21 Day No Complaint Experiment | Hacker News Reader

21 Day No Complaint Experiment

fourhourworkweek.com

43 pointsjlthom211317 comments

I don't really share everyone's obsession with fighting "negativity". Actually I find the lack of nonconstructive bitching to be quite annoying: sometimes that's exactly what's needed.

I bet the public pressure to always appear "positive" makes people feel oppressed: perhaps that's the underlying emotional background that feeds audiences to shows like "South Park" and rants like Zed Shaw's. Because force-fed "positivity" is everywhere: from bloodless CNN reporting of wars to always happy-ending movies. George Carlin's famous "pussification of English" is like an entire nation wearing invisible bracelets like these. To me that's borderline to orwellian doublespeak.

Fake "positiveness" comes at a cost. Both big corporations I worked for were filled with always-smiling, "outgoing, positive team players" who'd pollute everything they say with "great, awesome, tremendous" and other positive reinforcers that lost all their meaning because of overuse, while real problems tend to be overlooked and forgotten - nobody wants to be that asshole. My experience at startups has been the opposite: no time/money for fake bullshitting, "this sucks and needs to be better" isn't a taboo, it's almost a mantra.

I would argue that "this sucks and needs to be better" is actually not included in Ferriss's definition of a complaint. By saying that it needs to be better you are 90 percent of the way to also stating the steps you'll actually take to improve it.

I like this concept not because of its "negativity-fighting" aspects, but because it tries to cultivate a problem-solving mindset. That, at least, should be near and dear to most of us.

OK, so how about the example at the beginning of the article when the author was complaining about how difficult it was to resize photos on his Mac? Do you suppose it's enough that the "this needs to be better" was implied, or do you think he should have added something else?

Like it or not, a lot of the time the things that suck can't feasibly be improved by yourself.

I agree to an extreme level. I also worked at a large corporation that didn't tolerate negativity, and it was miserable.

There's a difference between attacking an idea and attacking the person advancing the idea.

South Park is a great example of not complaining.

Complaining would be writing a blog post about how much Kanye West irritates you, or writing a letter to Kanye telling him how much he irritates you.

Not complaining is creating a hilarious cartoon mocking Kanye West and publicly shaming him. Negativity can be awesome. Complaining mostly just sucks.

This sounds a lot like Benjamin Franklin's system for improving his personal conduct: he made some rules for himself (e.g. "always be punctual") and recorded infractions in a spreadsheet. He says it was remarkably effective. Me, I'm just tickled that he tried to solve one of mankind's great problems through the use of a spreadsheet.

The first rule given in Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People is:

Don't criticize, condemn or complain.

He makes it clear that by "Don't" he means "Never".

There are many things many people would never learn if no one criticized their behaviour.

A corollary: there are many startups that would never have gotten of the ground if friends of the 'owners' hadn't criticised their ideas. Criticism is informative. It informs you of weak spots you easily overlook, it forces you to explain your idea and think about it much deeper than you ever would if no one criticised you.

Don't condemn or complain: maybe. Don't criticize: that would really be very wasteful.

Agreed, but it is worth clarifying Carnegie's statement:

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

More often than not, a criticism does not have the intended effect. Our instinct in the face of criticism is to become defensive.

Dale Carnegie is an asshole.

The general principle is:

If you want to improve something with respect to some metric, start measuring that metric.

I have been wearing this bracelet for around 30 days. It is educational to discover, in my case, that there are certain types of family gatherings where the default behavior has me moving the bracelet back and forth across wrists many times.

I got a hold of it through United Centers for Spiritual Living, which talks about a lot of stuff along the lines of "Change your thinking, change your life." I've been working with it for a few months. If it turns out to be great, I'll let you know. So far, so good.

They do trace themselves back to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Franklin, and generally call themselves the "New Thought" movement.

I don't see why you need to stop complaining. The only step required here is adding a potential solution at the end of the thought process.

For instance, I could say: "John is such an asshole. Here is plan A for avoiding or removing this behavior in the future." Using kiddie words like "Muppet" makes me cringe. At least be honest inside your own head.

>that word choice determines thought choice, which determines emotions and actions

Alright. So what's wrong with thinking that things suck? Sometimes they do, right? If there really is no way to improve a situation, does it make sense to feel hopeless about it?

Interesting that he states only the positive changes he observed as a result of his "experiment". Not a single drawback? Almost as if they are forgone conclusions from his (IMO) rather dubious premises. It's enough to make one wonder if positivity is so "positive" why it would it would require so much attention to change.

Cool experiment. Dares work well.

OTOH... I recall reading in an online post recently (can't find it) that healthy people vent their anger openly and that anger is a natural thing. It's the getting negative that poisons thoughts.

Surprisingly substantive, coming from Tim Ferriss. Usually, reading his things makes me feel a bit skeevy, but I actually liked this one.

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