Comment by victorronin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by victorronin | Hacker News Reader

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This is a fascinating subject. It looks like many people are commenting about alternative realities and that exploring them is a fool's game (BTW. I concur with that).

The thing which bothers me is upbeat comments about living here and now and planting the seeds for future changes. It feels like current problems (and desire to wish them away via woulda/counda/shoulda) didn't happen entirely randomly. These problems are a result of systematic behavior/decision making.

As an example, it's too easy to say to yourself, "I will start doing sport tomorrow". However, you wake up tomorrow and notice that your day is so busy that you don't have time to do sport until 9pm and by that time you are exhausted and can't do sport. And you repeat the cycle saying, "maybe tomorrow". You start teasing your day apart and find that to squeeze in sport won't require you just to add it, but also to kick something out. And that all the things you have the energy for in the day, you implicitly regarded as more important than sport. And as a result, you are stuck in the loop wishing to do something better but being limited by your other priorities.

And frankly, this bothers me way more. The immutability of the past is normal. Being so set in your ways that you can't change the future - this is what scares the shit out of me.

If everything is a priority, nothing is.

For me it's been helpful to understand who benefits from my actions in that particular moment, and then prioritized the ones where I benefit too.

In personal finance context they say to pay yourself first. I think this also applies when e.g. prioritizing health. And when paying yourself first, this also means doing things when most energy is available and leaving other things for when you're tired.

>If everything is a priority, nothing is.

Other things could be a _higher_ priority than a new thing. Just to give you an example (for huge amount of people priority to earn money to be able to have food on the table trumps almost everything else).

I answered below. I chose sport activity, because it's so simple and clearly benefits everybody and still only 30% of adults do it.

If you go to more complex things and on the opposite side of scales put a lot of complex and tangled priorities, it becomes very unclear what benefits most and how to pay yourself first.

Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops. - H. L. Mencken

You're almost there. You're on the cusp. If you're really drawn to something you'll sacrifice everything before 9pm to make that thing happen. It might not work, it might not be a good idea from other perspectives, but if your desire drives you to what you think the world needs, you'll make time anyway possible.

Well.. I chose the simplest possible example. It has obvious benefits, and the only thing you have to figure out is to sacrifice some unknown other activity.

I wonder why "Less than 5% of adults participate in 30 minutes of physical activity each day; only one in three adults receive the recommended amount of physical activity each week." (https://www.hhs.gov/fitness/resource-center/facts-and-statis....) happens?

The answer is that there are so many other things that can stand between "desire drives you" and reality. Just to give you several examples: financial needs, physical or mental health issues, other priorities (kids, family, friendship, etc).

BTW. I am not saying that change is impossible. However, I am not buying "You're on the cusp". Over time you accumulate priorities, which you got by sacrificing a lot 5-10-15-20 years ago. These priorities are dear to your hard. Sacrificing (or even chipping away) from them is way harder than when you are a blank slate.

There are tools like Habinator to change your long term behavior. You just need to know what you want, which is the tricky part.

https://habinator.com

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