Introspect Yourself

https://dcgross.com/introspect-yourself/

by danicgross • 8 years ago

123 39 8 years ago

brd• 8 years ago

Glad to see this subject surface on HN. This is a topic that's near and dear to me, to the point that over time I've accidentally cultivated my closest friendships almost exclusively with people who share this interest/capacity.

I frame it as living more deliberately. Every moment is an opportunity to better yourself, better your position, better your brand, or help others better themselves. Introspection is the means to identify those opportunities and build habits around them.

This concept as a whole is a conversation that, in my opinion, happens all too infrequently. Everyone should try to find someone that they can talk to about this concept because there's a ton of value in being able to vocalize these internal monologues. Talking to someone about your introspective processes and conclusions brings another level of intellectual honesty to the entire process.

bloodorange• 8 years ago

"Every moment is an opportunity to better yourself, better your position, better your brand, or help others better themselves"

I'd also ask "why" to this one repeatedly (socratic method perhaps). In my mind that leads to "purpose of life" - which is, I suppose, a philosophical question with no easy answer.

psyc2• 8 years ago

Perhaps it is rooted in the role of fitness in biological evolution.

MDib• 8 years ago

For anyone getting a 502: https://web.archive.org/web/20180425160041/https://dcgross.c...

danicgross2• 8 years ago

Back up! Sorry.

falcolas• 8 years ago

Currently getting "SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP"

Firefox 59.0.2

dcx• 8 years ago

Your life goal should be not to win any particular game, rather to win the sum of all games.

Would anyone be able to help unpack this? I feel there is some depth to this idea but am not quite making the connection.

tlb• 8 years ago

There is indeed a good book's worth of depth: https://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James-Carse/dp/...

gglitch• 8 years ago

I wish I'd read this book when I was in my teens. It's transformative even now; but I'm now so firmly entrenched in exigencies, attitudes, and ancient habits that I feel like I need near-daily reminders and affirmations to begin to turn the ship around.

danShumway3• 8 years ago

The analogy I would use:

In card games like Magic or Hearthstone, there's a lot of randomness. Sometimes you don't draw the cards you expect. A common problem for new players is that they'll focus specifically on these scenarios, and they'll say, "well, the game is just luck."

But the point of games like these are to increase your win percentage. Variance is expected. A good deck is not one that wins 100% of the time but one that, over time, increases its win percentage.

Now, whether or not a game has elements of luck, there will still be scenarios outside of your immediate control where you lose. You may not know enough to win, you may not have enough practice or discipline to win. Even in this scenario, your goal is (often) not to win every single game you play - it's over time to increase your win percentage.

Or in other words, in both a luck and skill-based world it might still be worthwhile to lose a 'game' if it means you can win two in the future. In particular, this comes up a lot in entrepreneurship - a good entrepreneur is one who harnesses variance to their advantage, rather than focusing on just the immediate challenge or project in front of them.

----

Note that I don't believe this is universally true. It's true for some games, and it's an important point to learn if you're trying to deal with variance. However, there are certain scenarios where failure is incredibly costly, and you can't focus on the long-term in those scenarios. So, overall it's good advice, but you should still take it with a grain of salt.

antisthenes2• 8 years ago

I would argue that "winning" here in general would be to play games where there is less randomness and more skill, where you will have a larger edge over someone who hasn't done their studying.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to apply yourself to areas where 90% of the result is determined by luck (unless you truly enjoy it).

personlurking• 8 years ago

Better than being good at any singular game, you want to be good at the meta-game, ie, across the set of all games. Because then it doesn't matter what gets thrown at you, you have a way of looking at it and dealing with it. This could be thought of as specializing in being a generalist.

_cereal• 8 years ago

I see it as a suggestion to try to give the best of yourself in everything you do: use the same passion/positive attitude that you put in something you appreciate (your work for example) for all the aspect of your life, and you will get a better control of yourself.

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 8 years ago

What a strange statement, as though life is a thing that can be won. Life is lived, and then you die. There is no victory condition. Even the universe is ultimately doomed.

danShumway3• 8 years ago

"Meaning" and "winning" are two different things. Even presupposing that the world is meaningless, some states may be preferable to the individual actors inside of it.

Those actors might take steps to maximize those states, and their success or failure in the short term (ie. the duration of their own life) can easily be considered "winning".

nugga• 8 years ago

Jordan Peterson sums it up so that to win many sets of games you're supposed to be play in a manner that you're invited to play again and again. To win one game at all costs may not be the smartest thing in the long run..

https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/82497106398146150...

Regardsyjc• 8 years ago

"He who knows men is clever; He who knows himself has insight; He who conquers men has force; He who conquers himself is truly strong." - Lao Tzu

I'm currently reading Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin that covers the fundamentals on how to think. 200+ pages on how the mind works from common misjudgements to systems thinking. Highly recommend it to anyone interested in self-improvement, especially better decision-making.

aatifh• 8 years ago

This link leads to 502.

gregknicholson• 8 years ago

This article, particularly the Others section, is a very good elucidation of the particular form of social anxiety I have.

aizatto• 8 years ago

Understanding yourself is something I've been advocating for a while. I've developed a platform where the goal was to ask yourself deep questions https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/

It has helped me have a more holistic view of myself through a wide range of question and topics, and especially from the answers my friends have shared.

tra32• 8 years ago

What a wonderful site. Thanks for sharing. It's like oblique strategies for your whole self.

pmoriarty2• 8 years ago

In this article the goal of life is described as winning games, and doing everything else is subsumed as a means to that end.

Helping others, having empathy, not hurting others.. those presumably wouldn't be worthwhile things to do if they didn't help one "win".

psyc2• 8 years ago

The word game can be extremely broad. Life is complex enough that an individual can select their own rules and conditions. There is no activity involving choice and constraints that I can unsee as being fundamentally a game.

pmoriarty2• 8 years ago

That people are worth helping and not hurting, regardless of whether one "wins" is what's missing.

In this article, such actions are worth doing only because they're means to winning, not (say) because you actually value other people, their thoughts, and feelings. The impression one gets is that to the author they're just pawns in his game, and if he could "win" by trampling all over them he would.

This impression is strengthened by the reductionistic, instrumentalist analogies (like the mind being a computer program) sprinkled throughout the article. If people are merely computer programs and life is just a bunch of games that you're trying to win, why be nice to them? Oh, it's because if you're not they might not let you play.

dagfs• 8 years ago

About taking it to far; there is a good article at ted about the right way of being introspective[0]. I highly recommend it.

The summary of it is ask what questions not why questions. "Asking “why?” in one study appeared to cause the participants to fixate on their problems instead of moving forward."

[0] https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-...

yanilkr• 8 years ago

I would classify this as "Self help" advice based on personal experience. Over all its very good advice to learn to collaborate with others.

There are so many persuasion filters here "Partner at Ycombinator", "Co-Founder", "Director", "Apple", "High Achiever writer in general". With this many strong credentials, it would be very very difficult to critically read such advice and then think of alternative ideas.

"If you don’t retrain your model based on input from the crowd, you’ll never converge on truth." This is true for machines.

Other high achievers believe in the alternate version.

"Reasonable men adapt to the world around them; unreasonable men make the world adapt to them. The world is changed by unreasonable men." Edwin Louis Cole

"truth is my goal. Controversy is my gym. I'll do a hundred reps of controversy for a 6 pack of truth" - Kanye west.

"Your life goal should be not to win any particular game, rather to win the sum of all games." This metaphor of everything is a game really really works well for certain people. I personally witnessed it.

It would be a sad life if you turn everything you do in life as a game where you need to compete with others to win and never question the nature of the game itself.

"Do what you love" is an over all long term approach that sustains your energy and focus for long term.

Most ideas of high achievers are very contradictory, in general its a good idea to listen to so many of them and pick something that meets your style.

aaron-lebo• 8 years ago

Definitely agreed. The version of introspection presented here is inherently outward then inward, which is fine, but I'm not sure that's actually that useful. If the crowd has fucked up values, adapting to their fucked up values isn't a victory, it's just conforming to fucked up values. I think YC is a great example of this, many of the companies they fund are unethical and shallow moneygrabs (I'd be happy to detail them, but it's not useful). If you adapt to that, well, good luck because you might be an unethical and shallow carpetbagger.

I've got the problem of being too introspective, which can lead to a lot of beating yourself up, but after 30 years I get myself, which is nice. I'm not sure you can do that if you're constantly chasing what a lot of people value though which is success, "influence", money, a social life, etc. Those are all great indicators of success, but if you don't slow down how can you really stop and think about yourself? Not to introduce Trump (okay, going to do it anyway), but that's a guy who has spent 70 years chasing stuff, being addicted to fast food and TV. Has that guy ever stopped and thought about what's wrong with himself? What he can do better? Strongly doubt it. Much of our society is that, caught up in some loop where they never have the ability to do anything but react.

If we're honest with ourselves, much of what the world values is stupid if not outright evil. When people don't see that I don't believe they've really thought things through. That's pretentious, but we gotta get real about how we and others work or nothing will change.

Guess what I'm saying is by all means be introspective, but really be introspective. Don't measure yourself against bad yardsticks, be honest about your flaws and strengths. Don't do it because it's some game to maximize your utility, do it because if you don't do it, you are worse off.

mkolodny• 8 years ago

Great post! I especially like this idea:

Retrain your model based on input from the crowd... [to] become an enjoyable player to be around.

Regarding this introspection:

I [am] always thinking that I should have done that thing better. This is a dangerous propellant. It pushes me. But left unchecked, it means I’m rarely happy.

I've suffered from this, too. What's helped me most is gratitude. Every morning I think of five things I'm grateful for. I got this habit from Tal Ben-Sharar - the professor of "The Happy Class" (Harvard's most popular course ever).

davebryand• 8 years ago

I'd like us to start using the term "enlightenment" for these types of discussions. This is the whole goal of introspection, self-help, self-finding, etc. When you start to search around for ways to enlightenment, the doors are blown open with the number of paths that one can take to introspect yourself.

mcguire• 8 years ago

"An extreme form of self-improvement is what some call having a “chip on your shoulder”."

"What's the meaning of the phrase 'Chip on your shoulder'?

"A perceived grievance or sense of inferiority."

-- https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/chip-on-your-shoulder.ht...

"Having a chip on your shoulder" indicates you get into many fights.

tra32• 8 years ago

Make sure you learn from success, not just failure. What are the common factors that lead to a really good day? Good sleep? Good weather?

How are people tracking these factors? There's a whole movement around this, called "Quantified Self". The concept it simple: track a set of variables and try to glean some insight however I'm having trouble implementing this in my life.

Track what? Track how?

adamsea• 8 years ago

... talk therapy? Journaling? Long walks coupled with self-reflection ...

Introspect Yourself

Related Stories