People who are already retired: why do you something, instead of nothing?

[guitarplayer]

I didn't know Lawrence Pearsall Jacks, thanks for the cue.

[ertyu]

How do you reach the good behind the suck, following this strategy? Human tendency to overly discount future value seems prone to short circuit the process. I say this as someone who does suck every day, typically with no inherent reward. I'd much prefer a path where I enjoy every step along the way.

Many good things I have, were behind a large wall of suck. Years of it some cases.

So here's my thinking on this one right now. Let's take something that for me personally is behind a wall of suck - exercise. The suck is both physical, as in, i am unfit so effort sucks, and psychological. So, proper wall of suck.

The outcome of "being fit" that's behind the wall of suck is clearly desirable. If I were to do the physical actions of exercising a given amount of time with a given intensity over a sufficient period of time, I would achieve the outcome of being fit and the wall of suck would decrease. My life overall would be much better.

Many people take this as an "engineering" challenge (idk if engineering is the right word but bear with me): a given amount of action needs to be performed on a schedule. system resists this action. we need managerial tips and tricks to nudge the system into action and force it to perform on the schedule we've set for it. (if this sounds like a description of a person on their job being managed, that's not a coincidence. If you notice, the human being is completely absent from this line of thought except as an inconvenience to be overcome in the process of getting his tool-like aspects to perform correctly and on schedule to reach a goal.

This goal is clearly good and beneficial, even though it is behind a wall of suck. It absolutely fits your definition of "good things in life that were behind a wall of suck, sometimes even years of it." And no one argues that getting through this wall to the end goal would not be good.

To me, though, even though the mechanical goal of executing the exercise would be good, if you approach exercising in this way, on a level you're doing damage to yourself because you reinforce this idea that the self is extraneous and a hindrance to be overcome, forced through and struggled against. To a manager, the fact that labor has selves is a nuisance. The self is also a nuisance to a mechanistic thinker who would prefer that the self weren't in the way of getting the self "to execute."

To me, the ability to let go of this divided mindset - let's call it alienated, as in, the person is alienated from themselves, after the og guy who had this thought at the end of the 19th c. - is the most valuable aspect of early retirement. What would this look like in terms of exercise? Maybe it would be returning to one's own body and experiencing how movement feels to one. Some movement feels good, some movement feels bad. What happens if one moves with an air of exploration? Probably, progress will be slower and less efficient -- but whose value is fast and efficient? Is it the human's, or is it the manager's? Who and what are we "sinning against" when we fall short of efficiency? When we're inefficient, it feels bad, but why? We fall short against a standard of "the best way to be," well, how was it decided to adopt this as the best way to be?

Note that many absolutely do have efficiency as an intrinsic value. A person like that would probably keep and exercise diary where he records reps and all that jazz, and would spend time researching and optimizing a good routine, and this in and of itself would feel rewarding because it's action congruent with one's authentic joy - feeling like one does a thing with a sense of mastery. Many others might not experience exercise as something behind a wall of suck, but as a process of, "i'm getting shredded!!!!" Again, exercise will be intrinsically motivating because it will be goal-aligned. So it's not the action, it's whether you struggle against yourself when completing the action. If you are, you're doing it wrong. In the example of the instrument, maybe the end goal is desirable - "i can play" - and if one forces oneself through the mechanistic process of picking up one's instrument on a schedule enough times, probably one will acquire the mechanistic skill of being able to play that instrument. But is going about it this way a good way to live? See what guitarplayer said: learning to play wasn't about the mechanistic actions and about completing a mechanistic process of exercises on schedule; the process itself was an act of being close with his father and brother, a way to feel cool, and a way to feel like someone who is likable by girls, and hey, girls liking you is nice . Imo, if one finds oneself stuggling against oneself and executing mechanistically in an alienated fashion one should quit. Not even because the activity is bad, or the wrong goal, but because one's process of engaging with activities needs to be fundamentally rejigged.

Disclaimer: am still fat. But any progress I've ever achieved by struggling-against has ever only been transient and temporary.

[Scott 2]

@ertyu - This may be personality rainbow territory. You've described me well:

The self is also a nuisance to a mechanistic thinker who would prefer that the self weren't in the way of getting the self "to execute."

Do you have examples of this strategy, that have worked in your life? Maybe it's a selection bias, but those I look to for leadership tend to embrace the grind.

[white belt]

As I understand the answers to this thread there is a bit of effortless fun to most activities that people do mentioned above, or they have gotten good enough at whatever the activities are that part or all of it feels effortless. Another way to look at it is you can train yourself to feel comfortable with being uncomfortable for things like physical activities. So while this might appear like effort to an outsider, it is actually just a built in habit and more effortless like your MTG playing.

My first thought when reading through this thread is Csikszentmihalyi's idea of flow, particularly the chart that shows how challenges and abilities intersect to produce a particular state. To me, the "effortless fun" that is described in this thread's examples sounds the same as flow.

Note from the diagram that one has to match the challenge level and skill level in order to reach a flow state. As an absolute beginner, it is difficult to do this because you don't have any foundation of skill to build on in a new activity. Although I'm not in education, I believe this is a common teaching tactic to build confidence in students when learning a new subject. You basically want to give them a problem that is just pushing the edge of their competence range, then progressively push that range out in a way that is engaging (this is basically how video games and tutors/coaches function). Another related technique is "chunking"; that is you want to break up a task that requires repetition/memorization into smaller tasks and learn them sequentially. One example could be how a video game gives a respawn/save point, which effectively allows you to focus on one specific challenging chunk of the game at a time.

I think it's worth considering how flow and deliberate practice interact. The most effective learning happens from deliberate practice, but the literature shows that in the moment, deliberate practice is pretty uncomfortable. It requires total focus, frustrations from making mistakes, and a sense that you are not making progress. It is only after the fact through repeated bouts of deliberate practice that one will notice any improvement. As one climbs the S curve of skill in a particular area, it will require more and more deliberate practice to show improvements due to diminishing returns.

In other words, in my opinion we have 2 separate things at play. One is this flow state that a lot of us are chasing and perhaps society has instilled that we should be feeling when participating in a particular activity. The other is, the often unpleasant, deliberate practice. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of techniques that people have come up with to address this dichotomy. Examples in the thread include gamefying deliberate practice by setting micro goals and rewards, closely tracking all activity, taking time to intersperse fun/relaxing forms of the activity throughout the deliberate practice, etc. See earlier references to video games. The technique that works best for the individual probably depends on temperament.

I'll add some other examples I've seen from my life. I used to play guitar a lot. The layman might walk up on a jam fest featuring jazz musicians and be under the impression that they are all in the flow state. They just love playing their instrument. While this is true, this is the direct result of years of challenging deliberate practice. Even on a good day, an expert jazz musician might only be improvising 10-20% of the time. The rest of the time they are riffing ideas that they have worked out in practice. Whether that's physical patterns, melodies, scales, rhythms, etc etc. The live playing is very rewarding, which helps to feed a cycle. Musician practice instrument at home to improve -> musician plays with others and enjoys it -> musician practices instrument at home in preparation for next time playing live. Note that the musician can hop off of this cycle at pretty much any time. Maybe they feel like they reach a level of proficiency that they are fine with and only want to maintain that level while playing with other musicians at a similar level. That is very common with any activity and is totally fine. Most of us have an activity that we might enjoy doing even if we aren't experts or deliberately practicing to move towards expertise.

Now let's talk MTG. There are many people who approach MTG like ertyu; they play purely for fun and aren't really interested in putting time in for deliberate practice. That's probably the most common approach to the game because the casual audience is by far the largest. These types of players are only interested in the flow state which is going to correspond with their skill level and the level of their play group. If the players you play against are a similar skill level, then you will be able to achieve that flow state quite often. However, if ertyu wanted to be able to win in a competitive environment, he would have to spend some time deliberately practicing outside of just playing games. High level players spend a lot of time reviewing previous matches, compiling notes on a particular format, and evaluating complex board states for practice. In fact, I've heard interviews with World Champions who talk about how they spend much less time playing MTG and instead spend a lot more time thinking about MTG. That is, they basically have already squeezed a lot of the gains out of playing, so that activity is at a point of diminishing returns. Similarly, a chess GM probably spends much more time thinking about chess than grinding out games against competitors. Obviously, any field/skill has WL's which means a deliberate practice activity that is optimal for one skill level might be detrimental at another level, which is where a coach/teach/mentor can help.

You can see similar examples in countless other activities like casual pick-up sports. The casual player will experience flow in their local pick-up basketball game with similarly skilled players, but if you put them on the court with NBA players there would be no flow state.

TLDR: I'm not really able to articulate all of this clearly, but I guess what I'm saying is that one should be honest and realistic about one's expectations when approaching any activity. If you're only interested in achieving a flow state, then it might be possible to do so without any deliberate practice depending on the activity. If one is trying to accomplish a specific end state, then you will probably require some deliberate practice to reach that. The deliberate practice is going to be challenging, so you will have to figure out how to use appropriate techniques that match your temperament to assist with the process.

[ertyu]

As I understand the answers to this thread there is a bit of effortless fun to most activities that people do mentioned above

I guess this concept of "effort" is a good one to pick apart. Because there is effort as in doing hard things towards an outcome, and effort as in struggling against resistance, and while 1 is often pleasant and fulfilling, 2 is utter misery.

Edit to elaborate: something must have motivated the jazz musician above to persevere with the challenging deliberate practice that was necessary. Effort might be effort, but doesn't have to suck. It's not whether you're exerting effort or just breezing along, it's that when you're exerting effort, you aren't forcing yourself or struggling against yourself. The act of challenging deliberate practice must itself be rewarding in some way if one is to stick with it.

I guess the thing with me is, I'm not very competitive. As a person, you wouldn't find me trying to practice to compete at the professional level with the explicit goal to defeat others. A person who is competitive, however, would be motivated by the idea of winning. That's what will drive him. A person who isn't into winning would have to find another way to stick with challenging practice.

To me, that way is to be process-driven rather than results driven. I haven't mastered this by any stretch, so far Im only getting glimpses, I get it every now and then, then other times I'm back to "efforting," but it's not in the objective nature of the task, it's in the stance one has towards oneself when performing it.

I guess this brings me to the above question of, "well do you have an example that works"

How do we define "works"?

Some might define "works" in terms of results achieved - nothing else is important. To me, it "works" if I have managed to approach the task in a way that doesn't feel like im forcing myself or struggling against myself. If I have managed to let go of resistance. If I have managed to be present and to have connected with myself and with the task. If I don't achieve those things, I would never persist with practice -- and i won't achieve results anyway.

[mountainFrugal]

while 1 is often pleasant and fulfilling, 2 is utter misery.

This is why breaking it down into very small chunks can be helpful. 2 minute start habits to 5-10 minute effort.

Add: I agree with @whitebelt about flow.

[ertyu]

Another thought: if being goal oriented works for you (plural you), cool, i don't argue with what works. but also, don't ditch process orientation outright.

ERE praxis is, in essence, "if you get the processes right, the goals will take care of themselves" - whether the processes are redundancy, homeotelicity, anticonsumerism, diy, whatever /// the goals are a certain SWR, a certain environmental impact, a certain general level of fitness and competence, etc.

Being process oriented vs goal oriented and aiming to overcome the "self-alienated" habits that the system has instilled bc we're only useful to it as tools isn't crap just bc the person espousing it (me haha) has many and varied failings lol

[zbigi]

Edit to elaborate: something must have motivated the jazz musician above to persevere with the challenging deliberate practice that was necessary.

When you read about the giants of the arts world (music, painting, literature), it turns out that a lot of them were really maladjusted in their youth, and they've channeled their adolescent male energy (domination with skill over other men Conan the Barbarian-style) into getting better at this one thing that will either bring them back into graces of other people, or will be their "revenge" on them etc. This fueled them through the initial years a grind required to master the craft at the basic level. It's seems to be a very common pattern.

[ertyu]

Right. They didn't use tips and tricks and chunking and whathave you. Their motivation might not have been the healthiest psychologically, but something inherent to who they were as people made that effort worthwhile and drove them. I haven't read biographies etc., but even if what you say is correct and they did it out of a maladjusted sort of competitiveness, they still did it with their whole self, rather than struggling against themselves and trying to force themselves to practice on schedule against an inner resistance.

Healthy or not, this intrinsic drive must be unearthed. Without it, the activity will not feel meaningful. So one must be brutally honest with oneself about who one is. I am reminded of AH going, you know what, what I really want is, I wanna be SHREDDED! I dont care if it's vain or superficial. SHREDDED would not work for me - too many memories of my father and the particular way in which he was a shit - but what might work is something like, being proud of rediscovering and regrowing my relationship to my physical body despite of that psychological shit and knowing that i've figured out how to do the best for myself while not torturing myself (memories of my father shouting at me and berating me drill-sergeant style mean that any David Goggins style motivation or anything which triggers that early crap will probably not result in a sustainable exercise habit). A third person might have yet another motivation -- e.g. I have a buddy who loves feeling strong - and to him, this is important because he's the dude that carries all the heavy stuff in the house etc. so it gives him a sense of belonging and serving and being useful in a way that makes him feel good about having something worthwhile to contribute.

I guess I'm coming back to the idea that there's meaning in the exploration of oneself and in getting to know oneself when it comes to finding activities that will feel inherently meaningful in retirement. Might be personality rainbow, idk, but I don't think one can experience an activity as meaningful without this sort of personal connection to it.

[mountainFrugal]

To be clear I am all for process. I spend most of my time thinking about process and meta-process to make learning new things easier. In the end though process or goal orientation has to have action behind it. Putting in the work is necessary regardless of process or goal orientation. If the process is only thinking about something in the physical world without eventual action then that is motion not action. https://jamesclear.com/taking-action
Guitar strumming patterns, guitar chords, guitar chord progressions...playing a show
Putting on your running clothes, tying your shoes, going for a walk, then running...running a race
Writing a word, writing a sentence, writing a paragraph, writing an essay, editing... writing a novel
Tilling the garden, planting the seeds, watering, weeding, pest control...eating the harvest
Saving the money, investing it to your temperament, giving it time to grow...living like a king

I still delude myself with motion all of the time. The perfect Obsidian workflow, the perfect text editor, the perfect combo of pen/paper for just the right type of sketch... it is easy to do. Once you recognize it you can ask yourself if that is what you are doing as a smart person that is tricking themselves into procrastinating doing the uncomfortable thing.

[7Wannabe5]

it turns out that a lot of them were really maladjusted in their youth, and they've channeled their adolescent male energy (domination with skill over other men Conan the Barbarian-style) into getting better at this one thing that will either bring them back into graces of other people, or will be their "revenge" on them etc.

I would note that this is also clearly part of the motivational energy towards FI as evidenced by the phrase "FU money." Nobody likes being submissive within a structure that is not in great alignment with self-interest. OTOH, humans pay good money to obtain structure to which they can submit when they judge it to be in alignment with self-interest. For instance, when my sister (who is much better at practicing piano and fitness routines than me) and I decided that the health plan for our micro-business would be annual membership at hot yoga studio. Put on yoga clothes-drive to studio is much easier to do (much less inertia to overcome) than making myself work out.

As an eNTP, I have little problem with coming up with interesting activities to explore with whatever free time I have afforded myself, but when I am in Dora the Explorer mode trying to cram all the stuff I might want to do into my knapsack, I am forced to realize that the qualities of the knapsack determine/limit the amount of interesting stuff I can cram in it. So, I am always running a sort of rough algorithm to check for "What is most limiting my freedom to do X,Y, and Z?" It might be time, money, vigor, other people, mental health issues, etc. For instance, the reason most humans just collapse in front of a screen providing entertainment after 8 hour work day/commute rather than learning a foreign language, starting sideline business, or working out is that they are out of vigor rather than time, so any activity or tactic that returns vigor may be worth some time/money, because it will increase the size or improve the qualities of the knapsack itself.

[jacob]

Ribbonfarm's Gervais Principle provides another lens.

The Clueless are driven by their loyalty to a system or structure (such as a job, general achievement). Retirement means finding a new system to be loyal to. Loyalties must be placed to serve some kind of system lest the Clueless be lost.

Losers are not defined by loyalty (to a job or a career). Losers have the skills or lack of expectations to circulate more freely in the economy. Retirement is a kind of job where one doesn't even have to do the minimum. Many are actually quite satisfied with that.

Sociopaths are innately driven by their "will-to-power" and see retirement as "freedom-to" rather than "freedom-from" which is the problem of the Losers and the Clueless. To Sociopaths, FIRE is just the start-up capital that allows them to do what they actually want. Kinda like working for N years to buy their freedom from slavery.

Keep in mind that there's a baseline stat issue within the FIRE community as it tends to attract the Clueless. Especially as FIRE went mainstream, FIRE has become the new "millionaire" goal. The problem is that checking off the box on this achievement award also terminates the only game the Clueless know. Congratulations, you reached level 100. Now what?

[Frita]

@Jacob Ah, this explains my experience with clubs/groups dominated by academic retirees who wanted to use Robert’s Rules of Order and form positioned committees (unnecessarily, IMO).

And I personally question freedom to-freedom from as binary. I viewed freedom from needing a paycheck as freedom to have an opinion, speak up, and not play silly (to me) games.

[WFJ]

I've seen this on a few FIRE blogs and have no idea how those with free time can't find something interesting to do? In just about every job, I would often daydream during meetings about how much I'd rather be doing almost anything else and always had a long list of activities if my current employer imploded the next day. Don't even have any hypothesis on why this exists in FIRE people.

In a minute, thought of 7 hobbies that could each easily take 10+ years to master and have the opposite problem of not enough time. The more pressing issue is how to manage one's body/health and hobbies as one ages, which is not easy. Once my body is unable to perform or activities become dangerous (due to reduction in reaction time, vision, other) will pursue intellectual pursuits (chess, poker, or even AI as it matures).

Every person alive today can live the life only imagined by royalty of 200 years ago.

If one does not like physical activities, read the top 100 books, this would take years.
https://www.gutenberg.org/

[zbigi]

I've seen this on a few FIRE blogs and have no idea how those with free time can't find something interesting to do? In just about every job, I would often daydream during meetings about how much I'd rather be doing almost anything else and always had a long list of activities if my current employer imploded the next day. Don't even have any hypothesis on why this exists in FIRE people.

Oh, I've definitely daydreamed about plenty of things while on the job. But, when I had plenty of the time to do them, they just didn't seem all that engaging or worthwhile. The daydreaming was strictly a "grass is greener" kind of coping mechanism it seems.

[guitarplayer]

Every person alive today can live the life only imagined by royalty of 200 years ago.

I often think about it, it’s a sort of stoic exercise. Other than in time, also helpful to zoom out in geopolitical space and contrast one’s life to the poorer 90-99% of people. Lots of privilege here, lots and lots. There are some forumites who approach ERE from a different end than salaryman, would be great if they chipped in. Or a salaryman context other than WEIRD. Like @fiby41 for example.

[zbigi]

Every person alive today can live the life only imagined by royalty of 200 years ago.

I believe royalty quite often were bored to death, actually. They didn't have any imediate problems to deal with (apart from perhaps not being out-schemed, poisoned etc. by relatives) so it was up to them to come up with ways to pass the time. It was all before well TV, video games, podcasts, nice cities, consumption as distraction, so easy and effortless options were very limited.
For example, Balzac was pursuing an older and very wealthy (and married) Polish aristocrat (Pani Hańska), hoping that marrying her would end his financial problems for good. Whereas for her, sparse correspondence with a famous writer who was interested in her was a biggest thrill of her life. Other than that, she was living in her vast estate at the end of the world, and traveled to Kiev or other large city maybe twice a year. Looks like boredom might have been one of her biggest problems.

[Frita]

Hm, does this boil down to problem solving versus solution finding? Reacting versus choosing responses? Granted, life has challenges and it would be skillful to address them, but do I need to be addicted to the drama of constant searching for problems (and even creating them) to solve? No. I find that sometimes the boredom of doing “nothing” gives clarity to move forward to “something.” For me, the solution is balance and enough despite the option (and conditioning or even impulse) to seek busy and more.

[Starper]

Doing something for yourself (like working on your own business) > doing nothing > working for someone else

[ertyu]

https://livingafi.com/2015/11/06/done-detoxing/

A lengthy read but imo a useful one. Rec coupled with Jenny Odell's Saving Time. Relevant to the thread in that LivingaFI discusses how while the j*b might be over and done with, the grindset isn't*, and it has to go if one is to eventually have a full relationship with oneself, the world, and one's full humanity.

*AH discovered something similar, and I did too, independently: one's inner orientation towards problems/the world isn't a natural fact but a habit, and a habit that is very deserving of investigation and questioning.

@Scott 2, you said the people you respect embrace the grind -- In my opinion, however, there's a lot more to respect in a guy that dares to put the grind away and take an honest look at himself like LivingaFI -- and face and stay with what's there, whether he's proud of it or not.

On a personal note: what LivingaFI finds in relation to the grind is that it gives him a fake boost of esteem and importance: that Too Fucking Busy, as he calls it, is a transparent ego trip. That it's reassurance against existential angst. That it's a way to avoid vulnerability. I too live in reaction to the grind, but I've dropped below it. At some point, I got terrified of the grind: that embracing it was going to erode my soul, destroy me as a human. Enter a lackluster work history, a background depression, and most uselessly of all, I still did not manage to avoid burnout (I joined the forum at the height of it, the beginning of my journal is basically me screeching in insanity). Regardless: whether one drops below the grind or embraces its trappings, it's well worth introspecting for how and to what extent this cultural script runs one.