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yet another 2x2
The examples you chose for this 2x2 made me laugh, thanks!
I concur. The crux, for me, is whether or not I want to do the particular task.
If I want to do the task, say writing, but I'm not feeling motivated, then enough time being bored will eventually create for me the conditions to be more interested in writing than in staying bored.
If I do not want to do the task, say my taxes, then boredom or doing nothing may actually be preferable. In this case, boredom is not a sufficient motivator and I need to cognitively reframe how I'm thinking of the task and how to approach it. I wrote about this in a previous post, Facts vs Interpretations—An Exercise in Cognitive Reframing. Bludgeoning myself with normative "shoulds/oughts" is, in my opinion, a subpar coping mechanism compared to reframing my thoughts to better align with the task so that I'll want to do it.
The snake shrugged
My imagination is not creative enough to envision how this can occur when a snake has neither a neck or arms...
I don't think this was intended to be funny, but I laughed anyway.
I completely recommend performing a lot of obstructive behavior and misunderstanding basic instructions.
Reminds me of this video of a parent trying to follow his kids' instructions on how to build a peanut butter jelly sandwich.
Reminds me Parkinson's Law, which states work expands to fill the time given to complete it. So if at your job you create an improvement that improves efficiency and decreases your workload by 50%, your employer's "reward" for you is to fill that time with more work.
Entrepreneur Naval Ravikant has said previously that one of his favorite employees was this one guy who was more productive than all other employees while only doing 2 hours of work per day. The rest of his 8-hour work day (6 hours) was spent watching cricket matches.
Naval had to tell managers to leave that hyper-productive employee alone because they constantly wanted to fill his day with more work to do. Those managers failed to realize that if the productive employee was forced to work (or pretend to look busy) for a full 8 hours, that he might get burned out and quit.
I see the point all of you are making, thank you. I agree that a last name muddies things--I deleted it from the post.
Have fun with it! Let me know the results if you try it.
Your homeless person or professor story made me think of my uncle. He lives in his car, by choice.
He has a computer science degree and worked for a lot of top technology companies in the 80s and 90s. Eventually his disdain for the employee lifestyle inspired him to try his hand at the entrepreneurial route. Turns out he's neither a good employee, nor a good entrepreneur. After a couple bad start-ups, he went broke.
On two separate occasions during my childhood he stayed with my family in our home (with the precondition that he maintains employment somewhere). It lasted...for a while. But he grew bored. He prefers to live in his car and read books in the library than work "for the man".
I see him once a year on Thanksgiving now. Last year we talked about particle physics and blackholes.
I sometimes feel the pressure of making a first draft of a short article perfect (or at least really good). But historically that's never been the case. My first drafts are usually dumpster fires thrown into bigger dumpster fires.
The way I'm able to approach writing a first draft is through using two mental tricks. (1) I pretend it's just another journal entry I'm writing---that takes the pressure off and I don't take myself too seriously. (2) I recognize that the majority of what I write in a first draft never makes it to the final draft. The first draft is merely an exercise in structured thinking. The refinement comes later through editing.
It's probably in part generational, with younger people more influenced by this tech culture. One of my inspirations to write this post was this other LW post: Notifications Received in 30 Minutes of Class.
I say often that the fundamental unit of human experience is the story. We love stories. And the best stories are the ones with a sprinkle of drama in them. A story about a rich kid who never struggled? Boring! A story of riches-to-rags-to-riches? Sign me up!
Why? Because stories are a form of Supernormal Stimuli. We like to live vicariously through the lives of more interesting people. And it just so happens that the lives of interesting people are usually filled with some amount of suffering that they're able to transcend. That's why people like superhero movies. We relate to the struggle and rejoice when the hero wins the battle (for maybe we, too, can overcome our struggles).
other than was it is
*other than what it is
I worked from short sits up to longer sits
Remove the word "up" for clarity?
My original intent was in talking about how I shouldn't use information I found online about the other person to try to impress them (e.g., I find out they used to play volleyball, then slip into conversation that I like volleyball). It makes things messy.
What you're talking about is whether one should try to impress their date in general. In this case, my dating heuristic on what an emotionally healthy person would do is up for narrow interpretation. I say 'narrow' because lying to impress someone would be out of scope for the heuristic. But your interpretation (trying to authentically impress and attract someone), I think most people would agree, would be within scope.
Personally, I try to live a diverse lifestyle and let the other person decide on their own if they find me impressive.
An unintended consequence: While writing this post, I realized that adopting this heuristic for my dating life led to it bleeding into other parts of my life. In conversations with friends, family, bosses, I found myself asking what an emotionally healthy person would do in this context and it improved those interactions, as well.
To make an analogy to diet, you essentially replaced a sugar fix from eating Snickers bars with eating strawberries. Gradation matters!
I had a similar slide with my technologies, as I explained in the post. I eventually landed on reading books. But even that became a form of intellectual procrastination as I wrote in my latest LW post.
Another example of Mental Masturbation I decided to exclude from the main text:
- While playing a piano piece I already know fairly well but am lacking in one specific spot, my brain will say, “Hey, rather than painstakingly drill the 1-2 measures that are tricky, you should play the entire song through to get a balanced perspective of the piece!” To fix this, I put a sticky note on my music stand that says: “Stop Mental Masturbation and practice the hard part!”
The person totally understands the point I'm trying to make, and is then surprised by something I assumed they already understood.
Reminds me of Expecting Short Inferential Distances.
When I watched "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" in theaters last year, the animations were amazing but I left two hours later with a headache. Maybe it's a sign that I'm getting older, but it was just too much for my brain.
Good point. The question I use to identify perceptual blindspots is best suited to ask people who are interested in your genuine well-being. Asking a toxic ex-girlfriend is probably not going to be a productive conversation...
It was outside the scope of the original post and cut for space, but I'll add that these types of conversations operate best when they are a collaboration. Even when I'm the one receiving constructive criticism, I try to help them make the best argument. Then, we can determine together whether it's an accurate assessment. Regardless of its veracity, you may discover a new way that people perceive you that maybe you weren't aware of before.
Depends on the conversation and application. When applied to engineering, math is the language used to solve problems.
Math is also used, for example, to help explain the principles of physics. And the physical laws help tell the story of our universe.
Huh. When I search using either google or duckduckgo they both show the tweet under Images. I edited the above post to include this image, per your suggestion.
I attempted to find additional sources online while writing this post, but there's nothing out there. Perhaps the Youtuber stumbled across it at the time and wrote it down, but it wasn't covered by any media outlets. And that's part of the point I was trying to make---trolls can take you down with no repercussions. Keisha's left to pick up the pieces of her tarnished reputation.
I think it depends on the motivation. If you're trying to become stronger by following shoulds/oughts (ie: external motivation), you'll most likely burnout and may (incorrectly) assign the blame to yourself.
Example: let's say you're trying to lose weight. If the motivation for doing so is because you feel you ought to be healthy or to try to gain the approval of others, then you'll most likely fail. Try to remember previous times in which you attempted to achieve something with the use of external motivation. Did you succeed then? If not, why not?
Let's compare that example with being internally motivated to lose weight. What first has to be asked genuinely is: why exactly do you want to lose weight? Let's say you love the taste of food and believe only unhealthy food tastes great. Then exposure to a healthy-eating cooking class may help you realize that eating healthy is not a substitute for eating great-tasting food. Finding the right motivation is dependent upon being exposed to the right information that is unique to your situation. If the desire to change is not genuine, then you'll never become stronger. So yes, I agree with you that "depression [is] manifested by doing it the wrong way."