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It is too easy to get caught up in the idea that "everything is bad" when all you focus on is negatives. It sets the tone for your day, and alters your overall opinion on things.

A better alternative would be to have a clear, accurate, and wholly representative understanding of the situation. This means focusing on the good just as equally as the bad.

I understand where you're coming from though. I used to think the same thing about not focusing on good, and only directing attention to the bad. It made me feel like I was selective, like I had good taste, and knew things that other people didn't. I even suspected I was a little like Steve Jobs must've been, because surely he had good taste. I got to the point where I was starting to be known as a grumpy guy, and so I took a step back and realized what the negativity was doing to me, my mood, and to those around me. And thats when I realized a complete picture is better than a purely negative one.

With a complete picture, I'm less negative. When I'm less negative, Im more likely to have positive thoughts running through my brain. When I have positive thoughts running through my brain, I'm happier. When I'm happier I'm more productive, people like me more, I talk more, and all of those things lead to me being more successful. It was an obvious choice for me!

Maybe you aren't there yet, and maybe you won't ever be. However, I imagine a lot of people are somewhere close, and I hope they find this comment useful.

I see no issue with acknowledging good or positive things, but perhaps you should clarify what you mean when you say you should "focus" on them. To me, to "focus" on something means you invest a significant amount of time and brain power into understanding and evaluating them. If something is good and isn't broken, why, as a problem solver, would you spend valuable time going "oh isn't that nice?" when you could be addressing other problems?

Obviously there are things to be learned from the things that aren't broken (so that you know the difference between what works and what doesn't, and a potential solution when you come across something that IS broken), I just don't see the point of focusing on the good. It's good. Yay. Now move on.

I also find it interesting that both you and OP associate negative outlooks with big egos. You both mention how negative people tend to think of themselves as better or more deserving. I wonder if this is an association that really holds water.

I don't think there is any contradiction between being a problem-solver and having a positive outlook on life, as long as you are a competent problem solver and getting a lot of problems solved. Successful problem solving provides both an immediate joy from a "mission accomplished" feeling, and a long term positive outlook that comes with the feeling that because of you, there are less unsolved problems in the world, therefore life is better.

Don`t people become problem-solvers because they enjoy solving problems? And if that is a case, than being presented with a host of unsolved, yet potentially solvable problems should make a problem-solver scream with glee, right?

I find that people who tackle problems are those who are never quite satisfied. Even after solving a problem, they put it in their rear view and switch to the next problem to solve. There's always more work to be done.

I guess it depends on the depth of your compulsion.

I think you are confusing a problem-solver with a perfectionist. One solves problems because he or she enjoys it. The other because they live in a world that will never match an ideal they hold. The second is doomed to misery no matter what, and I think that is what the OP was saying he moved away from by focusing on the positive.

Or we just have different definitions of what a problem solver is. I define a problem solver as someone who, once taking note of something they identify as a "problem", feels a compulsion to solve said problem. Someone who identifies problems as inherently wrong and solvable. Your definition may be more lax than mine.

Also, I don't think he talked about moving away from perfectionism. He talked about moving away from "how unfair things were, how I deserved more, how other people were causing problems for me, and how I was vastly superior to everyone else." That isn't being a perfectionist, that's being a prat.

The joy of having solved a problem is short in comparison to the unpleasant process of actually solving it.

Ignoring the negative aspects of reality is also not compatible with the mindset of a problem solver.

> Personally, I feel the whole "positive attitude" thing is a detriment. People with "positive attitudes" tend to ignore problems because they don't want to upset others or make waves.

I think I know the kind of people you're talking about, but please don't think all "positive" people are in that same category. I think constructive criticism is great, and in no way do I want to stop giving it or receiving it.

But there's a lot of criticism that goes out of its way to be mean or condescending. And there's a lot of criticism with only one purpose: to make the criticizer look smart. These are not useful and they drown out the constructive feedback.

Sometimes being negative is appropriate! I'm not happy all the time. But it SHOULDN'T be a habit - negativity like that is not helpful to the person doing it and it's not helpful to those around them.

Criticism and complaint are one thing, but I think it boils down to what certain people are able to see. For example, if we're working on a project and I tell you "Hey, I don't think this solution is going to work. There are too many points of failure and something's going to go wrong. We need a plan for when these things go wrong." As a negative person, I focus on all the way things can go wrong. I've envisioned what would happen with each one. But as a positive person, you don't see them. Or, if you do see them, you think they're so unlikely that you don't consider them serious.

Now, if we planned for things to go wrong (as a negative person would) and things go right, all we lose is a little bit of time that was spent creating backup plans. But if we planned for things to go right, and things do go wrong, we're in a situation where we have to scramble.

That's why I think positive attitudes can be detrimental. If you err, I feel you should err on the side of caution, and that typically requires a negative outlook (because positive people won't waste their time on it).

> As a negative person, I focus on all the way things can go wrong. I've envisioned what would happen with each one. But as a positive person, you don't see them. Or, if you do see them, you think they're so unlikely that you don't consider them serious.

That's interesting, we seem to have wildly different definitions for these words. I view it like this:

As a programmer, I plan for things to go wrong. As a positive person, I try to express it in a constructive way. Caution and forward thinking is not necessarily tied to being negative!!

Planning for when things go wrong isn't just something a negative person would do, it's also something a cautious or sensible person would do. Or an experienced software developer! If I've learned anything from programming it's that no matter how unlikely an error condition seems, it WILL happen sooner or later.

I HAVE seen the kind of person you are talking about though - there are the people who think that just being positive will make bad things less likely to happen, and then people who are just overly optimistic about everything. Not every person who identifies as positive thinks this way though! :)

It's like employing defensive programming in your everyday. You plan for the unlikely negative event so that you can contain/minimize the impact. . .but you don't dwell on it forever.

> so they focus their efforts on fixing it

Complaining is not focusing your efforts on fixing something. Fixing is fixing. Complaining is complaining. When you complain about a problem instead of helping to build a solution, you become part of the problem.

I don't think this article said anything bad about polite and constructive criticism.

I'm disagreeing with the articles point of view that the people on Hacker News and other outlets are just complaining about something. Often times people will take any sort of negative discussion and consider it "complaining" regardless of the actual content.

I don't think being positive implies that you're looking the other way when a problem appears. I've noticed recently that my twitter stream is filled with programmers complaining about things not working but... they're not solving them.

The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging that you have a problem, isn't it? Drawing attention to an issue is a huge part in getting it solved.

Sure and I'm not disputing that. It's just that there are some prominent programmers that literally only complain for days on end how nothing works.

I'm not sure that quite gets at it, though - because there's there are actually three branches here. Focusing on the problem, pretending there's no problem, and focusing on the solution.

I think that one who focuses on solutions can be positive-focused without ignoring the problem.

True, there are three groups of people. But the article posits that just focusing on the negative is problem. I'm saying that it isn't - that you have to focus on the negatives and on the problems in order to solve them. The article specifically says not to focus on the negatives and instead focus on the positives. How do you fix problems (negatives) if you don't focus on them and instead focus on the positives (things that aren't broken)?

There was a spate of articles last yearish that talked about how people who were grumpy or melancholy were actually far better at perceiving reality accurately and were thus better equipped to address problems.

I've worked with programmers who are both positive and care deeply about solving problems. It was very pleasant working with them. I aspire to be as positive as they are.

Also, nothing makes me happier than improving or fixing broken things.