I would classify this as "Self help" advice based on personal experience. Over all its very good advice to learn to collaborate with others.<p>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.<p>"If you don’t retrain your model based on input from the crowd, you’ll never converge on truth." This is true for machines.<p>Other high achievers believe in the alternate version.<p>"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<p>"truth is my goal. Controversy is my gym. I'll do a hundred reps of controversy for a 6 pack of truth" - Kanye west.<p>"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.<p>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.<p>"Do what you love" is an over all long term approach that sustains your energy and focus for long term.<p>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.
"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<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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 <a href="https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/</a><p>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.
For anyone getting a 502: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180425160041/https://dcgross.com/introspect-yourself/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20180425160041/https://dcgross.c...</a>
About taking it to far; there is a good article at ted about the right way of being introspective[0]. I highly recommend it.<p>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."<p>[0] <a href="https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/" rel="nofollow">https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-...</a>
"<i>An extreme form of self-improvement is what some call having a “chip on your shoulder”.</i>"<p>"What's the meaning of the phrase 'Chip on your shoulder'?<p>"A perceived grievance or sense of inferiority."<p>-- <a href="https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/chip-on-your-shoulder.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/chip-on-your-shoulder.ht...</a><p>"Having a chip on your shoulder" indicates you get into many fights.
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.
<i>Your life goal should be not to win any particular game, rather to win the sum of all games.</i><p>Would anyone be able to help unpack this? I feel there is some depth to this idea but am not quite making the connection.
Great post! I especially like this idea:<p>> Retrain your model based on input from the crowd... [to] become an enjoyable player to be around.<p>Regarding this introspection:<p>> 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.<p>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).
> 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?<p>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.<p>Track what? Track how?
In this article the goal of life is described as winning games, and doing everything else is subsumed as a means to that end.<p>Helping others, having empathy, not hurting others.. those presumably wouldn't be worthwhile things to do if they didn't help one "win".