[HN Gopher] Measuring personal growth
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Measuring personal growth
Author : dan-g
Score : 79 points
Date : 2024-04-18 15:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (huyenchip.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (huyenchip.com)
| senkora wrote:
| This post is about personal growth in-the-large (or, strategy). I
| think that the other side to this--which is equally important--is
| personal growth in-the-small (or, tactics).
|
| What I mean by personal growth in-the-small is something like
| Atomic Habits. Iterating on your habits to increase your
| effectiveness in the day-to-day opens up time and energy that can
| then be spent on the larger goals.
|
| I really like the post, and just want to point out that this +
| Atomic Habits would be a good pairing!
| alexpetralia wrote:
| While I agree in general with much of this post, there are a few
| other things I'd keep in mind:
|
| * If you always focus on growth, sometimes you focus less on
| maintaining what you already have. It tends to be the case that
| when you're really growing on some things, you're sometimes
| neglecting other things.
|
| * I like to keep a small allocation of my time/energy to growth,
| but most of it on maintenance because I want to keep much of the
| good things I already have. Obviously this allocation varies by
| individual (based on your goals/desires/energy/time)
|
| * Focusing on maximal optionality can be good, but of course an
| option is only useful when exercised. Collecting options is just
| a cost (premiums paid). At some point you need to truncate the
| options (let them expire/have doors close) and exercise/execute
| on a select few
| prospector1065 wrote:
| All great points as well, thanks for sharing :)
| YossarianFrPrez wrote:
| I like this blog post, and like other commenters I agree. It's
| also interesting that it doesn't so much distinguish between
| external and internal 'achievement' so much.
|
| For a _very_ different take on the topic... I too was interested
| in the question of "measuring personal growth." So much so that
| I enrolled in graduate school and am now getting a Ph.D.
| researching personality development / change in "individual
| differences" over time. Another way to conceptualize / measure
| personal growth could be via decreases in one's level of
| Neuroticism over time.
| nick7376182 wrote:
| What about kids? They don't seem to start with any neuroticism
| until they learn it or maybe the more neurotic parts of the
| brain start to mature/engage
| YossarianFrPrez wrote:
| Good question. We typically don't think of young kids as
| having neuroticism so much as an aspect of temperament we
| call "negative emotionality." Some children seem to have more
| of it than others. Taken at a slice in time, roughly half of
| the between-person personality variation on a given trait can
| be attributed to genes, the other half is environmental.
| (Strictly speaking, this doesn't quite account for variation
| in the change of traits over time though.)
|
| Also, there's a well-studied effect where adolescents
| typically experience decreases in neuroticism / negative
| emotionality as they change and mature as they move into
| young adulthood.
| smeej wrote:
| _Does_ maximizing options maximize empowerment? I 've found I
| _feel_ much more empowered in a situation where I 've already
| deeply committed to some specific thing than when I have dozens
| of options but haven't chosen one. Intentionally closing the door
| on thousands of options is actually the only path I've found
| that's made it possible for me to grow at all. If I maximize
| options, I can just escape when faced with a growth opportunity,
| not actually have to grow through it.
|
| I remember sitting up late one night in my twenties overwhelmed
| by the sheer number of doors I would never open. Not metaphorical
| doors--actual, physical doors to physical buildings and rooms. It
| had hit me earlier that day that the number of doors I would even
| encounter in my life is infinitesimal compared to the total
| number of doors, and the ones I would _open_ of that tiny subset
| were orders of magnitude smaller still.
|
| I suppose I could have responded to this by making some strange
| life rule where I always try the handle on every door, but I
| think I grew a lot more by deciding it doesn't matter, that
| opening all the doors, or even maximizing my chances to open
| doors, would be a waste of my life. So I guess they doubled as
| metaphorical doors after all.
|
| I don't know how measurable it would be, but I would rather
| measure my personal growth by the peace I've managed to find with
| the realities I can't change and the choices I've made. For
| instance, I'm not infinite. I'm going to die. There will be
| things I dislike about the world that won't change during my
| lifetime. Stuff like that. That seems like a better measure to me
| of how much I'm growing.
| jskherman wrote:
| I think it's not so much as having many options but more so of
| having a lot of backup plans for when things eventually go
| wrong. There's analysis paralysis after all. It would be better
| to say that empowerment is maximized when there is a
| definitively best choice and there are several good backup
| choices (complete with sensible rankings down the chain of
| backups, ideally definitive) if the original choice suddenly
| becomes unavailable due to the arbitrariness of life.
| chiphuyen wrote:
| I've also found that sometimes, to maximize options, I have
| to first commit to an option. I've had situations before
| where I deliberated too long and missed the opportunity
| altogether.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Knowing when to optimize for optionality and when to burn the
| boats is key. Some things in life improve markedly when you
| let go of optionality and instead lean in to the constraint:
| significant relationships, jobs, parenting. Everyone's
| disposition biases them toward one side or the other.
|
| Recognizing when each approach is useful, and being able to
| do it (even poorly) is a great skill.
| larve wrote:
| > Quynh, an old friend who runs a publishing house in Vietnam,
| believes that there are three big problems in life: career,
| family, and finance. It usually takes people a decade to figure
| each out.
|
| I have a really hard time relating to this (except if you frame
| problem as "something to be solved somehow"). I'm much more
| focused on solving the problems of: finding activities that are
| worth living for (programming, drawing, music, reading, writing,
| sports, nature) and friendships and intellectual exchange.
|
| I find myself growing as I am able to focus my attention on these
| topics and feel that I am doing so in a sustainable way, and feel
| content (almost) every day.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I strongly dislike the productivity-maximizing ethos that drives
| people to quantify and optimize every aspect of their lives. The
| author acknowledges that POV. But at its worst, it's both
| pernicious and privileged.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| What does "privileged" mean in this setting? Do unprivileged
| people not have the option to maximize their productivity? How
| so?
| tibbar wrote:
| "Indulgent" might better capture what I think OP is
| describing than "privileged." There is a certain navel-gazing
| quality to endlessly pushing for higher personal records past
| the point where they particularly even benefit you,
| especially when some of that attention might be spent helping
| other people.
|
| And while that can be true, I think it only applies once you
| do really have your life together. Most of us, growing up,
| had lots of areas where we really struggled, hurting both
| ourselves and others, and it WAS important for us to reflect
| on those areas and consciously try to improve. I think it's
| only indulgent when done well past the point of need.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _I now know many things that I didn't know before, and I have
| access to more resources than I ever did._
|
| Those are also measurable axes.
|
| My single-bit ADC: if things that used to be stretches for me are
| now easy, and things that used to be impossible are now
| stretches, I'm still growing.
|
| (I pushed strength and reflexes earlier in life; those areas are
| now no longer an option but on the other hand I've learned how to
| steadily progress in disciplines where one may take years to work
| through plateaus)
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| A decade each feels much too conservative for the things on
| Quynh's list, but I like the list itself as an anchoring point
| for what would make a content life for a great many people.
| Myself included, because I'm following it successfully!
| sundalia wrote:
| >Some friends told me they find this blog post mildly sociopathic
|
| These are likely tech friends I suppose? I would say non-tech
| people would drop the mildly.
|
| This is leaking the productivity frenzy mindset through the
| cracks, but appreciate the attempts through the text to push back
| against it.
| grantpitt wrote:
| Nice post. With respect to maximizing future options, I find the
| ideas expressed in the following quotes are interesting counter-
| points.
|
| From '4,000 weeks': "Not only should you settle; ideally you
| should settle in a way that makes it harder to back out, such as
| moving in together, or having a child. The irony of all our
| efforts to avoid facing finitude -- to carry on believing that it
| might be possible not to choose between mutually exclusive
| options -- is that when people finally do choose, in a relatively
| irreversible way, they're usually much happier as a result."
|
| From 'Zero to One': "When people lack concrete plans to carry
| out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various
| options. ... A definite view, by contrast, favors firm
| convictions. Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and
| calling it "well-roundedness," a definite person determines the
| one best thing to do and then does it."
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