Do hard things carefully

212 点作者 spuds7 个月前

18 条评论

ismail7 个月前

The concept he discusses of “the edge” is very similar to “edge of chaos” from physics, but has been studied extensively in complexity sciences, specifically complex adaptive systems.The theory proposes that all complex adaptive systems (CAS) naturally adapt to a state at the “edge of chaos” which is a transition zone between order(stability) and disorder.The theory proposes this is the zone where maximal learning/innovation/creativity in social systems occur.We studied complex adaptive systems in 2019, at the time I changed my LinkedIn tag line to : “learning at the edge of chaos” , still have not changed it since then.<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos</a>

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ChrisMarshallNY7 个月前

Edges are cool. That's where the action is.But sometimes, we shouldn't have action.As I have gotten older, I have learned that "It Depends" is really a mantra for life.I know of some folks that are dealing with mental health challenges. They are all dirt poor, on SSI/Medicaid, and terrified of losing these.As a result, they don't try to get jobs, or advance themselves, socially. They don't take risks. Their therapists tend to encourage this stance.I can't, with sincerity, say that they are all wrong, but I'll bet some of them are. If they pushed themselves, they could probably break free of their chains. But some of the others, would just break. I am not qualified to know which is which. I do my best to support them, and keep my opinions to myself. One thing I know for sure: I have no idea what other people can take, in their edges. Just because I can do something, doesn't mean that someone else can.We advance, by pushing into our discomfort zone. There's a saying: "Winners do what they need to do. Losers do what they want to do."I don't know how to do almost every project I take on. It can be terrifying. I write about that, here: <a href="https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships-are-built-for/" rel="nofollow">https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...</a>

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arzke7 个月前

> “You have to listen to your gut. If something feels off, you’ve gotta listen to what your body is telling you and get out. If you don’t, you’ll end up regretting it.”> Next time you’re feeling some discomfort in a situation, slow down and take a deep breath. Check in with yourself. Where is your edge? What level of discomfort feels challenging but not overwhelming right now? Can you lean in and try something difficult? Or have you already leaned in too far and need to back off a little? Act accordingly. As the situation progresses, keep checking in with yourself.So the difference seems to be the notion that "a little discomfort is okay". You still need to place your tolerable discomfort cut-off point somewhere, right before it feels overwhelming.I kind of agree with the general content of the post, but find it somewhat simplistic with a focus on oneself. I see conversation more like a dance, a delicate balance where you should be aware of your own feelings, but also other people's. Some people feel comfortable over-sharing with someone they barely met, which can create quite intense discomfort. My understanding is that this tends to be more likely in people who struggle setting boundaries in their relationships. I'd assume some neurodivergent people would struggle with this as well, as they might find it challenging to sense this balance.

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josefrichter7 个月前

I think it's hard to judge discomfort while you're in the situation. It's usually in the retrospect when you realise "it wasn't that bad" and you actually gained more than you expected at the time.

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pbronez7 个月前

A related concept from psychology/education is “the zone of proximal development.” It extends this “edge” concept to consider how much further you can push with support from a coach.<a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/zone-of-proximal-development.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.simplypsychology.org/zone-of-proximal-developmen...</a>“It represents tasks beyond the learner’s current abilities but is attainable with the help and guidance of the more knowledgeable other (MKO). The ZPD is the range of tasks a person can’t complete independently but can accomplish with support.”

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rors7 个月前

David Bowie said it better“If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

ejoebstl7 个月前

I dislike the example of sharing personal information in the article. It's sometimes not only about your own comfort and boundaries, but also how much you want to put on another person.

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butz7 个月前

For the love of accessibility, why scrollbar on this website is as wide as a hair?

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imsurajkadam7 个月前

This is quite a good exercise to follow but don’t know how easy it would be to actually implement this in situations. I mean bcz of the habits we do not have that liberty to stop and ask this to yourself. Just like controlled breathing.

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Foreignborn7 个月前

It's very cool you're doing your own voice over reading for your articles.Soooo many sites have AI read voice overs, and while I understand why, it's a nice touch to listen to a real human with natural prosody.

metalman7 个月前

I like the authors take, and disatisfaction with certain maxums,so I created my own which is relevant, "just because you can,doesn't mean you should" which I first applied to lifting very heavy things and living as I do ,crossing paths with people from most lifestyles and groups,I have seen a good many exceptional people perform feats in there various fields....there is always risk.....and nothing would be fun without it....but then there is peformative stupidity...which most of us have had a good go at.....so its sll goid,eh!

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hemmert7 个月前

Excellent article! Thank you very much!I'm currently writing a book on the "edge of human thought" (more from a point of view of inventions over the course of humankind's history) – here's a newsletter signup page, in case you want to stay up to date:<a href="https://unthinkable.net/" rel="nofollow">https://unthinkable.net/</a>(Posting this is also in the edge area for me... ;))Keep up the great thinking and writing! :-)

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wseqyrku7 个月前

> Do hard things carefullySeems like my habit is making things hard and do them carefully.

svilen_dobrev7 个月前

few bits..* the Edge-zone/s (yes, plural) are many, per-aspect. One can be pretty ok with one aspect and at-same-time-and-place totally not-ok with another aspect* being in edge zone is kind-a learning.. training.. ("if it hurts, do it more often") the more often there, further the edge border will move (Extending the comfort zone). Of course depending where it started ; loading a twisted ankle as-usual-before-twisting isn't safe* as saying goes: there's no cannot, there is do not want ; and there's no have to, only want to. But YMMV

thenobsta7 个月前

Seems like he's describing homeostasis and hormesis.The body has a homeostatic balance physically and psychologically. Pushing yourself out that balance (the comfort zone) induces and adaptation (growth). When you push yourself into the edge, as he defines it, you enter the hormetic zone, the area of the dose response where there is benefit (be it from physical or psychological stressors or medicines). Going too far causes unbeneficial and possibly irreparable damage.

GistNoesis7 个月前

These kinds of article push me over the edge.They introduce just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to be useful in order to sell you a book and course which will be more of the same bad quality content.In the article they define the edge as the transition zone between the comfort zone and the danger zone.And they more or less directly tell you to push it and stretch it with care.The proper underlying concept is risk management.**If you follow the advices of these kind of articles, you typically see an initial success, followed by occasional bigger successes, followed by occasional crashes, followed by unrecoverable crashes.What is happening is that the underlying problem that you are trying to optimize initially benefits from expanding your comfort zone. People usually are too "safe" to begin with. That's called prudence, it's a good thing that has been hardwire by evolution.But then when you work to push your frontier zone, you work in a zone where pulling and pushing lever have maximum sensitivity, it's good and allow you to make some quick progress. You learn the good moves which rock is slippery to your foot or not, but slipping is not to important because you are still working inside the underlying safe operating zone.But now you are getting used to learning with immediate feedback. And if you make this the thing you optimize for, you will slowly drift toward the more danger and less reward zone.You master pushing and pulling the levers in front of you but as you already know how they work, you don't learn anything new. So you push them more and more because you get bored, and then you get some exciting new phenomenon, the car can drift when you go over 90 in the turn of the speed limit 50 zone. So you're happy you've got something new to master. You master it, and now you drift anywhere you go Tokyo drift style.But you never learned that the adherence of the car depends on whether it has rained the previous day because the oil and dust in the asphalt get lifted and redeposited on the road. So you are surprised when your car spin around.You got in an accident but made it OK, but now you've got to do some door dashing to finance the new car. So you are more tired, and more pressed by time and drive accordingly. So what does little Timmy in the back learn ?**Proper risk management is looking for the levers you can push, expanding them in a safe and boring way. It's concept like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier</a> in portfolio management instead of YOLOing. It's the concept of bankroll management, and management of variance, aggression window style, in things like poker.But the game of life is not an individual one but a collective one. And people playing an aggressive style are forcing you to play a more loose game. And even more worse than a loose game is a positive expectation game turned negative expectation game because of that. Because the game is not zero sum, in poker there is the rake, but in life many situations are win win, but can be turned lose lose by greediness.The rise is slow and the fall is fast and catastrophic, see the concept of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_failure" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_failure</a> in complex systems that result by taking a myopic approach to optimizing your life.

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gwd7 个月前

I don't think it's necessarily a "happy medium", but wisdom to know what kind of pain it is, and what the cost/benefit is of the situation.If you're lifting weights, the "burn" you feel after doing 20 reps of a light weight might be way higher in intensity than a little twinge in your shoulder; but the "burn" might be something you push through, while the twinge is something you just stop your workout for that day -- and if it happens again, may mean you take it easy on your shoulder for a week or two. That's because you know the "cost" of pushing through the burn is negligible and the benefit part of your whole plan; the "cost" of pushing through the shoulder twinge might be a month or two of no working out, possibly no more weightlifting ever if it's bad enough.In most situations I have a policy of eating at least a bit of whatever's put in front of me. It's good to train myself to put politeness over squeamishness, and in any case I've often found new foods that I've liked that way. I've never eaten tarantula or grasshopper, but if someone offered me one I'd try it, even though it sounds disgusting.However, I no longer eat sea cucumbers if my wife cooks them, even though I have only a mild distaste to them: I've already eaten them hundreds of times, I know I can eat them, I'm pretty sure they're never going to get any easier to eat, and she doesn't mind, as it leaves more for her. Forcing myself to eat them doesn't really have that much benefit.As a "social introvert", I've learned at conferences to just go back to my room and take a nap if I'm tired. I can just power through the day without a rest, but the interactions aren't really worth it -- much better to take a break and come back fresh and ready to engage.I could go on and on -- the key thing is to recognize what the actual cost or benefit of "pushing" is.

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sklargh7 个月前

In a prior career as a firefighter-EMT about 90% of the work was pure boredom and routine, 5% was in a sweet-spot of complex and interesting or perhaps mildly but reasonably dangerous. The balance was represented some really difficult-ugly or wildly dangerous moments. It’s interesting how prevalent this is across so many fields.