Focus on your own shit (2016)
justinjackson.ca
justinjackson.ca
What are some techniques that folks use to convince themselves to only worry about their shit and not dwell on shit from other people?
At the end of the day, that's what you need to do though. The sooner you accept that, the easier it will be to change. It's about self discipline. Everyone is looking for some easy way, but it's not easy. It's doing what you know you should be doing every second of every minute of every day. Will you slip up sometimes? Absolutely, but don't let it derail you.
Check out Jocko Willink's podcast sometime (or the Youtube excerpts or his Instagram). His no BS approach is what finally made me realize that there are no techniques, just self discipline. When asked how to get up early, the response is set an alarm and get up.
Jocko has a Youtube channel with clips about discipline which I think are good, but they are soundbites so miss nuance. For example, many people get hung up on getting up at 4:30am, but they miss the point. Getting up early is about getting a discipline win the first thing in the day. For me, I get up between 5-6am and go right to the gym. This means I'm in bed no later 10pm, which in turn means no more wasting time doing stuff like reading FB or Twitter or other nonsense. The other benefit of this, is who the hell gets up at 5am to read Twitter? I hope no one. If I'm up, it's time to be productive.
If you're still into learning more after that, and like history at all, I would start at his podcast #1. He reviews historical military non-fiction books, relates them to leadership and discipline, and finally wraps up with Q&A. I love history and at this point in my career need to be the best leader I can be, so they are super interesting for me. It's funny (scary?) now anytime I want to be slack on something I hear Jocko's voice in my head saying 'no fucking slack'.
I started today actually waking up at 6 AM to spend 40 minutes working out at my homegym, and another ~40-50 minutes taking online course work or working on personal projects. Then I go to work. After work (6 PM), I usually go to meetups / take a breather for at least 1 hour, and then do personal project work starting around 8 to 9PM. Bedtime to me starts at 10 PM now, worst case at 11 PM.
Sundays I sleep in though, b/c Saturdays are less predictable, and sometimes I need a hard reset day. When I get really tired and fatigued and don't want to workout, I just do a 1-2 mile jog/run and that resets my cycle
It really is all about winning the first battle of the day. I didn't feel like getting up this morning, but I forced myself too, and didn't hit the snooze button at all.
Mentally you can only handle 2-3 spurts of high productivity in one day. When you workout in the morning, you get a physical high and also a mental high starting the day. It slows down, picks back up again possible mid-day, and again at night to me at least.
I tell people that while it sounds silly, winning that first battle each day is a big thing. Get up, win. Gym, win. Now skipping that donut or working on something I would normally procrastinate on is easy.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17695868
Homegym is pretty convenient, what's nice is I can knock out an entire workout in 40 minutes (from warmup to cleanup, and my morning breakfast - workout shake) while watching 20 minutes of youtube / TV / anime etc at the same time. This is how I psychologically reward myself when I workout.
I wake up and go straight to 5-10 minute warmup w/ 3 lightsets and a light jog. I usually workout wearing nothing but my boxers then shower after. But I usually wear shoes and gloves to make it official though, b/c I need the extra gripping. I mentally associate an adrenaline rush when wearing certain gear, so this normalizes progress made.
Its pretty convenient not having to dress up when I workout. Also its convenient not having to worry about working out at night, b/c I usually do it pretty late. You have to do it at least 1 hour before you sleep. Today I did pullups / biceps / upperback.
Great to see another person working hard to stay on the path.
You can ask for a million different variations of advice but you won't get anywhere until you take action. And only you can do that for yourself.
EDIT: for the replies, I don't mean that advice is useless. Guidance is important, but even the best plan doesn't matter if you don't actually do something.
'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'
Aside from the continuing vacuity, and the rather oxymoronic nature of "Advice doesn't help"-advice, I'm pretty sure that idea is just wrong?
Advice is a rather fundamental mechanism of humanity's success. Not just as in "ask a lawyer/doctor", but as something so common we don't even notice. It allows to tap into a vast repertoire of wisdom, and brings the benefit of fresh sets of eyes, with often minimal costs and efforts for either party.
I also fear this you-can-do-it attitude is slightly too close to Prosperity Gospel for comfort: Telling people they just have to be more disciplined is bound to fail more often than not, and leaves them with the complete burden of guilt. There's a point of diminishing returns for emotional pain as a motivator.
That not only ignores the rather substantial influence of luck, other people's action, and other factors beyond one's control. It also discounts all other personal factors possibly contributing to someone's misfortune. Maybe they just aren't cut out for professional sports/pulitzer price journalism/whatever... Or they have chosen some endeavour that just isn't a good fit for their personality (in terms of social v analytical, outside / inside, action / concentration,...). In such cases, powering through is rather ill-advised unless your stock options are close to vesting.
You are competing for a woman’s affection, and it is an uphill battle and there are other potentially better qualified suitors but if you could just do one thing to put her over the edge and squarely in your camp, you just might be able to seal the deal. This wouldn’t be the worst time to get some pretty decent advice from a good mate.
You want to lose weight. You want to put on muscle. You want to teach yourself to draw. At this point you don’t need advice. All the information you could possibly need is not only out there, but very easy to find. What you need is to take action, and do the thing you claim you want to do. You’ll find that in most respects, you are already eminently qualified to figure out which actions you need to take and in what order. There has never been a better time to be alive than now for finding out the very basics in a readable format for whatever it is you want to accomplish.
Some things really are as simple as do or don’t do. That’s not to say everything is, but most things in life are just not very complex once the matter of first principles are essentially solved.
As for the rest of your comment, I'm not really sure what you're arguing. Life isn't fair, but 90% of success is just showing up. Most people don't.
It doesn't solve anything directly, but it gives you the means of directing your thoughts in a way that will help you solve things.
1. Just removing the sources of unhappiness can go far. Block all the websites that make you feel bad. Unfollow people that stress you out. Uninstall apps from your phone. Or go even further, and turn off internet entirely.
2. Mindfulness meditation can help catch these negative thought patterns and redirect them.
I honestly couldn't care less and consumerism is deeply offensive to me. I often think I belong in a different time, when commercialism and consumerism wasn't such a thing. There was a time not so long ago that people took pride in saving, repairing and making do.
That's a myth. Just like pretty much all of the "in the past, it was so much better because people X" constructions.
Some people feel that way now. Some people have always felt that way. But many people have always felt a pressure to compete with those around them, in whatever ways were available and socially acceptable at the time.
It's possible that if you go all the way back to before urbanisation, the people in a small farming or hunter-gatherer community would feel less of that pressure because there was simply less to compete about, and more mutual support....but I suspect that even then, people would have competed in their own ways.
In terms of the specific "there was a time" you mention...OK, yeah, there kinda was. It was the Great Depression. People "took pride" in saving, repairing, and making do because there was literally no other choice besides doing without.
Despite the various problems we suffer today, I don't think that's a good model for our society.
I get my groceries delivered and basically don't go to shops unless I have a specific thing I need. That's not a burden for me because I hate shopping anyway.
Also I don't care about what the Joneses have.
To be free is to understand the root cause and tackle that. To truly understand why seeing pics of your buddy's hawaiian family vaction makes you feel bad.
It has also made it easier for me to ask for help about problems and be receptive to advice and feedback from my mentors- all the times when I was on the other side, helps me see the other side. So I guess maybe that's why people advise to always be teaching someone else while also being taught yourself.
Last, patience. I know I'll get there eventually. Marathon not a sprint.
Rinse and repeat.
If you want to make $500 this week, it isn't relevant if Joe Bob McMillionaire did that in five minutes on Monday morning. It is relevant that it's noon on Friday, you want to call it quits by 5pm and you are only at $400. Can you make another $100 in just 5 hours, or does it look like you need to choose between hitting $500 and quitting at 5pm? What can you learn from this week's failures and successes to make it more likely that you hit $500 next week and also get to go home on time?
so you could do something like block all news websites except on weekends or something
Example: you can prepare all you want for a job interview or a date, dress appropriately, rehearse all you need, this is all something you control. But ultimately you have no control over their final decision, so you shouldn't let it negatively affect you and be mad/sad/puzzled. Reach for rationality, understand why you failed and improve on this for the next time
For me it is Stoicism such as reading Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus.
One thing that I'd like to think helps me is being genuinely happy for others' success.
This is the easiest to do for your close friends and family, but as you get to fringe friends, acquaintances, and former colleagues, the seeds of jealousy start to sprout.
IMO anyway, being genuinely happy for others’ successes is totally orthogonal to the topic of this thread. Being mean-spirited about others’ successes would possibly be some other, different type of stressor for a different type of discussion.
Then you listen to their podcast or read something they wrote, but after you approach them 1 on 1 you quickly find out they don't even follow their own advice and you suddenly begin to get angry because these people are successful from lying to people but they put on a good show in public, and there's nothing you can do about it.
When really, all you have to do is unfollow them and concentrate on your own stuff because you'll improve your situation by focusing on things you can control.
It's sort of like Nike's phrase "just do it". There's so many ways you can apply this to life, and it's a text book example of "no duh" advice, but sometimes you need a reminder from something outside your brain that it really is that easy to snap out of it and do whatever you're trying to do.
"Focus on how you're helping people." - ?
How come is 'helping people' ultimate goal? "Focus on what you are doing." looks as better advice?
Getting better in what I do (whatever that is) first (so focusing on what I do), then helping as a side effect, that's possible.
Ignoring competition does not make it go away. Being a competitive person is good, and it gives you an advantage. The top of most any field is comprised of very competitive people.
I do not agree with this very generic advice. You shouldn't back down the second you feel any pressure / stress, this is not the behavior of a competitive person. If you are getting irrationally jealous or saddened to an unhealthy degree, you should learn to deal with this. If you are unable to, you should reconsider whatever field you're in.
It seems common for people to move goalposts when talking about this, as if being competitive and not ignoring competition detracts from your ability to improve your own project, or to be able to think independently of what competitors are doing.
Being competitive is good, if it helps you succeed. The degree to which you can be successful if you just "focus on your own shit" vs. paying close attention to what your competitors are doing is going to depend on what you are doing. If you play football professionally, you absolutely need to pay attention to what the competition is doing to succeed. If you write code for a living, you are going to be way more successful paying attention to your own shit than spending time paying attention to what everyone else is doing. It is just stupid to say that being competitive is the only way to get to the top of your field. Being the best at what you do will get you to the top of your field, by definition. The drive to get you there can come from wanting to be better than everyone else, or it can come from somewhere else.
1. Concentrate on your users, audience, customers, fans. Figure out what they want. Develop a deep connection with them.
2. Improve your skill, expertise, competence, product. How can you get better? How can you make your product better for the people who use it?"
There is also a responsibility for well-informed people to encourage and join initiatives that are 'good' and interesting. This is the way ethical and useful initiatives can be promoted and can 'win' in the marketplace of ideas.
It does. Without some envy where is the drive to improve?
https://stepsandleaps.wordpress.com/2017/10/17/feynmans-brea...
I think we've located the problem.
The goal is not to ignore the competition but get better at controlling how you react to it.
“Published on February 29th, 2016”