You Are Your Own Worst Enemy - thoughts on ego protection and self-sabotage | Hacker News Reader

You Are Your Own Worst Enemy - thoughts on ego protection and self-sabotage

zachobront.com

67 pointszobront17 comments

This is a very "classic psychology" view. As usual there are alternative views and in this case specifically: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle

A startup world interpretation, in a nutshell - the reason we value organic growth or the achievement of a small team is that they are "honest signals". They are "honest signals" because the were achieved while "handicapped" compared to achievement supported by more resources (ex. marketing budget, big teams etc.)

I disagree with the author. Handicaps are real, very real, they are not mere excuses to protect our sense of self-worth. If anything, what the handicapped/troubled person desires is to lift and be free his burden - and not to use it to fail repeatedly.

Apart from that, yes subconscious fear of failing, of being not good enough, can paralyze you and demolish your productivity. You spend time searching for that perfect design, then you stumble upon someone's else work, feel inferior/get jealous - go back to the drawing board, and your project gets never completed, not even halfway done. You can never be perfect enough.

So, striving for perfection is not a good ally, striving for providing solutions is.

But please keep real problems/issues out of that, you don't have the right to insult troubled people and call them under performers, and diminish their burdens to "excuses for failure".

Please read the article again, more carefully. I'm sure you just skimmed it while at work, that caused this misunderstanding.

This isn't meant to be a hippie, voodoo, "all you need to do is focus on success and it will come" message. There are real handicaps.

But there's also tons of people hurting their chances of success in order to protect their egos. It's not just about perfectionism (although that's one manifestation).

Which "real burdens" did you think were targeted that shouldn't have been?

That's why we on HN say: 'Build it and ship it'. Everything else is 'could have, should have' noise.

This started off as a piece about Jobs' "Real Artists Ship" quote and slowly evolved. "Build it and Ship it" really is the entrepreneur's corollary to this whole line of thinking. Glad you picked up on that.

Hi, I just graduated in CS this summer. Coming into uni out of foster care I always felt that things were much more difficult for me than for other students because other students had their families for support and didn't have the same emotional baggage that I do.

There have been times though where I've wondered if I was self-handicapping, how do I know that things aren't as difficult for them? I guess I felt it would be more acceptable for someone with my background to fail or break the rules.

Like the students the author writes of, I once thought I was exceptional but I'm not and it's surprisingly difficult to be honest with yourself about that.

Re: Are you self-handicapping? Probably not. You've got a real disadvantage. BUT that doesn't mean you should hold yourself to any lower of a standard. I find that a useful heuristic is to automatically answer "yes" to this question. In other words, if I told you authoritatively, "YES, YOU ARE SELF-HANDICAPPING - SNAP OUT OF IT" what would you do differently? Usually, whether it's true or not, those are the right decisions.

Re: Exceptional. I'm sure you are. Exceptional is a vague term and that can lead to big ego swings. We can all find evidence that we're "exceptional" and "non-exceptional" every day. The trick is to realize that assuming that your exceptional innate abilities will lead you to success without work is a myth. Just keep hustling. Excellence is a habit, not a trait.

Very interesting read. I have to admit that I have been guilty of this self handicaping on more than one occasion. The self illusion of being able to achieve great things if you just put in the time is very difficult to overcome. To me I believe that the difficulty comes from a mix of complacence & fear of discomfort.

One thing that still bugs me to this day, is why this types of issues seem to be more prevalent in the software industry than anywhere else. Has anyone have an idea as to why this is?

I would say it is due to the fact that computers are full of wondrous things that distract us. How many software people have fought game addictions to gloriously complex and involved game? There are more distractions being created than there is time in the day to enjoy and when you feel tired it's so easy to just access that push button entertainment.

Something something a smart man knows he knows nothing...

Perhaps part of it is a personal predisposition to be able to face a hard truth or accept that the chances of failure are high.

"We all tend to overestimate the situational factors in our failures and overestimate the individual factors in our successes."

I recall reading somewhere that attribution of the factors differed by culture, with the people in the US generally blaming themselves for what happens in their life, and Europeans tending more toward external factors. Unfortunately I couldn't find the source, so take it with a grain of salt.

There's a whole bunch of factors that affect it. It's actually Eastern cultures that tend towards external factors (relative to us North Americans). But, in general, everyone focuses more on the individual factors than they should: it's called the Fundamental Attribution Error.

I've learned a bit about this recently in a Coursera class on social psychology. I tried to attach the lecture video but you need to be in the class to watch it. I recommend joining though - it's fascinating (and free).

https://class.coursera.org/socialpsychology-001/class

Not sure if I really want to take life advice from a blog with the title "meditations on winning".

I usually ignore critical comments, but on deeper thought that tagline comes off a lot douchier than it did it my head. There's a better word for what I'm trying to convey than "winning" but I can't come up with it.

Now that the tagline's changed, you can go back and take some life advice ;)

Regarding eating seconds as a self-destructive act is short-sighted. The same man can both eat seconds and not be or look "like a pig", i.e. overweight, He just needs to exercise.

In this case, eating seconds is not a self-destructive act but an example of cognitive dissonance. Maybe it's not true for everyone, but most have the feeling that they're doing something wrong/unhealthy when they indulge in too much dessert, but they have the temptation to do it anyways.

That's cognitive dissonance. Self-destructive behavior is just one example of a weird way we deal with that tension (in this example, maybe that's the person who says "I have bad genetics, so it doesn't even matter anyways!" before stuffing their face).

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