Ask HN: Have you invested in self-development and done inner work?
Before realizing on what I should focus on and what my purpose was, I was in the agency world, and close from the infoproduct world.
I came to realize that there's a lot of programs that exist for this audience (agencies and coaches with a course). Most of these programs are steps by steps on how to do X (often sales related) or on how to improve their mindset to scale their business.
When I switched to focusing more on my craft of being an "optimizer" (problem solver) by focusing on being more a maker, I noticed that there's not much of these type of programs.
I am still new to this new "indie" and "maker" world, so maybe I simply have not been exposed to it enough, but I am curious, how many of you have been doing some inner work?
And what have been your experience so far as a creator regarding your personal growth?
104 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadI think for a lot of other spaces inner work means more about finding personal (and shared) values, and feeling through trauma, and finding a path for 'living and dying well'.
For me, this has meant studying philosophy, religion, biology, music, and other things that do not necessarily contribute to a fully optimized life.
I too have found a wonderful community in the maker scene, and it has fed my creativity. This can certainly be a good place to spend time.
While you're at it, if you do anything along these lines, consider couples counselling too. Even if all is great. The closeness and generally better understanding its given my partner and I has been the greatest stress reducer I've ever found. It opens up my bandwidth to so many other things which more generally allows me to be more effective.
- the Zhuangzi, translation by Burton Watson, which I've read many times. See the last two paragraphs of https://terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu.html about the useless tree
- Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa, which I haven't read except extracts, but it could be relevant to you (esp. if you're looking at spiritual growth).
But anyway, instead of buying new book... I'll speak of what I'm doing in a week.
I'll go for ten days in the countryside with my dear partner and leave the laptop at home. I'm quite productive these last months (just submitted something to Show HN today), I find I'm missing guidance on a few areas of my life, and I'm in dear need of slowing down and cutting the external noise.
Haven't taken real holidays in years.
I have a few thoughts to share and questions to ask about your search.
I have been at this for many years and I can say that doing the work requires effort and the expenditure of energy. The benefits to personal creativity have begun to become immense in recent years, as creativity comes naturally as a result of being less attached to ones' personality and being able to more freely allow energy to 'flow through your being' (that's the best I can describe it). These benefits are side effects, though, and not really the purpose of the work. If this is why you seek to do the work, it is misguided and you are probably setting yourself up to simply fuck yourself up. Seek a guide for this kind of work (I am not a guide), and be wary of those who charge money. My guide has been with me for > 10 years, has never charged a cent, and has been instrumental in my efforts. If you do the work with genuine integrity, you will find a guide.
It seems that you are talking about moving from a "problem-solver" workflow, to a "creator/architect" workflow.
You also mention self-help kind of stuff, and how it seems focused at problem-solvers, and not creators.
So, I assume the question is that you are planning to move from a "problem-solver," to a "creator," and want to find out about support infrastructure for "creators."
One reason that there's less of an infrastructure around creation, is that it is a lot riskier, and, for the most part, a lot less lucrative, than problem-solving. For every unicorn, prancing around SV, farting out rainbows, there's a charnel pit, with the rotting corpses of 10,000 jackasses with horns glued to their heads.
Everyone has problems, though, and are often willing to pay well, to have these problems solved.
Every day I saw how I was getting in my own way, and just how many opportunities I had to grow as a leader. But I couldn't actually do much of the work I needed to do while I was in the startup. It was too intense. I had to leave and reboot. So I left, and I started doing inner work in a completely open-ended way.
In the end, it took about four years. I was lucky and privileged to be able to take so much time off.
In the first year I was feeling through the darkness for clues. I had no idea what I was looking for. I only knew that I was burned out. I knew that the way I was operating wasn't serving me anymore. It hadn't served me for quite a while. I went to EMDR therapy, which was very helpful.
The first big insight: Because I had focused so strongly on engineering as a kid and into adulthood, I realized that my growth was stunted in other areas. I started reparenting myself.
The second big insight: I had learned to numb my emotions and was disconnected from my own body and my sense of intuition. I believe that's what led to burnout in the first place. I'd lost my connection with my spirit.
Being used to clear career paths and life paths, the scariest thing to confront was the reality that there's no clear map for spiritual development, and it's a winding path, and signs of progress aren't always obvious. There's only a set of tools that have worked for others. You have to be willing to go into the unknown, and try some of those tools, especially the ones that may are beyond your comfort zone. For example, a five-day meditation retreat was a huge breakthrough for me, and it felt like taking a big risk for me to go at all.
In order to really commit to this growth, I needed to let go of the idea that I'd ever return to tech. That was tough, because engineering has been such a big part of my identity. But I found, after that period, that I was able to come back to tech with a rediscovered sense of genuine curiosity. I returned as more of a whole human being. I gained a perspective that couldn't have come through more engineering work.
It's hard to describe spiritual growth, but the entire journey was well worth it. I learned how to listen with my whole body. I learned how to get fear out of the driver's seat of my life. I prioritize very different things than I used to. I am more able to remain grounded in my body as I work. I actually enjoy working out now. I play basketball, I box, I meditate. I feel more of my emotions, and more empathy and connection with others. I learned how to cry. I'm so grateful for all of this, it is such a gift. And today, I love the engineering work that I do in infosec and PKI. As long as I stay connected to purpose, I'm not worried about burnout. I can feel that my heart is in my work. And when it isn't anymore, I will follow my heart to whatever is next.
Yes, purpose is huge to me also.
My heartfelt congratulations on your growth.
> self-development
> inner work
This is more commonly referred to as "self-improvement" or "self-help" (depending on if you think you're just improving yourself, or more specifically addressing something you consider to be a weakness or shortcoming.) It means developing your skills or learning new ones, and coming to a new understanding of a topic of interest.
You also might want to start by figuring out what role you want to be in, whether professionally or in hobbies. It's not clear if you want to be a problem solver or a creator. Having lots of aliases for what you mean isn't giving anyone clarity. Being a "maker" often means you have projects you work on because you're interested, and you want to tinker and build things. But a "creator" might be slightly different, as would a "creative." A "problem solver" in business is more likely someone that is called upon when there are problems. That's vastly different from being a "creator", "maker" or "creative."
In general, I think you're caught up in "programs" and buzz words. In my opinion, you need to take five steps back and think about what you really want to be doing and go from there.
This feels very much like "outer" work, tacking on new skills or understanding about externalities. "Inner work", however you want to refer to it as, is more about looking within to understand your motivations, influences, blocks/hang ups/fears etc to help approach life with a more informed understanding of why you are the way you are
But I think you're trying to use generic high level language to describe your personal, specific niche. It doesn't really communicate anything.
Looking at your submission from yesterday, and your product submission, it sounds like you want to make products, and market them so they are successful, so you are successful. But this focus on finding a superfluous label doesn't seem like it's going to help you get there.
Self development has nothing to do with positive thinking, visualizing success or spiritual stuff. That's a load of horse shit.
Real self-development involves choosing difficult goals and focusing all your energy on attaining them; learning new skills and improving existing skills in the process. It's about mastering some useful skills in order to give yourself a sizable competitive advantage in the marketplace and in society - This is the best way to gain control of your future.
The emotional, spiritual, positive thinking and visualization aspects of 'self improvement' are nonsense. This doesn't yield any improvement, all it does is it shows everyone that you're a gullible, delusional fool. The world doesn't give a shit about your positive thoughts; in fact they tend to cause people to be neglectful. The world cares about results.
It wont yield any improvement as long as you're too terrified to try and too busy judging those who are trying.
It may align with some particular philosophy that resonates with you; the nature of the "work" may fit what seems "right for you" within your particular context (not everyone needs, wants, or benefits from a psychedelic meltdown, or a ten year hardcore meditation retreat, or three months of sensory deprivation, or prayer, or splitting logs, or ...); but there is an "essential" core underlying the things that would actually matter.
"Self-development and inner work" largely amounts to clarity/awareness. Most of us are completely clueless regarding the values that drive us, and fewer of us are aware we can choose them. We don't examine the goals that drive our choices and behaviors. We don't actively monitor and adjust our physiology. We allow thinking errors in their wide variety to accumulate and distort. We over-identify with thinking/feeling/states/etc. We don't examine the beliefs we have about ourselves and the world, and again, we don't realize we can change these.
There are lots of ways to examine/inspect/alter the software you're running, installed by you, your family, your friends, your teachers, your culture, your country, your experiences, your environment, your everything else.
Find one that clicks and go for it. The idea that this will be somehow unique to "indie and maker world" is, ah, "not very helpful".
Personally, I mostly use hypnosis/self-hypnosis/some forms of meditation/inquiry and the like, but that's what suits my inclinations. (And I'm a hypnotist, so of course that's what I prefer.) I got interested in that when I was a wee teen and it's been a very fine tool. But your mileage varies because you're driving a different vehicle.
An acquaintance recommended the Headspace app and I really like it. Hadn’t done any guided meditation before that. YMMV but I think mindfulness and meditation can be useful for anyone.
Then there are other types of inner work, such as learning empathy, or studying ethics and philosophy. I don’t really have any solid advice there. For ethics and philosophy, there are lots of books out there to further one’s knowledge and comprehension. It will expand the mind.
Some day I would like to acquaint myself with Nietzsche’s works, but so far I haven’t taken the time to do so.
It takes me to memories and dusty corners of my brain that I rarely visit that form the foundations of my identity. The only bad part about it is one really needs a therapist to guide oneself when one goes deep and visits what IFS calls "exiles".
Also as a software engineer whose always been on the analytical/intellectual side of reasoning, I prefer the psychodynamic nature IFS as opposed to modalities like CBT. Really helped open me up to being more emotionally intelligent and aware.
Tip: read a page, then click a link to get more info on any particular part. Like one big outline, skimmable I hope. Feedback welcome there, too.
You will become different. Whatever measures by which you discern 'better' before, will be irrelevant, almost laughable to the person you become. And beware too that growth can itself become a preoccupation.
If you have goals like be more productive, make more money, change the world, be more liked... then prepare yourself for at least the possibility that you will, in the course of real growth, end up rejecting those things as silly.
edit: accidentally posted as reply to wrong comment
Programming itself is horrible, now I'm stuck in a career I hate (or rather I am now aware of my prison).
I'm not sure knowing is better.
If you're perhaps grounded with the goal, I want to evolve into the person I really am, and should be. Remembering (or discovering) that most of what the world tells you and teaches you is just false. There are reasons why we want the particular things we want and upon deep examination those reasons may be found to be silly. This realization is heartbreaking cause then we feel we are past the mid-point - and have wasted our life!
But is a necessary step toward our real goal. It's a tough road, but I believe provides one more dignity than a lot of people's alternatives - numbing the pain with alcohol or drugs or chasing money or false idols so to speak. Not dealing directly with one's pain and difficult questions about oneself.
People career hop a lot.
Somewhat related, I used to weigh 270lbs. I changed my mind and made some changes, and was down to 180lbs after 1.5 to 2 years.
It's nice to find meaning in your work, but doing so is a luxury not everyone cann afford. More importantly ones work should never be the only source for meaning, nor the most important.
There are competeing schools of thought that value and life satisfcation can be measured by what we produce and what we consume. Both those schools of thought are lies, or at least incomplete.
I will say I have always wanted to be a programmer but I've so far ended up being a better Systems Engineer, regardless though it doesn't worry me since at the end of the day, I am exchanging labor for money.(although I wont Rule out a career change!)
Now my job does have some added meaning in that I help to provide internet to rural areas and I can see myself in many of these end users and I can see how impactful it is to provide services. Real life and meaning and by extension happiness is beyond work, it encompasses work but is so much beyond work. Happiness is like gas in that it expands to fill the space you give it, if you look for happiness in programing, you might be miserable. If you look for happiness in being an excellent worker and craftsman then you might be a little bit happier but there are still probably larger spaces.
Of course people's brains(and hearts) are different so you may want to see a therapist and there is nothing wrong with that.
After watching my friends go to Peru to trip balls with shamans (or just go to Burning Man yearly) and "expand their mind" -- but not really change their lives in any meaningful way -- I'm highly skeptical of the "deep understanding" school.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca
As a mental model, it has applications from very basic to extremely rich and complex.
I've worked as an eng/manager/executive coach and keep discovering new insights.
I always enjoy discussing it more if you're interested