Habits are not needs | Hacker News Reader

Habits are not needs

seths.blog

43 pointsgmays29 comments

The way I frame this is that in modern generations, there's a good likelihood that one can and does enjoy many different forms of media: social media, youtube, movies, series, sports, video games, books, music.

They all have their hooks to keep you in as much as possible. You have to draw a personal line for each or even all if you want to make progress in other pursuits (even just other media forms). The time sink should only be done in small amounts unless you truly have nothing else you want to be doing.

Also to note I think is to be mindful of how these things make you feel after consuming/participating - if it just leaves you as tired as you started (or just from being seated for hours on end) or in other ways doesn't make you feel at least the same or better, it's probably not worth continuing.

Of course, tastes change over time as well. I can't game nearly as much as I used to in my childhood because 1)I know I have more fulfilling things to do (work, friends, hobbies) and 2)The sense of achievement finally started feeling fake for me, and I can't justify this "junk food" for my mind.

> The sense of achievement finally started feeling fake for me, and I can't justify this "junk food" for my mind.

This is what happened to me as well.

Every now and then, I encounter some new slot-machine game that keeps me hooked for a few days (this time it was Torchlight 2), but the convenient thing is that it's the story that keeps me hooked most of all, so as soon as the story runs out (and thankfully nobody has created an infinite storyline with generative AI yet), the game boils down to numbers, which are predictable. Once I figure out the progression and realize how much time I'll waste just to get from X to Y, it stops being meaningful to me.

Yep. For me recently it was Assassin's Creed Valhalla. I've played the previous two games and The Witcher 3 - all fairly similar games. I got maybe 1/3 through the entire map and realised how much more time the rest of it would take plus the DLC.

Maybe another day, but right now it just makes me feel bad afterwards like I ate too much pizza, so I uninstalled.

With AAA games if you're not using a subscription service then it's also a bit of a sunk cost situation - feeling guilty to play my backlog of purchased games because I've spent thousands on it over the years.

>For example: You can be a successful professional without spending time on social media.

Then right below it, dude literally has: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn buttons.

> You can be a successful professional without spending time on social media.

Where do you draw the line between a habit and a social need? You absolutely don't need to spend time on social media to be a successful professional, but it's one of the few ways to make explosive progress, and some people need it to maintain their status.

Another way to put is, why does Seth need to write things?

You aren’t wrong, but there’s a chasm between mindlessly scrolling through social media every day (even HN) pretending it’s for your personal development, and actually creating content that may end up discussed on social media.

The latter can absolutely be incredibly beneficial, for the reasons you’ve mentioned.

Grooming - getting your hair cut regularly, wearing well-fitting clothes that aren't worn out, bathing every day - is also generally a bunch of optional habits, but if you want to be taken seriously and treated well in modern society, they are also needs. Some people choose not to invest as much time and energy into it and others can tell. It's treated as such an important signifier that many physicians make a note of it in your records!

For some people even social media is similar, because it's an essential tool for networking and getting business done. Terrifying, perhaps, but unfortunately true at this point.

you can skip most of it if you work remotely :)

An older one: Watching tv can become a bad habit. Maybe good bonding time once or twice, but years?

Does one really need to watch the hit show of the season? Talk about with others to be seen as being in the “in crowd”?

Cancel Netflix/Hulu/Disney+/stream subscription and save money & reclaim time to do more meaningful things.

It is not necessary true. A better way to say it is identifying which habits are purposeful and goal oriented and which hedonistic. Which are at the intersection. Review both! And maybe having zero hedonistic habits (like the odd TV binge even) is too strict a lifestyle for most.

The words are not even related, why would anybody think a habit is a need?

I think the author is suggesting that many people adopt habits and then, after time, become convinced they are actually necessities.

It's tough to tell if my fairly regular eating of dessert after a meal is a habit or a need. It feels like a need at the time, but it seems to be at least partially a habit.

I need a cup of coffee to function in the morning!

(No, it's a habit.)

You don’t need to have almost anything in life. However, most people get pissed off or feel depressed when they can’t follow old habits - this is typically known as a standard of living reduction.

I think the goal of this post is to kick people out of a rut and make them reexamine their habits. If it's a habit and you like it and you're keeping it because you like it, great. But if there's something you're keeping because you think it's needed, check if maybe it isn't.

I don't think that's really what the author is talking about. He's talking about habits that people think they need to do to survive or be successful, but may not provide much value after all, and might actually be bad or harmful in some ways that someone might become blinded to.

I find the blogging style interesting. I blog, and I don’t write a ton, but more than a tweet and less than an article, I guess. I don’t know why I’m rambling about this.

That’s an interesting, uh, 55 words I guess. The bar to clear to be a “thought leader” is solidly subterranean.

He thinks therefor he is

It’s been my experience that Seth can fit more wisdom in 55 words than most can get into 1000

It seems like a pretty useful nugget of insight for a bunch of people.

Then again, not everybody needs to hear every single nugget of insight. Lots of nuggets of insight are banal to maybe 95% of the population, but super useful to the last 5%. 5% of 300 million people is 15 million people, which is nothing to sneeze at.

I am skeptical of these 15 million people that will be floored by the sheer intellectual heft of learning that “different words have different meanings” for the first time on a blog.

I learned a new word today — pleonasm — and this is a neat opportunity to use it in a sentence: There are people for whom their entire livelihood relies on producing pleonasms!

Counterpoint: some of the time the hardest expression is that which is simple. Brevity is the soul of wit. Blaise Pascal and his longer letter. Not all thought leadership has to be long form or particularly insightful seeming in the moment. I do mostly agree with you, but it is worth pausing to consider it a little more deeply.

It's far easier to construct banal bumper sticker slogans that merely appear profound, than to construct profound aphorisms.

Agreed, it kind of seems like a stub that he meant to turn into an entire blog post one day. I do feel like I see many people in my life clinging to questionable habits. I personally have a nicotine addiction and it is easy for me to trick myself into labeling it as a need.

Is this insightful? I feel like this is trying to help me be a better founder but I don’t know what to do with this advice.

Yes, I can be successful personally without social media. Can I successfully launch and market a product without it though?

I agree with you. It depends on which area you want to be professional on.

I hate posts like this.

"You can be a successful professional without spending time on social media. See, look at [those people who've already made their audiences and can self-sustain, and then can afford to longer use social media, or those who made their audience before Facebook and Google completely gutted anything related to content on the web], they can do it! You just need to try harder!"

Spare me.

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