How to Do Hard Things

https://every.to/superorganizers/how-to-do-hard-things

by yarapavan • 4 years ago

105 20 4 years ago

rjh29• 4 years ago

Quite a dense read but looks like it has a ton of useful advice as I'm not familiar with ACT (only CBT). Added to read later!

derbOac3• 4 years ago

ACT is generally considered a form of CBT, fwiw, with some extra experiential components.

ejASIM• 4 years ago

work hard

GEBBL• 4 years ago

The advertisement is at the top of the article and I was reading about flat file first before I realised I was reading an ad instead of the article. Annoying layout

xyzzy4747• 4 years ago

The best advice related to this is that your thoughts are just your thoughts, and you can choose whether to give them importance. Reading some Eckhart Tolle helps here. As a founder I experience difficult thoughts all the time but they are just part of the game.

Think about your core values and why you are doing what you are doing, and what you want to achieve. Make some values more important than others. Everything you do should be in support towards those values.

Personally I want to build cool things and organizations that didn’t exist before, and make enough money such that I can one-up and establish egoic superiority over my neighbors, friends, and family (who hardly know anything about what I’m doing). I’m willing to push through difficult things to make this happen. I don’t want to turn this comment into a brag-fest but already reached some mild/decent success so far which gives me a lot of satisfaction.

hallqv• 4 years ago

In my experience ACT is most useful form of therapy if you want to live a meaningful life and not just do emotional management

teekert• 4 years ago

Wtf the first part is an ad. I realized after finishing reading it. Ugh.

whycombagator• 4 years ago

Appears to be one giant ad for the authors ACT coaching business (I won’t bother to link it). Which has an endorsement on it from the guy who runs the site this article is posted on. Not to mention my adblocker blocks the entire page from being rendered, had to check out the article in reader mode.

thesaintlives• 4 years ago

Excellent advice and concepts to think about further. ACT is new to me and seems very useful. After going through a difficult divorce and starting a new business some of the points seem very relevant. Connect yourself with the now and understand thoughts and not necessarily reality..

leobg• 4 years ago

I avoided reading the article. Haha.

passivate3• 4 years ago

The best proof of any kind of methodology is in its application and results. I'd be impressed if some data were to be presented showing its effectiveness.

derbOac3• 4 years ago

ACT is pretty well established scientifically at this point. There are controversies but not more than other things and they tend to be focused on the novelty of ACT concepts.

As to any particular implementation, that's a different issue.

passivate3• 4 years ago

Its my own ignorance, but can you please link to data showing effectiveness?

tdehnel• 4 years ago

You don’t get proof from Bayesian reasoning (data). That’s not how science is done. The best proof of any idea is whether it is a good logical explanation that stands up to criticism.

Take Newton’s ideas about gravity and the motion of bodies for example. The day before Einstein came up with general relativity, Newton’s ideas had the most possible data which confirmed they were true. In other words, they were as wrong as they ever had been.

Relativity predicted the warping of spacetime, which was shown to be real in a single experiment. It’s not like more data is needed to make it more true.

Back to the original topic: If this ACT stuff is a good explanation for your behavior, and if it works for you, what more data is needed?

travisjungroth• 4 years ago

Einstein’s theories being confirmed is one of the best examples of the relationship between the theoretical and empirical. AFAIK, there’s no equivalent for ACT.

If this ACT stuff is a good explanation for your behavior, and if it works for you, what more data is needed?

I’m wrong like all the time, so I only lean on my own judgement about explanations so much. And how would I really know something is working for me? Sometimes there are confounds and there are definitely measurement errors.

feoren• 4 years ago

Can I just say how tremendously irritating it is that this site has no scrollbar? Why!?

CRConrad• 4 years ago

OK, that's one way to do hard things... I was expecting something more like:

1) Look at the whole problem.

2) Split it up into smaller parts. As you do so, try to...

3) Evaluate each part on how a) basic to the rest of the problem or based on other parts it is, and b) how easy or hard it is to do.

4) Begin with the most basic parts; among those, begin with the easiest ones.

5) If some part turns out to be a big(gish) problem in itself, do the same splitting-up and ordering in steps 2-4 with it.

6) If at some point you find that you've made a mistake in your Step-3 evaluating, re-evaluate and re-order; then continue according to the new evaluation order.

Honestly, is there any other sensible way, and doesn't pretty much everyone know that already?

But yeah, this post was -- after the annoying advertisement formatted like actual content-- about something else: How to get started in the first place. Oh well, insert as Step 0?

maxverse• 4 years ago

I read the post and really enjoyed it. I had my adblocker on, and didn't run into any issues with ads, or the scrollbar. I thought the content was thorough and well-written, and is encouraging me to explore this methodology a bit more. It seems to pull on a bunch of threads I've come across in the therapy, mindfulness, and general productivity advice. Some of the author's own anecdotes seemed a bit reductionist, but I appreciate that they tie back to business, making them feel immediately actionable. It feels like every one of these sections could be a chapter or few of a book, but I guess that's the whole point.

The section on values was the most helpful to me personally.

How to Do Hard Things

Related Stories