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Comment by profsummergig | Hacker News Reader

> we suggest that seeking discomfort as a signal of growth can increase motivation

Can someone help me understand this please? With an example? I haven't read the paper, just the abstract. I can barely understand the abstract, I am not going to understand the paper.

Per the paper, does the "discomfort" need to be in the same arena as that of the "motivation" one wants?

E.g.: If I want to learn a new language, does the discomfort need to relate to the language, or is it enough to do something like taking cold showers?

(FWIW, I have a strong suspicion that most Psych papers, including this one, have inadequate evidence. But I still like to understand what they're claiming.)

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I don’t think it can be just anything. I experienced some discomfort this morning but I cannot speak to any consequential personal growth. I can tell you however that the Samyang Buldak instant ramen live up to their fiery reputation.

Wait til you hit the toilet!

Marcus Aurelius' Meditations:

"The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

I think it's more an observation that the act of learning can itself be uncomfortable. So in the language example, going to a meetup and feeling awkward while struggling to use the language you're learning would be considered something to lean into and do more of rather than avoid and stick with learning from a book that feels less negative.

> If I want to learn a new language, does the discomfort need to relate to the language

Yes.

Comfort: Duolingo and similar. UX designed to make you feel proficient when in fact your are not, gamification, drag and drop words, point and click on things, streaks, leaderboards, etc.

Discomfort: write your own content, talk to people a bit before you are ready, seek content a bit too difficult for you, listen to a podcast many times to see how your understanding improves with each listening, deep dive onto a subject, shadowing exercises, etc.

In short: prefer harder and more efficient things even when easier and less efficient things are available.

Did you switch efficient with less efficient in your summary?

I find your conclusions interesting, basically you’ve listed every modern “appified” experience as unsuitable for true personal growth. I’ve felt this way for a while but never put this fine a point on it.

> E.g.: If I want to learn a new language, does the discomfort need to relate to the language, or is it enough to do something like taking cold showers?

Weird to restrict the focus of growth to one particular area, and to ask whether any discomfort (even physical) will contribute to your growth in that particular area, when the abstract just refers to "personal growth" and makes no claim related to some spooky cross-pollination of discomfort. It even gives a list of examples, and refers to feeling "awkward."

But when it comes to learning a language, some discomfort when you're using that language is obviously when improvement in the language is happening. If you're only in situations where your current knowledge is completely adequate, you'll never have any reason to get better. You're not getting better at anything if you're never breaking a sweat while doing it.

edit: could "results showed that these effects occurred only in areas of personal growth that cause immediate discomfort." be any clearer?

There's so much word-salad in abstracts, that I feel like I'm not sure what something is saying.

You're right in the "edit".

However, the results seem tautological and associative.

- Certain things cause discomfort.

- If you do more of certain things, you develop more motivation to do them.

- Scientific Conclusion: the discomfort caused the motivation.

I assume it is about the goldilocks spectrum of situations that are challenging but still managable, but I'm only guessing.

David Goggin's public persona comes to mind as an extreme example. He frames his journey as one that involved embracing pain and discomfort. Now he preaches it incessantly like a sort of addict to masochism. I think this highlights the point of the study which attempts to say, instead of avoiding discomfort one could welcome it with the added risk that you become some sort of firestarter in the sense that you now cannot sit with being comfortable.

A natural extension of this work may be to study at what point does burnout occur.

He's a rather an extreme example and probably not applicable to most situations we are involved in. Most things in life only required consistency and adherence to long term effort to achieve 'success'.

I think it's the science behind the windhoff cold plunges. Also the belief that societies in extreme environmemts(deserts or alaska) thrive better due to prep or die conditioons which make them less averse to physical work.

Or you could kick it in a perfect temperate climate, eat fruit off trees and sleep all day.

Last I heard the science did not replicate. He is just unusually tolerant to cold

Amazed to see everyone talking about Huberman and Wim Hof here.

Two conmen of the highest degree. I just beg of you to look at some criticisms of them on youtube and save your money and time.

I still think there is value in putting oneself thru adversity and discomfort, if for nothing else, to gain empathy for those who can't afford the comfort-lifestyle of those with means to build comfort. Not to mention raising one's threshold for discomfort. Our Biology itself is engineered for adaptation, one could argue that living in comfort is like the frog in the pot of water on the stove. this might be hard for first worlders to understand, but take a poor person in a third world vs. a middle class person in a third world. A poor person is limited to a bicycle means of transportation, while the middleclass person can afford a vehicle. The very nature of hauling your carcass around in a mechanical means of transportation makes your carcass much more healthy and raises the chances of longevity.

You mean Wim Hof?

yes, typo. fixed. Oh, nevermind... can't fix.

Not really know if this persons idea of discomfort, but I had to think about Kafkas quote: 'Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.'

Going over points of no return e.g. because you commit to certain decisions can be extremely uncomfortable and so many people will just push it off into the future, and so years can go to waste. Learning to spot that kind of discomfort in oneself (and reacting to it) can be extremely benefitial in avoid prolonging it.

I did have success with that in changing gender, though in general I do not like points of no return.

I once wished to be a man during the week and a woman on the weekends.

In my attempt at nonmonogamy, I've had more mixed results. That is harder

Oof okay a gender change is s bigger thing than I thought about when I wrote this — although the evidence points to these generally making people happier in the long run.

It still applies perfectly tho.

These point of no return decisions can also turn out to be mistakes (from with we can learn), but if skateboarding thought me anything it is that there is a class of situations where you either need to do it or you don't — as soon as you try to do it "a bit" without following through you will get hurt.

Of course the art is to recognize when each one applies, e.g. if your goal is to live healthier that doesn't mean you need to run marathons right away or you are a failure, here committing means persistence and incremental improvement.

In another class of problems the outcome depends mostly on luck, without being in the know I could imagine that non-monogamy-thing could have gone differently depending on where the people involved are with their lives.

The discomfort needs to be alleviated by learning a new language. E.g. moving to the country where the language is spoken, as an extreme example.

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