I keep seeing rationalist-adjacent discussions on Twitter that seem to bottom out with the arguments of the general (very caricatured, sorry) form: “stop forcing yourself and get unblocked and then X effortlessly” where X equals learn, socialize, etc. In particular, a lot of focus seems to be on how children and adults can just pursue what’s fun or enjoyable if they get rid of their underlying trauma and they’ll naturally learn fast and gravitate towards interesting (but also useful in the long term) topics, with some inspiration from David Deutsch.
On one hand, this sounds great, but it’s so foreign to my experience of learning things and seems to lack the kind of evidence I’d expect before changing my cognitive strategies so dramatically. In fairness, I probably am too far in the direction of doing things because I “should”, but I still don’t think going to the other extreme is the right correction.
In particular, having read Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals, I have a strong prior that even the most successful artists and scientists are at risk of developing akrasia and need to systematize their schedules heavily to ensure that they get their butts in the chair and work. Given this, what might convince me would be if someone catalogue of thinkers who did interesting work, quotes or stories that provide evidence that they did what was fun, and counter-examples to show that it’s not cherry-picking.
The above is also is related to the somewhat challenged but still I think somewhat valid idea that getting better at things requires deliberate practice, which is not “fun”. This also leads me to a subtle point which is that I think “fun” may be being used in a non-standard way by people who claim that learning can always be “fun”. I.e. I can see how even not necessarily enjoyable in the moment practice can be something one values on reflection, but this seems like a misuse of the term “fun” to me.
Unblocking motivation is only enough on its own if the motivation is so strong that you feel “hungry” to do something. Long term this kind of hunger is, in my experience, unreliable, so it’s not enough just to unblock your ability to do things.
You also have to set up the conditions for your motivation to express itself, e.g. through daily rituals as you suggest. For example, a big problem people I talk to had to deal with when shelter-in-place orders hit was that they lost their daily rituals and had to establish new ones. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to work or do other things they normally do, it was that they lost the normal context in which they did them, and had to establish new contexts in which they expected to find themselves doing the intended activity.
Trying to force yourself to do things is like setting up the conditions without unblocked motivation.
So I think both things are required, but only one thing is the bottleneck at a time, thus lots of people need advice on one part and not the other at any given moment, creating evidence though that can look like all you need to do is fix one thing and everything else will follow.
I originally had your experience, and have seen enough people claim to get unblocked that there seems to be at least something to it. At the very least, if you have crippling depression, solving that is often higher impact than incremental skill growth.
Thanks for replying and sharing your post. I’d actually read it a while ago but forgotten how relevant it is to the above. To be clear, I totally buy that if you have crippling depression or even something more mild, fixing that is a top priority. I also have enjoyed recent posts on and think I understand the alignment-based models of getting all your “parts” on board.
Where I get confused and where I think there’s less evidence is that the unblocking can make it such that doing hard stuff is no longer “hard”. Part of what’s difficult here is that I’m struggling to find the right words but I think it’s specifically claims of effortlessness or fun that seem less supported to me.
If your problem happens to be some trauma, fix the trauma. If it is lack of tools, buy the right tools. If it is wasting time on social networks, install a web blocker. And if it’s just than you never prioritize doing X, but in retrospective always wish you had, precommit to spend some time doing X.
Of course, it could be more of those things together; maybe you have a trauma and also lack the right tools. Then you must solve both. Maybe one is more visible, and you only realize the other after fixing the first one.
The idea that everything is caused by internal conflicts, and if we only could resolve all the internal conflicts (which might take a few years of hard work, if you want to do it thoroughly) we would become amazing supermen (so all those years spent on therapy would still be totally worth it), originates from Freud.
It is my long-term source of amusement, that if you mention Freud of psychoanalysis in the rationalist community, you reliably get “pseudoscience”, “it’s completely debunked”, et cetera… but if you rephrase the same ideas using modern language, without mentioning the source, they become accepted rationalist wisdom.
One way I think about things. Everything that I’ve found in myself and close friends that looks and smells like “shoulds” is sorta sneaky. I keep on finding shoulds which seem have been absorbed from others and are less about “this is a good way to get a thing in the world that I want” and “someone said you need to follow this path and I need them to approve of me”. The force I feel behind my shoulds is normally “You SCREWED if you don’t!” a sort of vaguely panicy, inflexible energy. It’s rarely connected to the actual good qualities of the thing I “should” be doing.
Because my shoulds normally ground out in “if I’m not this way, people won’t like me”, if the pressure get’s turned up, following a should takes me farther and farther away from things I actually care about. Unblocking stuff often feels like transcending the panicy fear that hides behind a should. It never immediately lets me be awesome at stuff. I still need to develop a real connection to the task and how it works into the rest of my life. There’s still drudgery, but it’s dealt with from a calmer place.
I think removing internal conflicts is a “powerful but not sufficient.”
The people who are most productive are also great at amplifying external conflicts. That is, they have a clear, strong vision, and amplify the creative tension between what they have and know they can have. This can help you do things that are not “fun” like deliberate practice. but are totally aligned, in that you have no objections to doing them, and have a stance of acceptance towards the things that are not enjoyable.
The best then augment that with powerful external structures that are supportive of their ideal internal states and external behaviors.
Each one of these taken far enough can be powerful, and when combined together they are more than the sum of their parts.
I keep seeing rationalist-adjacent discussions on Twitter that seem to bottom out with the arguments of the general (very caricatured, sorry) form: “stop forcing yourself and get unblocked and then X effortlessly” where X equals learn, socialize, etc. In particular, a lot of focus seems to be on how children and adults can just pursue what’s fun or enjoyable if they get rid of their underlying trauma and they’ll naturally learn fast and gravitate towards interesting (but also useful in the long term) topics, with some inspiration from David Deutsch.
On one hand, this sounds great, but it’s so foreign to my experience of learning things and seems to lack the kind of evidence I’d expect before changing my cognitive strategies so dramatically. In fairness, I probably am too far in the direction of doing things because I “should”, but I still don’t think going to the other extreme is the right correction.
In particular, having read Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals, I have a strong prior that even the most successful artists and scientists are at risk of developing akrasia and need to systematize their schedules heavily to ensure that they get their butts in the chair and work. Given this, what might convince me would be if someone catalogue of thinkers who did interesting work, quotes or stories that provide evidence that they did what was fun, and counter-examples to show that it’s not cherry-picking.
The above is also is related to the somewhat challenged but still I think somewhat valid idea that getting better at things requires deliberate practice, which is not “fun”. This also leads me to a subtle point which is that I think “fun” may be being used in a non-standard way by people who claim that learning can always be “fun”. I.e. I can see how even not necessarily enjoyable in the moment practice can be something one values on reflection, but this seems like a misuse of the term “fun” to me.
Unblocking motivation is only enough on its own if the motivation is so strong that you feel “hungry” to do something. Long term this kind of hunger is, in my experience, unreliable, so it’s not enough just to unblock your ability to do things.
You also have to set up the conditions for your motivation to express itself, e.g. through daily rituals as you suggest. For example, a big problem people I talk to had to deal with when shelter-in-place orders hit was that they lost their daily rituals and had to establish new ones. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to work or do other things they normally do, it was that they lost the normal context in which they did them, and had to establish new contexts in which they expected to find themselves doing the intended activity.
Trying to force yourself to do things is like setting up the conditions without unblocked motivation.
So I think both things are required, but only one thing is the bottleneck at a time, thus lots of people need advice on one part and not the other at any given moment, creating evidence though that can look like all you need to do is fix one thing and everything else will follow.
I originally had your experience, and have seen enough people claim to get unblocked that there seems to be at least something to it. At the very least, if you have crippling depression, solving that is often higher impact than incremental skill growth.
I wrote up more thoughts about this here.
Thanks for replying and sharing your post. I’d actually read it a while ago but forgotten how relevant it is to the above. To be clear, I totally buy that if you have crippling depression or even something more mild, fixing that is a top priority. I also have enjoyed recent posts on and think I understand the alignment-based models of getting all your “parts” on board.
Where I get confused and where I think there’s less evidence is that the unblocking can make it such that doing hard stuff is no longer “hard”. Part of what’s difficult here is that I’m struggling to find the right words but I think it’s specifically claims of effortlessness or fun that seem less supported to me.
Generally, you have to solve the problem you have. (Related: Anna Karenina principle.)
If your problem happens to be some trauma, fix the trauma. If it is lack of tools, buy the right tools. If it is wasting time on social networks, install a web blocker. And if it’s just than you never prioritize doing X, but in retrospective always wish you had, precommit to spend some time doing X.
Of course, it could be more of those things together; maybe you have a trauma and also lack the right tools. Then you must solve both. Maybe one is more visible, and you only realize the other after fixing the first one.
This is basically my perspective but seems contrary to the perspective in which most problems are caused by internal blockages, right?
Yep.
The idea that everything is caused by internal conflicts, and if we only could resolve all the internal conflicts (which might take a few years of hard work, if you want to do it thoroughly) we would become amazing supermen (so all those years spent on therapy would still be totally worth it), originates from Freud.
It is my long-term source of amusement, that if you mention Freud of psychoanalysis in the rationalist community, you reliably get “pseudoscience”, “it’s completely debunked”, et cetera… but if you rephrase the same ideas using modern language, without mentioning the source, they become accepted rationalist wisdom.
One way I think about things. Everything that I’ve found in myself and close friends that looks and smells like “shoulds” is sorta sneaky. I keep on finding shoulds which seem have been absorbed from others and are less about “this is a good way to get a thing in the world that I want” and “someone said you need to follow this path and I need them to approve of me”. The force I feel behind my shoulds is normally “You SCREWED if you don’t!” a sort of vaguely panicy, inflexible energy. It’s rarely connected to the actual good qualities of the thing I “should” be doing.
Because my shoulds normally ground out in “if I’m not this way, people won’t like me”, if the pressure get’s turned up, following a should takes me farther and farther away from things I actually care about. Unblocking stuff often feels like transcending the panicy fear that hides behind a should. It never immediately lets me be awesome at stuff. I still need to develop a real connection to the task and how it works into the rest of my life. There’s still drudgery, but it’s dealt with from a calmer place.
Yes I can relate to this!
I think removing internal conflicts is a “powerful but not sufficient.”
The people who are most productive are also great at amplifying external conflicts. That is, they have a clear, strong vision, and amplify the creative tension between what they have and know they can have. This can help you do things that are not “fun” like deliberate practice. but are totally aligned, in that you have no objections to doing them, and have a stance of acceptance towards the things that are not enjoyable.
The best then augment that with powerful external structures that are supportive of their ideal internal states and external behaviors.
Each one of these taken far enough can be powerful, and when combined together they are more than the sum of their parts.
Thanks, this framing is helpful for me for understanding how these things can be seen to fit together.