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"If you aren’t the type of person that excellent people would want to be friends with, then you need to work on that first. This requires the ability and willingness to self-assess honestly. What do you bring to the table? If you don’t know, then that’s a problem. Would someone be lucky to have you as a friend? That answer must be a clear yes, and getting there is a combination of working on yourself and also having the self-esteem to see your own worth."
"If you aren’t seeking out the types of people with whom you want to be friends, you are making a mistake."
"It is better to be alone than to be around the wrong people. In the same way that boredom spurs creativity, some degree of loneliness can fuel the process of building a great friend group."
"Your time and focus is an extremely valuable resource. If you don’t feel that that is true, then you should look inwards and maybe use your time and focus better. When you’re around people, be excellent to them no matter who they are, but also treat your time like the valuable commodity it is, and spend it with those people with whom you’d like to grow closer."
Create a Stable Life, not a Stable Job
"Create a life where it doesn’t matter if your job is stable or not. A litmus test could be whether or not you could live the exact same life for a year if you had to spend the whole year job searching."
"All of this feels like a huge secret weapon to me. Every item in my environment makes it easier for me to do whatever I want to do. The constraints on my time are probably fewer than the average retired person. This doesn’t lead to me living a coddled idle life, it enables me to do a lot of work with no stress, no encumbrance, and no distraction."
Ask HN: How do you force yourself to do boring tasks?
"So maybe that is my strategy: only focus on 'getting started', not on getting done."
"When I wrote my masters thesis I auto-generated 50 pages of Lorem Ipsum, properly formatted, and started editing it."
"In my case I ask myself this question "how can I make this task interesting? (but also accomplish it on time)" and then simply make a game of it."
"Behavior = Motivation + Ability + Trigger"
"1. Make a deal with myself to do some of the boring task (say an hours worth) before switching to something rewarding 2. Procrastinate until the consequences of not finishing the boring work are technically or socially expensive then rush into it desperately 3. Do it as a sort of down time or palate-cleanser, or a break from more challenging or stressful work"
"most dopamine is released “on the way” to achieving the pleasurable goal, rather than after we attain the goal itself."
"Humans need to go get food, find shelter, and have sex, but evolution doesn’t care if we feel pleasure after we achieve those things. Evolution is more concerned with getting us to those things in the first place, which is why we are wired to feel most of our pleasure as we move towards the goal rather than after we get it."
"journey pleasure only exists when the journey leads to destination pleasure. If there is no pot of gold at the end of the journey, our subconscious mind will not generate the dopamine necessary to motivate us."
"you will only be motivated to work hard if you believe your work will lead to something. That “something” can be money, developing your skills, creating something new and valuable, or helping people. Ideally, your work will pay off in all of those ways."
"Successful people run towards a goal; unsuccessful people run on a treadmill."
"journey pleasure satiates our desire for pleasure, and once we have a consistent source of journey pleasure we can make rational, long-term plans."
"Whether we realize it or not, our brain is constantly seeking pleasure, and if we are not directing what pleasure it seeks, it will probably seek the lowest, cheapest pleasures that will ultimately lead us to ruin."
"We feel journey pleasure only when we see a clear path to the goal, but we feel anxiety when we see obstacles and threats on the way to the goal."
"the journey pleasure we get from venturing into the unknown is the strongest type of journey pleasure possible, because all the pleasure in the “known” world is finite, but the pleasure in the unknown is potentially infinite."
"Our motivation is lowest when we see a threat blocking our way to the goal. It is highest when we see a clear path to the goal, and our fear is behind us, pushing us towards the goal."
"First, because the Ultimate Transcendent Purpose is the most valuable and pleasurable destination and because it requires venturing into the unkonwn, you will feel the strongest possible journey pleasure during its pursuit. And because the Ultimate Transcendent Purpose is not achievable, this journey pleasure will never end."
"Second, if you pursue the Ultimate Transcendent Purpose you will always feel confident and certain of your purpose because you know you are pursuing the best possible purpose. You will never feel that nagging anxiety that you should perhaps be doing something else. You may run into obstacles or make mistakes in choosing your lower purposes, but because your highest purpose is the correct one, you will be able to quickly change your lower purposes without feeling like you have failed in your life’s mission and falling into a pit of depression and anxiety."
"Your desires never “turn off” so you cannot satiate them by feeding them. In fact, feeding them often makes them hungrier. Our desires evolved to be constant and insatiable to make up for anticipated scarcity."
"We can, however, reduce this feeling of scarcity by putting our desires into a schedule and routine. If you offer me food or pussy right now, but I know for a fact that I am getting some food or pussy later, it will be easy for me to resist."
" You must reduce uncertainty in your life as much as possible, so that you can use the precious, limited power of your conscious mind to tackle challenges that actually matter. You should create long-term plans for your life and short-term plans to support those long-term plans. On a micro level, you need to create a predictable routine for your daily life. You also need to eliminate unnecessary sources of uncertainty and negativity in your life, like shitty friends, bad habits, a dirty house, addictions, and internet worm-holes, because your brain views these sources of negativity and uncertainty as threats, and if you are not voluntarily and consciously confronting these threats, they will induce anxiety in you."
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