So here’s what you do instead: first, decide what you actually want to do. Then, seek out people who will socially reward you for doing that, and set yourself up to get social rewards.
I think that it is important to emphasize that the “seeking out people who will socially reward you” part should come after the part where you decide what you actually want to do.
I also want to note that I think that it that it could be very easy to slip from “I seek people out who will socially reward me for what I do after I actually decide what I want to do” to “I let my echo chamber heavily influence what I actually decide to do”. And so I think that before applying the former strategy, it is important to have a plan for how to not slip down the dangerous and slippery slope of practicing the latter one. Perhaps it would be a good idea to have a diverse group of people meet, say, once every three months, and challenge each other about whether they should continue to do what they’re doing.
Still, I really like this post! I think that a lot of people fall prey to the “surround yourself with diverse people who will shoot you down” failure mode. That diversity just isn’t valuable on a week-to-week basis, let alone day-to-day or minute-to-minute one. We can only spend so much time at the meta levels. At some point we must step back down into object level reality and do stuff. And for that, support is useful, while challenge is harmful.
I think that it is important to emphasize that the “seeking out people who will socially reward you” part should come after the part where you decide what you actually want to do.
I also want to note that I think that it that it could be very easy to slip from “I seek people out who will socially reward me for what I do after I actually decide what I want to do” to “I let my echo chamber heavily influence what I actually decide to do”. And so I think that before applying the former strategy, it is important to have a plan for how to not slip down the dangerous and slippery slope of practicing the latter one. Perhaps it would be a good idea to have a diverse group of people meet, say, once every three months, and challenge each other about whether they should continue to do what they’re doing.
Still, I really like this post! I think that a lot of people fall prey to the “surround yourself with diverse people who will shoot you down” failure mode. That diversity just isn’t valuable on a week-to-week basis, let alone day-to-day or minute-to-minute one. We can only spend so much time at the meta levels. At some point we must step back down into object level reality and do stuff. And for that, support is useful, while challenge is harmful.