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Comment by InfinityX0 | Hacker News Reader

The great paradox of this article is that the ultimate way to achieve things is to evolve to a point where you stop reading these kinds of posts. When your media diet is greatly composed of easily digestible lists that instead of instructing effectively end up only distracting you from achieving, you begin a reductive process towards not actually achieving at all.

I'd go as far as to say this article will not help a single person as far as it comes to "achieving" anything. Will it create a momentary dopamine pulse for those that read it? That enjoy clicking? That enjoy distraction? Yes.

But thats not how doing anything worth a shit gets done - other than temporary brain relaxation - and that could have been spent more effectively driveling around I Can Has Cheezburger instead of this article.

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I think that's a bit extreme. If you have some fundamental issue with getting things done, articles like these are clearly not going to help you. If you're already productive, and looking for tips to optimize your execution, it makes for interesting reading. There were several ideas I hadn't seen mentioned on other lists, and some cited journal publications. Not too shabby.

I had a problem with procrastination when I was younger. I wasted a significant amount of time reading a bunch of very poor-quality linkbait blog articles, trying to find something that helped. When I finally bought The Now Habit (print edition and audiobook for my car), I was able to apply a coherent system rather than piecemeal techniques, and this helped to correct what was a fairly big problem for me. Now that I have a system that works for me, small tips are useful. Prior, not so much.

I agree with you. Moreover, there is yet another paradox in the article - if you need that much self-hacking and self-tricking to achieve the goal, is the goal really that thing you want to achieve?

I always thought that the goals should be my servants, and I am going to achieve them because it fulfills me and I enjoy the hardship associated with them. This article feels to me like it's upside-down, like I should be a servant of my goals. But why should I?

You can't actually "evolve to a point where you stop reading these kinds of posts". This is just the result of evolving to a point where you start doing things.

I think the paradox is elsewhere: These articles defeat their purpose. "Start starting" can be paraphrased as "You shouldn't be reading this right now".

I was reading a product review last night and the author started with something like this: "Stop reading. Go buy "ProductX". Use it. Come back and read the rest if you want". And that should be the point every positive review should be making.

I don't think that's a fair assessment of this article. This self-help article is different from all the other junk out there because it's based on psychology research, not personal hunch.

If you're going to claim that there is one ultimate solution that works for everyone in the nebulous field of achievement, it would be useful for you to back that up with actual research.

Ultimately, I agree with you, except that reading these kinds of articles for long enough will get you into the right mindset. Then you can maybe read these kind of articles as refreshers or get some new ideas. Or never read one again.

At least, it's how it works for me.

You concurrently described 99.9% of self help books with this post.

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