You Won. Now What?
To readers of PaleoHacks, Lifehacker, Get Rich Slowly, 37 Signals, StevePavilina, Quantified Self:
YOU WON!
You’ve found the perfect…
[diet, productivity system, way to save money, workflow, source of inspiration, regimen]
You’ve done it. We all agree. Now what?
Remember, it’s bad strategy to go past the mark you aimed for. When we look at our health, our money, our productivity or anything else that takes our time and energy, the metric that matters is ROI. Nature has given us a wonderful guide to help with that: the law of diminishing returns. Yet, you stuck with it long past then.
You spent so many hours slaving over improvements at the margins. So many pedantic debates on the internet—because you had to be right. How much time did you spend trying to be a better person? A better father? A better friend? You know definitively whether legumes are good for you or not, but whether you are good or not remains less clear.
What should you focus on instead? Start with the things that matter: Philosophy. Empathy. Goodness. And from there, proceed to basically just about everything else. You know, stuff that matters.
I had the exact same thoughts few days ago. I decided to delete (almost) all of the paleo blogs I am subscribed to. What is the point reading one more article bashing vegans or the merits of omega-3? Keep few blogs that keep posts to a minimum and have fresh content.
Unless your life or career depends on it, drop it once you know the major points. This is why when you are doing scholarship, read the introduction textbook or the Oxford Handbook of x, don’t go on JSTOR reading every single paper on the subject.
Signal vs noise, marginal returns, pareto principle, etc.
I was moderator over at the Pavlina forum and now I’m involved in Quantified Self community organising.
I don’t think either venue is intended to provide people with a perfect forumla for a problem.
I don’t think it’s about making improvement on the margins.
A lot of Steve’s writing isn’t about informing people but about challenging them. You might disagree with the concept of the subjective reality framework but I don’t think that it’s valid criticism to say that he doesn’t deal with philosophy.
Quiting a job is also something that I wouldn’t classify as “improvement on the margins”. There are people who suffer because they make that decision but it’s not about being complacent.
When it comes to Quantified Self it’s similar. Tracking data that gets you to make changes in your personal life is actually quite challenging.
It’s only problematic when they person just consumes information without action.
Even then there’s nothing wrong with consuming information for it’s own sake. I think that reading any of those blogs is a better time investment than spending the same amount of time watching mainstream TV.
No, it’s a problem of priorities firstly. And secondly, of the inevitable complete consumption that comes along with it.
Look who is talking, you moderated a forum on Pavlina’s site! And what did you do when you left? You moved on to another community to fill that void. Did you spend even a comparable amount of time quantifying, say, what makes you angry and what you can do about it? Or times you’ve hurt other people and how you could repay that debt? Of course not–it’s much more gratifying to obsess over food choices or supplements or “personal development” (which immediately descends into the same bogus advice about productivity, making money, advice about networking).
Let’s me honest, mostly you end up quantifying sleep and health and diet. I know, I’m a part of these things. It’s why I’m warning against it.
We’re really good at making numbers go up (or down). It’s just a waste of time in most cases.
“It (sic) simple: stop learning (or “working”) for a second and refine.” From your post on Return to Philosophy.
Most posts on PaleoHacks, Lifehacker, Get Rich Slowly, 37 Signals, StevePavilina, and Quantified Self offer small continuous refinements after the main learning has been done.
From all those sites I got something that worked wonders for me and maybe not for the majority of people reading. That’s worth the 5 minutes scanning the feed everyday.
My point’s clear enough.
Little tactics don’t do much, and a bunch of them just clutter your mind. I wore myself out for several years grinding to figure out which Moleskine size was right to have my GTD lists in.
I was so clever, offering advice to all comers on how to Alt-Tab instead of use the mouse to get through Windows.
Really appreciated this post. Staying caught up in productivity streamlining and life hacks can still serve as a total distraction from the important questions, its just much easier to self-rationalize than watching TV.
Or rather, these productivity streamlining and life hacks are just the same as TV, only we congratulate ourselves for engaging in one mindless activity while generally looking down on the other.
Ryan always knows what to say to remind me of the wisdom I had in high school, when I was just starting to realize no one has it all figured out.
I actually thought someone had it all figured out. But get this–they don’t! Those were heady days.
I can’t say that I consider the approval of your high school self a compliment, but thanks
This is what I needed. I’m applying to law school.
Can you not be a reader of these blogs, among others, and still spend time in the day to work on yourself? I don’t check any of the ones you named but there are plenty that I do check, including this one, and yet I still spend time everyday working on being a better person. “Soul searching” as some would call it.
I think the bigger issue is the amount of people that read, listen, or watch information about being a better person. People that try to learn about how to give back to humanity but never actually put any of it into practice. Wasn’t that one of the main points of the Stoics’? That philosophy needed to be more than talked about, it needed to be lived?
Or maybe I just completely missed the point of the post. Regardless, I agree with the end message: “Start with the things that matter: Philosophy. Empathy. Goodness.”
Dude, what does the title of the post say? It says “Now What?”
Obviously I concede that these things have value. After all, I eat paleo, work remotely, understand the basics of finance, and need creative inspiration myself. But then what? What’s next? What do you do after the point of diminishing returns? Are you even able to, at this point, accept that there are diminishing returns?
The answer to that question for most of the people in those communities is no. They’re too wrapped up in the self-congratulation and obsession with pedantic details.
You have won the (insanely large) lottery, now what? Still working on selling clothes?
You won the lottery. Still selling clothes?
(added usable mail, in case you would like to give some explanation about why the comment is censoured)
woops, i deserve it for my nasty mind.
I don’t read any of the other sites you mentioned, but I don’t think this a fair criticism of Steve Pavlina’s site. (I read his book regularly, never took part in the forum though – that place was full of freaks). He does write about time management and productivity, but that’s just one of many topics, and there’s definitely a lot of valuable advice and information on there about bigger subjects like life purpose, healthy relationships, connection, compassion etc.
The danger of course is that you’ll spend too much time reading about these topics and not enough time applying what you’ve learnt. I think it was Eben Pagan who said that ‘learning is behaviour change’ – if you understand something intellectually but don’t apply it, you haven’t really learnt anything. I’ve been guilty of that at times, but who hasn’t?
It’s helpful to learn and read a little bit about increasing your personal organisation and time management (skills which most students I know SEVERELY lack) but people who obsess over it are generally no fun at parties.
Typo: ‘I read his book’ should be ‘I read his blog’ in the above comment, although Pavlina’s book is brilliant too – I think you’d like it Ryan. It’s pretty clear from your writing that you are interested in ‘personal development’ even if you don’t call it by that phrase.