No More “Insight Porn”
jakobgreenfeld.com
jakobgreenfeld.com
My advice: get lucky.
My insight porn version: 10 easy steps I used to get $500K ARR and how you can do it too
....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.
That's some good insight porn right there!
...and yet, all poor people know it by heart (unless they were born into a rich family that has just fallen from grace), , because it's totally true.
For more good insight: wealthy families know a lot more about how to make money when you have some money. Poor families know a lot more about avoiding the risk of being totally broke from an unlucky event, because they know they'd be totally unable to recover from it (not having the safety net of education and wealthy contacts that the upper-middle class have even when they go broke).
You might start with little wealth and accumulate education on your journey. Therefore in the early years when you lose wealth it's difficult to accumulate more, but over time it can become easier as you are more educated and experienced.
Having little wealth when young also allows you to live on very little - when combined with an education you can use this very nicely to say bootstrap a product.
Which means that those who begin with more of it will have a head-start which grows exponentially, leaving behind those which start with none of it.
While this is true, it also isn’t helpful. Play the cards you have, not the cards you wish you had.
You always gotta start somewhere. Might as well start with what you’ve got and go from there.
Also, a lot of people seem to far overestimate the work and risk involved. This doesn't help really poor people, obviously, but the amount of people with sufficient money, backing and time that complained they'd start a company if they "only also had $20 million backing from their parents" is staggering.
Because one line of thought leads to: "I couldn't do anything, the game was rigged from the start" and the other leads to "I didn't do as much as I could have done."
My favorite realization from actually playing cards. We used to play a lot of rummy on vacations as a family. Like a lot.
I kept losing. Hard. Absolutely destroyed. If only I could get this one card to complete my hand, I’d win every time. But it just wouldn’t come! I had terrible luck. Someone else always ended up winning before I got the one card I needed to make the high score and beat everyone else into submission. It was infuriating.
After a while I changed tactics. No waiting. Make a play on every play. Something, anything, with whatever cards you’ve got. Find a way to make the card you just picked up work.
Suddenly I was winning almost every game. Everyone complained how much it sucks to play cards with me. How does this kid always get exactly the perfect card!?
Now I’m banned from playing cards with family. Last time I played rummy was with my girlfriend’s family over Christmas a few years ago. They banned me immediately. Cards never come up again in conversation lol.
It really isn’t about the cards. They’re just the ingredient.
Anyone can win with a perfect hand; the skill comes in dealing with the imperfect hands. True in life, too.
Bridge is nice that you can compensate for skill somewhat by handicapping, and the less-skilled players can still get a great hand and win sometimes. I always say "bridge is a fun game to lose" - and that's a really important part of a game you want to play.
Which is why abstract and complicated bidding systems dominate the game, which gives it that lovely, steep initial learning curve.
To make rummy a good metaphor for this discussion, you need to modify the normal $1/point rummy gambling rules; say making gin gives you $1000 bonus from the house or something. (There's a resemblance to quiddich here, I think.) Anyway, now you have the two extreme strategies: knock if you can, which gets you a few dollars each time, or try exclusively for gin, which usually costs you money on each hand but sometimes pays off. If you're skint, the gin strategy won't work since you can't stay in the game long enough. If you're flush, the knock strategy is uninteresting because a few dollars doesn't make a difference.
Now make that bonus $10,000,000,000 and you're making some unicorns, Harry!
There is still quite some mobility, but it effectively makes for different optimal tactics within the same game as your unfair start position determines whether it's best to risk things or not, what score is achievable depending on your position, etc and IMHO it has quite some parallels with real life decision making.
The game is rigged. But that merely makes it less likely that someone who's on the wrong side can succeed, not impossible. You do have to do as much as you can, with what you're given, regardless of what it is.
The real key, though, is that this tells us what we, as a society, need to change. If we genuinely value entrepreneurship and innovation, we need to create a universal safety net that lets people take risks, try things, and fail, again and again, without ending up destitute, because we know that is what leads to eventually creating a successful business.
People need a way to limit downsides, not have zero downside.
It’s like giving a student a service chance at a test to help ensure they learn the material. But giving them unlimited attempts with no risk doesn’t create the same environment.
Having something like universal basic income absolutely does not reduce the risk to zero. What it does is it reduces the penalty for failure—failure which is often largely out of your hands. Rather than such failures meaning you lose your life savings, have no job, and are months/weeks/days from homelessness, they would mean you are making only the minimum needed to sustain housing, food, and clothing. For most people, particularly those of the type to try starting their own business, that still won't be enough to be happy.
The threat of death by exposure and starvation should not be what drives us to do better. We, as a society, should have moved past that already.
They don't prevent you losing those things if you invested your life savings in the company, and you mortgaged your home to invest more. Which are both things that people trying to get companies off the ground do, especially if they don't otherwise have the means to do so.
If you're considering the primary purpose of a UBI as being encouraging entrepreneurship, then sure, they're not that efficient. I do not consider that to be its primary purpose, nor have I yet spoken to anyone who does. It is one of many, many benefits to a UBI that should be considered.
I'd bet my life on this - if every homeless person was given a place to live, recovery from addiction (if needed), mental health counceling, education and a job, a significant percentage of them would become productive members of society.
The average homeless experience lasts about 2 years. So yes, you are right.
We should all have this basic understanding of how our society works, and how our plutocrats got to be in the position they are in. We’re fed myths that they all started from the bottom and worked hard enough and smart enough to get where they are, and you can do it too! And if you can’t, you’re just not as smart or hard working as they are. These myths serve the people in power by preserving the status quo. I believe it is helpful to remind people that we should change the status quo instead of adopting a “grindset” to get yours within it.
i know this may be rhetoric but i’ve never heard someone say that. a lot of folks in power say “I got lucky but also worked hard”
it’s counter productive to claim the elite is this super disconnected group of people. because they are not and it weakens the case for reform.
let’s be honest many successful people work hard, yet most unsuccessful people don’t.
there’s a number of lazy successful people
there’s also a bunch unsuccessful hard working people
nuance is better than hyperbole
I don't know. It seems like you are dehumanizing rich kids which I don't really think it's a great idea. Sure, entitlement is a thing but it's not like rich kids don't have their own struggles
The key point is that the number of unsuccessful hard working people is humongously larger than successful hard working people, so working hard does not really correlate with having success, no matter what the survivor bias tell them.
“so you’re saying there’s a chance!?”
is good enough for me, plus when i work hard i feel better even when it doesn’t pay off.
The question now is how much violence will be involved in the next reboot of said elites. That it is coming has been obvious for almost a decade now.
I'm reluctant to talk about this case specifically because it is so... fraught. People get mad, in both directions.
But in theory, there is no reason identifying the challenges in your starting situation that others might not have wouldn't be helpful. Isn't all information helpful?
Giving up before you even start just because it’s harder for you than someone else, that part doesn’t help.
The thing here can be anything. Losing weight, running a marathon, starting a business, climbing out of poverty into the middle class. You can’t get there unless you start.
Doesn't help with what? In general, when you have your choice of direction, choosing a direction that plays to your strength instead of a direction where you are starting out handicapped compared to competitors can certainly help with your chance of success.
If we ignore the specifics about it being about the background you were born into, I think we'd all agree taht there are some people who exist who because of personal charecteristics or even personality are ill-suited to be startup founders, and have a poor chance of success, and maybe shoudln't do it, right?
It's just when we don't ignore that we are talking about social position specifically, in America we want to believe this can't be true because of your social position, we want to believe everyone has an equal chance regardless of social position. This is an ideology though, not based on observation. An ideology that says you have to pretend it doens't matter, not even identify the challenges to overcome.
So if you know you're going to have a harder time being successful than others, and that of course most startups fail anyway, and maybe you want to try it anyway after evaluating the risk and what will happen to you if you fail, but maybe you say actually, no, I don't want to do the thing that is already very risky and I have an additional handicap for... maybe instead of being a founder I'm going to look for someone else's startup to join, or maybe I'm going to try to work at a FAANG instead -- when you say it "doesn't help", what do you mean -- it doesn't help who do what? And who would it help to do what if you were to insist upon doing it even though it will be harder for you than someone else?
You mention adjusting tactics and strategies, even goals, based on circumstances. This is what “playing the cards you have” is. You do what you can with what you’ve got.
Giving up before you start doesn’t help because it’s a shut down. You don’t even get to the part of assessing viability and weighing risk.
The point is that if you want a change on whatever dimension you choose to care about, you have to do something. What that something is depends on the cards you have. How far it can take you again depends on circumstances.
And it’s fine to not want to do things. Or see the costs and decide that kind of life is not for you. But at least you took the time to evaluate.
Now you're adding "before you start", who said that until you did? Ok, what if instead you've gotten to the part of assessing viability and weighing risk and then decided not to go down that path, of, say, founding a startup.
> What that something is depends on the cards you have. How far it can take you again depends on circumstances.
Right, perhaps depending on circumstances that something is not founding a startup.
I don't totally understand what we're disagreeing about. Or what you mean when you say "it doesn't help" -- help who do what?
I would say deciding your circumstances make it harder for you than others to found a startup, thus it would make more sense to join someone else's startup or look for a job at a FAANG or something instead -- could at least conceivably "help". Help you find a path that works better for you to find success. I'm not sure what you mean by your repetition that it "doesn't help", as, like, a logical a priori.
That was already in the comment your own (G)GP[1] was a reply to, so they're certainly not adding it "now."
> I don't totally understand what we're disagreeing about. Or what you mean when you say "it doesn't help" -- help who do what?
As I was going to reply to your (G)GP[1]: Help anyone with whatever it was they didn't even start on doing. Be it running a marathon or starting a company or... What does it matter? Isn't it obvious that if you never start training for a marathon, that won't help you run one? And that the same goes for starting a company -- if you never even start starting a company, then you'll never get to the point of having started a company? And the same for anything you might want to do?
What I don't understand is how anyone can honestly claim not to understand that.
___
[1]: Grandparent of your comment that I'm replying to; great-grandparent of this my reply.
certainly not, if you have bad cards it's better to bluff - What is there to lose?
btw the best book on the subject is unscripted from MJ DeMarco.
That's playing the cards you have.
As an example, being upper-middle class probably gives you an advantage on networking, either family, school old mates, ex colleagues, … Which I think is quite important when starting a business.
So realizing you don’t have that since the beginning will help.
Imagine a civil engineer walks into the office and asks a colleague about the plans for the new housing project, and the colleague replies that the concept of a "house" is a rich and socially constructed idea that both reflects and influnces the social zeitgeist in subtle ways and is intimately tied to notions of community and private property. They are not wrong, and the civil engineer would probably learn new things if they let the colleague finish instead of laughing them off or firing them, it's just that there is this implicit shared context in the workplace, that "house" is not a subtle idea and our job is to plan and build them not talk about their history or philosophy, that the colleague is violating or ignoring.
This is a useful analogy to understand why a remark like GP's, very useful and very true and would drive you into despairing madness and perhaps the brink of suicide if you think about it honestly and deeply, is not welcome in a thread like this. There is an implicit context in the comment section (formed haphazardly in a distributed non-explicit way, unlike that of the analogy) that you have a bunch of latent opportunities that you can take for granted and build off them to new frontiers, and that those opportunities are more or less a "critical mass", you can make them into whatever outcome you want given a fair amount of work. This is non-trivial for a huge portion of humans, and yet the self-help context always assumes it without proof, and any pushback is interpreted as doomer nay-saying or unhelpful pedantry.
It isn't quite helpful. The second half of the advice should be to tell working class people to do whatever they can to get near rich/upper-middle class people, to flatter them, befriend them, attend their parties, and sleep with them.
The more rich people around you, the luckier you get. Some rich manchild somewhere is waiting for you to be "the brains" behind something.
Only your own cause and goal can generate the willpower and stamina necessary to ultimately create something great.
As Nietzsche said: "He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living things."
Them as don't want to live in cardboard boxes but don't have some part of the resources necessary to "create something great"?
The brains who you use to achieve someone else's goal instead of using it to become what you truly are is somewhat wasted. don't you think?
If you're poor, do you go for the moonshot, or do you go for being middle class and then adjust your expectations once you're comfortable that you've achieved your initial goals? Going from nothing to something is more impressive than going from something to... more something.
The idea was students wouldn't go through the rest of their life thinking they'd prevailed in a meritocracy, and had earned and deserved every bit of their future success. They'd always have to acknowledge: some of it was pure luck.
And Harvard cares about the latter a lot more than it does about the former.
- accepts that the admission team is not infallible.
- allows for the drawing pool to be more representative of some target demographic if one believes that the selection panel has inherent bias.
If you believe the pool of qualified candidates is much bigger than the student body for a school like this (pretty easily supportable, imo) then this is also obviously a good idea - if the primary purpose of the school is to provide a great education to any qualified individuals who exist.
I don't think any reading of the history of the ivy's and similar schools can really support the latter.
Perhaps they could submit 3 drawings, one of which would be randomly chosen.
All drawings would be displayed in a gallery, with a critic deciding which they like and which they dislike. A scribe would trail the critic with a notepad, writing down their critiques and informing the applicants why their drawing was declined or accepted.
"at least"?! upper-middle-class in US puts you well in the 0.5% of world population.
However, in my life that limited downside has cost me a lot of money in opportunity costs over twenty years. I might be retired had I been able to work for money with the same energy and time I applied to my startup projects. But reality isn't quite like that, I would have been so unhappy doing that, it wouldn't have been sustainable (I tried working that hard for money for two years and it was horrible!) Those startup projects were so fulfilling and I learned so much on the journey. Even though I haven't found success yet, I haven't given up and the journey itself has been incredibly rewarding.
Subsequently, he's used the resources that that lucky has afforded him.
That example is quite bracing, but I think it points out that there are many ways to build this 'luck surface', and the expected values of each are probably very different, and likely situational.
I agree. Something as straightforward as being known as someone who does good work, putting yourself out there somewhat (writing, speaking, etc.), basically developing a network of people who you know at least professionally is certainly a way a lot of people develop at least something of a "luck surface." It may well not produce the big win but it can certainly lead to "lucky" opportunities.
Of course, there are other options that are more like gambles that may have negative EV but if you don't play big you probably won't win big.
For any given "luck surface" strategy, you can find far more people who haven't achieved massive success using it than those who have. Some strategies are probably better than others, but those are not foreseeable in advance.
Think of networking, and imagine every person you meet and build a rapport with as non-parametric distribution that you're randomly sampling from over time (future interactions). You have no clue if each sample is going to yield positive results, but you can increase your chance of a positive outcome overall by increasing the number of distributions (people) you're sampling from (maintaining relationships).
So much of it ends up by random chance, what else could it be but luck?
The next dumb way to evaluate lottery tickets is to compare it with other long odds (lightning strikes, marrying your favorite actor). If you want to play along, the probability of you winning the lottery is 10000000000000x more favorable than the probability of you existing in this universe.
Buying lottery tickets is a simple framework. The upside of winning a lottery is significantly higher than the downside of losing one (per week or per month). So do it.
The opposite is driving recklessly to save a minute of your commute. It has significantly higher downside risks than the upside of time savings. So don't do it.
A lot of lottery-bashing people make 10000x worse sub-optimal decisions in their life and yet pick trashing a lottery ticket to feel superior about their decision making ability.
Yup -- it was written in a universe where the poster they replied to exists, so that probability is = 1 here.
There's no reason to hate on people for doing something that they enjoy, regardless of what the expected value is. For god's sake, I juggle! As a hobby! Can you imagine the expected return on THAT?
Is it, though? This claim ultimately hinges on the probability of life occurring in the universe, and that's pretty hard to assess given our lack of encounters with extraterrestrial life.
Once life is established and subject to evolutionary processes, I hypothesize that intelligent life is - barring some mass extinction event preventing it - just about inevitable; evolution will select for greater and greater intelligence until the local lifeforms achieve sapience (and possibly beyond even that, i.e. levels of intelligence we mere apes are incapable of comprehending).
It’s my opinion that just buying one ticket, for say $2, essentially is a trivial and inconsequential amount of money that exposes you to incredible upside. Imagine if the ticket only cost a penny. At that point it’s practically free, but free exposure to life changing wealth. I don’t know if that counts as zero to 1 according to Peter Thiel, but it’s basically zero to something, for essentially nothing
It’s almost like there is another variable that determines if this is a dumb idea, and it almost always is. Maybe those math professors are on to something after all.
Go back to the framework
Upside(Gain) / Downside(Risk) is a pretty simple framework.
All I'm saying is, Downside(Risk) is not f(Expected Value)
Downside(Risk) is not f(p(winning))
Anyone telling you that they worked hard to achieve their current success is falling to the survivor bias fallacy.
Increasing the luck surface sounds smart and insightful and I have been guilty to use the term quite nonchalantly myself, but without quantification and direction of the luck-surface actions, it means very little.
In the specific case discussed, apart from the "building a company" part which is admirable but kinda to be taken for granted when selling services, it sounds like walking increased their luck surface. Had he taken a Uber or gone to a different store, maybe the company won't be here (guessing). I continue to call it luck.
No, don’t worry about taking the time to reply & say that of course that’s what you mean. I’m already halfway through dictating a blogpost on my way to the grocery store right now. Thank you, I never would have seen it as the rich business networking venue it clearly is without your insight.
- ask you to email
- read it and understand what you do
- follow up and spend the company's money
edit: simplicity
She got "lucky" in the sense that narrowly surviving bone cancer as a kid gave her a compelling story, but it's everything she did after getting cancer, and her conviction to follow her dreams, which led to the opportunity.
If a complete stranger became your big customer from the same scenario, that would be luck.
Sure, there's merit involved - but that's a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. There's a million competent people having basically the same drive and capability. The thing that makes a difference is luck. Period.
Please note: this doesn't mean that succesful people don't deserve the success - most times they do. It's just that there are many more people, equally deserving, that didn't have the same success. Let's treat those people better.
Successful people are successful because they put themselves out into the world to expand their fortune. They seize common opportunities and make them great. Those opportunities come back around like the original comment.
The whole idea of "building one's fortune" or having a "fortune be told" instills in the idea that your actions are what influences your chance of being lucky in a positive light(never negative).
E.g. if one is born retarded or with another mental disability, that prevents them from the actions that increase the chances of luck occurrence. A less extreme example is a person born with dysthymia who possesses less of the mental energy required to put themselves out there to expand their fortune and become successful.
Conversely, if one is lucky enough to be born with high innate intelligence and drive, coupled with a good upbringing and role models, they will more likely engage in actions that bring about luck and success.
One might argue that in many cases, people are not beholden to their genetics/circumstances and can rise above them. A dysthymic person can put forth the effort to get the help they need. I might argue that even this is a byproduct of luck in that the person was lucky enough to not have an incurable form of depression and also was lucky to have access to the resources to overcome it.
Yeah, I think that was what the GP meant: ~ "Back then, people could admit that it's largely a matter of luck."
Sure, nothing is certain, but some career paths are much more replicable than others. Maybe not everyone can work at a FAANGAMMATRON, there's a certain amount of luck, but "get a big tech job, work it for twenty-thirty-forty years" is still a fairly replicable path to moderate wealth.
You can look at the types of actions people took to get a big tech job (probably either "attend a prestigious university, apply straight to big tech" or "attend a decent state university, work any job in between for experience, apply to big tech") and there's probably a double-digit percent chance of you being able to replicate it.
You take any of the paths founders took to a successful company, it's almost impossible you'd achieve the same outcome trying to replicate it.
You think more than 700 million people can get a big tech job?
I second your advice to get lucky.
Most of my 27 year career has followed as a domino from that. Once we'd paid back his investment and exited (for a pittance; the ISP marked we'd entered had become impossible for a small player), his lawyer happened to get a question from another client if he knew any software developers locally. That job led me to meet someone who left to start a company, and I followed. There I met one of the co-founders of my next startup. That startup hired a lawyer who later went on to hire me for one of his startups. The co-founder of that startup hired me for my current job.
There have been interludes that did not follow so directly, and there are certainly things I've done to help things along, but there are also many more examples of luck involved along the way too. I'm sure I could have gotten a lot less lucky and still done ok, or been more lucky and done better, but overall I've come out of a lot of things disproportionately well.
And most of the events after that sound like the fruits of being skilled, agreeable and available.
Luck played a part, but don't sell yourself short. :)
Even though my skills certainly also played a role, I could also have been equally skilled and taken another job and missed out on meeting the right people and ended up with far less satisfying outcomes. And many do. Or I could have been born somewhere where I wouldn't have had the same opportunities.
Luck and skill amplify each other, and a problem is that people often want to think it was all down to their skills. A lot of subsequent failures happen when people fail to learn the right lessons because they don't understand which parts of their earlier successes were down to luck and so try to copy the same approach in different conditions.
That's actually great and actionable advice. The more draws you have the better chances you get to luck out.
The actionable part is the draw participation and you participate with your each interaction multiplied with your relevancy surface.
Do you know who did not luck out with your former manager? Those who did not had a company that does the things you do and those who might have had but did not interact with your ex manager.
IMHO lucking out is a very straightforward strategy and is relevant not only in business but in romantic relationships or friendships or any other partnerships.
Just don't expect to luck out on your first try and multiple participations is much easier than trying to design the luck on first try.
Perhaps the advice is: do more internships :)
Not sure if 100% luck because I usually switch to the sidewalk other side of the road when i spot someone i know coming down the sidewalk that i know :D
We do create our own luck to a certain degree and for anyone born in a first world country we have so many opportunities all around us - many simply choose poorly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Willink's answer is "Just do it." Very charitably, he suggests you should do things you ought to, even if they are painful and you don't want to do it. This actually has some backing in cognitive-behavioral therapy by starting with action first before motivation.
Uncharitably, it's not nuanced if there are deeper reasons why you should actually consider to not work on something you've planned to do (though it's hard to say when this should happen).
> "How do you decide what to be disciplined about?"
Willink talked about how his first motivation was to be very good at his assigned tasks while in the navy. Then, if I remember correctly, he said his mission after retiring was to provide for his family and to help others with his content. For others, he said to focus on physical health; emotional stability; spending money wisely; spending time efficiently; taking care of family and friends; and doing great at your (presumable) current job. This is actually a very good starting point.
My major criticism of his past work is that he seems to assume that leaders/managers work in good faith and won't exploit your hard work. In my experience and several reports by others, following his advice can lead to getting severely overworked for little-to-no reward by managers acting in bad faith.
He also hasn't acknowledged (as far as I can tell) the importance of managing office politics in advancement in many workplaces. He said that outworking someone is the best way to counter someone trying to make you look bad in the workplace, which in my view is insufficient - you also need to talk to your manager about it in a tactful way. Lastly, his current content seems to be increasingly monetized, and he's had more podcast guests who are politicians, when he used to be apolitical.
Great points by the way. I would also add that Jocko Willinck is a master teacher in self promotion. The pioneer of “monetize my navy seal career”, but I do feel it’s mostly genuine and valuable content.
I guess that for some people, being told “there’s no way around just doing the things even when you’re not motivated” by itself creates sufficient motivation long-term to do the things even when they are not otherwise motivated. But for those for which that doesn’t happen, there isn’t much actionable advice.
I was calling out the GP that the mere insight that discipline is usually necessary because you can’t rely on being consistently motivated fits the pattern of an insight that doesn’t by itself makes it easier to solve the problem. The insight can explain lack of success (inconsistent motivation combined with lack of discipline), but it doesn’t tell you how one might engender a lasting change. Also, the difference between discipline and consistent motivation is arguably small, because you somehow have to consistently motivate yourself to build up and maintain a discipline.
But it's far more interesting to consider how the one phrase relates to the rest of Willink's perspective. For example, he argues that that you can frame discipline and hard work as a method to be physically healthier; care for your family better; or help you earn more income or career capital.
The phrase is an introduction to the rest of his arguments, and it isn't quite as interesting to debate its merits in isolation.
From Willink's perspective (interpreted charitably), there are many situations where it's useful to "just do it." For example, say you want to do a task, but you want to get comfortable first because you're anxious. You can watch a funny video or browse the internet to calm down, read a motivational blog post, and do various chores to 'get in the mood.' Then hours pass by, and you still haven't started the task.
A better solution is to start with the action causing anxiety, expecting the shift in mood to follow the action (before trying to change your mood first), which is supported by recommendations in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Actions first, mood follows is a good, actionable insight supported by CBT counselors.
> "For those who lack enough motivation, which is the situation the advice is supposed to address, I don’t see how it helps."
If you're disciplined despite lacking motivation, you can improve your physical health and earn better career opportunities, letting you earn more and have more freedom. Therefore, by focusing on actions more than motivation, you can improve your circumstances. This is a charitable interpretation of Willink's perspective.
However, my personal view is moderate. Motivation does matter, because it reduces the amount of willpower needed for work, and lets you choose the right tasks and goals to work toward. Though in any case, action before changing your mood is perfectly actionable advice.
Also you don't necessarily need discipline in the actual thing you want to do - you just need to know what it means to be disciplined in something and then you can extrapolate your behavior in discipline itself to then be disciplined in something.
> At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”
> Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
Not even "discipline", but what is "nature".
So… not what Jocko is talking about?
https://www.nsw.navy.mil/NSW/SEAL-Ethos/
If "the logos" (fate) declared Jocko to be a warrior, then it is well within his nature to be disciplined.
But really, what negative external could be more intractable than the hordes of Germans lining upon the Rhine and Danube? And yet MA rose up each morning to deal with them as seen in that documentary with Russel Crowe
Often times not having the discipline to get up when you need to is the problem. And the solution is to tough it out.
So while you look for the cause, also work against the symptom.
For instance, quitting alcohol.
You need to quit, as well as try to look for the reason you're escaping into it. Do both.
However, if you consider that we co-evolved with our environment and all of its challenges and constraints, then our desires and how much we feel them are simply the result of optimizing our survival over hundreds and thousands of generations.
E.g. the 'difficulty' of our environment is a 50. We have to have a desire of 51+ to survive: a will to live. The 'lazy' spiders all had <50 and no longer exist.
Therefore, if we change environments to something much easier to live in, then our desires are kind of vestigial optimizations that may not provide the kind of guidance on the optimal way to survive in the new environment - they may take hundreds or thousands of generations to unwind. Modern civilization in particular has created such a massive shift in challenges and resource availability that it's not hard to find examples of this.
E.g. we have a strong desire to rest even when we don't need it because we co-evolved in environments where rest was scarce (due to need to survive), so when we had the opportunity we took it. Same with food: food used to be scarce, so we needed a strong desire to get it, but now food is abundant and we still have that desire and wind up eating too much.
In both circumstances, the environment was the pace-setter, but thats now changed, so we need to be our own pace-setter.
The problem is it's not even correct. Discipline does not equal freedom. Have you ever seen a well-meaning man with all his might do the same incorrect thing over and over? Of course you have, because we're all that person in some area of life.
If you're consistent with physical exercise by resisting when you feel like skipping a workout, you'll have more strength, endurance, and freedom of movement when you become much older. And if you're consistent with improving at your career skills, you'll have more career opportunities in the future. Therefore, even if you may seem less free by avoiding unhealthy food or watching too much television, you're setting yourself up for more opportunities in the long-term.
I personally do agree that you can be disciplined toward the wrong goals, though I also think it's more interesting to consider Willink's arguments as a whole, instead of focusing on a phrase in isolation.
Regardless of whether one accepts the arguments in the comic, I doubt willpower can be trained. It's not like a marathon where you have to actually run to practice, every day you're faced with decisions and temptations that you can "exercise" your will power with. In a sense you can't really stop practicing with your willpower...
This keeps getting repeated but there is no physical evidence to it. We know muscles have a limited amount of power (because they run out of ATP energy) but there is nothing that suggests it's the same for willpower.
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)
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
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.
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.
"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.
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.
During my career I did freelance mobile app and web development for about 10 years.
In that time I came across many people who wanted to found a tech startup because "that's where the money is" and being a tech startup founder being a status symbol. Some enthusiastic youngsters, but mostly people who had a successful non-tech small business. And they were not the right sort of person and did not have the right hunches, they didn't use what they learned from their non-tech business, but instead sat down over a beer with friends to brainstorm "social-local-viral" app ideas.
The advice instead should be that if you are struggling to come up with startup ideas, you probably aren't the right sort of person at this time. You should do something entirely different for a while until you find a product that just has to exist.
Unfortunately, they had never read HN or PG, nor could I do more than politely refuse their business.
What he's really doing is answering the question "how can I come up with startup ideas?", which has always been asked of him and the other YC partners frequently.
And his answer is: you shouldn't try to come up with startup ideas; that's not how it works. Instead you should just notice if/when they appear before you.
He's clearly not claiming to be doing what the author is accusing him of trying to do. He's just explaining something he'd noticed after (at that time) 7 years of funding/advising some of the most successful startups.
(That said, later in the essay he goes on to offer actionable recipes for formulating startup ideas anyway).
In answer to your question: you can take his advice, or not, to stop trying to confect startup ideas, and instead just pay attention to the opportunities you notice from your own experience.
Right there he suggests you become an expert. An expert who is at the crest of the wave in some field is more likely to see over it and get a glimpse of what’s next. I think he is spot on. It’s no guarantee but it’s probably as close as you can get.
Just as how its easy to criticize ideas because criticism is cheap, its also easy to pick out if a business will probably fail; but singling out success is near-impossible. If you asked me if playing video games all day was a good way to get the brain-surgeon-rocket-engineering job of your dreams, I'd say it probably isn't; but the right way is far more elusive.
In other words, its high level, not useful, and once you get into the specifics his message falls apart. I also think: VCs are generally quick to trivialize the impact the rising economic tide of the '10s had on all investments, not the least of all in the novelty of software-related venture investments, and many people will be found without pants over the next decade. Which I only say to add that this is a common theme with insight porn; trivializing luck & privilege.
To me, this sounds like a line from a multi-level marketing pitch. It sounds like they're saying "This may not apply to you," but a lot of people will hear "There are chosen people (and you're probably one of them)."
It reminds me of the Calvinism sect of Christianity. They believed in predestination for salvation: God has always known who be a good person and deserve salvation. So there was no point in trying to be virtuous, because the outcome was set before you were born. Still, Calvinists often adopted public shows of virtue, like meticulous gardens, to convince others they were part of the "to be saved" group.
Yeah, but just because Omega already either put the money in the box or didn't doesn't mean you should act like it doesn't matter. God is omnicient, and sees whether you'll get into heaven, but curiously enough at the end of the line we see it's the people who did virtuous deeds which wound up there. As you can't see the stamp on your soul, you might as well act like your actions will decide it, since the outcome of your choices is what God looked at when He stamped you in the first place.
It's a fairly pointless objection seeing as I doubt either of us are Calvinists, but their take on Predestination annoyed me when I learned about it, especially since they acted virtuously anyway (or pretend virtuously, whatever)!
The truth is you do have to be the right kind of person to be successful (in this context, successful at startups). A person born with severe retardation or another mental incapacity is not the right kind of person to be successful at startups.
The right kind of person has the genetic makeup, personality type, upbringing and/or access to resources to become successful. Not everyone has this and that's okay. And also, you (usually) don't know if you're the right kind of person until you try. So if you want to, try and keep trying until you don't want to anymore.
But he carefully doesn't say that, and the majority of most of his essays are designed to inspire the belief that you are the right sort of person, etc.
his examples are so bad. i've read paul graham's essays, naval's thread & alex hormozi's $100m offers book & all are quite good & easy to understand. naval's thread is a big hard but he has whole bunch of podcasts (4 hours) [2] explaining them in detail & articles [3] to accompany them.
the op's entire schtick is to sell his courses by writing articles. first he wrote an article on build a business, not an audience [4] & then did a complete 180 turn & has been building an audience ever since. then he started selling courses. it's like his schtick is to go against the popular ideas & attack them to garner following.
although, he does have some good insights in a few of his articles like when he summarized a book (nathan latka) or a video (sam parr)... rest of his posts are purely trying to hard to be a contrarian. tries to hard to be like peter thiel except he doesn't have any real arguments.
you don't have to believe me. just read $100m offers & apply it. that book could've saved me many years of trying to figure out the framework myself & has every single technique mentioned on how to make a good offer. if you actually follow the advice to the t, you will actually be on the pathway to your 1st million. not to say, the author himself is worth >$100m & has a portfolio of companies making $150m/year so he'll be a billionaire in a year or two. you don't become a billionaire without any real insights unless you are a trust fund baby.
[1]: https://twitter.com/deadcoder0904/status/1528327537872760833
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-TZqOsVCNM
[3]: https://nav.al/rich
> 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?
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.
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.
I don't find it inspirational, and there is nothing actionable.
* "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-pr...
[2] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
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.
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.
>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.
Though to be fair to him, it was very specific and actionable advice!
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!
Yes, sir, Mr. Simpson.
Could you, um, work any harder than this?"
Love the label "insight-porn" though. Concisely captures the nauseous feeling of ingesting your 100th self help book.
I mean people have been living on this planet for 1000s of years without access to as much info as today.
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
>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!".
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...
Words will evolve, but I wanna say she was going for something higher level than self-help.
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.
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.
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.
A fool and his money are soon parted. The real question a society should ask itself is to what extent it should protect its fools from their own gullibleness and inevitable bad decisions.
If a business owner goes bankrupt because he believed the "insight peddlers" and their easy solutions, then according to capitalist theory, it's OK he'll be replaced by someone who is better at business.
The same also happens in the political realm. How much time and effort should a society spend on educating its fools, for example that their belief that the president shitposts on 4chan under the guise of "Q" to tell his followers about his secret plans, is based on nothing but lies and gullibleness?
Should we take our collective eyes off the ball of actual issues at hand and deal with our fools' every concern? Or should we just accept that we can't save every voter or every business man and just let the "market" do its thing? It's not black and white like that, because of course a society shouldn't be do-or-die about anything, but when the extent of foolery starts to threaten the fundament that allows it to exist, there's a limit.
On a more general level, I think we (as in any society that's not too far gone like Russia) need to educate our young about propaganda and how to not fall for it.
Social media has been a game changer in terms of the spread of propaganda, if nothing is done about that then I fear we'll see the end of humankind in our lifetime.
See how many diet books are sold, and see how few people actually successfully lose weight, even though the advice boils down to "stop eating so much".
Maybe that's what makes real advice so hard - too many people making glib blanket statements on the Internet. Actual advice always targets individuals, and it's never a single thing that it boils down to.
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.
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.
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.
He knew he was slimy, and did so anyway. This advice would not then help.
> You shouldn't go into business with crooks. People do it all the time, and it often ends poorly for them.
The problem isn't that they don't know they shouldn't do business with crooks. Most of them do. Just like many know that murder is wrong and yet people still kill.
Eating vegetables is almost directly actionable. So is taking your car in for service. But this is far from the "don't do business with crooks." Which is generic, unhelpful advice. And many crooks have made it rich and made others rich too. Is the advice even always true? Many a person got rich off of corruption.
There are people that are surprised when the partner who cheated with them in their previous relationship also cheats on them in the current.
> There are people that are surprised when the partner who cheated with them in their previous relationship also cheats on them in the current.
Is it that these people don't know the risk, or they willingly choose to take the risk, because of some potential reward, such as having a partner? I say that is more likely. A lot of people know things are bad decisions and do them anyway - often because of hopes.
If I do know, then this advice is so obvious as to be meaningless. Unless I'm an idiot, in which case, again, this advice wouldn't help me.
There is some merit in the very inexperienced learning different ways to think about revenue. "You can choose to target one or two big contracts or many smaller contracts, and those have the same result" is useful advice, not that either one is necessarily easier than the other.
But "don't choose a business partner who's crooked" seems tautological and empty.
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 "
And they rarely share the messy awkward embarrassing reality of their journey.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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".
It made me think, he is happy to use the tool for his own gain, but opening acknowledges that it's bad for him, of course, most people in his situation would be the same, but it made me think, how all of that is mostly for his gain, not what a lot of the content consumers assume, for there gain. It's really just entertainment disguised as something more, might as well just watch Netflix.
Also it's abundantly clear that a lot of these creators don't listen to other podcasts etc, why is that? Being a creator and having a big following is a decent and fun life, but it's completely separate to being a consumer and all these consumers following this content wanting to learn to be more like the person that is creating the content, when the irony is, the biggest step they could take to doing that, is stop consuming it all.
I don't use socials, so I need some help understanding this sentence, please.
What does it mean to "[not] see the timeline" and why is it important?
He didn't want to see the feed that everyone was posting because he knows it just saps your attention / can be toxic, but he wanted the ability to post on other people's feeds so they would see the content he wanted to promote.
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.
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.
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.
Wait a minute…
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.
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".
There, I said it. It's not a pretty mountain top sunset. It's not kittens playing. It's not useless self-help articles.
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.
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).
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.
...or their "trick" was really 100% incidental to their success, which sprang from causes they'd rather not reflect upon.
Sounds like scrum.
So non-fiction content is not worth reading. And doesn't qualify as a book either.