is all the matters. My story about my identity is intended to freeze it where it is. That’s not a bug. That’s called staying alive.

FergusArgyll 3y ago
העבר אין העתיד עדיין ההווה כהרף עין דאגה מנין Not worth translating unfortunately, it would lose its charm EDIT: Sorry all! I'll do my best. The past is no longer, the Future is not yet. The present is like a blink of an eye, So, where does worry come from? But it rhymes and has a great whimsical feel which is very much lost in translation
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  "Ndiyo, naweza kufanya tafsiri kwa Kiswahili. Tafadhali niambie sentensi au neno unalotaka kutafsiri, na nitakusaidia." I'd translate, but it isn't worth it.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  if you do not translate it, then this bit of wisdom turns into a taunt for those not a Member of The Tribe I invite you to speak to all readers here
- flextheruler 3y ago
  01010000 01110010 01100101 01110100 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101001 01101111 01110101 01110011 Not worth translating, it would lose its je ne sais quoi so to speak
  - FergusArgyll 3y ago
    00111010 00101001
greggsy 3y ago
These techniques and mantras for grounding yourself in the present are useful for panic attacks and anxiety, but being honest about your past and future direction are more powerful.

doctorhandshake 3y ago

I’ve been practicing a version of this for years. I describe it as being on the lookout for stories you tell yourself about yourself - things like ‘I can’t draw’ and ‘kids don’t like me’ and ‘I’m bad with money.’ As this article points out, phrasing those statements in the present tense, as though they were immutable absolutes that must persist into the future, is a static mindset. It takes only a small shift - ‘up to now I haven’t been able to draw but I’m going to learn’ - to re-frame your idea of yourself as dynamic and malleable. This opens the door to actively shaping your future self, and it’s hard to overstate how different that is from a static perspective.

3abiton 3y ago

It's a really interesting article that skipped my reading list! Any other good recommendations from HBR?

famahar 3y ago
I liked their article about how to be a good listener. Breaks down listening into different levels. I think just reading it makes you become more conscious of giving the space for others to be heard. The people I enjoy being around the most are incredible listeners which makes conversations become an enjoyable experience and building friendships easier. https://hbr.org/2016/07/what-great-listeners-actually-do https://hbr.org/2016/07/what-great-listeners-actually-do
elteto 3y ago
They also publish books: https://a.co/d/dY4a2Ta https://a.co/d/dY4a2Ta This link is for an older boxed set, but you can buy them individually from Amazon too.

dcpit 3y ago

OK, nothing to do with Rust ;-)

spot5010 3y ago
I chuckled. Thank you, just what I needed to start the week :)
faitswulff 3y ago
What, this isn’t about async &mut self?

HenryBemis 3y ago

(not affiliated in any way) Something similarly useful is the https://www.selfauthoring.com/ https://www.selfauthoring.com/ I remember listening to Jordan Peterson a couple years ago and he was promoting it. I haven't used it, as I have my journaling all set up and helping me, but that seems to be similar to what the article speaks (except from the "tell people..." towards the end).

hammock 3y ago

Truly if we are to make our only concerns those which we can control, past AND current self are useless to own except as they impact, and we are constantly told past returns are not indicative of future performance, your future self, which is the only self that we can have active influence over

Extasia785 3y ago

I've started doing something similar around a year ago, after noticing that I reached basically all goals I set out for myself after school. I was at a point where I felt like I stopped growing as a person and found myself unhappy with my life, yet was seemingly stuck. What I did was to have a very strong introspection over a few weeks. I thought about each important aspect of my life - social life, family, career, hobbies, health, even my daily structure - and formulated a very specific target for each area. Basically a well thought out fantasy character. This was hard work, it took many nights of thinking and it's honestly a process that never stops, even nowadays I still update that document from time to time. Once I had a list I was reasonably happy with, I started thinking of the type of person that would reach that goals and what kind of habits they had. And then I started implementing them. The most important part here is a habit of doing stuff. I can not stress enough how important that is, everything else pales in comparison. I recommend reading Atomic Habits and personally follow the "Getting Things Done" system. But once you have written down everything you need to do and actually do it, you have a superpower and the ability to transform every part of your life in a few months. I found that most "hard" things in life are actually quite easy to do, it's just that doing stuff consistently is extremely hard. I agree with the author, simply telling people about your future self also helps massively. The first time it will feel extremely weird, like talking about a fantasy character. You will talk about some guy you seemingly have nothing in common with and talk about future achievements with absolutely nothing to back it up. But do it 2-3 times and suddenly that future self will feel familiar. Do it some more, take some steps to be that person and suddenly you'll be far more similar to that guy than you could've ever envisioned. At least for myself this process was the most important thing I've ever done in my life. I've gone from a pretty shy, boring, somewhat depressed and risk-averse guy to moving across the country for an awesome job, restarting my entire social life and solo-travelling across the world. And most importantly, I'm happy now, it feels like I'm finally me and not just the product of my upbringing and surroundings.

klysm 3y ago
I’m so incredibly far from this level of self actualization that it scares me. I think it’s mostly the ADHD traits that make habit formation difficult: I’m usually stuck fighting for the bottom of my Maslows pyramid

ErigmolCt 3y ago

"...let your desired future self be the thing predicting your current behavior — not your past" - really well said. But it's important to know the person you are now to become the person you wanna be

chrisoconnell 3y ago

See also, Hal Hershfield's "Your Future Self". I recently made a few major changes to my life that I felt were my responsibilities as a founder. Mainly, taking care of my health. I heard Hal's Ted Talk, and decided to give getting into shape another chance. being that it takes a ton of time to begin to see major results, it was always a detriment to putting the time in. "I'm still going to be fat tomorrow." However, if you spend 30 days working towards something that's incredibly difficult, and put in all of the effort possible, and review your progress after those 30 days, you'll realize you're actually making a ton of progress if you can justify the hardships as a necessity for future success. If you're a founder, that might sound familiar, especially if you're a bootstrapped founder. After those first thirty days, I was incredibly proud of the past me for not giving up. I had lost 20lbs. That's amazing. I felt amazing. Future me would be even more proud if I kept going. Almost a year later, I've lost over 100lbs, and am in the best shape of my life. My company is growing, and I'm free of almost all health conditions. The idea of doing something for "Future You" isn't necessarily what worked for me, but instead, becoming the future me and having respect and being proud of the person I was to work hard for the person I would become. But, it's the little things. Like going out drinking, and waking up to a gatorade on your nightstand with a little note you prepared for your hungover self the next day saying "Hey, I'm sorry. Drink this."

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

shermantanktop 3y ago

I’m American with European family. This self-help attitude is close to how I think about myself. But is 180 degrees from the mindset of older relatives who lived through war and hard times. People blog about grit and resilience as a part of the self-help ethos. But in my experience people who have survived real hardship tend to have a much more fatalistic and realpolitik view of life.

marcus_holmes 3y ago
The older I get the more I credit luck (both good and bad) for most of what happens to people
- shermantanktop 3y ago
  The American sports self-help response is “you make your own luck.” And I do think there’s something to that; “luck” is by definition an event in which the individual lacks agency. But some lucky events have preconditions that the individual can influence. Sometimes it’s merely a matter of rolling the dice as many times as you can. That said, having tanks roll across your country’s border is not going to be influenced by anyone’s can-do attitude.
  - bonestamp2 3y ago
    There is a famous music producer that I follow and he once said something that I think applies to everyone trying to be successful in any industry. He said he knows people who are more talented than he is, but they tried to be successful from their keyboard alone, and he became wildly successful because he hates sitting behind his computer all day. Early in his career he was out at clubs meeting people, which led to volunteering in recording studios, which taught him a solid foundation, which led to getting hired for larger gigs, concerts, and then music festivals, a Las Vegas residency, etc. Like you said, he persistently rolled the dice on as many game boards as he could find and his number eventually came up. Now, another person could have done all of the same things and not been as successful, and those are the two different sides of making your own luck I suppose -- even in making your own luck, there is an element of luck.

Spooky23 3y ago

I can identify with some of this, but my Achilles Heel is looking forward. It’s a superpower in some cases, but often it’s tempting to live in the future at the expense of today. When I lost my wife suddenly to cancer, I lost that ability for awhile… in survival mode, the future isn’t available to you. Only the present. It was a horror, but also an opportunity. I chose to focus on my fitness, my son’s fitness, health, and nurturing relationships that I allowed to back burner as busy people do. My offering is that you should be aspiring and working towards the future, but the prerequisite for tomorrow is today, and you may not have a tomorrow. So make today the best today it can be, now. Tomorrow will wait, as it does.

lenwood 3y ago
I'm sorry for your loss.

lenwood 3y ago

I'm usually skeptical of this type of content, but this seems useful. I accidentally did something similar, which has been very instructive. I play guitar as a hobby, and aspire to able to play improvisationally. I've struggled with this and at one point had all but given up. I realized the silliness of giving up because I can't do it now, and wondered is it possible for me to do this in 10 years? And if so, what can I practice today to be a better player next month? This has worked. I'm less than a year into this and I'm already a better player. I'm more disciplined in my practice, I'm enjoying it more-and therefore more motivated to stick with it. When I sit in with a band I feel more prepared and am slowly getting comfortable experimenting. I still have a lot of work to do, and I'm more eager than ever to do it. I've been wondering what other areas of my life would benefit from this attention.

zoogeny 3y ago

I think a lot about frequency. I think about the frequency I clean my house, or the frequency I maintain my yard. There were a lot of jokey TikToks about how frequently men change their bed sheets or how frequently they wash their bathroom towels. Habit seems to be a quick way to say "an activity repeated with some frequency over a long period of time". I think about learning an instrument and how playing X minutes a day is often a recommendation. I think about American Thanksgiving and how it gives a yearly frequency for large family gatherings. It is interesting for me to consider the activities that I do on different frequencies: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. One major change I have considered is to reframe importance away from "how much time do I spend on this" into "how frequently do I do this". Articles about "goal setting" like this one often seem to fall flat for me. I've set all the goals, many times. What I've found many times over is that once I establish the rhythm of life around the activities, I realize that my lived experience doesn't match my expectations. I guess what I'm saying is, goals aren't enough. You have to understand the frequency of activity you are signing up for when you take on the goal. And if you cannot stomach the frequency of the activities that are required to achieve your goals then no amount of planning will help you. Striking that balance, between goals and the frequency of effort towards them, is the real difficult task. I believe that is partly responsible for some spiritual ideas around freeing oneself from desire for particular outcomes. There is some value in focusing solely on the activities you engage in frequently without focusing on your attachment to the outcomes.

donjigweed 3y ago
In behavioral psych terms what you've identified would technically be referred to as "rate of responding." Its identification as the primary focus of observation in the clinical setting ( and in fact a variable even worth examining!) might be Skinner's greatest contribution to the field.
polishdude20 3y ago
This connects with the fact that we don't have infinite time in a day, month, year to do things. We must sacrifice 99% of all possible activities all the time. Most of our daily activities are also non-unique and don't feel grand. Eating, sleeping, relaxing, cleaning, meeting with friends. These are all things we all need to do and are less of the goal and more of a basis for a solid foundation to achieve other goals. I often wonder how successful people manage their foundational activities. And by successful, I don't mean popularly successful. But people really content with their lives and happy.

aheyaue 3y ago

I got excited about an async rust article, borrow checking `Future<Self>` or something...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bennettnate5 3y ago

"Take ownership of Future Self" sounds like something I would look up on Stack Overflow while working with async Rust code...