Previously posted on Basecamp: DF for Dface and DT for Doubtingthomas
DF is grandparent:
Hello
Im on the second gigahurt video of the playlist. I want to do the activity, but I should start on something easy. That way I can get the method down.
Hi. I haven’t watched any of the videos. Did you mean that you want the topic to be easier so that you can focus on learning trees first?
Yes, we can start with a normal conversation though. I saw you write about Elon Musk yesterday. I don’t have a well thought out opinion on him yet. I just hear what he does through internet memes and random people online praising him.
I remember coming across curi.us and his thoughts about dumb rich people. I vaguely remember that he had crits on Elon Musk, and that shifted my opinion of him to a negative one.
I don’t like that though cuz if I was caught trying to explain why Musk is bad i’d be stuck with no words. I think it’s fairer to judge people issue through issue.
It does change a lot but I think it was a basic suggestion. I think it said that we do not have to add everything we say in this forum to a tree. Only things we want to. We can have multiple trees and we need to know which conversation is part of which node.
Sorry, I got stuck. I shouldnt have focused on one detail for so long. I was doing avoidance behavior. Having a convo with piers reminds me of college and how emotional and hostile I got to the other students and professors cuz they provided crits.
Im afraid of getting hostile and emotional again. I dont think im ready for convos with other people. I think I have bad ideas about the value of discussion.
Why? Is it because you think you might get emotional and hostile? Wouldn’t that depend on the conversation topic? I think a conversation about trees has a very low chance of getting emotional.
ATM you are (or, might be) on the edge of some useful humility regarding those emotions. If you try to avoid them then you will never master them. If you want to be unaffected by them (and remain rational in spite of them), then you need to master those emotions.
If you want to respond positively to criticism, then this is a chance to practice that. You say that you’re “afraid”. Is that not an instance of being afraid of criticism? Those moments (when you do get emotional) are the best chance for you to figure out why you have those feelings and to understand them - IMO. It’s hard to introspect about something the further in the past it gets.
Here is my suggestion: read https://fallibleideas.com/emotions
The final section is “How To Change Emotions” – you should read the entire article, slowly and carefully. (and post about stuff you don’t fully understand and your ideas, too – that way ppl can help if you get stuck on something.)
One thing I have to add to the article that helps me: in those moments when you slow down, consider your goals – what are you actually after; and consider the other person’s goals, too.
Edit: IDK if this post is okay for this category. I posted about that here
re: what’s keeping you from responding part. I think I have this or a similar problem too. Trying to be verbose and writing down everything helps me in clear my mind. I get clarity about what I want to say when I write down a lot.
@Max Thank you for your reply. I’ve been reading it this past week in bits. My emotions played a factor in non responsiveness, but I think it’s actually that I didnt know what I was going to get from a discussion with DT.
I was having trouble visualizing my goals like how does learning discussion look like when Im talking to DT? Am I going on a tangent and not getting anything done?
I think i shouldve asked more questions in the forum instead of struggling silently trying to get one thing.
I guess by ‘visualizing’ you mean like making your goals explicit and knowing how to judge if you’re making progress / meeting them / etc. These are good things to bring up if you feel uncertain. I find that if I’m not clear on my goals, or aren’t sure that what I’m doing is meeting those goals, then it’s harder to commit and see things through. I find writing about my goals helps (even if it’s just private), and doing some clear planning. WRT planning I like the method Eli Goldratt has in It’s Not Luck; roughly it goes like:
Write down the main goal.
Write down all the big things that could go wrong; i.e., the reasons that you might not meet your goal.
Come up with intermediate goals that address each of those things that could go wrong.
Come up with methods to meet the intermediate goals.
Order all of the methods and intermediate steps based on dependencies – this gives you the plan. (you can repeat steps 2-4 to break down intermediate steps, too)
You can structure this as a tree, which might help both with practicing the structure of ideas and getting the plan clearer in your head (it also often helps having something visual where you can see the structure).
Note that you can often find synergies w/ steps 3 and 4, like a single goal or method that helps prevent multiple undesirable things that you identified in step 2. I find that it’s harder to enact a plan when I include too many things that can go wrong and too many intermediate steps to address them. To start with, if you want to try this, I’d suggest doing smaller stuff first (where fewer things can go wrong), and for bigger things to prioritize the stuff that can go wrong and ignore smaller things that you can solve ad-hoc as you go through. That way you get a clearer idea of where the bottlenecks in the plan are and the major obstacles between you and your goal.
Yup, this sort of thing is good to bring up. If you feel stuck then you could make a thread asking for suggestions with a bit of explanation about where you’re at or the problems you think you’re running in to. (otherwise it makes it harder for ppl to give you specific advice)
