The idea that what matters most is having the most followers is very arbitrary and not relevant to many strategies for enjoying Twitter. In my experience, Twitter is best as a place to have conversations, and this is optimal at some number of followers below 10k. There are many accounts out there having an amazing time at small numbers, having curated a medium-sized following of people who are interested in talking with them about the things they want to talk about.
Well detected! Yes, I do have an financial interest in this semantic battle. I haven't read Scott Adams' whole book but I found myself called to respond to his take when people were rejecting my app or my other writing and just citing "goals are for losers". So yeah, I'm critiquing a straw man here—Adams' thinking is deeper than that, but the people quoting him seemed to just have a naive anti-goals slogan.
Even prior to starting the app though, goal-setting had changed my life in a really meaningful way, and I would still have taken issue with "goals are for losers" as a blanket statement. Most people don't realize that it's possible to just decide to do something and work towards it, and goal-setting can be a really powerful frame for that.
I would say that I'm not the one calling the other Olympic athletes losers—Scott Adams does that in his book and I'm responding to him. Goals are for everybody.
Anyway, Adams is making some good points (goals and systems are different, and presuccess failure is a real issue) but he's also overgeneralizing—it is, in fact, possible to have goals without having presuccess failure. Goals can feel good at every turn. Which I won't go into further here because I made my case in the post already.
These are all interesting points but I still think "systems over goals" is better advice for people in general.
Looking at your ideas, I think it's clear why that's the case. Goals need to be treated in a very specific way in order to avoid pitfalls. Is it really worth recommending goals when you need so many guard rails to prevent bad outcomes? Guard rails that you are willing to provide, for a fee $.
This lines up with my experience too. I've seen people self-sabotage because they're not on track to make X amount of money in 5 years. I just don't think goals naturally lead to better outcomes than systems.
I think this is true for companies too. It's better to create systems and culture that better serve the customer than to fixate on stock price, profit, or beating quarterly earnings.
I've found some shifts in my language have helped with this. Here's some examples from a blog post I wrote on this awhile ago:
Instead of "Some people are born to be singers—I’m not one of them." ▶ try "I didn’t start with any singing talent—I’ve had to learn it all."
Instead of "I suck at math." ▶ try "Math has been challenging for me."
Instead of "I’ll never be an artist." ▶ try "I feel really dissatisfied with all of the art I’ve tried to produce."
Instead of "I would never be comfortable offering hugs to strangers." ▶ try "I’m finding it really hard to imagine offering hugs to strangers."
Instead of "I never seem to be able to keep my notes organized." ▶ try "In the past, when I tried to keep my notes organized, I didn’t have much success."
Instead of "I’d really like to learn to juggle, but I just can’t." ▶ try "I’d really like to learn to juggle, though I haven’t started yet."
Instead of "I’m not good at origami." ▶ try "I haven’t learned how to do origami yet."
Instead of "I’m just bad at it, and I don’t care." ▶ try "Well, it’s not a priority for me to learn right now."
Here's the blog post, which features a few other kinds of reframes as well as some other examples:
http://malcolmocean.com/grow
Can also help to get your friends in on it so they spot when you're using fixed-mindset language and point it out for you :)
Not exactly the same thing, but this reminds me of a style of speaking/writing that avoids using "to be" verbs. I don't remember the name and can't seem to find it on Wikipedia right now, but it's similar to what this article describes [1]. The crux of it is, you avoid framing things as more absolute and permanent than they really are. For example, you are not inherently bad at math, you are just bad at it in your current state you don't quickly solve problems people regard as "math". Or you are not inherently a bad person, you just did some specific things that hurt people.
> Not exactly the same thing, but this reminds me of a style of speaking/writing that avoids using "to be" verbs. I don't remember the name and can't seem to find it on Wikipedia right now, but it's similar to what this article describes
(Creator of complice.co here, summoned by HNWatcher.)
I'm glad to see this thread because yeah, most productivity apps are just organization structures that don't support metacognition at all, and so people end up in all kinds of stuck modes.
Complice is definitely better, in that for instance it has different phases for planning your day, working, and reflecting on your day, or that if you say you're going to do X today then don't do it, it doesn't just go on your list for tomorrow but instead you're prompted to break it down or come up with a new plan.
And, I think there's a huge amount of potential here that's yet to be explored, both in Complice and other systems. Relatedly, if you're familiar with developmental psychology or subject-object shifts, we've started strategizing on how to design Complice to guide people through growing into different ways of relating to the world, themselves, and their goals.
I have a different very simple workflow I use for this stuff that I call a Captain's Log. Basically it's like a journal but instead of reflecting after, you intentionally start journalling as soon as you're not sure what you're doing. Link to that: https://malcolmocean.com/2017/11/captains-log-ultra-simple-t...
I'm the creator of Complice and it was indeed made largely by me (I have another collaborator but he joined after it was already making over $3k/mo) but I wouldn't call it simple! Both the software itself and in relation to your comment above that describes how it's not just "how easy is it to build?" but "how easy is it to market?"
In a world where most people are just looking for a better to-do list, Complice is offering an entirely different philosophy of productivity, so it can be hard to explain it, as opposed to something that just straightforwardly scratches somebody's itch.
I will say that the software plays to my strengths: I'm not a data structures & algorithms guy, or a machine learning guy, or a fanatic about the perfect REST API, and Complice is much more about the workflow and the interface, which is what I'm good at.
So "super simple" also depends on what you're good at!
Hey Malcolm, cool to have you chime in! I've appreciated reading your stuff around the internet and your IndieHackers interview was really cool.
I noticed you have a coaching offering as a higher tier on Complice - have you had much success with finding takers on that? I'm currently working on a coaching practice of my own and have wondered how effective "coaching as the top tier of a SaaS that helps you do the thing I'm coaching you about" works.
Creator of Complice here. I agree it's sad the rooms are empty! I thought it would be way easier than it turned out to be, to get a room off the ground. There are a few private ones that are consistently active, but for some reason I've had a lot of trouble getting a public one to stick.
Last summer when IndieHackers launched on HackerNews and Complice was one of the businesses featured there, I made a "Hacker Hall" room (https://complice.co/room/hackers) and posted it to Show HN. It had people in it for a few weeks but it never quite stabilized.
Based on the experience with the private rooms, I think it would only take a couple of champions--people spending most of their working hours there--for it to then be attractive to visitors. This thread probably has enough people to do it. I'd say just comment below if you're willing to hang out in the room consistently for the next few weeks, even if nobody else is there. And if a few people are up for it, then give it a shot. And let me know so I can support you in that!
I think the other thing that's needed is for at least a couple people to actually turn on their cameras, and to chat during the pomodoro breaks, so that people are actually connecting with each other.
hey not to derail a thread recommending your app (which I think is pretty nice! I drop into the lw coworking room sometimes), but I've never quite figured out how to take advantage of it, despite feeling like I should be the kind of person who can (I do daily intention / outcome logging, I have a premium beeminder sub, I do pomodoros and stuff like that). I've done the free trial a couple times but never managed to get it into my flow in a way that quite justified the cost.
Anyway this post isn't going to give you enough information to recommend anything highly specific, but do you have any ideas what I might have been missing?
Maybe I've just already got that kind of thing well enough sorted, but then, I'm not entirely satisfied with my current approach to self planning.
I remember a classic breakdown of 7 areas of life which has in a few places when reading about goals etc: Career, Family, Financial, Mental, Physical, Social, Spiritual. These aren't terrible decent, but I think Alex's breakdown is much better for sparking useful thought:
• Values & Purpose
• Contribution & Impact
• Location & Tangibles
• Money & Finances
• Career & Work
• Health & Fitness
• Education & Skill Development
• Social Life & Relationships
• Emotions & Well-Being
• Character & Integrity
• Productivity & Organization
• Adventure & Creativity
I actually liked these so much that I integrated them right into the yearly review section of the productivity app I run, Complice (https://complice.co/). The app is subscription-based, but you can use the yearly review without paying :)
Almost all these self-help "how to do X" guides focus exclusively on Conscientiousness. Yeah, they all pay lip service to "relationships" but it gets the same treatment as "bigger car": work! work! work! daily goal!
> • Values & Purpose • Contribution & Impact • Location & Tangibles • Money & Finances • Career & Work • Health & Fitness • Education & Skill Development • Social Life & Relationships • Emotions & Well-Being • Character & Integrity • Productivity & Organization • Adventure & Creativity
That list is absurd. If you're unhappy enough with your life to turn it into a 24-point daily checklist you need a vacation and possibly treatment for depression. If you think that's not it, here's some advice:
Get "Values & Purpose" straight and everything else will follow.
There is something important to be said about the effect of having a really clear sense of purpose. I think this is seriously underrated.
But I think it's also the case that part of how we discover purposes to orient towards is thinking about areas of our lives and envisioning how they could be different.
(Also I'm not sure why you're comparing the Big Five list with these lists)
I run a productivity app called Complice (https://complice.co/), which is currently making me about $3k/mo. If you want to learn tons more about the process of getting to profitable, you can read my profile on IndieHackers from back in August: https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/complice
...it doesn't have to be climate change per se. The point is that if you don't see things to improve on a given level, look at a higher level. Or a longer time horizon.
A lot of this is going to be hard to solve on the level of software. But not all! And maybe you can team up with people with other skills.
