If you really think a problem is serious, then take it seriously. Be empirical and tentative, as a scientist would, instead of dogmatic.— Paul Graham (@paulg) October 28, 2022

I watched Barbie thrice to come up with this idea: What stops most people from living out their true selves is not ignorance of their own mortality but an inability to distinguish between wants and oughts. Most are too busy going through the motions (ie. planned choreography):

How do I turn off the part of my brain that is sensemaking / storying / evaluating an experience as I am having it?

working harder, getting increasingly heated/angry, past a threshold where its not working, will typically make things worse. everything gets more knotted and tense. overwhelming the bottleneck https://t.co/EP69fo5ZwE— Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) June 9, 2023

modern culture can often have you constantly striving for more but i really think you gotta celebrate when you get to places and stages of comfort as a young adult yea, don’t get complacent etc but also don’t fall in love with “the struggle” focus on expanding your comfort…— Joe Holder (@JoeHolder_) April 18, 2023

Adler: the strongest person in our culture is the baby. The baby rules over the adults with his weakness. And it is because of this weakness that nobody can control him— Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) September 6, 2018

Relevant again; We have a tendency to simplify complex problems so that we can understand them & then we solve the simplified version.This can backfire for wicked problems: those that are complex, uncertain & hard to evaluate. Review this list of reductive tendencies to help! pic.twitter.com/VaoKbcLeKE— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) October 3, 2022

If you lack motivation & discipline, this is a great way to start looking at things pic.twitter.com/C6DnZAyooM— Pariss Athena | Founder of Black Tech Pipeline (@ParissAthena) September 8, 2022

someone asked me for a reading list of my threads about increasing agency, so here are some...— visakan veerasamy (@visakanv) May 25, 2022

A thing that's slightly counterintuitive about social reality, and particularly internet social reality, is that "Dunbar constraints" don't apply. You can radically change your experience by radically changing the way you behave and the people you talk with. Make alts, etc— visakan veerasamy (@visakanv) October 9, 2018

so like, a lot of people are shitty managers of their own brains. i'm sorry its true. it's not even really your fault, you weren't taught better. this species is a fractal of shitty management all the way up and down.and all the cliches of bad managers apply internally as well— visakan veerasamy (@visakanv) June 9, 2021

this is true for people IRL, too. the best thing I learned from my ex-boss wasn't any single insight or truism, but *his way of being*. He's calm in the face of conflict & difficulty, sincerely believe that it's possible to know things, and do things, and to change for the better— visakan veerasamy (@visakanv) October 9, 2018