The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Notes -
Is there any reason to not forgo video games completely? Are they in a category with gummy candy, smoking, and lottery tickets - no benefit of any kind beyond a dopamine release - or more like classic movies, dime novels, and social media - escapism with some degree of social and intellectual benefit?
I’ve enjoyed my two-week trial run of Lex Fridman’s maximally productive daily schedule but do find myself missing my offline career-based sports games. How sturdy is the argument that “not everything has to be productive”? Are books and television and film so far above video games in the usefulness ranking (after all, they can confer knowledge and social benefits, if not maximally condensed) that it’s a no-brainer to stop gaming completely? Or should sedentary leisure as a whole be relegated to “break in case of emergency” status, never part of a daily routine but “around” when more productive options are not available, or only to be used in the company of others?
I’ve wrestled with this for every day of these two weeks and still see benefits of escapism, while simultaneously seeing the futility of time spent achieving nothing in the real world - even if only for an hour or two.
EDIT: I coincidentally just discovered the "End Poem" of Minecraft; a poignant take on this discussion:
I don’t see why in the slightest that I should center my life on “productivity”. The greatest benefit of being someone in a rich Western country with an easy-ish email job is that one’s material needs are extremely easily met, meaning that there is no biological imperative (enough food, water, shelter, sex) to be especially productive.
I don’t think a life of pure leisure is necessarily satisfying, but so long as basic imperatives (pursuing a family, children, a job that pays enough to not worry all the time about providing for them) are met, I don’t see what the issue with games is. I have no aspirations of being a “10x person” or whatever the hustle culture term is. Those people will be forgotten almost as soon as I will.
While people with stable families and decent jobs are almost universally happier than NEETs, I see no evidence that hypercompetent life-optimizers are much happier than me. Lex Fridman himself does not seem like a hugely happy fellow relative to the average. Maybe he is.
“Achieving nothing in the real world” isn’t a grave point of pain for me, especially not if it’s only two hours. I’d caveat that I do think the pursuit of legacy through children is an important part of fulfilling our biological programming and most people’s psyche benefits from pursuing a family. But beyond that, and beyond the base needs, leisure is fun.
By the way, tons of rich people I know play the lottery or buy scratchers. I know I do, even though the (shockingly low) jackpot on my usual card of choice wouldn’t exactly ‘change my life’. I like the idea of imagining how I’d feel if I won, no differently to how I enjoy exercising my imagination while reading. And I love gummy candy, I enjoy the texture, the color, the taste, the sugar (obviously). In moderation I see no harm in it, although I make sure I avoid certain artificial food dye/colors.
Your argument for not doing these things seems flawed, or perhaps I just don’t understand it. From a “productivity maximizer” perspective they’re bad, but from a “candy maximizer” perspective consuming candy all day isn’t bad. From a “happiness maximizer” perspective, sedentary leisure in moderation might well have entirely decent utility.
He's 39 and unmarried. Whatever he's succeeding at, I'll take my life over his.
I confess I find him extremely boring. He’s like the inverse Joe Rogan. Rogan is the star character on his show, his fans tune in for the guests to some extent, sure, but he’s the main character, his idiosyncrasies and mannerisms are amusing. I don’t personally listen to him, but I understand why people do. Fridman is an empty shell, he’d never have been made an interviewer by a TV network or radio station. I suppose because he’s such a nonentity, he’s able to draw quite a lot out of some of his guests.
Yeah, I tried Lex's podcast out because he has some great guests and he seems like a nice enough guy, but he really isn't a good interviewer. Rogan's ridiculousness and curiosity makes any episode with a half decent guest a pretty good background listen, but Lex pretty much needs to be carried by guests.
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