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Comment by jaqalopes | Hacker News Reader

  Having a high say-do ratio has always been important to me

I've never encountered this idea, but as soon I read it I suddenly see it everywhere. My roommate who tells me he'll clean the kitchen then doesn't; my cousin who says he'll come to dinner then cancels. My best friend who says she'll start going to the gym and never does. My world is awash in people who say the most wonderful things and then don't do any of them; it feels like a distinctly modern phenomenon. I find it hard not to resent people for this, but I try, because not everything is equally important, and not everyone can be as determined as we might like. As this article illustrates, we are ultimately only in control of our own actions.

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I think this is mostly the culture of "should". In our highly individualized society that glorifies self ambition, the list of things we "should" do are endless. However, when we say "I should go to the gym", we're not saying "I value my personal health and wellbeing and am convinced the gym is a path to that", but rather, "Society/friends/family/work might value me a little more if I do this" or "society may value me less if I don't do this". Not too much different from when we buy vegetables at the grocery store because we believe we "should" eat them, only to see them rot away in our refrigerator until we have to throw them out. The saying part is the easy first step, but our values are not in-line to follow through. In the end, "should" is just a mild-ish form of shame and shame is often a terrible motivator for long-term change.

yeah a lot of the self help industry is built on shaming and shoulds. We "should" excercise for 60 minutes a day, meditate for 30-60 minutes, go for a walk after meals, work on career, our brand, our hobbies, our business, read a book for 30 minutes.

Like Oliver Burkemann said, most of these producutivity articles are written by and for 20 year old kids with no family, no responsibility; and the rest of us are shamed if we dont meet these impossible standards.

> My best friend who says she'll start going to the gym and never does.

My friend always calls me out on this, and now I'm being haunted by you too, a person form the internet!

But on a more serious note, I think often times people believe when they say they want to do something, but end up not doing it for various reasons. Sometimes it's lack of self-love, other times it's low energy levels or lapses in time management. Sometimes people do try, but get discouraged and shy away.

I think the person on the other side ia often just as frustrated by themselves—if not even more, but they can't tell what and where it went wrong, which is equally frustrating in itself.

I am the best person at frustrating myself and fucking my days up. Sigh I never learn.

> it feels like a distinctly modern phenomenon

Probably not a modern phenomenon. Except in so far as it's a lot easier to "hear" people say things much more easily now.

"Confucius said: 'The ancients were hesitant to speak, fearing that their actions would not do justice to their words.'"

If Confucius said the ancients didn’t do it then his contemporaries definitely did do it.

I hated this when I was younger. But I've learned to do it, too. To please people. I don't really want, but I also don't want to have the discussion, of why I don't want. Now I try to not do this anymore and speak the truth, but I understand the meaning of why someone does this.

A high say-do ratio would be bad. A high do-say works.

I tried this for awhile (3-4 months) and it was extremely effective. Two rules.

1) I only talked about what I did

2) I only talked about things that occurred in the last <pick a time horizon>

It biases you for action.

I’m curious - did you stop? Why? What did not work about this?

First off, it was kinda hard. I am old and have lots of knowledge.

I went through some time where I didn't have much to pull from, so I found myself "being silent". Basically when talking with friends and bs'ing, I'd have to keep my mouth shut on the _should_, go do it and the next time show what I worked on.

It means getting off soshmeeds (like hn) and doing some sht, documenting it enough to explain it. I restarted from the comment I typed yesterday. :)

Why would you want a high say/do ratio? Did he mean "low"? I don't understand why you'd want to say a lot of things and do only a few.

Neither high nor low. I think that the author wants to have that ratio close to 1 and got mistaken because of the bias that high is better than low.

Or an high ratio of done / !done.

Don't resent people for this. I used to as well. But these people only try to become better versions of themselves. And for various reasons fail. It's still noble of them to keep trying.

There are many things I want to have done but which I don't want to do. I think the key to improving your say-do ratio is to figure out how to do the thing such that it's something you want to do, not something you want to have done. For me, many tasks can be converted into something enjoyable by adding earbuds and a podcast.

I think this is a common cultural practice in many places in the US. It is nice to say nice things that are not necessarily true or make friendly invitations that are not firm invitations. In other cultures it is better to say true things and/or limit pleasantries that are not true.

People say things all the time that they never intend to do.

To go with the theme I’ll add another common Japanese concept: tatemae / honne. In short, what you say vs what you really do/feel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemae

I heard it best explained by an old Japanese teacher. Say you bump into an old high school friend on the street. You have a quick chat and at the end he says “we should get together some time”. He doesn’t really mean he wants to get together. That’s tatemae.

If he says “we should get together some time, how’s next Tuesday at 7?” That’s honne.

I bet you live in California.

Close. Similar milieu, different American coast.

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