[HN Gopher] How to do hard things
___________________________________________________________________
How to do hard things
Author : tacon
Score : 213 points
Date : 2023-04-03 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (every.to)
(TXT) w3m dump (every.to)
| Madmallard wrote:
| I don't really think there's any shortcuts one can do to adopt
| self-discipline. I think it is born out of serious changes in
| ones life if it wasn't already taught and adopted at a younger
| age.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| I tend to agree that there are no shortcuts. However I do think
| you can be disciplined in one area (e.g. work) and lack
| discipline in another (e.g. diet and exercise).
|
| So discipline is not an on or off switch for a person, it's
| more granular and nuanced than that.
| haswell wrote:
| I think you're correct in the sense that one does need to adopt
| changes, but I'd offer a slightly alternate framing of the
| process of change itself.
|
| I've spent quite a bit of time struggling to implement serious
| changes, because that's how I thought about them: serious
| changes. When framed this way, it sounds difficult. If you
| happen to be depressed, it sounds impossible.
|
| The good news is that there are approaches that can help bring
| about serious change without requiring an outflow of willpower
| - willpower you don't have because you don't have the self-
| discipline.
|
| Starting with small core habit changes makes all of this more
| possible. At some point, I was able to convince myself that if
| I'm willing to spend <n> hours on distraction each day, I can
| commit to 10 minutes of mindfulness each morning.
|
| That 10 minute commitment became a snowball of positive change.
| The end result was a lot of change, yes, but it does not
| require a herculean effort or some impossible transformation.
| It's more like laying bricks. Each brick is manageable. The
| resulting wall is much greater than the sum of the individual
| bricks.
|
| I wouldn't call this a shortcut, but it was certainly a lot
| easier than trying to just "fix" everyone through sheer force
| of will.
| Madmallard wrote:
| the small changes that form habits don't come out of
| willpower and thin air that's a myth. the person was already
| in the mindset for positive change and motivated
| haswell wrote:
| One still has to have enough motivation to make small
| changes, yes. I'm not claiming that there's a magical path
| that requires no effort at all.
|
| The point is that small changes are often achievable in
| situations where large changes are not. It's a classic case
| of breaking a large problem into small enough chunks to
| make it possible to tackle.
|
| This is a drastically different undertaking and is far more
| likely to succeed than any kind of "big bang" approach.
| Madmallard wrote:
| Where is the evidence that this is how it is other than
| an intuitive argument? I would challenge that from the
| getgo. A lot of feeliscience ends up not panning well
| when confronted with scientific rigor. People aren't in
| much control of themselves in reality, and those that
| seem to be often have so many pieces of upbringing
| context that support the development of agency.
| haswell wrote:
| I grew up in an abusive environment, and have dealt with
| the process of unwinding C-PTSD for much of my life (now
| mid 30s). The environment I escaped is the type of
| environment that books about learned helplessness (a
| concept at the center of modern therapy) are written
| about. I mention this only to add context to my personal
| experience, and to highlight that the mindset I had to
| escape was ingrained from the earliest age. In short,
| there was little to no "supporting the development of
| agency", and in most cases, the exact opposite was true.
|
| The process of therapy, whether that's CBT, ACT, etc. are
| all about making incremental changes that eventually all
| combine to rewire how you think and/or act. The entire
| therapy journey consists of these kinds of small changes
| along with active processing of past events to free up
| mental capacity. I'm highlighting therapy here because
| the related disciplines have been studied extensively.
|
| The same concepts apply in other contexts (and are common
| in fields like software). Outside of traditional methods
| of therapy, practices like mindfulness meditation have
| been studied quite a bit, and there is a growing body of
| research on its benefits [0]. In particular, it seems to
| lower friction for hard things by helping you see more
| clearly the reality of why you're struggling with doing
| things, and why _not_ doing them is often worse in the
| long run.
|
| > _I would challenge that from the getgo._
|
| To clarify, what are you challenging, specifically? The
| idea that small changes are easier to execute than large
| ones?
|
| This has been the subject of deep exploration across many
| walks of life, and on the personal improvement front is
| at the center of books like Atomic Habits, which itself
| is based on a foundation of research. The reason small
| changes work is that we absorb them into our daily
| routines until they no longer require active thinking to
| accomplish.
|
| Part of what happens is that you also start confronting
| the bad reasoning you've been using to justify not
| acting. Embarrassingly, I had to re-establish basic
| habits like brushing my teeth. Clarity through
| mindfulness led to the realization that avoiding the tiny
| annoyance of doing this each day would be far less
| painful than the eventual dental issues I would otherwise
| suffer. I always _knew_ that, but pausing to actually
| think clearly is what turned that knowing into a deep
| realization.
|
| - [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_meditation
| (linking to Wikipedia as a shortcut to the extensive
| references in the article if you're curious).
| Madmallard wrote:
| I challenge the assertion excluding a context that
| supports it (i.e. trauma, influence from others, other
| things of the sort) that you actually have agency to
| alter your behavior even in small incremental ways if you
| weren't already doing so as part of a larger motivation
| that is strong enough to override your existing
| behavioral patterns. I just don't think people actually
| have that control. In every case where I see someone
| change there's so many factors that went into it that
| just obviously would lead you to understand how it's
| intuitive that they would have done so.
| haswell wrote:
| > _if you weren 't already doing so as part of a larger
| motivation that is strong enough to override your
| existing behavioral patterns_
|
| How would you explain getting into the state of "already
| doing so as part of a larger motivation" in that case?
| The fact that people manage to get into that state
| undermines the premise of your challenge. If what you say
| is true, no one would rise to the level of "already
| doing", which is an act that started at some point.
|
| > _In every case where I see someone change there 's so
| many factors that went into it that just obviously would
| lead you to understand how it's intuitive that they would
| have done so._
|
| This is called life. The causes and conditions of change
| are tautologically the reason that people change, yes.
| But is this any surprise?
|
| If there is nothing to change or no reason to change, why
| would someone try?
|
| By definition, if someone finds themselves in a position
| that would benefit from change, that falls under your
| "other things of the sort".
|
| The factors that lead to change are innumerable and
| different for each person. Some of the causes include
| exposure to new information. For me, I stumbled on some
| useful books like "Learned Optimism", which details the
| history of the discovery of learned helplessness. It
| opened my eyes to some things about myself that I didn't
| understand, and was one of many things that led to a
| change of mind.
|
| Causes and conditions that lead to change include reading
| comment threads like this one. Exposing yourself to
| information that challenges your assumptions is another
| potent change agent.
| bityard wrote:
| I think military folks sum all of this up as "embrace the suck."
| :)
|
| > A mentor of mine likes to talk about experiential avoidance as
| a sort of "reverse compass." When we notice the desire to avoid
| something, it may actually be telling us what we need to move
| toward.
|
| I rarely get life-changing advice from a podcast, but something I
| heard one time really stuck with me. This super-successful guy
| was talking about all the businesses he owned or something and
| the host asked him what his morning routine looked like.
| Paraphrasing, his answer was:
|
| "After I've gone through my normal morning activities, I sit down
| and make a list of the things I need to do that day. I always
| look through the list and find the thing I want to do least, and
| I do that one first. Because I have found the things I don't want
| to do are almost always the most important."
| simonswords82 wrote:
| My chairman calls it "eating the pain"
| CharlesW wrote:
| Similarly, "eat the frog". https://todoist.com/productivity-
| methods/eat-the-frog
| montenegrohugo wrote:
| Sounds like Naval Ravikant - it's a method that has struck a
| chord with me too.
| sam1r wrote:
| A military friend once told me something similar!
|
| "What's going to suck less, later?
|
| Handling it now... or later?"
| haswell wrote:
| I was not previously aware of ACT, but as someone who went down a
| rabbit hole of mindfulness meditation with a side of (secular)
| Buddhist philosophy, it struck me how similar some aspects of
| this are. In particular, the focus on aversion and the
| realization that aversion is usually worse than whatever pain is
| involved in the thing we're avoiding.
|
| Going down this particular path has been life changing as someone
| who grew up in an environment that essentially conditioned me to
| default to aversion/avoidance, a default that culminated in a
| pretty big burnout.
|
| Realizing that aversion/avoidance was almost always much worse
| than the thing I was avoiding was a major aha moment, and
| realizing that this could be corrected is when my life started
| changing.
|
| Whether it's ACT or some form of mindfulness+related philosophy,
| I can't recommend this kind of internal exploration enough. The
| associated mental shifts are like freeing up numerous processor
| cores that were previously consumed by unhelpful thoughts and
| feelings.
|
| Mindfulness meditation was the tool that made this go from
| something that I knew intellectually, to something I could
| observe directly within myself. Once you can _see_ these things
| clearly, changing them becomes far easier.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I agree with the similarity. ACT has the advantage of being
| science-based rather than inspiring so many to LARP
| enlightenment.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It's a good (long) read, and has some valuable insights.
|
| That said, I've been living these principles since I was 18 (long
| story, lots of tears, bring a hanky).
|
| I can tell you that anyone can benefit from this.
|
| But most simply, if there were one single trait that I think has
| been key for me; it's been self-discipline. It has paid off all
| over the place.
|
| _Finishing_ stuff takes a great deal of what people like to call
| "grit." There's a _ton_ of unpleasant, boring, hard-to-digest
| stuff, in delivering a finished product. In many cases, it can be
| more than half the project.
|
| In my experience, not giving up, and powering through the "boring
| bits,", when, what I wanted to do, was go into a fetal position
| under my desk, and sob into Mr. Floppy Ear Bunny, has done the
| trick.
|
| It also does wonders for self-image, and self-confidence (which,
| unfortunately, is often interpreted as "arrogance" -nothing is
| perfect).
|
| I've found that starting the day at 5AM, and with a 5Km walk
| (which I _hate_ ), is useful. Everything after that, is gravy.
| Real gym rats beat that handily. Many of my friends work out for
| a couple of hours before getting into work.
| F3nd0 wrote:
| So your recipe for doing hard things is doing hard things?
| waynesonfire wrote:
| how do you think you got your grit?
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| I agree one hundred percent. Life has some good bits and most
| of the other bits are tedious, unpleasant and painful. But to
| reach the good bits you have to tread over the bad ones.
| civilized wrote:
| A big YMMV on what I'm about to say, but: in my experience,
| the biggest complainers at work are the most responsive and
| productive people. Because when a new request comes through,
| they're the ones who have already jumped in. They're mentally
| working through what it will take to get this done, wrestling
| with the difficulties and verbalizing them. Others are
| nodding and smiling but not really engaging with the problem
| yet.
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| I've found that complaining is productive but has a social
| cost. But I and others absolutely do work this way.
|
| I started opening GitHub issues I never expect anyone else
| to read to help myself explore and verbalize a problem
| without having to nag anyone else about it; it's been
| helpful and also yields a lot of what is effectively
| documentation of the "why" behind our design choices. Not
| sure if it would work as well on public repos or if you
| work with anyone that tries to max their GitHub stats (eg
| average issue close time) though.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| I think there is something to it. The ones who complain but
| still trudge through are amazing. They highlight pain
| points and solve them at the same time.
| ExtremisAndy wrote:
| That's the key: they still trudge through it. I fully
| agree that those people are indeed amazing. In my
| experience, though, many complainers toss out every
| objection possible hoping to make the new project seem so
| difficult that it isn't worth doing (so everyone will
| just drop it). Those complainers are toxic and can kill
| progress. But yes, the ones who verbalize issues just to
| make sure everyone has a full understanding of a project
| and the challenges in completing it... but still have
| every intention to conquer those challenges and stick
| with it to the end... yes, give me those types of
| 'complainers' ANY day :)
| javier2 wrote:
| From my point of view, we get a new project that I think
| will take 6 weeks because of X, Y Z. Management thinks it
| should take 2 days, so they say go ahead anyway. The
| project takes 8 weeks to finish most of the features and
| doing this effort forced us to drop every other thing we
| were already maintaining and working on. Everything is
| late, the targets set for the year miss as we spent 2
| months on this other project and nobody is happy.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Those types of complainers are certainly better than the
| types who don't actually do the tasks. But even better
| are those who do the tasks without burdening their
| coworkers with complaints.
| newah1 wrote:
| Inspired by this, I may just start that 5km walk at 5AM.
|
| When do you get to sleep to allow for that early start?
| darkteflon wrote:
| 3:30 is early. 5am is table stakes.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yup. I know a few people that drive into NYC. They
| generally get up at 3:30 or so.
| girthbrooks wrote:
| Are these folks hitting the sack at 6-7ish or not getting
| a full 7/8?
|
| Couldn't imagine doing this, purely considering the
| implications of going to bed with the sun up and
| offsetting my schedule to accommodate a commute that
| early.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I know that many of them are still awake, at 8PM, most
| weekdays. I guess they "catch up" on weekends (which I
| don't think works).
| Arrath wrote:
| If I'm getting up before 4:00, I try to be in bed no
| later than 9. Its rare I can force myself to get to sleep
| anytime before that.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 9PM is my usual bedtime, but I usually run on about 6-7 hours
| per night.
|
| I'm a morning person. My wife is not...
| rozenmd wrote:
| I recently wrote about this (focused on delivering software,
| but I've applied it to running, lifting weights, and more over
| the last 12 years): https://onlineornot.com/unreasonable-
| effectiveness-shipping-...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I think that I read that. It's familiar.
|
| I agree. I like to ship everything I write; even if I don't
| actually ship it.
| girthbrooks wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your perspective on the 5AM start of the
| day.
|
| I've found the same for myself, if I want to feel solid about
| my day, I need to get up early and exercise and figure
| everything else out from there.
|
| I absolutely hate it, but I can't deny how much better I feel.
| I'm hoping that one day my brain will flip and I'll genuinely
| enjoy it, but it is still very much a need and not a want.
|
| Everything after is still gravy!
| bsder wrote:
| The first 90% of the project takes the first 90% of the
| schedule. The final 10% of the project takes the final 90% of
| the schedule.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| This got me thinking about side-projects, things I consider my
| life's work, but yet I make little progress on.
|
| It feels like my programming job clutters my mind with concerns
| about work. Then, when I try to program for myself, on my side-
| projects, I find everything is already cluttered with worries
| about work, and I end up making little progress.
|
| Or, it may simply be that work makes me tired, and when I'm tired
| I don't want to work on side-projects?
|
| Has anyone moved away from programming as a job and found it
| helps them focus on their side-projects better?
|
| I can (1) find a different type of day job (non-programming),
| and/or (2) work fewer hours at my day job, and/or (3) find a day
| job that I personally find meaningful. Of these, which is most
| important and realistic?
| enos_feedler wrote:
| As someone who has moved in and out of full time SWE employment
| to work on side projects and explore new things, I can say this
| does not work for me. After doing this several times it is very
| clear that my day job was not the thing that prevented me from
| making progress on a side project. It was everything described
| in this post.
| Camisa wrote:
| Try working on your personal projects in the morning or just
| don't work so close to exhaustion on your day job. Working on
| hard problems with high intensity could lead you to burn out
| and that would be terrible for your employee and your own
| health.
| captainbland wrote:
| Sorry I can't help but I can also confirm that work is an
| energy parasite. But hey my landlord won't pay themselves.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Genuine question: are ADHD people inherently disabled in
| developing self-discipline due to their brain wiring? [I mean
| disabled in the sense of "they need external assistance or must
| put way more effort", in the same way someone with a muscular
| disorder might need a cane or put way more effort into walking.]
| tekla wrote:
| No. I find that many people with ADHD never even attempt to put
| themselves into a situation to develop these skills.
|
| I am diagnosed with ADHD, and the best skill I've learned is
| putting myself into situations where I have no choice but to do
| the thing I need to do.
|
| I refuse to be a person who offloads all responsibility to
| something that can be dealt with, with some effort.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I, a non-ADHD person, do not have to put myself into
| situations where I have no choice but to do the thing I need
| to do. I simply see I need to do something and then do it.
| Does this strongly deviate from how I described a disability
| above? (the inability to do something without extra
| assistance or significant extra effort)
| Camisa wrote:
| I've seen ADHD person explain this as having every reason
| to do the task, know that they need to get started now, and
| yet, just can't get around to do it. I've certainly felt
| that in some scenarios in my life. It's like getting the
| timing to start doing the task is impossible and everything
| else, no matter how mundane, seems safer and more
| fulfilling to do.
|
| It's like you are missing the drive to get that thing done
| to the point that your brain just tricks you into thinking
| that anything remotely productive seems more important and
| better to get started on now than the actual task. To me
| this is a rare occurrence, hence why I think I am not a
| ADHD person.
|
| The problem to me is that this difficulty is hard to
| differentiate from self-discipline.
|
| I suspect you will be less likely to feel that inability to
| get around to do the tasks that you know to be important to
| do it if you fail in a way that life itself, the universe,
| hurts you for the failure, as opposed to your boss saying
| "you're fired for showing up late".
|
| I also suspect that some people use _religion_ to fix this:
| Like picturing a higher being looking down and saying
| "Wherefore dost thou not now do that which thou must? Else,
| I shall smite thee from the heavens or cause thee great
| trouble in the afterlife."
| Camisa wrote:
| Agreed, it's so easy to blame your problems on the
| circumstances and feel good about it. Some people were just
| taught to always be victims (which is sad), and others just
| power through their weakness and eventually comes up on top.
|
| Stoicism tends to be a difficult way to live but it does
| compensate in the long term.
| throwaway743950 wrote:
| Yes, they are inherently disabled. Medication can help, but
| even with strategies, tactics, and therapy, there is still
| brain chemistry at play. Medication can help, but has its
| trade-offs and isn't a silver bullet.
|
| Self-discipline is also more costly. You can brute-force your
| way through tasks with ADHD, but it is more taxing on your
| overall energy. Those with ADHD typically experience impulses
| often and it's harder for them to ignore. Forcing yourself to
| ignore them requires extra energy. It's not sustainable to do
| all the time. It's hard for those without ADHD to truly
| understand what that's like.
|
| In addition to impulsivity, executive dysfunction affecting
| starting tasks or work is also a big challenge.
| withinboredom wrote:
| A side effect is hyper-focus, which shouldn't be discounted.
| If you can learn to direct that focus, you can grit through
| anything.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > there is still brain chemistry at play.
|
| This is sort of non-descriptive. Every time you are happy,
| sad, angry, afraid, bored, tired; that's brain chemistry at
| play. Brains are electrochemical computers.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Read it as "hardware bug that cannot be fully compensated
| for in microcode".
| [deleted]
| nabnob wrote:
| I don't think this is true about brain chemistry or that ADD
| is a life-long disability. Just speaking from experience
| here, I was diagnosed with ADD as an adult in my mid-20s and
| then started using IFS therapy (parts work) a couple years
| later for childhood trauma. After two years of IFS therapy my
| ADD is pretty much non-existent and my executive functioning
| is better than most people I know.
|
| My hunch is that for a lot of people, ADD is a result of
| growing up in a home that felt unstable so they never gained
| a basic internal sense of stability that you need for things
| like task switching or staying focused.
| epylar wrote:
| You can't generalize your experience (trauma mimicking ADD
| symptoms) to 'ADD [is not] a life-long disability' --
| people have symptoms for different reasons and there are
| biomarkers for ADD.
| nradov wrote:
| Which specific ADHD biomarkers are you referring to?
| There are some promising areas for research but I'm not
| aware that any are yet accepted for clinical purposes.
|
| https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-022-02207-2
| mandmandam wrote:
| [dead]
| civilized wrote:
| ACT helped me turn around my life at a low point in my mid 20s.
| The problem it helped me with was essentially the same as what it
| helped this author with - how to do hard things.
|
| The short answer is, if you accept that it's going to be hard,
| you can focus on the problem rather than how stuck and frustrated
| you are, and that helps you to not make it harder than it needs
| to be.
|
| Of course, a person who needs help needs more than the short
| answer; in particular, we often need a lot of unlearning of bad
| mental habits, and we need to hear exactly what ACT is saying
| and, sometimes more importantly, what it is _not_ saying...
| because we tend to hear what we expect to hear, not what is
| actually being said.
|
| Here's the self-study book I used: https://www.amazon.com/Get-
| Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
|
| Highly recommend.
| eur0pa wrote:
| My brief 2C/, and also my own way of doing hard things: you're
| allowed to complain. I've been in strength training for 15+
| years, and as fellow weightlifters know it never ever get easier
| (if it does, you're doing it wrong). Sometimes I really don't
| feel like it, even after all these years, and I complain about
| it. I complain all the way to the gym, complain through every set
| of heavy squats, huff and puff each set of sumos, complain all
| the way home, whine up the stairs, and finally complain in,
| under, and out of the shower.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Wouldn't it be more productive to focus on how awesome your
| workout was? Especially if you have been doing it for years you
| probably do sets with weights that the average person could not
| do as a 1-rep max.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Replacing a mindset of complaint with gratitude will bring
| about an entirely different world view and free up energy
| that is otherwise burned up in the 'complaining circuitry'.
| It can be difficult but is certainly worth the effort. You
| will absolutely become more productive.
| wnolens wrote:
| Reframing your question: "why doesn't your brain just see
| things differently?"
| Buttons840 wrote:
| In keeping with the article: what value you are achieving with
| this behavior?
|
| The article mentions doing a "tombstone" exercise: What would
| be written on your tombstone if you lived the life you wanted?
| What would be written on your tombstone if you died today? What
| can you do about the difference?
|
| I would guess (and it's just a guess), that you work out
| because you want to be healthy? So, would it be important to
| you that in your eulogy it mentioned that you were healthy? Or
| maybe you would want it mentioned that you had bigger muscles
| than other people? Like, what's the value you're chasing? Since
| it sounds like overall the experience mostly sucks.
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| Looks interesting, the pitfall (as with most frameworks) is
| ending trying to put yourself out of the swamp by pulling
| yourself from the hair.
| cracrecry wrote:
| I do very hard things and while I do most of the things the
| author does at some degree(embracing the suck), in my experience
| it is not the best personal strategy for dealing with this.
|
| For me the secret is like the famous Article says: "Attention is
| all you need". I distract my attention on how much "boring", or
| "painful" or "humiliating" some work that I believe is important
| is.
|
| I just do the work until the work is finished, but I should not
| feel bored, pain or humiliated while doing it.
|
| If you feel it,It depends on the difficulty of your job, if the
| difficulty is not that much you can deal with it without problems
| but if it is hard you will eventually collapse, break down and
| burn out.
|
| I use instrumental music for that and also habits. I also reward
| myself for the good work done.
| charlieflowers wrote:
| > For me the secret is like the famous Article says: "Attention
| is all you need". I distract my attention on how much "boring",
| or "painful" or "humiliating" some work that I believe is
| important is.
|
| I don't follow ... can you elaborate a bit? Are you saying
| that, when you feel the work is "boring", for example, you
| somehow distract your attention from how boring it is?
|
| And if so, how?
| nntwozz wrote:
| Great if it works, but also be aware of the criticism against ACT
| for being promoted as "the proverbial holy grail of psychological
| therapies".
|
| More on wikipedia:
|
| In 2012, ACT appeared to be about as effective as standard CBT,
| with some meta-analyses showing small differences in favor of ACT
| and others not. For example, a meta-analysis published by
| Francisco Ruiz in 2012 looked at 16 studies comparing ACT to
| standard CBT.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Definitely worth pointing out, but I would imagine most people
| reading about this are deciding between ACT and nothing at all,
| as opposed to ACT vs another therapy, and that's a very
| different evaluation.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| > ACT appeared to be about as effective as standard CBT
|
| I'm no expert but I don't think it has be _dramatically better_
| to be very useful, does it? CBT is effective and if some people
| gel with ACT more than CBT, then great. It might even be useful
| at lesser efficacy if it 's effective for people CBT wasn't
| effective for.
| mataug wrote:
| Most if not all claims of "silver bullet" or "holy grail"
| solutions should be taken with a massive grain of salt.
|
| No single thing applies to everyone and this criticism of being
| "holy grail" is valid for all types of therapies.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I question efficacy as a valid measure for something that
| relies on the patient actually getting off their ass and doing
| something (as opposed to a pill, which is comparatively
| passive).
|
| I think the more useful measure is: what results does a patient
| achieve if they fully apply themselves to a particular
| methodology. Of course we can also look at: what % of people
| that are introduced to a particular methodology fully apply
| themselves, but this measure is inherently secondary to the
| prior measure.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| How do you see that measure as more useful? I see it as very
| narrowly useful. You've conditioned the input to the desired
| output.
|
| Let's say my gas tank is empty. One way of treating this is
| to drive to the gas station. This will fail often (remember,
| I'm out of gas). We could compare this to other treatments
| like using a gas can.
|
| Driving to the gas station normally is the better treatment,
| because normally the gas tank isn't really empty. But if
| we're at the point of getting professional help, it's
| actually the other way. We probably have a real problem. If I
| call up a tow truck company and their suggestion is to drive
| to the nearest gas station, I wouldn't say that's very
| helpful.
|
| So your conditioning makes sense if the goal is to turn stars
| into superstars. It is not a good measure for treatment of
| people in need.
|
| The first half of your first sentence alone should set off
| alarms "I question efficacy as a valid measure..."
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-03 23:01 UTC)