80/20 Personal Development

99% of self-help is escapism. Pick a few principles and take a leap of faith.

Everything you’ve ever read is wrong. Some of it is useful. Nowhere is this more true than in the business of becoming a better person.

The personal development / productivity space is littered with conflicting advice of varying utility. It attracts the intellectually promiscuous. Most readers are commitment-phobic concept sluts that endlessly dabble with frameworks and tools, hoping to someday reach a moment of certainty when they’ll finally take action.

• “…I kinda wanna try GTD, but there’s this other guy on YouTube that said Bullet Journals are better.”

• “…maybe my life will be better if I create a knowledge graph in Obsidian.”

• “Can’t tell. Should I meditate or visualize in the morning?”

You already know this: 99% of self-help is escapism.

The great lie beneath it all is that once you collect enough mental models, you can skip taking a leap of faith. You can build a bridge of concepts from your current self to your ideal self and slide across it. It’s a seductive idea, but it’s wrong and useless.

“All models are wrong but some are useful.” - George Box

Box’s quote is an antidote for uncertainty-driven escapism. By themselves, no amount of mental models will get you from here to there.

But here’s the secret: coupled with faith, some of them might spark you to leap. Still, some of them might keep you leaping after you’ve started.

Below is my shortlist of “good enough” practices and models for personal growth. This is a get-your-shit-together one-sheet. A safe, action-oriented place to return to when the marketing machine tempts you to read another book.

Let’s begin.

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1. "First say who you would be, then do what you have to do" - Epictetus

Don't wait until you've figured out your life's purpose. It’s actually impossible to do so by waiting.

Instead use your instinct for admiration to orient your aims and get after them. Who inspires you? Clear enough is clear enough. Define your ideal self and go.

2. It's dangerous to go alone. Find a gang. 

Find 3 people to meet with bi-weekly. Make promises to each other and practice keeping them. Train your integrity.

Graduate to an actual gang. Support each other like a healthy marriage (seriously).

3. You are blind. Act accordingly.

In 5 minutes, an honest person can reveal things about yourself that would have taken you 5 years to discover alone. Everyone is littered with blindspots.

Get people (e.g. your gang) to reflect yourself back at you. Life is too short to do this alone. Lone wolves are idiots.

4. Create Emotional Leverage

The person you want to become is on the other side of a wall of discomfort. If this wasn’t the case you would already be there.

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain.” - Carl Jung

Engineer more negative emotion on the side of stasis than on the side of change. Bet money. Announce your plans. Paint a picture of what would happen a year from now if you don’t move. Make it uncomfortable to stay where you are.

5. Divide and Conquer

Break projects and goals down more than you think you need to. Procrastination is the behavioural side-effect of ambiguity.

Always ask “what is the next physical action for achieving the desired outcome?” Everything great starts with a modest physical action.

6. Design your Salience Landscape (or someone else will)

Today’s world is full of supernormal stimuli — most of which are more compelling than the modest practices needed to achieve your ambitions.

Everyone is in the business of generating desire. Every time you click something you step into a marketing funnel. If you don’t defend against this, your aspirations will endlessly move like shifting sands. You’ll become oversaturated and lose taste.

Regularly tune out the noise (unsubscribe from this Substack if it’s noise). Surround yourself with reminders and rituals of what matters most (e.g. group accountability, maxims and affirmations, embodied life practices). Design your most-used space for righteousness.

7. The Habit Hypothesis

Your character = the habits you've inherited from your past self. Some of these habits are good and you have your mom to thank. Many of them are bad.

The best way to remove an old habit is to change your environment. The best way to embody a new one is to consciously commit to it for at least a month.

8. Make Commitments

Impactful change starts with commitment.

When making a change, get really clear on the price you are about to pay. Understand the pain you are signing up for and decide if it's worth it. Make a list of the "sacrifices" that are necessary to achieve the thing you want. Otherwise your psyche will rebel.

You want 6 pack abs? Here’s what you might sacrifice:

• no snacking

• might feel hungry pretty regularly

• saying no to beer with the friends on a random week night

• daily ab exercises that might leave you perpetually sore

• you risk hurting your back if you do it wrong

• etc…

List the possible sacrifices. Look at them consciously and decide “is this a good deal?” Then commit. Things will get hard but this time you’ll be ready.

9. Use rituals to make it real

Having a concrete "opening" to your commitment is essential for making it real to you. Having some skin in the game helps.

Spend a lot of money on something beautiful. Light a candle. Get down on your knees and pray to a higher being.

Create a memorable, multi-sensory experience to demarcate the beginning of something new, the end of something old or the return to something valued.

10. When in doubt use “Provisional Values”

Never wait for the myth of 100% certainty. Round up from 51% and take action for 2 weeks.

It’s useful to assume certainty on something and act now for a brief, designated period. You can always reflect and adjust at the end. This is the only way you’ll get clarity.

11. Tell a Story

The key to making this all work is to align your entire psyche around something difficult but worthwhile. Perhaps the best tool we have for this is storytelling.

Regardless of where you’re at right now, if you’re reading this it’s not the end of the movie. There’s still a third act. All the best stories have dark, low moments for the hero. Good. They only serve to highlight his/her ascension.

The human ability to redeem darkness through narrative is pure magic. Cultivate this skill and decide what kind of story you’re in.

—Daniel