Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

This is a great article but the best part is an off hand link to a book review of <i>A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression</i> [1] which includes choice quotes like<p><i>&gt; The writer George Jean Nathan claimed that before the 1920s, there existed only eight basic sandwich types: Swiss cheese, ham, sardine, liverwurst, egg, corned beef, roast beef, and tongue (yes). But by 1926, he “claimed that he had counted 946 different sandwich varieties stuffed with fillings such as watermelon and pimento, peanut butter, fried oyster, Bermuda onion and parsley, fruit salad, aspic of foie gras, spaghetti, red snapper roe, salmi of duck, bacon and fried egg, lettuce and tomato, spiced beef, chow-chow, pickled herring, asparagus tips, deep sea scallops, and so on ad infinitum.”</i><p>I ordered it off Amazon right away only to immediately realize, to my horror, that the hardcover version I had chosen would not arrive until Saturday, a full fortnite after my aspic of foie gras, salmi of duck, and the $5 esp32-wroom dev kits that were part of the same order.<p>What is this, the 1930s? Civilization is seriously going down the drain.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slimemoldtimemold.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;04&#x2F;04&#x2F;book-review-a-square-meal-part-i-foods-of-the-20s-and-30s&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slimemoldtimemold.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;04&#x2F;04&#x2F;book-review-a-squar...</a>

This seems to be a major epidemic nowadays. I suspect that mechanistic, meaningless, purely mimetic pursuit of success has some pretty negative consequences on society. I suspect it might explain why so many people are interested in engaging in politics (or company politics) and zero-sum value extraction schemes instead of just adding value... They&#x27;re not interested in the process at all, only in the outcome; financial success and social approval from authority figures.<p>Many people are spending most of their lives doing stuff that they don&#x27;t want to do, so of course they tend to look for shortcuts instead of trying to do things the right way. They have no intrinsic pride in the work they do; it&#x27;s all about status, money and power. As people have become more free in their personal lives, on the career-side, we&#x27;ve never been so constrained.

The topic is nice, but above all I thoroughly enjoy the writing.<p>I feel like I get a lot more done precisely because I don&#x27;t like to eat frogs. I sleep until I&#x27;m rested. I don&#x27;t touch my computer until I&#x27;ve had tea on the balcony. I work on what feels right, when it feels right, for as long as it feels right. If the weather is nice, I&#x27;ll hop on my bicycle and forget about work.<p>But when something sparks my interest, I have stores of energy to throw at it. My appetite for work is unrestrained by the frogs I&#x27;ve had for breakfast.<p>I embraced the fact that I am not a machine, and that my output is neither constant nor predictable. I&#x27;d rather respect the tides of my energy than fight against them.

&gt; <i>For legal reasons, I’m not saying the people who write this stuff are literally Lucifer in human skin. It’s just that, if I wanted to maximize human misery, I would 100% try to convince people to spend more time doing things they hate</i><p>When Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote <i>Good Omens</i> thirty years ago they already hit upon this idea when Crowley, a demon and one of the main characters, tries to explain to his fellow demons that nowadays it&#x27;s all about optimizing micro-evils for the biggest net amount of evil. Sure, things like corrupting a church leader <i>sounds</i> more impressive, but if you cause the phone network to be down for an entire morning in London that ruins so many more people&#x27;s day ever so slightly, leading to more sinful thoughts in total and pushing them to take it out on others, who then take that out on others, and so on.<p>(my money is on that joke being written by Pratchett, it fits his kind of satire so perfectly)

I love and agree with this article, but I do want to defend the Pomodoro method. In brief, if you already don&#x27;t enjoy what you are doing for work, applying a new time management strategy to that work will not increase your enjoyment. However, I have personally thrived using the Pomodoro method to help keep myself on track and hitting goals for the work I <i>do</i> enjoy. In this light, moreover, I don&#x27;t think the analogy to a diet makes much sense.<p>Still, overall an insightful and much-needed statement on one problem with the times we live in. I especially loved this line:<p>&gt; <i>These students inevitably end up as consultants or bankers or managers at tech companies, industries that richly reward people who are willing to work very hard for no particular reason.</i>

I strongly disagree with the author.<p>What brings me pleasure is playing strategic computer games. I was addicted to playing dota. I was playing 12-16 hours a day, which left no place for socializing, career, family, even basic self-maintenance suffered. Anything meaningful, art, self-improvement was cut. It&#x27;s a disgraceful, shameful life.<p>The meaning of life is not the blind pursuit of pleasure. We are humans precisely because we follow higher purposes.

Don&#x27;t be angry at your frustration, it already feels bad enough.<p>Don&#x27;t be angry at your shame, it already feels bad enough.<p>Don&#x27;t be angry at your fear, it already feels bad enough.<p>Don&#x27;t be angry at your anger, it already feels bad enough.<p>All of your &quot;bad&quot; emotions can feed other &quot;bad&quot; emotions.<p>The &quot;bad&quot; emotions are a way for your mind to tell you to avoid or change something. They aren&#x27;t bad in the same way that hunger isn&#x27;t bad. Hunger feels bad, but it&#x27;s a signal that tells you to change something or do something.<p>---<p>This is not a comprehensive comment. There are very important things I didn&#x27;t say here.

&gt; &gt; We humans are, deep down, lazy and gluttonous creatures. If left to our own devices, we will do nothing but eat Pringles and watch Netflix. The only way we can escape our indolent nature is to exert our higher faculties over our base instincts.<p>&gt; First, humans are not “naturally” lazy, because humans are not “naturally” anything. ... We’re different today not because our genes changed, but because our culture changed.<p>But those faults are in fact undeniably persistent to us as a species. It is not without reason that many of our religions, since antiquity, have framed this issue, man&#x27;s struggle against his impulses, against his baser self, as the struggle against evil.<p>If you&#x27;re of the opinion that religion is bad for the same reasons that those motivational coaches are bad, then I think you still have to admit that this fight against our selves is far from novel.

Counterpoint: sometimes eating frogs is an opportunity, and if you don’t eat them, someone else will and they will be better off because of it.<p>Eating more frogs now can mean that you have to eat fewer frogs in the future, or in total, ALSO that your children and family will have to eat fewer frogs.<p>I still believe that working hard is a virtue and the people who do will usually end up becoming the people who (and who’s children also) are privileged.<p>I agree though that the culture around it is a bit much, and it’s not for everyone. Those type of people should not be forced to participate in that kind of culture if they don’t want to.

Re; This particular quote from the article…<p>&gt; &quot;Stop confusing productivity with laziness. While no one likes admitting it, sheer laziness is the No. 1 contributor to lost productivity.&quot;<p>I was taught growing up that if it&#x27;s something you <i>must</i> do anyhow, then <i>true</i> laziness is finding the simplest and most effective way to do a given task <i>quickly and correctly the first time</i> so that you don&#x27;t have to waste time and effort doing it again or fixing your screw-up. Sounds pretty &quot;productive&quot; to me…

FWIW, I think this is among the better pieces that I have found on HN recently.

&gt; your previous love was just a make-believe love, a childish imitation that you mistook for the real thing––an honest mistake, because you had never felt the real thing before?<p>I&#x27;ll share a personal story: I was burned by a &quot;stuck in your head&quot; &quot;love&quot;. It was unrequited and I suffered a lot.<p>I have since then read about infatuation, and am averse towards it.<p>I&#x27;d much rather have a stable partner I can have fun with but also communicate, rather than the intense stomach-churning variant.<p>The most important criterion I&#x27;ve found is that both partners in a relationship see the other as greater or equal to themselves.<p>Satisfy that, and you get a long-lasting relationship, and you can stop chasing for the impossible ideal.

I like some points of the article, but stating we are not naturally anything, and then in the next paragraph claiming: &#x27;&quot;your base instincts&quot; deserve more credit.&#x27;, is very illogical.

I think a lot of the motivation to keep shoving those frogs down comes from religion, particularly christianity. Christianity teaches that we are born flawed (original sin) and must work for our redemption. The protestant wing of christianity seems the worst for this (I&#x27;m not sure why). Just look what happened when the puritans took over England after the English civil war. What a joyless bunch they were.<p>It is a great article. Insightful and funny.

I wonder if past generations have cared as much as we do about helping people feel better about their perceived failings? This essay fits snugly into a 2020s canon of NYT Best Sellers around &quot;work less, enjoy more.&quot; My impression had been that previous generations principally aspired to get more done to advance their lot in life. If that&#x27;s true, it will be interesting to assess later how long-term happiness compares between the &quot;try harder do more&quot; past generations and the &quot;you&#x27;re amazing why are you working so hard?&quot; current one.<p>Cal Newport is the only contemporary personality I know of that advocates for getting more done, but his method still conforms to the zeitgeist, in that his &quot;get more done&quot; is more precisely &quot;get more important stuff done by doing less overall.&quot;<p>Perhaps this is the natural evolution that occurs when a country has reached sufficient wealth where contributing gains to per capita GDP just ain&#x27;t inspiring to a comfortable generation? It&#x27;s interesting to try to contextualize the current popularity of anti-productivity literature vs what has come before it.

&gt;I am <i>not-at-leisure</i> in order to <i>be-at-leisure</i><p>- Aristotle<p>If you&#x27;re never <i>at-leisure</i>, you&#x27;re missing something important. Leisure is the very basis of culture [1].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.worldcat.org&#x2F;title&#x2F;leisure-the-basis-of-culture&#x2F;oclc&#x2F;38853869" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.worldcat.org&#x2F;title&#x2F;leisure-the-basis-of-culture&#x2F;...</a>

This essay is really hitting home for me (sorry for leaving a few comments in the thread, they are hopefully each contributing), and I think has some resonance with <i>this</i> essay I also just saw today:<p>&gt; I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health &#x2F; by Sanah Ahsan<p>&gt; To return to the plant analogy – we must look at our conditions. The water might be a universal basic income, the sun safe, affordable housing and easy access to nature and creativity. Food could be loving relationships, community or social support services. The most effective therapy would be transforming the oppressive aspects of society causing our pain. We all need to take whatever support is available to help us survive another day. Life is hard. But if we could transform the soil, access sunlight, nurture our interconnected roots and have room for our leaves to unfurl, wouldn’t life be a little more livable?<p>— <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;amp.theguardian.com&#x2F;commentisfree&#x2F;2022&#x2F;sep&#x2F;06&#x2F;psychologist-devastating-lies-mental-health-problems-politics" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;amp.theguardian.com&#x2F;commentisfree&#x2F;2022&#x2F;sep&#x2F;06&#x2F;psycho...</a><p>Compare to from OP:<p>&gt; I think lots of people are stuck in that first relationship, stuck next to their tiny little pond, skeptical that anything greater exists. But it takes a lot of work to be satisfied with their relationship and their pond, because they don’t get enough love to fill their hearts or enough fish to fill their bellies. So they end up reading articles about how to love things they don’t love that much and how to feel full without eating enough.<p>&gt; …When they get home at the end of the day and they’re so tired that all they can do is sit motionless and watch TV, they blame themselves, as if it’s their fault that they feel exhausted after racing to meet a deadline so they can avoid being publicly shamed. And that breaks my heart.

The author&#x27;s favorite paper of all time, said in the article voiceover:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;home.csulb.edu&#x2F;~cwallis&#x2F;382&#x2F;readings&#x2F;482&#x2F;nisbett%20saying%20more.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;home.csulb.edu&#x2F;~cwallis&#x2F;382&#x2F;readings&#x2F;482&#x2F;nisbett%20s...</a>

Thats a very epicurian piece. Yeah dont do things you hate, love yourself the way you are and dont have big dreams that you hope to achieve, you are already perfect.<p>No thanks.

Amazing piece. I always read such types of fiction with some white, but slightly darkening, sense of envy. Especially parts like &quot;We humans are, deep down, lazy and gluttonous creatures. If left to our own devices, we will do nothing but eat Pringles and watch Netflix.&quot; I left my job in February with enough take to not work for another 10 years keeping my gluttonous lifestyle and 20 or more without it. I kept myself busy with moving across the country (and then pushed a little further) for a couple months but 6 months later I ended up with a side project that I have an itch to productize, another project that I want to do for money, a consulting company and I talk to prospective employers at least once in 2-3 weeks. I don&#x27;t remember when I was watching Netflix online, not downloaded while on the plane. These are the people from another universe. Somehow I believe their existence is a figure of speech for brilliant writers like Adam.

That&#x27;s one of the best things that HN has ever sent me. I especially liked this penultimate paragraph:<p>&quot;I no longer think there’s something wrong with me; there&#x27;s something wrong with Reviewer 2. I intend to have so much fun that Reviewer 2 will simply have to join in.&quot;<p>I love the last bit: &quot;..so much fun that Reviewer 2 will simply have to join in.&quot;

&gt; we have a bad theory about how our minds work, one so dastardly that it could have only been devised by the devil himself. It goes like this: <i>We humans are, deep down, lazy and gluttonous creatures. If left to our own devices, we will do nothing but eat Pringles and watch Netflix. The only way we can escape our indolent nature is to exert our higher faculties over our base instincts.</i><p>I believe that allegedly wrong theory applies perfectly to me, since I have watched myself descend into the junk food - junk flix routine. It started with a mild depression which was a perfect excuse at the time, and then continued down into the pits of procrastination where the lazy part of me was feeling fabulous. Thankfully, the devilish side went completely crazy with guilt and frustration, never mind their Satan worshiping sidekick - the wife - and eventually delivered me back into productivity heaven&#x2F;hell.

If you have goals beyond feeling good in the moment then sometimes it’s worth feeling bad for some time to achieve them. Most people definitely spend a lot of time doing things that will never lead them to that deeper satisfaction but that shouldn’t stop one from trying. And to enjoy the struggle along the way.

Jesus, this guy knows how to write.

Well, I think people have big aspirations, and these typically are achievable with lots of money, and people think you have to &#x27;eat frogs&#x27; to make that money.

In the doctor and sweet shop owner story the article&#x27;s author is the sweet shop owner.<p>Sometimes I think the sweet shop owner is helpful to some people, but not to me! I need that disgusting medicine. To each their own.

I had this exact conversation with my 3 month old puppy just the other day. Toads, though.

Kind of makes you think what&#x27;s more important: the ability to do things you want to do, or the ability to <i>not</i> do the things you <i>don&#x27;t</i> want to do... people do seem to give up on the latter one quite a lot in order to get the first one and then realize the trade-off they&#x27;ve made may have been somewhat non-optimal way too late to be able change it.

Regarding pomodoro: I&#x27;ve found that 5 minutes of rest is not enough.<p>Through trial and error I&#x27;ve settled on 30min work and 20min(!) of rest.<p>I have to force myself to stop working when my timer is up, otherwise my productivity that day goes down.<p>On one hand it&#x27;s just a somewhat smarter way to eat frogs, on the other it doesn&#x27;t feel so.<p>I suppose half of the problem is not knowing what amount of frog is too much for you.

A classic article on this: <i>In Praise of Idleness</i> by Bertrand Russell<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;harpers.org&#x2F;archive&#x2F;1932&#x2F;10&#x2F;in-praise-of-idleness&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;harpers.org&#x2F;archive&#x2F;1932&#x2F;10&#x2F;in-praise-of-idleness&#x2F;</a>

We&#x27;ve got the wrong theory about how minds work and it&#x27;s ruining our lives

Who cares about all this? The work or not work is not an end. It&#x27;s a means to an objective. I want to move the world closer to what I want it to be. I have a theory for what I need to do for that and it&#x27;s going to take work.<p>Out there I&#x27;m sure is my antipode, someone who is taking a different path to the same objective. I&#x27;ll let them do that way and I&#x27;ll do this way and let whatever works work.<p>But for me it&#x27;s hard work and if I don&#x27;t finish it, power up my kids so that if this is what they want to do they&#x27;ll have a head start.

Great article. It is necessary to be reminded of this some time. I always like to remind myself of Steve Jobs&#x27; famous speech where he says something like:<p>&quot;As with all matters of the heart, you know when things are right&quot;. Which implies you damn well know when things are not right too. (source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&amp;ab_channel=Stanford" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&amp;ab_channel=Stanf...</a>)<p>Not sure if Steve Jobs is a devil according to this guy.

Related reading: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hotelconcierge.tumblr.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;113360634364&#x2F;the-stanford-marshmallow-prison-experiment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hotelconcierge.tumblr.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;113360634364&#x2F;the-stan...</a> <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;benjaminrosshoffman.com&#x2F;approval-extraction-advertised-as-production&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;benjaminrosshoffman.com&#x2F;approval-extraction-advertise...</a>

So good article, I felt recently the same like a torture with all, make money, do this or that, travel more, enjoy more, do more ...

Lovely concept and execution! Definitely going to share as it shows the diversity in humanity is real and just natural. There is no ‘ideal’ because other than genetic duplicates, everybody has variables it’s so much fun.<p>Reminds me of being a snippy teenager at “inspirational coaching” sessions or listening to some invited speaker…<p>Speaker: Think outside the box!<p>Me: What box?

Frogs are actually pretty tasty.<p>Contrary to the article, I am a human piece of trash.<p>The problem with those questions of what will make you successful that you hate doing, is that you can&#x27;t say with certainty that the behavior will make you successful since there are multiple variables at play (most of the time).

Isn&#x27;t life just a menu of frogs?

I wish he&#x27;d used a different metaphor. Fried frog legs are delicious.

&quot;The French eat the frogs&quot;, very discriminatory to all insects and small animals that represent the many diasporas of France all over the world.

As developers, don&#x27;t we usually automate the frog?

I truly loathe romanticism.<p>If that&#x27;s the kind of crap that&#x27;s bursting out of you, don&#x27;t do it.

The 40 point spreadsheet from the Harvard Business Review article sounds like pure parody.

yeah, man&#x27;s natural state is better than this bitter dystopia.<p>&gt;&gt; using your “higher faculties” doesn&#x27;t always leave you better off. As I wrote recently, smart people aren’t happier<p>glad we&#x27;ve come full circle, all the way through self help gurus back to self-referencing barbarians masquerading as intellectual saviors.<p>no, the notion of work is not the devil. idle hands are. if you need evidence, check out all the people who apparently don&#x27;t have to work and spend all their time on tiktok.

Summary:<p>The author argues that the popular productivity advice to &quot;eat frogs&quot; (i.e. do the things you don&#x27;t want to do first) is based on a false premise, that humans are naturally lazy and gluttonous.<p>This false premise leads to a lot of unnecessary suffering, as people try to force themselves to do things they don&#x27;t actually enjoy.

I hate the author’s snarky arrogant voice. Like nails on a chalkboard.

I made a summary of this article, because I found it a bit hard to read. I used GPT-3!<p>Here&#x27;s the summary:<p>The author is saying that people who write about productivity are, in a way, the devil, because they convince people to do things they hate. The author is also saying that these people are not literally the devil, but are just as bad.<p>The article argues that humans are not &quot;naturally&quot; lazy, and that the feeling of being a &quot;lazy piece of trash&quot; is actually a result of the unconscious mind doing its job. The unconscious mind is only able to communicate with the conscious mind when there is a problem that needs attention, which can make it seem like the unconscious is lazy. However, the unconscious mind is actually responsible for solving a lot of problems without the conscious mind even realizing it.<p>The author is talking about how people who are successful often have to eat a lot of frogs (do a lot of things they don&#x27;t want to do), but that doing too many things you don&#x27;t want to do can lead to burnout. The author suggests that people should stop and think about what they really want to do, and not just do things because they think they should or because other people are doing them. The author also talks about how some people never get to experience true love because they&#x27;re stuck in bad relationships, and how this can be just as bad as eating too many frogs.

As a Frenchman, it took me a while to realize it was supposed to mean &quot;a painful thing to do&quot;