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Most Plausible Theory Yet: Attention Hijacking

Obviously I’ve had a lot of theories as to what is causing some of my difficulties, ranging from pretty likely to absurd. In many cases, I was quite hopeful that I had found my true explanation. Once I’ve figured it out, I plan to go through all of my posts and assemble a master list of everything I’ve theorized and tested.

It’s been a little while since I’ve had any confidence in any of my ideas, but I finally feel, once again, like I’m on to something.

I’m reading the book Stolen Focus by Johann Hari and almost everything in it so far has resonated really strongly with me.

While thinking through my own life, I’ve realized that I’ve gotten myself into an unsustainable habit of constant task switching coupled with little to no downtime where I have no active tasks.

I’ll walk through both of those now.

I first approached this topic from where I feel I’m doing the most harm: during work.

Early on, I came to realize that work is where things seem to go wrong. I might have a day that’s starting well, but by the time I’m done with work, I’ve got just as much brain fog and lethargy as ever. Often, it sets in almost immediately. I do not believe this to be a case of just getting naturally worn out.

So I put a lot more thought into how I’m doing things.

I’ve realized that I am constantly task switching. When I’m going through emails, understandably this is going to happen. Most don’t take long, so it’s just one after the other.

But this part is understandable.

What isn’t is the fact that I basically leave my Gmail window open all day, and I also leave my Whatsapp window open all day.

The moment I have any downtime (which is constantly because the internet in 2026 is almost unusably slow across the board), I check for new emails, I look at my Whatsapp messages, I respond.

I’ve trained myself that I need to be doing something at all moments, and having to wait for anything feels unbearable without replacing the first task with another.

As a result, everything is way more difficult, but I also feel like I’m sort of just fracturing my mind throughout the entire day. It’s never able to really focus on anything.

Even when I’m “done” with emails, the moment I sit down to do any other harder task, I still have Gmail and Whatsapp open and I’m constantly glancing between them. I’m absolutely frying my ability to focus properly on one thing.

I think this, by itself, could explain a huge part of why I’m feeling the way I am.

It’s also very consistent with my history of feeling better during and immediately after trips; particularly trips in which I’m moving around a lot and don’t have time to be working all day or using my phone.

Generally, the good feeling quickly fades as I go back to my old routine.

So I think the constant task switching is probably the number one problem.

As a sub-point of that, I also think that the tasks I’ve been spending time on lately have also been pretty detrimental. It has been almost entirely putting out fires with things breaking as a result of email deliverability or bot attacks on e-commerce sites.

I’ve already resolved to put some extra things in place for most sites to proactively prevent these, and hopefully that will help. But by nature, these types of things are frustrating. They tend to be largely systemic problems in fragile systems I have very little control over. They are also very difficult to articulate to clients. If things go well, they don’t even know. If they go poorly, they blame me even if it isn’t my fault.

So I’ll do what I can there, but it’s not the main problem.

Now I want to talk about the second main issue, is that I feel I don’t spend nearly enough time doing nothing.

I think this concept is starting to rise in the mainstream consciousness, but it’s also addressed in depth in the book.

Basically, I’ve tried to fill every moment of my time with something. And if I feel I don’t have the energy to actually do anything, typically I’ll just consume content. TV shows, YouTube, etc.

Just like most people, I’ve become uncomfortable just doing nothing. But that’s exactly what I need to be doing much of the time.

I haven’t been giving myself appropriate time to just switch to the Default Mode Network and let my brain do its thing.

It has important work to do while I’m awake but not switched on to a task, and I’ve been depriving it of that. I need more time walking without music, being in nature, sitting and looking outside, cooking or eating without anything on, and just resting.

I feel like if you don’t get this, it makes you anxious and fractured which then makes it even harder to get this. It’s harder to let go and just relax.

It’s a vicious cycle.

And as a third and final category, I feel that I’m not getting enough flow either. I think largely as a consequence of these first two problems, in fact. But also just because I’m not often sitting down and working on an important problem or task.

I think it’s probably a fairly necessary state to be in on a regular basis, and I’ve gotten it very little.

Okay, so I’ve determined that these things are probably having a very negative impact on my life and well-being. What now?

I need to make a plan. I need to set up some guidelines to follow to avoid falling into the same traps.

To that end, here is what I propose.

  1. Whatsapp and Gmail are closed unless I’m actively planning to use them.

    I can’t just have them sitting idly open at the times when I’m not messaging. Otherwise I see those little notification icons and it distracts me constantly.

    I’ve noticed that this will happen even if I don’t plan to respond right away: my brain constantly goes back to them and is trying to focus on them even if I won’t let it. That’s very clearly terrible.

  2. Pick designated times to deal with these.

    For Whatsapp, I think I should generally have it closed and not use it at all other than maybe once in the morning, once after lunch, and then whenever after work.

    For Gmail, I’ll have to figure out the best rhythm, but I’m thinking I’ll go through email once in the morning like usual (though I may investigate doing something else first), perhaps once before workout/lunch, finally once after lunch.

    The rest of the time, it should be closed and not even visible.

  3. Make time for flow activities.

    I need to do my best to incorporate flow activities into every day. It could be writing, focusing on one hard work problem, or some other task. I’ll have to figure out over time how to best do this, but I know that what I’m doing now is insufficient.

    When doing these activities, I need to be totally disconnected from everything else. No distractions. Ideally, have my phone elsewhere.

  4. Sleep with my phone in a different room.

    I need to start charging it elsewhere. I don’t want it to be close enough to feel like a distraction when trying to sleep.

    I’m considering getting another device (or just using my old phone) just for studying and translations. Something without any messaging of any kind, or email. It will just be for language learning, basically. I’ll need to look into that.

  5. More downtime, shooting for at least 1-2 hours per day.

    This is time spent with no task. It could be walking around the neighborhood, possibly kayaking or hiking, sitting down relaxing, cooking, eating, showering, etc.

    I just need some time when I’m not doing anything productive.

  6. More time spent doing just one thing, like cooking, lifting, editing, etc.

    I tend to stack lots of activities, like cooking with a language lesson, weight training and editing photos in the downtime (still not sure if I should keep doing this one or not), and more.

    I think I need to spend more time with just one thing.

  7. Reduce as many notifications as possible on my phone and elsewhere.

    It seems like the vast majority are a huge waste of time and attention. I need to aggressively opt-out, disable, etc. Only notifications which are vitally important should come through.

  8. I need to spend more time with my phone elsewhere.

    Particularly when not working, I should spend more time with my phone elsewhere. It doesn’t need to be on my all the time.

    I want to break the thought process that my phone is an extension of myself or that it’s always there for distraction. I want that to not be true.

 

I’ll probably revise this list over time and perhaps add to it, but this seems like a great start and these things should help a ton.

It’s hard for me to believe at the moment that these issues aren’t the primary cause of the problems I’ve identified. I’m actually pretty confident I’ll see some pretty significant improvement with these in place.

I’m actually hoping strongly that this is the main problem, because unlike many other causes, I can actually do something about most of these.

I’m going to try to keep all of this up and then report back on results. I’m very curious to see how these changes impact me and on what timeline. It’s possible some improvement will come almost immediately, and others may take some time.

 

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But I Actually Did It

For the last handful of years, I’ve had a sort of mantra that I keep coming back to, which is basically, “Yeah, anyone can do it. But I actually did.”

I had been planning to write a blog post about this for some time, and then today, I just so happened to read the blog post where I first heard those words.

It was in my own blog. But it wasn’t me who said them. It was a comment from my good friend David, and he said those words exactly.

I don’t think I appreciated them fully at the time, but over the years they came to mean more and more to me.

You see, my early writings in this blog reflected my actual mindset at the time which had a sort of obsession of being a “top performer” or just really talented or smart. While not all my posts were public, it seems like every few months I’d write a post scolding myself for not doing better or questioning whether I was even that talented.

I used to find myself regularly pursuing extremely ambitious goals or projects and then getting frustrated when I didn’t immediately excel at them. I was dismissive of anything that I saw as requiring lots of time but not elite, innate abilities or talent.

But you know what I’ve come to realize? That’s complete nonsense.

One of the most rewarding things I’ve done in my life is learn a foreign language (Spanish) and actually reach a high level of proficiency in it.

But here’s the thing about learning a language… Anyone can do it. It takes a lot of time and energy, but it doesn’t require any special skills or intelligence. You just have to put in the time.

Anyone could do it. But I actually did. And in Robert Frost’s famous words, “and that has made all the difference.”

As David pointed out eight years ago, the fact that anyone could do something is irrelevant. It still takes hard work and sustained effort to do many things, and they are still not only worthwhile, but even impressive.

So since then I’ve really tried to apply that to my life, and it’s been freeing. I don’t need to be the best at anything innately or to focus on activities that most people could never do. If it’s worthwhile to do, I should do it.

I’ve been having lots of fun getting more serious about guitar playing lately, and I think this mindset shift is an important piece of that.

I don’t think I’m a naturally gifted musician or guitar player, but it doesn’t matter. Most people could master an instrument if they were to put in the hours. But it’s still extremely worthwhile to do so. The fact that most people could doesn’t cheapen it at all.

And, lest I get carried away here, it’s also worth noting that things can be worthwhile and great even if everyone not only could but actually does do them. Even if they are extremely easy. Not everything needs to be a demonstration of ability or, more pointedly: proof that you are better than others. Things can be enjoyable and worthwhile on their own merit.

With that out of the way, I want to proceed to the logical conclusion of this line of reasoning.

There is no difference between those who could do something and don’t, and those who can’t do it.

The idea that you “could” do something if you wanted to is a mirage. It’s so irrelevant that it’s meaningless.

You either do something or you don’t. Nobody cares whether you’re capable of something and you shouldn’t either.

If your self-esteem is based on perceived but untested competence and ability, you’re doomed to never try at anything for fear of breaking the illusion of competence.

I’ve seen how this plays out with myself and lots of others. It’s almost always the same.

These people typically don’t want to try anything new. If they do, they give up quickly when they realize they aren’t instantly gifted at it.

They fear failure more than anything because it means they aren’t what they believed themselves to be.

And what’s really interesting that over time, their efforts and failures (or lack thereof) are compounded.

Most people who succeed at a high level were willing to try lots of things and, indeed, fail at lots of things. Their self-esteem was never tied up in their “innate ability”.

This gave them experience which, over time, gave them actual competence.

I think it’s the same reason that you so often see top performers from high school flame out in college or after and end up in safe but boring jobs, never really reaching their potential.

It’s a known phenomenon that the vast majority of top performers in adulthood actually didn’t excel as children. In fact, a Science study determined that only 10% of top performers as children end up as top performers as adults.

And I think this is a big part of why that is. When you’re a top performer as a child, you start to believe that you are successful because you are actually in some way better than others. You then close yourself off to any opportunity to expose that as untrue. This prevents you from performing at an elite level later in life.

But I reiterate: it doesn’t matter if you can do something. I only matters if you actually do it.

Anyone could learn Spanish, but I actually did it, and it was extremely worthwhile to me. Now I’m even learning French, something anyone could do.

I’m running a business in an industry with low barriers to entry and I’m not doing anything particularly original. In theory, most people could get into this. But I actually did it, and it’s enabled a life for me that’s very worthwhile.

And again, I’m really putting a lot of effort into guitar and music again, even though I don’t think I have any particular natural ability. And it’s already greatly enriched my life. I’m kicking myself for spending so little time on it for a long time, in part because I didn’t feel like I was naturally gifted.

How silly.

I think that, without this important mindset shift, I would have eventually found myself an old man with no accomplishments or abilities, bitterly confident in my own intelligence and talent with absolutely nothing to show for it.

I feel that I’m on a much better path now. One where I can just enjoy things and set goals that are attainable and have have rewarding experiences that I never would have been able to before.

It’s a shame we can’t go back in time and talk to our younger selves. I’d love to have the opportunity to set myself straight years ago.

I can’t do that, but the next best time is to do it now!

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It’s Burnout… And Basically Everything Else

I’m only maybe 5 days into relaxing a bit since developing my theory that I’m essentially just burnt out and I’m feeling… Great.

I haven’t been super productive, though I have spent lots of time on the important things I need to do in my business and also have done tons of reading and playing guitar (which I’m enjoying much more).

Overall, I’m just feeling like how I should be feeling, I think. It’s great.

Obviously I don’t automatically feel great, but the floor is way higher, I enjoy things more, the brain fog is pretty much gone, and I have way more energy.

I randomly decided to go on a run today and my pace was for about an 8:38 mile, vs my most recent runs previously of 9:22 or more. And I felt good doing it. I felt light.

And really all I’ve done is relax a bit more and have some flexibility in what I get done.

Nothing else major has changed.

So I think really, this is it.

What’s funny is that the first post I randomly read today before writing this was one from March in which I specifically determine that I think I’m burnt out. I had forgotten about that entirely. It’s funny how things work out.

I eventually dismissed that idea at the time, because I realized my CPAP settings were not good and were definitely hurting me.

Which is probably true. And would make them the biggest contributor to my burnout.

You see, I think basically everything I’ve brought up here as an idea has contributed in one way or another to the burnout. Most of them affect how I sleep, rest, or otherwise recover. That’s why my sleep apnea has had a massive impact, and why when I was most burnt-out, I felt most like I did before it was treated.

So over time, I’ve slowly fixed and optimized so many parts of my life and I think those will continue to serve me well. And I might not have ever figured them out if I didn’t feel bad to start.

But now I feel like I can solve the overarching problem while reaping the benefits of everything else I learned.

I think that basically, I need to just pay attention to how I’m feeling. If I’m getting really stressed, I can’t just use that stress to power through for days at a time. I need to occasionally back off the workload and take some time to recover.

I may also need to figure something else out for my mornings. If I’m waking up past 8, going on a walk, studying, and reading for a while, then breakfast, THEN trying to do all of my important work tasks for the day AND workout all before lunch… It just won’t work.

So maybe I’ll plan to do emails and then just the ONE important work thing and work out, and then lunch. And then do the other work things afterwards.

And if things get crazy, I need to be open to working out after work.

But the important thing is to just monitor how I’m feeling and make adjustments as needed. I don’t want to get burnt out again. It’s not a good feeling.

I’m mostly just excited that I seem to have finally figured it out. It’s very encouraging, and I’m far more optimistic for the future now.

I think at my lowest point, I really started to give up hope that things would improve. I was feeling pretty hopeless.

But now it’s back! And I’m excited for the future again.

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Of an Abundance of Time

I swear I already wrote this post, but I think it might just be that I have a note to write it laying out and just never got around to it.

I’ve determined that it’s very important for me to feel like I have an abundance of time. The moment I feel like I don’t, I get anxious and unhappy.

Much of this connects to general anxiety and the rest mostly relates to something I’ve brought up before which is that “freedom” has historically been a value I subconsciously lived by. If anything at all impinges upon my freedom (in this case by taking up too much time) I start to get stressed because I’m no longer living up to my values.

This has caused me to resist beneficial routine and avoid committing to good things that would take a lot of time.

But at the same time, it’s not all bad. I think I’ve always understood the premise of this blog post at some level and – as a result – have typically not remained in a state where I have no free time for too long.

Over the last year, on average, I’ve improved my energy levels greatly and have also initiated two different acquisitions in my business. The result is that I have more work to do but am also capable of working more.

Some of that is great. But it can’t go on forever. I don’t want to immediately expend all of my new-found energy on work.

Instead, I need to consistently spend some of it on improvements to my business so I can outsource more of the work or make processes more efficient so I’m not doing as much.

As I gain more energy, I want to also feel like I have more freedom with my time to do whatever I want. I need to plan days and weeks where not much is going on.

Because at the end of the day I’m just much happier when I have that abundance mindset with regard to time.

 

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We Focus on the Things We Think We’re Good at, and we Judge That Based on Comparisons to Others

I had a sort of epiphany today. I’ve long been formulating a sort of theory that humans have a need to feel special. I won’t go into too much detail on the base theory here, but basically it says that this need to feel special drives almost all of our behavior.

My epiphany is basically that we like things we feel we are good at, and we feel we are good at things if we can do them better than other people.

That maybe sounds very obvious and without any need of further explanation, but I think it’s actually relatively profound.

Let me explain how I got here.

I went for a run today. It wasn’t very far (less than a mile), and I did it quite slowly. I’m not in running shape, okay?

It wasn’t the most enjoyable and I definitely felt slow.

But then a thought occurred to me, “if it felt exactly the same as this, but I had completed it in a time that was better than the vast majority of people, would I like it more?”

And I realized the answer would be a resounding “yes”.

I also remember some times when I was running regularly, and I was way faster, and I did, in fact, like it way more.

We are always gauging our own performance against that of others. In basically everything. For the purposes of this post, I want to focus the discussion on skills and performance vs. other metrics and comparison.

I play guitar. Now that I’m older, other guitar players around me tend to be way better than me.

But if I could play at this level when I was in 9th grade, I’d feel like I was incredible. And by comparison: I would be. Most kids were just starting to play.

When thinking about it more, I realized that there are likely evolutionary reasons why things would work this way.

In contrast with Neanderthals, humans inherently form groups and societies. We don’t really ever survive out on our own. Societies evolved along with us.

And one of the things that makes our societies so effective is specialization. No one person can be great at everything. There just isn’t enough time to practice and learn enough about more than a few things, and our brains are likely not even capable of handling the extra workload.

So instead, we specialize.

But how do we choose what to specialize in?

I’m sure the answer is quite complicated, but my theory is that it’s basically what I’ve described above.

When you feel you are better than your peers at something, you enjoy it much more. And then you tend to spend more time on it, and get even better at it.

If you feel you are worse than others at something, you don’t enjoy it as much and you tend to give it up.

The key component of this system is “comparison with others”. By doing so, you ensure a broad range of specialization within a group. You only focus on what you do better than everyone else, and they do the same.

I imagine that feeling like you’re better than others at something also fills you with purpose and pride, leading you to feel good about yourself and more effective overall. It’s a reward for following our prewired specialization script.

It’s a pretty ingenuous system that ensures human groups are as effective as possible at ensuring the survival of the species and that everyone is contributing to the best of their ability.

Thinking to modern society, I suspect there may be real problems here. We know so many people and can see tons of really-talented people online, and the result is that most people don’t feel like they are actually that good at anything.

As a result, they don’t put time and effort into anything, and their self-esteem and sense of purpose suffer greatly.

Perhaps that’s really the greatest problem with social media.

There’s a lot to consider with this. I’ll have to revisit it and think through some more.

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How You Feel Determines How you Enjoy Things, not the Other Way Around

I had an epiphany the other day that when you feel good, you tend to enjoy things a lot more. Enjoying things isn’t really the way to feel good. It’s backwards!

Initially, the thought came to me while sipping on a pint of Guinness in Dublin with some friends. I recalled thinking during my last visit to Ireland that it was true: the Guinness there really did taste better than at home.

This time around, I’m not so sure. It seemed to be the same to me.

Regardless, I blurted out a half-formed theory that I think had been floating around in my head for some time: you enjoy everything better when you’re feeling good.

I noticed that when I was numb to the world, I tended not to enjoy… Just about anything.

And that when I was feeling really good, I became emotional about lots of things. I enjoyed things way more in general.

I think that applies even to things like taste, or music. When you’re feeling good, food tastes way better. Colors are more vivid. And music seems deeper and better.

And when you say it like that, it seems pretty obvious. Of course it’s true.

But I don’t think I’ve been living with that in mind.

Like most people, I think instinctually I’ve always had the thought, “I’m not feeling great. I need to do something enjoyable in order to feel better.”

And that’s exactly what most people do and what culture and society recommend.

Feeling bad? Treat yourself! Seek pleasure. Eat something tasty. Buy something expensive.

Maybe it’s the result of centuries of manipulation from marketing that our only solution to feeling bad is to seek material pleasure.

Regardless, I’ve found it doesn’t work very well, because those pleasures are greatly diminished if you’re depressed or generally feeling bad.

Instead of seeking out pleasure, I think we need to ask the question, “WHY am I feeling bad?” and the do our best to resolve the underlying issue.

Once again, this feels really obvious when you say it out loud, yet I’ve never heard anyone say it out loud.

A lifetime of pleasure-seeking any time you felt bad would mean that you are never, ever dealing with your actual problems and instead just trying to distract yourself.

It should be no surprise, then, that people eventually just become numb.

Obviously there’s a lot more to depression than this but I think it’s still a pretty important thing to keep in mind, and something that may prove to have a big impact on me personally.

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The Purpose of Basically Everything is to Feel Good, So I Need to Prioritize Things that Maximize That

As humans, we like to believe that we are always incredibly deep and everything is meaningful and that every action and motivation is incredibly complicated.

But in the end, we just want to feel good.

Obviously there are many ways we go about feeling good, and feeling good in the short term often comes at the expense of feeling good in the long term (eating something tasty but bad for you, drinking, watching TV, etc.).

And, of course, perhaps some things feel good in different ways. Some things may be deeply fulfilling, while others may just feel like passing pleasure.

Yet just about anything we strive for, we do so because we believe it will make us feel good. Even for things like charity or volunteering; we think that we’ll feel good about ourselves if we do it. And that’s probably rightly-so!

But what if we just dropped the pretense and admitted that basically everything we do is an attempt to feel good? That’s literally how our brains work.

Even the most deeply selfless acts are most likely always the result of someone choosing the way in which they think they’ll feel best; often the resulting choice between intense emotional anguish or brief physical harm and maybe even death.

Now, you might be thinking, “I know people that are always trying to feel good, and that kind of hedonistic pleasure-seeking leads to a bad life.”

And this is where I think it’s important to note the difference between being impulsively drawn to short-term pleasure and carefully planning to feel good long-term.

I’m starting to think that it’s better to plan – virtually always – to maximize how you feel long-term.

So let’s look at a common example: drinking.

Drinking is famously enjoyable in the short (when done in moderation). But what about the long-term?

It would seem that even relatively small amounts of drinking have a pretty serious, lingering, negative impact on mood and other measures of well-being.

At the risk of being overly analytical, if you were to graph how you felt over time, the purpose of life (or at least the unavoidable aim as mammals) is to maximize the integral; the area under the curve.

While most people are probably decent at doing that for the next… 15 minutes, they are not so good at doing it long-term. And that’s what I want to focus on.

Sure, I want my highs to be high. But I don’t want my lows to be so low, and I certainly don’t want to be feeling bad most of the time.

Yet that’s where I think most people are. They live in an unhealthy way, they work too much, they spend too much, they don’t communicate, their priorities are off, they drink, they don’t sleep enough, and in the end they might have some moderately high highs, but most of the time they are very low.

And I don’t want that.

So going forward, I’m going to think a lot more about this concept and use it to reevaluate things like drinking and see if it wouldn’t be better to just give it up completely.

I need to focus on the things that will maximize the area under that curve at all times. Even at the expense of other activities, like working.

Pretty much anything that is “healthy” falls under this category. I don’t think total deprivation is necessary, but I do need to focus my efforts where they will be most beneficial.

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In All My Hobbies I’ve Opted to Nominally Do One Hard Thing – At the Expense of Fundamentals

I always hated “fundamentals”. I always wanted to just jump to doing the really difficult, impressive stuff so that I could prove I was good at something.

I remember with skateboarding, I always struggled with some core stuff, and instead of just perfecting each thing one at a time, I would spend all of my time trying to land – for example, a 360 flip. It’s a very difficult trick, and every so often – only from a standstill – I could land it.

It looked bad and I could never really get the hang of doing it consistently, but sometimes I could do it. And that made me feel like I was good at the sport.

I wasn’t though. I was just ignoring all the small pieces that were required to get good.

Or on the trampoline. I did get good at basic flips, but then I started doing backflips with a full 360 in them. Once again, it wasn’t pretty. But I could do it. And it impressed people and made me feel like I was really good at it.

And then guitar. I never practiced with a metronome, I didn’t learn any music theory, my rhythm was bad, and just so many of the fundamentals were totally foreign to me.

But I could play one of the more complicated Stevie Ray Vaughan licks. Not very well, obviously, but I could play the notes and I could do it quickly.

I think with all these things, there has been sort of a desperate thread to prove (to myself?) that I’m good at something. I skip steps to just get to the hard stuff because otherwise I feel like I’m just not that great.

And I also just get bogged down in the details of things and it feels overwhelming. I’d rather just go to something cooler and more showy.

I never put any of this together until just recently. The irony is that, in my quest to prove I was good at things, I neglected the very fundamentals which would have enabled my actual success.

It’s sort of frustrating looking back now and seeing how counter-productive it was. I should have drilled in the fundamentals and mastered them so that I could proceed from there with a good base.

Even now, I’m just realizing I do it with weight training, too. I’ve neglected all stretching and all core stability exercises. Instead, I’ve focused hard on obvious measures of success like my bench press numbers.

And then just the other day I injured my back again, ostensibly as a result of not building up core strength. In this case, I got burned by not building up a literal base of stability from which to expand my strength.

In work, I’d much rather take on major acquisitions than slowly build up my client base with strong business fundamentals.

So the question is: what do I do now?

The first step is obviously what I’m doing here: acknowledging the issue. Now that I’m actually aware of it, I can watch out for it going forward. I can pay attention and notice where it might be counter-productive.

I’m really going hard at the guitar again, and it’s important that I do things differently this time. I actually have been focusing a lot more on the fundamentals this time around, so perhaps I have already started to improve. But I do really need to dial that in and realize that being rock-solid on the basics will make the harder stuff way easier.

And I should obviously apply that elsewhere, to. Particularly with my business. I need to look for all the ways in which I’m neglecting some of the basics and really start to work on them. I already sense that there are tons of areas in which I need to improve.

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I Shouldn’t Dismiss Things that Lack “Research Evidence”

I feel like it’s easy in today’s day and age to live and die but we call “science”. While I’m a whole-hearted believer in science, I think that it’s really important to acknowledge its shortcomings and recognize that we are often applying the results of studies far too broadly.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than it is in long-term studies of health and wellness.

At least how it’s done today, these studies aim to follow huge groups of people with diverse backgrounds and see whether a given aspect of how they live is beneficial or not.

But here’s the problem: everyone is different. What works for one person may not work for another. Some things that may be useless for one person may be life-changing to another.

Much of the time, we have no way of seeing behind the scenes to understand what’s going on or why some things work great for some people but not others.

But I’ve had an example lately where that’s not the case.

I’ve seen YouTube videos that champion the idea of “mouth taping” at night to force people to breath through their nose. Proponents claim that their live was completely changed by this simple thing.

Now, I suffer from obstructive sleep apnea. In my case, I stop breathing whether I’m breathing through my mouth or nose. Simply taping my mouth closed is not going to accomplish anything.

Likewise, many people have no problems breathing only through their nose at night, even without taping their mouth shut.

I suspect that the only people who would benefit are people who:

  • Suffer from mild sleep apnea but only when breathing through their mouth
  • Can tolerate mouth-taping

I would venture a guess that this is not a large group of people. And anyone outside of this narrowly-defined group would probably see little-to-no benefit from doing this.

If they were to do studies on mouth taping, I suspect that they would find that it’s ultimately quite negative overall and they would say that you shouldn’t do it.

And yet, some people would get significant benefit from it.

Or let’s say they did a study about diet and concluded that grains are bad for you and decrease a number of measures of health.

It may be the case that many people truly are intolerant or allergic to gluten and that these people are weighing down the results. If you were to exclude them, you may find that the remaining participants in the study are actually far healthier eating grain.

I’ve generally heard that vegetarians tend to be healthier overall, but I suspect there are variables at play that either can’t be adjusted for, or aren’t even known.

For example, it might be that many people who become vegetarian and stick to it actually have some problem digesting meat. I had a roommate that claimed even a tiny amount of residual meat on clean dishes would make him quite ill, and would insist on using only his own dishes and never mixing anything.

I’m quite incredulous of that claim, mostly because I saw him on numerous occasions using my knives or other dishes that had just been used on meat, and he was fine. Nevertheless, it’s likely that many vegetarians do truly have problems digesting meat, and may see huge benefits to their health by remaining vegetarian that others would not have.

Weight loss is an interesting category. “Studies” have shown that aerobic activity actually makes people gain weight, and that “diets” don’t work for losing weight. Not all studies have shown that, of course, but taken with the populace at large, these things supposedly are not effective.

And yet… They work. If you hang around weight training and bodybuilding circles, there is no mystery whatsoever about gaining or losing weight. If someone expressed doubt that reducing their caloric intake would result in losing weight, they would be laughed at and mocked.

And what they are saying is not only true, but most people in this space don’t seem to have too much trouble gaining or losing weight.

So where’s the disconnect?

I’d argue that the average person has little to no agency in terms of affecting change in their life. They follow a script and rarely deviate from it. They do what they feel like.

You can’t tell them to just “eat less” because they won’t.

Someone who is a bodybuilder has probably already demonstrated that they do not fit this mold at all. They are capable of doing difficult, even painful things in order to improve themselves. For them, eating a little less is no great challenge.

These are all just examples. They may be flawed in parts, but the main point I’m making is that just because some research has determined something doesn’t work, doesn’t mean that it should be discounted entirely.

Obviously pseudo-science and outright falsehoods abound, but I suspect there are tons of things in this world that are not supported by consensus in the modern scientific community, yet may be tremendously beneficial for specific individuals.

Or if you look at people who are top performers in just about anything… It’s easy – especially when looking at high-earners – to simply point to survivorship bias. To say that they didn’t do anything to get there, and that the vast majority of people doing what they did failed.

We may look at their habits and routines and point to evidence that says those things do not work, and it would be supported by evidence.

But what if a given routine just doesn’t work for most people? 

The vast majority of people could not handle most of the tactics bodybuilders don’t even think twice about.

I have to believe that there are tons of things that would be tremendously beneficial to individuals either of unusually-high intelligence or self-discipline. I think I need to be completely open to that possibility, and not write-off things just because the previous studies haven’t found them to be beneficial among the general population.

The general population isn’t capable of tons of things that are helpful. I may find considerable value in places others have written off.

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I Need to Think of Myself Like a Plant

This post is basically just a rehash of my post from a week or two ago, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot more and it really feels extremely relevant.

Basically, I need to think of myself like a plant.

What does that mean?

Plants don’t think or feel. They simply do their thing. Some are far more successful than others, and it’s all a combination of the right conditions that allow them to thrive.

And I’m realizing more and more that we are more or less the same.

We think we’re so smart and can will our way through anything, but at the end of the day our output is almost exactly correlated with our inputs.

None of my most productive days have ever come after a terrible night’s sleep, when I’m hungover, or when I’m sick. And more than likely nearly all of my best days have followed a period of sobriety, great sleep, and low stress.

It may feel in the moment like bursts of energy and creativity are totally spontaneous, but they aren’t at all. They come when all of your inputs are optimized and you’re feeling good as a result.

I honestly feel really silly for never realizing this before.

I once wrote that it’s arrogance to be too idealistic or optimistic about yourself or your abilities; especially regarding your willpower. While calling it “arrogant” feels like a bit of a judgement, the fact remains that thinking you can still be at your best even when you’re feeling terrible is simply false.

I feel like now that I have this understanding, I need to strive to maximize my inputs as much as possible. I need to get everything in place and do just about everything right on a consistent basis to maximize my output.

Throughout this blog I’ve spoken about weight training, and one thing that I like about it is that it provides objective feedback about how I’m doing. Whereas tracking a subjective measure of how I’m feeling may not always yield valuable results, the objective nature of weight training can’t be biased and is often far more useful.

I’ve started really focusing on giving myself the correct inputs to improve at weight training, and it has started to pay off. I’m rapidly approaching the strongest I’ve ever been. I can almost immediately tell that my efforts have paid off.

These results directly prove my idea. If I eat well (and enough), provide adequate rest and recovery, and don’t drink too much or otherwise sabotage myself, I can put in a great effort in each session and the next time I’ll be able to lift more.

It doesn’t really matter how much effort I’ve put in during the workout. At least not the “conscious” kind of effort requiring me to push myself uncomfortably hard.

If all the conditions are met, I will push myself the correct amount and I will immediately be rewarded with tangible results.

This may not be as obvious in other areas of life simply because I don’t have an obvious, objective measure. But I feel like there’s no question that it’s there. The impact is likely far greater in my life more broadly than it is just for weight training. After all: while there is a limit to how much I could conceivably lift (and I’m already a good chunk of the way there), there’s no limit to how “successful” I can be.

So this may be a nearly identical re-hash of the other blog post, but I’ve just continued thinking about it and felt I needed to expand upon it a bit more.

Armed with this understanding, I may have to change many things in my life.