I just realized you went to my high school Tynan. You graduated from mcneil before me though. 

This is the one part of minimalism I struggle with. A lot of your experiences are not easily accessible over time without these memory aids to get it to come back from the offline backup tapes in the corners of your brain, and not everything is suited to digitizing. I am conflicted by an aversion to destroying unique hand made things (like that Valentine's card) while not wanted to be responsible for them anymore either. Are there any details of your relationship that you would not have remembered if something in this stash hadn't trigger it?

You lucky rat bastard! How in the God Damned Hell did that happen?!?! A pretty girl giving you her number after you reciting pi to her?!

You magnificent bastard.

Ever think you'll get back together with her again? Or are you two just fundamentally different people now? How and why did you know the relationship had run its course? What changed? Or did the love just end and there was nothing else to hold you guys together?

I thought I should make a comment on this post. This was a really interesting post, and in my mind much more the sort of quality posts that you used to make in years gone by. I had started to check your site only every few weeks lately, but I can see myself checking a lot more frequently again now. (disclaimer - I find the PUA stuff painfully boring to read about. This could/probably is the biggest reason I had stopped checking your site frequently. Equally though, I am sure that lots of people love the PUA stuff, and those readers probably love the posts I hate and vice-versa). You can't please us all, nor should you try.

Cutting your 7 boxes down to 1 resonated with me. I recently did that. Scanned and photographed all the old letters/journals/etc that I had wanted to keep. Quite a relief not to have the physical boxes of stuff around any more. 

A quick note about SETT - I like it, and I think it holds a lot of promise. Currently it does seem quite slow across browsers. Not sure if this is a function of the server hosting it, site design, a combination, etc.I hope it keeps improving though because I think it could be really great once the wrinkles are ironed out.

Tynan, just read (again) the posts about publishing a book. I thought of posting a comment there, but didn't know if you'd see it. This time I'm actually writing a book, as opposed to just reading and re-reading your post! I don't think I can do it in 48 hours though, that's pretty amazing and cool that you did that. While in the midst of writing, I started wondering if I should just publish it only as a Kindle ebook.

Can you give a rough breakdown of how the sales are divided between Kindle ebook and physical book sales in a month, e.g. 500 ebooks and 250 physical books.
Does it change drastically from book to book?
I am wondering which version sells more, and if it's a big difference, and if it depends on the title.

I also want to thank you for writing those posts, they are among my favorites on tynan.com.

Right on! I think what stops most people is the pain. We instinctively try to avoid it if it isn't necessary for our survival. It saves energy for when there's really a tiger behind you.

The trick is to make mediocrity feel like death. It's a dirty trick, but it works.

Btw, I had to rewrite this post from scratch. When I first posted it, I got an error and got logged out. Redoing something you've already done is some of the painful stuff ever, but what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. (I logged in manually and it showed my username and picture, but the second I do something I get logged out, I just went to my e-mail and clicked and old reset my password link which logs me in automatically)

Hi Tynan,

I'd love to increase the number of hours I spend working on my projects each week. I'm in full agreement with you that 40 weeks is probably too little if you want to master your discipline. I'm a student working in a technical field and the problem I come up against is a lack of mental energy. I seem to be able to accomplish a maximum of 4 hours hard, deliberate practice each day. By this I mean working on problem sets, or attempting to learn new concepts (lectures, and preparatory work doesn't count).

Do you ever find mental energy a limiting constraint when it comes to your learning or programming? If so, what ways have you found to increase the amount of hard, deliberate practice you can do each day?

I'd like to add that another way of keeping the bar high is to intentionally teach the topic/subject to someone else - keep yourself sharp, and [maybe] gain people to do it with

P.S.: btw, you should check your blog code... it is very heavy and with lots of errors when loading up. It freezes also...

Hi Tynan,

I've been a reader for around 2 years, although this is my first comment. 
Anyways, I've always loved the things you do and your general lifestyle, and I'm hoping for some suggestions for my own.

I'm finishing my Master's degree this Sep (after 5 years of college) and I'm taking a year off before starting my phD. So far I don't have anything planned for Sep-Dec, 2012, but I really want to do something a bit far-fetched and interesting, and pays enough to support a minimal life (and preferably not engineering related).

One of your best posts in my opinion! You should consider applying to give a TED talk on this topic!

Great post, Tynan!

When you write "Fundamentally, I think life is about taking action," do you mean that life for everyone is (or should be) about taking action, or "life is about ___________" and anyone can fill in the blank with whatever they think life is about?  Another person may think "life is about learning", or "life is about having great kids", or "life is about being happy".


For example, as you write your post and I read it, life is about taking action for you (writing the post) but for me it's about being interested in what you have to say, and therefore taking the time to read your post.  That would mean that in that moment, you're fulfilling what you think life is about, but because I am passively consuming your post, I am not!  Unless, that is, life is about something different for everyone.

PS, I'm curious: Does reading a literary classic count as being passive?

It's a shame but not taking action has everything to do with the way we are unconsciously set up since childhood through the education system. Schools indoctrinate kids for at least 12 years how to be servants, obeying a boss who also obeys their own boss. Unfortunately, schools don't teach entrepreneurial skills at all. If they did, more and more people would be "trained" to take action on the opportunities that present to our lives.

Wow, I think this is a really significant post. I love this formulation - talking about the opportunity quality that motivates us to act. I wonder if there's research about this - I haven't seen anything that addresses this directly in the behavioral econ stuff I've been reading. But maybe in books like Jonah Lehrer's "How We Decide"? (I haven't read it, so I don't know.)

I mean, the flip-side formulation is, what are we measuring the opportunity against? It's fear, right, in a catch-all sort of way, the opportunity has to be exciting or motivating enough to push us past fear. And inertia, too, procrastination.

I know for me a huge part of it is deliberately deciding to look honestly and openly at these decisions from a bunch of angles to try to make sure I'm being as rational as possible. What's the downside of taking the opportunity? The upside? The downside of not? The upside? And then look honestly at the feelings about doing it or not doing it. Like when I see something I want to buy, I'll stop and visualize that I already own it and see how that feels, and most of the time that helps me see that I won't really care about the thing as soon as it's mine, and so I don't buy it. Or I consider an opportunity like doing some risky physical thing and I'll stop and visualize, let's say I don't do it, will I regret it?

Re-reading the post, here's another way of thinking about it that just occurred to me: treat every moment as a choice. Treat everything as an action. This is kind of turning your "watching TV and working a mundane job is inaction" on its head, and saying - no, think of that as action! When you wake up, say, I'm choosing to go to work. When you sit on your couch, say I'm choosing to watch TV instead of doing something else.

It's the unconscious that kills, that dawning sense of "whoa, what have I been doing for the last two days / two weeks / two years / entire lifetime??"

We have to realize that working the day job is not "no choice", it's a choice - a choice to spend that portion of your limited life doing that day job instead of taking every other opportunity you have for spending that time differently.

Taking Action is great. 

However, if you want results, there is a pre-requisite. 

Planning, and Preparing, so that when you take action, you are for ready to achieve successful results. 

Hi Tynan. Great timing, I had a fantastic story to share. Posted it in the community section. Worked like a charm :-)

Hey Tynan, thanks for the plug of tuRVel.com.

The idea actually came from your post a while back looking for a spot to park:
http://tynan.com/helpmepark

I was commenting as "Dividendium" in the comments on that one.

Buglet - In the email, the video I got was just a black page in Thunderbird.

I didn't buy into this at first, but I like it now. I see that having the best 'community' posts flip to the front is going to encourage better message board posts, better community, etc. I'll try and start using the community side as a message board too.  

Well, as said before I love SETT and don't mind guinea pigging - if that is even a word.

Liking what I see so far, only bug I saw is when logging in using Safari browser and inputting incorrect password there's no pop up dialogue saying incorrect, nothing happens, login boxes stay populated, nothing enters etc.

Nice post.
I have a question though.... weren't you the guy that banged Mysteries GF?

Nice pic of Dr Stephens - the very incarnation of integrity :)Does he know?

This reminded me of a Paul Graham essay (although I couldn't find the exact one) where he talks about always telling the truth to the start ups they advise because it wouldn't scale to make something up and try to remember what he said to each one.

I have to say that's my reason for being habitually honest.  If I lie or bend the truth, then I have to remember what I said.  I can move much faster if I don't have to keep track.

And if I make a mistake or break something, it always hurts less to fess up immediately than to hide it and get found out later.

Hi Tynan,
I'm glad that u wrote this. I still subscribe to your newsletter because of the way you've portrayed these types of good hints at just living. Keep it going!

I have a huge amount of respect for this mindset and approach to life, nice post

where was the picture taken? Looks like Dominica or something rainforesty like that.

Not even minimally sick of pickup stuff. Keep writing about it! You have incredible self-discipline, not just in pickup, but everything you do. Really admire that.

Keep going with the pickup posts.

You know whats funny Tynan:  You can live in that RV until your 40 years old while everyone is working their asses off.  On your 40th birthday party you can go out with your superior pick up skills, and just knock up some rich girl.  9 months later you have a mansion, a BMW, half a pension, and health care from HER employer.  Captain Power......

I apologize. My comment didn't come across like I wanted.

My point is that unless I missed it, you don't seem to have an end goal that is framed in terms of pick up, do you? In other words, your goal doesn't seem to be to find a girlfriend, to have sex with a certain number of women, or any other goals where you can say definitively that it was achieved. Your end goal appears to be "making myself extraverted and social again" (from "Letting Myself Quit"), which is definitely a worthy goal and will benefit your life greatly. It is something that I need to work on myself.


We can go about personal development in two ways. We can make personal development the goal, or we can set a specific, compelling end goal that drives us to develop and improve in order to accomplish it. The end goal would be something that we can visualize or imagine as being accomplished -- something that is awesome and inspiring and has a distinct end point. I'm just suggesting that this might provide some additional motivation to keep improving. Then when we accomplish the end goal, we can set another one to keep improving.


I liked this quote from Scott Young. It's a great article.


If a goal doesn’t require at least a certain degree of obsession, it’s not a hard goal. 

Interesting because I was very productive for almost two months until this past week where I barely got anything done. I've been wondering what went wrong and how to resolve it. Initially reading, I thought this seems rather strict, and I'd only get more unproductive because my mood would bomb with the restrictions, but perhaps I need to revisit my own accountability system.

I'm also interested what got you into meditation now? I know you wrote about vipassana before and feeling like it wasn't necessary for you.

Please keep writing about pick-up.

In my RSS reader this post appears as one large blog of text - there aren't any paragraph breaks.I'm not sure if that's a side effect of this migration?  (I know nothing about SETT!)

I have the same issue as Paul except I usually read posts from my gmail account and not a reader. It is also INSANELY wide (the screenshot is on a 1600p screen, and it takes up about 75% of the width on that screen at my zoom level).

The SETT logo in the nav bar should probably have an href for people like myself that like to open links in a new tab. 

That being said, I like the new look, and I wish you the best of luck with this.

It would probably be a good idea to link to an explanation of what SETT is somewhere. I'm assuming it's the idea you applied to Y Combinator with but if I hadn't read that post I'd have no idea, it's been some time since I looked at the blog.

Good luck!

Hi,

Long time lurker, first time poster from the Netherlands here. I like the community feel from SETT, but the "feel" of the site can use some improvement. Three things I notice are:
1. Navigation is a bit weird: when I click on an article in "community" mode to read the comments and hit "back" in my browser (Chrome) in order to get to the next article from the community section, I end up in the "blog" section, which requires me to switch to the community section by hand to continue reading.
2. Also Navigation-related: I really feel like I'm searching for some navigation block somewhere, without ever finding it. Some place where I can find an "about", or an overview of articles or anything. Perhaps you're trying to innovate and build a system which doesn't need such a tool and I'm just too much stuck in old habits, but I feel a bit lost here and there.
3. In my browser in default setting (again, Chrome) the font is extremely large. I seem to recall you mentioning having high resolution monitors in order to be able to fit a lot on your screen for better productivity in one of your articles, but this design seems to contradict that philosophy. Reading an article or browsing through the "archives" really requires a lot of scrolling

I hope this helps and good luck with SETT! Contact me if you want screenshots or anything to verify.

Love the format of the blog! On a mac and using firefox, I don't have any of the formatting issues mentioned below. I personally like the "read this next" popup and especially how it only pops up at the end of an article and disappears again when scrolled down to the comments. The "hide this" could be tweaked. Currently, if you click "hide this" as soon as you make even the slightest scrolling motion it reappears. I haven't checked out the other features yet but I will shortly.

Tynan,

I absolutely understand where you are coming from with this, and why you are trying to defend the PUA community.

Here's the problem, though.

I noticed this too. I'm a geek. When I came across pick-up I thought it was pretty interesting, but I didn't really like how it seemed manipulative. My biggest take away from it was that to get a girl and to "be yourself" you first have to actually get her attention in the first place. The other was that I should try to be the best person I could be so that I would feel inside myself that I deserved to meet someone great. Doesn't really put me on the level of "artist" but those two things have taken me a long way.

Not only does society not teach social skills, but it often tries to dissuade you from wanting to have them. When I was a nerdy kid who couldn't make friends, adults kept telling me that it was okay, because being a nerd means I'll be the next Bill Gates and all the "cool" kids will work for me when I grow up. They feed you this kind of tripe instead of just encouraging you to put the fantasy books away and go play some baseball with the other kids.

When I had bad social skills, few people thought I could get better, and almost as few thought I should even want to. And as I've gotten better, just as few people can believe that I used to be terrible. So I've just come to accept that most people won't ever view social skills as learnable like other skills; they put up this false dichotomy between what you DO (which changes) and what you ARE (which somehow can't possibly change), and social skills get put into the what you are category. So forget them; haters gonna hate, and players gonna play.

Tynan, you're a very positive guy. You come across as liking people in general, and women too.

Not all PUAs are the same. I was stunned to recently read another PUA's blog applauding a 41-year-old high school teacher - who left his family to shack up with his 18-year-old student - as "Alpha Male of the month," and in another post slamming single moms and their "hellion spawn."

Among PUAs, I'm not sure his beliefs are such a minority.

You say, 'I've shrunken it below', but it's actually about 4x the original size :)

Thank you. XKCD can be a real jerk sometimes. Last year he insulted something I value a lot and I stopped reading him. I guess he thought he was negging me.

Seriously, many people have a lot of hostility towards learning social skills. I think they just hate people for not popping out of the womb with them already honed and hate the idea of any of us ever having any companionship at all. Being shy and awkward is a hanging offense for which we should burn in hell eternally.

I also suspect that guys with a degree of natural game are threatened by the idea of more competition.