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I’ve gone from amused/apathetic to deep work, to actively hostile to the idea. It’s a performative part of hustle theater. Nobody using the phrase “deep work” appears to have actually done work comparable to what they claim to aspire to.
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The stuff we’re supposed to think deep work is like — soaring leaps of Great Work production by Great Men, on the order of Einstein or Mozart — actually happens via very different patterns of genetics/context/resources/work patterns/play patterns/recovery patterns.
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Ditto Waldenponding. “Social media detox,” etc etc. Yeah, just the “good cop” side of performative hustle theater. Social media addiction isn’t the problem, your solution isn’t a solution. Just an aestheticized, intellectualized version of “a bad work an blames his tools”
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This sounds harsh, but a lot of bullshit analysis and theatrical intervention into misframed non-problems is just ordinary, mediocre people refusing to question the conceit that the only thing standing between them and Greatness is some environmental factor.
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A solution to a problem found by someone who actually thinks they’re average and ordinary tends to look less generalizable than it is. A bunch of janky-looking life hacks that look specific to the peculiar circumstances of their life. But you can usually borrow a trick or two.
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A solution found by a person who thinks they’re special typically looks more universal than it is: “just adopt this manifesto and do xyz.” Usually delivered with unconvincing false humility ie “if I can do it you can” and a throwaway remark about personalizing to your needs.
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There’s more than fundamental attribution error going on with people who think they’re special. They misunderstand the very mechanics of problem solving. They think their solution is 80% of anyone else’s and their specialness lies in seeing what nobody else has.
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It’s more like they have 20%, and the part that’s new is not good and the part that’s good is not new and probably rediscovered routinely by half the population every generation. But a person who thinks they’re ordinary instinctively starts with these assumptions.
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I shouldn’t be so mean to waldenponders and deepworkers. They’re more wrong for reasons they can’t control than malicious. Navigating life with a persistent and perhaps repressed sense of your own current specialness and future significance must be really hard.
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