Category: Personal

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Historically, Things like Hunger and Fear Moved us to Action, but not Anymore

During the vast majority of the time that humans were evolving, we were motivated to action by strong biological desires like hunger, fear, or sex.

But in modern society, we are generally comfortable. While sex may still be very motivating for people, hunger and fear rarely are feelings that cause us to act.

And I don’t mean: you feel hungry so you go to the refrigerator and grab something to eat.

I mean: you had concerns about your ability to secure food for yourself for the whole year, and that motivates you to work tirelessly, 365 days a year until you die, to do everything you can to secure food.

Nearly all of your actions were based around just a few basic needs.

And we simply don’t have that anymore. You barely have to do anything to survive and meet those needs.

So now we’re operating on a completely alien system of motivation. We’re forced to think about what we really want in life and make complicated decisions about how to meet long-term goals.

And, more to my original thought and point of this article: in the short term, there is almost nothing motivating you to action.

I have no intense biological needs that are in danger of not being met anytime soon.

So how exactly do I motivate myself to do… Anything?

Animals behave almost entirely on instinct and in response to their needs. Everything is very low-level and they basically do what feels right at every given moment.

But for us humans, we’ve created a world in which almost every action we take has to be guided by higher-level thinking that’s generally not tied to basic needs like food and safety.

To some degree, it’s wholly unnatural.

Sure, we do use stand-ins for our basic needs and let those motivate us. For example, sex appeal is used to sell everything from cars to vacations to kitchen appliances.

You can motivate people at a fundamental, animalistic level by tapping into their biological desire for sex. But of course you’re not giving them sex, you’re selling them a product.

Obviously money tends to be pretty motivating to people, too. And I think it tends to be a stand-in for basically all biological needs: hunger, safety, sex, shelter, everything.

It’s almost an avatar of our base needs that have guided our actions for millions of years. We’ve replaced those needs with a need for money.

While that’s motivating, I’m not sure it’s as motivating as a true need for food, for example.

And so it makes sense that for most people, once they’ve reached a level of stability and comfort in their lives, they essentially stop trying at anything.

Why would they? Our evolution hasn’t prepared us for that type of situation. Once you’re there, there is no script. You are not biologically motivated to do anything else.

And so they do nothing.

Obviously I could get deep into philosophy and psychology here, and there’s not going to be any concrete takeaways.

But I almost think that you have to somehow rewire your brain and treat your goals like needs, in the same way that food would be to a nomadic hunter-gatherer 2 million years ago.

I have noticed that compared to most people around my age, my level of motivation to improve and my general ambition and effort in accordance with that ambition is very high. And it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why that is.

If I could figure out the reason, maybe I could double-down on it and really supercharge it. Obviously I don’t want to become anxious, restless, or unsatisfied with my life, but I do want to maximize my motivation and energy which I can put towards advancing my goals.

I think I’m just going to have to keep pondering that until I come up with a satisfactory answer. Right now I’m not sure.

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The Right People Keep You On Track

I was going to give this post a much more descriptive and specific title, but I think this one actually captures the essence of what I’m about to say more clearly and, perhaps, accurately.

First, I’ll explain my initial thought.

I’ve come to believe that using any substance or activity that floods you with dopamine, whether that be alcohol, cannabis, TikTok, Instagram, or anything else, leaves you depleted of the dopamine you would otherwise need to pursue activities and objectives.

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about my times going up to lake cabins in the summer. I always go with hopes that I’ll have tons of energy and do every activity available to me like kayaking, swimming, tubing, whatever.

As I’ve outlined in other posts, I’ve noticed in recent years that the energy and enthusiasm I’ve had for those things has been dwindling. One thing that’s been consistent over time is that these types of activities tend to come with more overall drinking that normal. Perhaps not all at once, but having White Claws throughout the day is quite common.

However, to the point of this post: I feel like the right people will sort of force you to do things. Even if you don’t have the energy to suggest it and make it happen, as long as somebody does, they’ll often convince you to do it.

And so even at times when perhaps I had been drinking more than usual, I still did more activities because somebody else convinced me to do it.

But in the last several years, more often the people who would have done that for me were in the same boat (literally and figuratively). As a result, we kind of just… Don’t do anything.

And that’s a shame.

The solution is probably for at least one person, me for now, to be the one who’s not drinking or doing anything else and sort of lead everyone.

But that’s not the main point here.

Having the right people around who are going to motivate you and keep you on track with a schedule and moving towards some kind of goal is extremely beneficial.

In my examples, I’ve highlighted how this is the case for leisure activities when on vacation. But I suspect it applies to so much more.

They say that having a strong group of close friends is one of the greatest predictors of success in life.

One of the main reasons could be that when you are struggling (in any way), they’ll help you through it and keep you on track.

Maybe you’re having a tough time with something. Your friends may encourage you to take the steps needed to keep your life going and even get back on track.

If you’re totally alone, it would be much easier to simply give up and not do anything to improve.

So I guess the main conclusion here is to keep the right people around who are going to support you, motivate you, and keep you on track.

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My Photos Website is Ranking for its First Keyword

After having allowed search engine crawlers and also adding more photos to my photo website, I’m pleased to discover that I am ranking for my first keyword!

It’s “bond falls haight township mi”. One of my photos is of this location (one of my first, actually), and I specifically targeted keywords like that.

And it worked! I’m like the 80th result for both web search and image search.

That’s not great, but that’s not the point. I’m already seeing results from optimizing to these search terms. All I have to do is keep it up and hopefully I’ll start ranking for tons of keywords, and then I’ll really start getting the traffic I’m looking for.

The whole site is sort of built on the belief that I can start ranking for local keywords like that and that soon, people will start actually buying my photos.

And it has already started.

I expect to see results improve over time as I add more photos and continue optimizing the website.

I’m pretty excited!

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My Interests are Changing Drastically & I’m Not Sure how to Handle It

It sort of dawned on me recently that my enjoyment of some of my old hobbies or interests has decreased substantially.

That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy anything; on the contrary. Some of my old activities I still find very enjoyable and I think I’m finding new ones to be enjoyable, too.

But it’s still sort of a weird feeling.

As an example: I purchased a new graphics card because I’ve always wanted to have a good one and play some video games that actually use it and have stunning graphics.

But I’m playing some of these games and I don’t know that I care that much. It’s hard for me to get into them. I don’t know if it’s just the fact that they are new and there’s lots to learn, or if I just am not interested in that sort of thing anymore.

I am much more interested in active, physical activities though. Playing disc golf, hiking, biking, etc. are all things that I’m very interested in.

Also, most things I’m interested in now are social. Even with gaming, I’ve tried to keep that as a social activity and I do enjoy that aspect of it.

I’ve also come to enjoy reading more. Perhaps because I’ve started actually reading fiction, and mostly in Spanish which feels very rewarding.

But the idea of binge-watching a show is not that appealing to me, but staying in and reading is.

And actually that’s one of the big categories that has appealed to me less-and-less: entertainment like movies and TV. I don’t know, they just don’t have that appeal to me anymore. I try to get into them but I’m almost always disappointed, even when watching movies I know I like.

I think it’s all… Fine though. The things I am liking more of are things that are all healthy for me and benefit both my happiness and long-term health, both mental and physical.

The things I’m losing interest in… Don’t.

So it all seems kind of strange and new, but I guess I should really just embrace it because it’s all good.

I’m not sure how much of it is just me getting older, or possibly it’s coming along with all the other healthy things I’ve been doing like sleeping better, eating right, not drinking, etc.

It’s hard to say, but it will be interesting to see how it changes going forward.

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Watching Spanish Content Makes me Feel Better than Other Stuff

I’ve noticed that I feel a lot better watching content in Spanish vs. watching random, time-wasting content on YouTube.

Now, this may not really be all that deep. Watching Spanish content feels productive and challenging.

Watching YouTube… Is typically not.

But I think it’s worth noting that watching things in Spanish can also be extremely entertaining. There’s nothing stopping me from watching my favorite shows and content in Spanish.

So I think it’s really important to stick to watching things in Spanish and not get sucked into wasting time watching pointless videos on YouTube.

Not much more to my post today. I think the main lesson is just that I really need to focus, always, on productive activities. I can’t be wasting time on mindless entertainment.

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The Bizarre Context and Mindset Shift After Returning from Abroad

I’m not sure how much detail I’ve gone into about this in the past, but I just want to talk about one of the weirdest phenomena I’ve ever experienced.

When I live for awhile in another country, my goal is to sort of develop my own life there. And it works.

After 2-3 months, I have a whole routine. I have a gym, I have a grocery store, I have friends and people that I see regularly.

I have my own problems.

And then the moment I step through door of my house, everything completely changes.

It’s not like my experience when I first arrive somewhere outside the US, which as noted before is characterized by a period of tumultuous acclimation.

Instead, the bizarre part is that you basically open your eyes and find yourself in a state of relaxed comfort. Your problems and concerns are entirely different than they were yesterday, but there’s a broken-in familiarity to it.

It’s that lack of transition and tumult that is actually what is jarring. It’s like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror and you don’t have control over yourself. There’s a part of you in the background screaming, “why are we so okay with all this?!”

It is not inherently a problem, but it is unsettling.

Part of it may be that if we slip right back into our old life, what was the point of everything else? If we can completely disregard the people, places, and problems of our other life, are they even meaningful?

And of course they are, but therein lies the issue. They are important, so why are we simply moving on without them?

Maybe I find it a bit unsettling because it sort of feels like I’m towing all of those people and experiences in a boat behind me and simply cutting the line. And in that sense, it feels sort of like a loss. A loss of a life I once had, of relationships I once had.

So then… Why aren’t I mourning that loss?

Maybe that question is what really bothers me. It isn’t that any of it happened, it’s that I don’t seem upset.

And I’m not quite sure how to deal with that.

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I Need to Adopt a Pragmatic Approach to Everything

This feels very obvious but I don’t think I’ve really been living it: I need to adopt a pragmatic approach to everything.

I’ve posted many times about my idealism in the past and how I tend to think I’m going to be able to just brute-force my way through problems and achieve a level of perfection that will solve all my problems.

And that obviously isn’t a good strategy.

The only viable strategy is pragmatism.

It’s fine to want to improve, work towards goals, and imagine a future where we are better in certain ways.

But in the present, we need to be completely honest and realistic about ourselves, our opportunities, and our weaknesses.

Because none of those things change over night. If I’m weak against something now, I’m likely to continue being weak against it in the future.

The path the leads to success will take into account all pieces of information and make decisions based on that. Because why wouldn’t it?

Idealism simply ignores some data and replaces it with what you wish things were like.

Pragmatism is iterative, too. You can try something based on what you know, and alter your approach based on how that went. As you learn more, you can improve what works.

So here’s a concrete example of this.

I’m currently not drinking at all. Productivity is way up and lots of other things are greatly improved.

This is highly pragmatic. It recognizes that there are downsides to drinking and that it has very real consequences, and also that it’s difficult to just drink a small amount.

The idealistic side of me has always said, “I can limit it to weekends and it won’t affect me in the week” or, “even if I’m low on energy I’ll just power through it and it won’t affect me”.

They are idealistic and unrealistic ideas.

Whether or not I’ll one day be able to find a happy middle ground remains to be seen, but the fact remains that I definitely AM more productive now, and it is highly pragmatic and effective to give up drinking in an effort to be more successful.

But I can think of some other things that this applies to as well. Here are some of the top of my head:

  • I’m not effective on low sleep, and it’s generally better to sleep late than to try to power through the tiredness
  • I’m not motivated to work or be productive at night
  • Looking to others for help in areas where I’m lacking is probably much more beneficial and rapid than trying to do everything myself

I need to simply give up my idealism and focus on being pragmatic in all areas.

Most importantly, this means acknowledging my own weaknesses and consistent failings and altering my approach accordingly.

My goal now is to just be more aware of times when I’m being too idealistic and take a step back to figure out what I should really be doing. And perhaps writing about it there!

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Life is What You Make of It

It’s time for a nice, trite post that will hopefully motivate me in the future.

The last week I’ve been sort of just feeling sorry for myself. The people that I know here were busy and for various reasons I wasn’t able to make any plans with them.

And so for the most part, I just stayed in my apartment and didn’t do anything social or really anything to take advantage of where I currently am.

And it was sad. I was also sad specifically about a girl I’m seeing here (or rather: not seeing in this case).

After about a week of that I finally decided: you know what? I’m done with this. I’m not just going to sit around and wait for things to happen or to go home. I’m here, I’m going to make the most of it.

And along with my attitude, things took a 180 overnight. I quickly lined up a bunch of activities which led to seeing people immediately, and I’m even planning now to go to Uruguay tomorrow morning and spend the weekend there.

It was all just a basic mindset shift.

I just needed to actually DO something to make it happen.

And you know what? It was uncomfortable. It would have been much more comfortable to just stay in like always and read or play games or something. But I would have gone home in a couple weeks feeling incredibly disappointed.

Instead, I’m not only doing things that I’ll remember for a long time, but I’m also feeling way more fulfilled and much happier overall.

I need to just remember in the future that I have control over these types of things. If there’s a problem, I can and should fix it myself.

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The World is Nothing Like I Think it Is

The thought came to me that really, none of the places I’ve gone to are really anything like what I imagined.

I always have notions of what things are like. What cultures are like, what the people are like, how much people earn, etc.

I think I’ve been guilty of thinking everyone in a certain place would be poor, and then have been surprised to see countless cars driving down the road that I couldn’t come close to affording.

I always thought Buenos Aires was on the ocean and assumed it would have a proper beach. Neither are accurate.

Basically everywhere I’ve gone has led to some great surprises, and my existing beliefs and concepts about what those places would be like are often way off.

Of course it can vary a bit (London, for example, was about what I expected), the fact remains that even if we’re confident in what we think we know, we might still be completely wrong.

And that’s just for the places I’ve been to, which hopefully not I have a more accurate concept of.

I’ve only been to maybe 0.0001% of the cities of the world, and met even fewer of its people. It’s likely that my concept of almost all of them is wrong.

And then there are ideas, concepts, industries, cultures, languages, and more that I am likely just as ignorant about.

With almost all of them, if I dug in deeper, I’m sure I would find that my preconceived notions are way off base.

Which means that I really don’t know anything about anything. I’m almost completely ignorant about the world.

And I think this applies to everyone.

The world is a huge place and we don’t live very long. You can spend an entire lifetime learning and still barely crack the surface.

I’m not sure there’s much of an actionable lesson from this, just that I shouldn’t be confident that I know just about anything. I need to always be open to new ideas because the ones I have probably aren’t the best.

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The Experiences I Have with Others Account for the Majority of my Opinion of a Place

I had a lot of fun with some new friends here yesterday, and I realized just how much that colors my opinion of a place.

Independently of just about anything else, the people I meet and the time I spend with them accounts for nearly my entire opinion of a place.

This may apply mostly to cities, vs. going around scenic landscapes. I may have enjoyed Ireland more with a travel companion or if I had met more people, but going alone was still fun.

But I thought about it because for the last few weeks here, for a number of reasons I won’t go into today; I have mostly been alone. And it’s been a little bit sadder as a result.

Everything is still inexpensive, the weather is nice, and people are friendly and there is theoretically plenty to do. But the fact that I wasn’t enjoying my time with others did minimize my enjoyment greatly and, with it, my opinion shifted.

It just makes you think a bit… It’s easy to think that your opinions and judgements of a location are fairly objective but they aren’t at all. Even if you’re in a wonderful place, if you’re there alone or with the wrong people you might hate it.

Likewise, if you’re in a terrible place, you might still have a great time with the right company.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I really need to prioritize frequent social activities when I’m traveling (and probably even when I’m not). Life is a whole lot more fulfilling that way.