Some Protect the Ego by Working on Their Excuses Early | Hacker News Reader

Some Protect the Ego by Working on Their Excuses Early

nytimes.com

71 pointsrobg44 comments

This is an incredibly scary description of how I went through college and high school. Every time someone did better than me I thought "well, they didn't stay up every night of this week doing drugs" or "if I studied I would have done way better" or "I coded a one month assignment in 3 days, so what if I didn't do the extra credit". I managed to still be pretty successful, but now find myself frustrated with the easy choices I made.

It wasn't until I grew up that I realized the value of success and failure (and the necessity of failure in big successes). Unfortunately, now I'm a bit older and some of the benefits of youth are gone, making it tougher to take huge risks, but I am doing it anyway, because I'm so resentful of all the self-handicapping I did throughout my youth.

It's a big part of why I decided to join a startup and leave a cushy big company job (that was actually pretty fun some of the time) - in a startup, you might just fail even if you do a great job, but you're sure to learn a ton. No startup exists without feeling like it's going to die at some point, and I felt like I couldn't push through this self-handicapping without experiencing near failure and pushing through it.

It's funny, I was just thinking about this a few days ago, and it's been on my mind for a while. I went through my entire school life not exerting significant effort but mostly "succeeding" anyway; I could cram for a test the same day and still ace it. I was never at the top of my class, but I was always in the top ten.

Even then, I realized that there was something wrong; I found it easy to get good grades, but because of that there was little to motivate me to really excel or do something extraordinary, so I never seriously tried. My first dream (the one I've had since grade school) was to be a writer, and I told myself that I would finish my first novel at the age of 14. Ten years later, I haven't completed it. People make excuses to others, but mostly we make them to ourselves; I adjusted and re-adjusted that deadline in my mind until it became meaningless. Similarly, I've entered contests and things, but usually procrastinated and didn't really put a whole lot of effort into whatever I did. I realize now that, yes, those were mostly just excuses.

I sort of regret it now, and I'm seeing the repercussions of my not having any self-discipline and real drive. It's too easy to get into the "good enough" rut, as I think I'm currently doing even now that I'm working. I do fine as a programmer, and my current developments are easy enough that I can still deliver good work even though I do things at the last minute, but really, it's shades of high school and college all over again and I really need to stop.

I would like to get out, though, and I suppose actually trying something out on my own and owning up to the risk of failure is a good idea. And yet, I still have no idea where (or what) to start.

I wish epiphanies came as freely and as conveniently as excuses, but then that would miss the point, no?

/rant

This has me wondering if doing a startup is (often) itself a form of self-handicapping. You can always claim you had brilliant performance, but failed due to the impossible odds. Food for introspection.

I find the opposite is true. At a big company I could always tell myself "In the end, you're not making the decisions. It's not on your head if it doesn't work". Working at a startup, either I succeed or I fail, but there aren't any excuses unless you literally get hit by a bus.

You can always claim you had brilliant performance, but failed due to the impossible odds.

Where do we draw the line between making an excuse and being optimistic? You might do the absolute best you can but the timing just wasn't right. As long as you've acted with character, integrity, and have done the best you can, there's nothing wrong with being internally optimistic while publicly admitting failure -- all while maintaining a genuine sense of self-esteem.

On the other hand, the time I often make excuses to others is when I know I've made a mistake with moral or character implications. A business failing has nothing to do with my personal character, nor does the failure (hopefully) show me as someone with lower standards of morality.

Yeah, this happened to me in Middle School and High School. When a girl did better than I did (I must admit it was a sexist attitude), I asked myself "Oh no, but I'm still smarter, right?" In Middle School, there was an excuse. In High School, the answer was "No. She's smarter than you are. Deal with it." I got better results then.

I think one of the best things that has ever happened to me was running into people at university who were unquestionably, irrevocably smarter than me.

I take it on faith that there are people who are much smarter than I am, but I'm still waiting for conclusive proof. I'm taking physics and math this quarter, so this may change.

You owe it to yourself to seek out and find these people who are smarter than you. You must do this. Go find them. Confirm.

Then go back to working your tail off.

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly." - Thomas Henry Huxley

Very interesting, although I'm not quite sure if they established a causal link between these two behaviours. The article isn't detailed enough to know this.

It could well be that both behaviours (coming up with excuses - proactively or after-the-fact - and setting yourself up for failure) are driven by something else (e.g. intense distractibility coupled with good creativity and intuition). I'm not saying it is, but that needs to be ruled out before the article's conclusion can be established.

I thought this too but I'm not sure I see it as much different. If the reasons for requiring the excuses are different, but the excuses are still being made and success not being achieved, why is the distinction interesting?

Because if

A -> B

then B can be fixed by fixing A. (i.e. if coming up with excuses proactively is a direct cause of failure, if you can cure your habit of coming up with excuses you can reduce your failure chances).

On the other hand, if:

C -> A

and

C -> B

Then there is no causal link between A and B, even though they occur together, and so fixing A (the excuses) won't fix B (the increased rate of failure), and instead you must find out what C is.

Poor impulse control underlies many self-destructive behaviors. I'd say that the excuses are just a symptom of poor impulse control.

> Raven has the phrase "POOR IMPULSE CONTROL" tattooed on his forehead, an indication that he has been arrested for committing a violent crime

Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash

aka Discipline.

the D word! gasp

I wonder if there is an evolutionary reason for men being more likely to self sabotage?

Fight only when it counts?

Me personally, I'm a touch too competitive. I often choose not to participate rather then go all out.

For example, I used to play soccer, I jog every day but I have not played soccer in years, and then one day I'm invited to very friendly soccer game during lunch hour.

Cut to maybe 20 minutes before the end of the game, I had already torn damn near every muscle in my legs and my lower back was starting to hurt. Slow down? Quit the game a bit early, nah push harder.

I'm still recovering.

Just to speculate: Perhaps self-sabotage allows someone to maintain a high self-esteem ("I'm great at everything") while ignoring subjects which are difficult ("I'd be great at that, too, if it weren't for X").

This self-delusion has direct benefits; people with high self-esteem are more attractive. But it also makes it easier to ignore a pursuit, which perhaps encourages people to spend more time on fewer pursuits, and with greater enthusiasm. Such specialization may help a male stand out from other suitors.

I will share this as it seems relevant.

A few years back, I signed up to be a counselor at a wilderness camp in Southwestern Colorado. Hiking. Climbing. Camping. Living in a log cabin without plumbing at 12,000 feet for three months. I was very much not in my element.

I had a great time. No one there knew me before, so there weren't any preconceived notions about who I was. It was liberating.

However I also was at the bottom of the "coolness" ladder among the counselors, because I had no background in the outdoorsy skills that "mattered" out there.

So doing things that I normally would shy away from was good for me. But yes, as you say, it screwed up my "game."

Frighteningly accurate description of behavior I've caught myself engaging in. It's a vicious cycle best defeated by working on things with people who know you well and won't put up with it.

Yeah, I do this too. I do it so intensely that it's practically the story of my life. High praise and expectations from parents in youth led me to be afraid I'd never reach them. Oh shit, did I just do it again?

Seriously, I think years of sabotaging myself has led to a real effect on my work ethic, and I'm only just beginning to restructure my emotional schema.

Same story. School came so incredibly easy for me that I decided I was a genius or something in 4th grade. Anything that would clash with this self assessment was something to avoid.

And sports did NOT come easily for me, so I decided I was terrible at them wouldn't ever be any good. Anything that would clash with this self assessment was something to avoid. I was ok with letting a ball get through into the goal every once in a while. It confirmed my self image.

The truth, that maybe I wasn't that smart but also wasn't that terrible at soccer, would have been a lot harder to swallow. Still is probably.

The New Yorker recently published a profile of Alec Baldwin that describes this phenomenon very well.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/09/08/080908fa_fact_...

The writer observes that Baldwin has an excuse for every bad performance. And that his life narrative, as he describes it, consists only of triumphs and miserable failures.

"Baldwin is perhaps too easily seduced by a narrative of grand failure, rather than accepting a quieter story of qualified success; but by his account, one that hurries past some fine performances, almost everything he did in film from that point on (post-Hunt for Red October) was, at best, dissatisfying."

----------------------

I think that "quieter story" is what scared me as a kid and what scares me sometimes still, the fear of being just another average person with some successes and stumbles, rather than someone "special."

This is narcissism right?

This issue is also tied into how we're praised as kids:

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/02/the_power_of_praise.ht...

You were probably told you were really smart and so you tended to believe it. Better to praise the results than make blanket statements about the kid.

Yes, exactly. As an adult, I realize how and why everything happened the way it did.

But what I still don't understand is how to fix it. How do you radically change yourself, especially when the thing you're trying to change negatively affects your ability to do so?

I recommend reading the entire NY Magazine article they link to.

I recommend reading her book "Mindset" as well.

I thought of that New York Times piece, too. Yup.

So then you wonder about your parents. Praising the innate intelligence of your kid is kind of like praising your own intelligence. You can't really pass on "hard work" or "effort."

I understand what you mean, but passing on "hard work" and "effort" would seem to pay greater dividends.

I think you can pass on a tendency to persist rather than give up though. Perhaps persistence and effort is more learnable than intelligence, but there does seem to be some hint that there is a genetic component to this trait. I am thinking of some experiments done with dogs where the dogs were shocked and they could escape the shock by jumping over a fairly short barrier. Some dogs persisted until they found the way out while others fairly readily just gave up, sat down and started whimpering despite the shocks.

I remember this article now... was quite interesting. And yes as a kid I remember my parents complimenting me for being smart much more than they complimented me for my effort

I've had the same behavior as a kid. Starting middle school I stopped doing any homework whatsoever partly to better fit in by not seeming too serious, partly to prove to myself that I could succeed without (and have a convenient excuse if I didn't)...

On the other hand in sports, I behaved exactly the way you describe... The fear to be a normal average person is powerful...

> so I decided I was terrible at them wouldn't ever be any good. Anything that would clash with this self assessment was something to avoid.

How often do we make excuses to avoid doing something or taking an action that might benefit us? e.g. what if that girl actually wants to talk to you..

She might be dying to talk to you.

She might think you're the coolest guy in the room.

But no. You're the smart guy who tragically never gets any play. You're a tortured soul of epic proportions.

Having a fairly pretty girlfriend would be...normal

Intentional irony?

Yes. I have the same issue completely. :)

It's nicer to be a "could have" than a "cannot."

But do you really know if you could have until you've tried?

Almost every time a startup launches on TechCrunch, the comments are filled with "could haves" instead of "here's what I've done".

I think you're missing his point. By "nicer" he doesn't mean "better for us," but "easier on our egos."

Context clue failure for me.

Carol Dweck's research on mindset

http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/feat...

is closely related to this issue.

Are there any know solutions to preventing this behaviour?

"... Every ugly exam score, blown deadline and failed project provides the opportunity to try out new excuses. ... Q Are there any know solutions to preventing this behaviour?"

I think the real problem with trying to achieve something is a combination of not "knowing how" and thus having "no way to estimate" what it takes and just give up. For example, if I said to you, "go and walk 1000Km over hilly terrain" most people would probably give up because it seems impossible to do?

But if I said, "could you walk 10Km a day for 100 days?". This is doable. The second bit is the estimate. Could you "walk the distance in 100 days straight? Or 5 to 6 days out of every 7?" Breaking the big unachievable goal into smaller more achievable goals, you do regularly, means you have an understanding of:

- where you are now

- how far you have to go

- how much effort is required, right now

I imagine some peole still might flat out choose not to do 10Km/day five or six times a week, but I imagine quite a few could see that the effort is doable and achievable and not give up. Breaking down the tasks means you are not overwhelmed by the perceptions of impossibility. This could be the reasons kids give up for instance if you tell them to do a task and simply give up. Break it into smaller achievable tasks and you can hack their automatic flake response.

Btw I'm at my 330/1000Km.

Now just to figure out how to make yourself stop doing that...

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