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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I completely disagree.

First of all, the whole kind of "no pain no gain" philosophy is particularly American. In a lot of other countries they find this mindset bizarre. If you go to the gym and it hurts, you should STOP. Maybe it will take you twice as long to build up muscles as the guy who "leans into the pain", but you're also not going to tear your hamstring, or slip a disc, or whatever, and you'll still achieve your goals.

As for "psychological pain", again, don't "lean into it". Figure out where it's coming from, and fix whatever is causing the pain. In the example of merges, use continuous integration, or merge daily. Which is what the author says... but that's not leaning into the pain, that's intelligently avoiding it!

And if selling is a painful process for you, then don't "lean into the pain" and keep doing it painfully -- find someone to teach you how to do it better, so it stops being painful.

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Could you avoid making baseless statements that an attitude is "particularly American"? I'm doubting you've done any sort of survey, even informal, to back this up. There's a mental shortcut a lot of people like to take, where if the USA does something one way, and another country does it a different way, it's because the USA is wrong, and the not-USA country is doing the same thing as the entire rest of the world. It's stupid, it's mildly insulting, and it doesn't contribute in any way to the conversation.

Your post would have lost nothing, in fact would have gained quite a bit, if you had simply left out the "Americans are weird" bit.

Ha! Well, I'm American myself, and my experience comes from signing up for gym memberships in other countries I've lived in -- it was really eye-opening to see how rare the whole "no pain no gain" philosophy is, when it's the mainstream attitude in the US -- and it fact it's very relevant, because the whole "no pain no gain" philosophy pervades a lot of American life -- working longer hours, etc.

And I'm not talking about Olympic athletes here, I'm talking about normal people who go to the gym. And obviously I haven't lived in every country, so it's just anecdotal.

I don't know where you're reading in the "mental shortcut" you're talking about to my comment... but I really don't think I was being insulting to anyone :)

What's your basis for saying so?

As somebody who took up running in my mid-30s (and now often do 10k runs and 100-mile bike rides), I think changing my relationship to pain was one of the key things I needed to learn.

Sure, there is "you are damaging yourself" pain. But there is plenty of other pain that for me is a pretty normal component of exercise. The creaks and groans of getting started, the burn of pushing my cardio limits, the delicious agony of deep stretching, the glorious next-day soreness, the fire of muscle exhaustion when doing lots of reps. I used to see that as all "pain" and avoid it. Now it's just reasonable stuff my body does, part of the game I'm playing.

Regarding leaning into psychological pain, leaning into it is exactly what you have to do in order to fix things. If you lean away from it, then you will never get to continuous integration and continuous delivery. Organizations that don't lean into the pain keep slowing their release cycles, adding more process, and doing anything they can to avoid the pain. Which ends up being much more painful.

Was the wording of the headline that made you completely disagree? You can interpret stuff in anyway you wish, especially when you feel a need to argue against a point for the sake of arguing. From the context, overall OP's message is very clear. Basically, it's the same old "get out of your comfort zone" motivational preach, but OP sheds a different and interesting light and gives simple analogies that HN audience can easily relate to. I fail to see any reason to criticize it purely due to the word choice.

PS, this comment reminds me a pattern in HN where an article ends up in front-page; say, about the need for hard-work in a startup, and the comments which would go up in arms about how working "smart and not hard" was the key, that there is more to life than just work, blah blah blah, sometimes arguing with a straw man. Yet, when some 37 Signals article hits about working 4 days a week, etc etc, again some people arguing how the "great" work was only done by putting a lot of work, crossing the higher walls, etc. All in unnecessary amount of comments by making a mountain out of molehill. Without taking to extremes or pointing out some edge cases all this would be avoided.

I think the problem here is a misuse of the term "pain." I think what is really meant is "discomfort." Pain is an indicator something is wrong; whereas discomfort is simply being beyond your comfort zone.

Growth takes effort, and usually that effort needs to push you outside of your comfort zone, and I don't mean that metaphorically.

To me, "lean into the pain" means "be willing to be uncomfortable while growing."

Not all pain is the same. There's the "I'm pushing myself hard" pain and then there's "I'm in injury territory" pain. Clearly the author is talking about one and not the other.

At least back when I was on a track team, if I didn't run so hard every practice that everything hurt after, my times did not improve. If I even ran on my own during the summer instead of competing with teammates, my times were terrible when I got back to school. What's the point of being on the team if my times didn't improve?

Unfortunately, at startups, everyone does everything and there's a ton of muck work. At a big company maybe you can get away with saying, that's not my job so I won't do something tough, but at a startup you just aren't going to beat the big guys with that attitude. You have to do the muck work, and if you can excite yourself about it, even better. Maybe you'll even automate it or hack around it somehow, but you can't leave it undone just because it is painful.

I think most of us can easily tell the difference between bad pain and the kind of pain he's talking about here.

I think you're mistaking the spirit for the letter. I'm not fond of making that distinction, but you seem to be pointing out edge cases. It was Nietzsche, a German, who told us that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and even there you have to watch out for mistaking the spirit for the letter (of the law, dunno if that reference was clear).

If you go to the gym and it hurts, you should STOP

Woah, hold on. Are you telling me that when my arms get sore from lifting or pressing, I should just stop? There's something to be said about incrementally getting better, but the pain is there for a reason: you're literally tearing your muscles so that they can be rebuilt stronger. How do you fix that?

That aside, the author suggests to lean into it, not to run haphazardly. Also, your last statement is willfully dense. If selling is a painful process for you, let me guarantee you that sitting in a class or reading articles about how to sell better is going to be equally painful. The psychological pain the author speaks about is reluctance due to previous bad experiences. And in that case, a lot of the time, it would help to continue trying until you get better. There is a lot to be learned from failure.

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