Outsmarting Yourself for Success

Outsmarting Yourself for Success(dextronet.com)

47 points by jirinovotny 14 years ago | 12 comments

slackson 14 years ago |

I don't like the tone of this sort of piece. The capitalizations and bolding, the oversimplified assertions of "caveman brain" and "rational brain". It probably has valid advice, but it rings quackery alarms.

MrMatters 14 years ago | |

It's because it looks like a landing page for an internet marketing ebook. I scrolled to the bottom to make sure it wasn't that or a mailing list full of the secrets for success that somehow got to the frontpage.

Harkins 14 years ago | | |

It's a landing page for a software to-do list. Somehow the guy lands the HN front page with a vague blog post every 2-3 weeks.

kentosi 14 years ago |

The overuse of exclamation marks makes me cringe when I read this article. Nonetheless, he's got some solid points. I wish he gave more concrete examples rather than just the one on getting up early.

majmun 14 years ago |

Can't make yourself do something? try this:

- First shut down all distractions , and go lay on bed.

- Don't move or do anything until it is what you want to do.

- go and do it.

I tried this few times, it worked, it usually took me 15 min to 30 min to get up again and start doing work. (maybe for you will be different)

tomjen3 14 years ago |

That sounds like a solid plan, and I have tried it in the past but I always get stuck on the problem that I am too smart (or too stupid) to trick myself.

Or, and this may be worse, I look at the problem and say 'yes this would be nice, I like to be financially independent' and then take a look at what it would take to get there and then say 'but honestly the reward is not worth the effort'.

sumukh1 14 years ago |

The article is long but the main lesson behind is to identify success paths and failure paths. Then make the changes so that the path of least resistance is the path to success.

I love this and his other posts about goals. I've been researching this topic/field (relevant to what I'm doing) for the longest time and it's better than most other blogs about goals.

AznHisoka 14 years ago |

This article is just about setting up your environment correctly so you don't need to rely on willpower as much. The book Switch, and the Happiness Hypothesis talked a lot about this.

mistercow 14 years ago |

I have not had much luck with this kind of strategy in the past, although I did successfully quit reddit by editing my hosts file.

moeffju 14 years ago |

tl;dr: Set yourself up so that choosing a path leading to failure is harder than choosing the path leading to success. There is a kernel of truth in all the long-form dramatization.

kappaknight 14 years ago |

Good tips but the article was WAY too long. What a distraction...

aniket_ray 14 years ago |

Slightly tangential but I'm a huge fan of the dextronet's swift to-do list.

I use a combination of swift's to-do list, gmail tasks and lazymeter to keep track of my TODOs. I find the todo list a very important tool in my productivity arsenal.