This is just repackaged cognitive or dialectical behavioral therapy, with cutesy names like "whisper" and "virtue garnish" to make it seem novel. But if it speaks to people, I see no harm in that.
If you're genuinely interested in changing your habits, I recommend investigating these therapies, as they're backed by decades of research and results.
And if you want to tune in to these "whispers" in the first place, there's really no substitute for meditation and mindfulness practice.
nico · 3h ago
It’s pretty good advice
But the title is misleading. Sure, once you’ve built the habit of breaking bad habits, it will take 3 seconds each time. However, it will take quite a bit to build that habit
The article references Dale Carnegie. Related to that, and with much better exercises to build habits, I’d recommend the book The Charisma Myth. It addresses the type of situations mentioned in the article and a lot more, all with great step by step, habit-building exercises on each chapter
jbotz · 2h ago
That "gap between stimulus and response" is in some circles known as "mindfulness". And meditation is an effective exercise for building and strengthening that gap.
mpnsk1 · 1h ago
That seems to fly over a lot of heads.
Anyone who actually meditated will tell you the process of fixing yourself through meditation is painstakingly slow, you mostly become aware of how your mind does not do what it is supposed to, and if you stop meditating you quickly lose all progress.
What the post describes is essentially some form of micro journaling to build a cached hashmap of the thought patterns you want your mind to have.
mpnsk1 · 1h ago
What I like about this approach is that it goes back to looking at what your problems actually are.
A lot of self help and social media sells you virtues in the form of solutions looking for a problem. It makes people go around with hammers of virtue seeing everything as a viceful nail they can hammer down. And of course they see the nail in other people first.
seanhunter · 21m ago
In what sense is the platitude you’re supposed to think of in crucial moments a garnish? “Garnish” has two meanings: Firstly a decoration or embellishment, especially for food. Secondly it can mean to deduct something (eg garnish someone’s wages to pay child maintenance or a fine of some kind). So is the dumbass saying supposed to be a decoration for your virtue or is it supposed to be reducing your virtue?
I certainly feel that the overall quality of hackernews has been garnished by having this drivel on the front page. Unfortunately in the second sense of the word, not the first.
blitzpoet · 3h ago
I find the military saying "pain is weakness leaving the body" effective for workouts. The slogan is short and sticky, and I tend to exercise harder when I think of it.
citizenpaul · 3h ago
Sometimes its cartilage leaving the body.
zhivota · 2h ago
Hah yes or broken down muscle tissue in the case of rhabdomyolysis.
As I've gotten older I've had to discard this kind of maximalist thinking with exercise and think of every workout as just a smidge more than the last, after an appropriate period of rest and recovery.
leptons · 2h ago
That's the kind of toxic masculinity platitude that causes men to not seek medical help when they are in pain, which causes worse outcomes for things that are preventable.
throwaway81523 · 3h ago
[flagged]
sandspar · 3h ago
It's a cute idea and well told! I think the general idea is that you have a "watching" self and a "deciding" self. Perhaps like different AI agents that check each other's work.
My favorite version of this is the guy who imagines a village of dwarves in his head. When he feels annoyed or angry or whatever, he imagines the "angry dwarf" making his case in front of the dwarf counsel. "We should strike back!" Then he imagines how the rest of the dwarven counsel would respond. "Ah, but this could be chance for us to practice compassion," says the compassionate dwarf. And so on. According to him he finds this very helpful.
mettamage · 3h ago
I see my mind as a village. I owe a lot to my meditation self. He’s somewhat of a monk. Oh, and my inner dating coach. Then we have the strategist.
There are quite a few but a lot of power has gone to the strategist who developed the dating coach and meditation self back in the day.
sandspar · 2h ago
That's really neat! I like how it's layered like that. It sounds helpful.
jen729w · 3h ago
> Perhaps like different AI agents that check each other's work.
Or like I agents?
ModernMech · 2h ago
This seems like a chat GPT authored blog post that's trying to sell what I can only assume is a chat GPT authored self-help ebook.
dr_kiszonka · 2h ago
It annoys me when people are not upfront about wanting to sell me stuff and just waste my time.
The article itself is not that bad, but it is surprising that it received nearly 50 upvotes in two hours.
Anyway, instead of buying yet another journal, `w:` could be made into a handy keyboard shortcut to open a certain file in your favorite editor so that you can write your "whisper" with current datetime. One could also LLM it to automatically provide the "garnish". And BOOM a new AI start-up! The first 10 garnishes a month are free. Above that you have choice of slow garnishes and premium garnishes (36c per garnish). Email me directly for BYOK and enterprise deployments. YC, yes, I am looking for investors. This could be big. Let's do this!
redcobra762 · 3h ago
[flagged]
lifthrasiir · 3h ago
Gemini suggested some: "Seek first to understand, then to be understood", "Let go of judgment", "My goal is progress, not perfection or judgment" and so on. Sounds fine as virtue garnishes for your whisper.
redcobra762 · 3h ago
You're presupposing that this blogvertisement ought not be considered profoundly stupid.
What would my virtue garnish be if I wanted to think of this blatant attempt at shilling a book as a waste of digital space?
lifthrasiir · 3h ago
Oh, I didn't realize your OP was actually a satire. I intentionally ignored that part because well, you can always take whatever meaningful informations out of anything including stupidly apparent ads. As the other comment said, the whisper part is a well-known strategy as well.
redcobra762 · 3h ago
You genuinely read this ad and think there's something to be learned?
If I take this concept seriously for a few seconds, it's one massive exercise in begging the question. The argument boils down to "notice when you do something wrong" while simultaneously admitting that people don't do that. And the ad's advice for doing it? Do it. What?!
That's profoundly stupid as a concept, where "profoundly stupid" here is defined specifically as an argument with a clear reasoning issue.
You know one great way to stop smoking? By stopping. OP is stealing Bob Newhart's bit:
Sorry to be clear: I want to reinforce my belief that this ad you've posted is profoundly stupid.
What would my virtue garnish be for that?
mpnsk1 · 2h ago
If you want to reinforce your current beliefs do the opposite. Write nothing down. Do what comes to your mind first. You do you.
If I had a garnish that turned anything objectively stupid into something that has objective value it would probably revolutionize chain-of-thought reasoning.
If you're genuinely interested in changing your habits, I recommend investigating these therapies, as they're backed by decades of research and results.
And if you want to tune in to these "whispers" in the first place, there's really no substitute for meditation and mindfulness practice.
But the title is misleading. Sure, once you’ve built the habit of breaking bad habits, it will take 3 seconds each time. However, it will take quite a bit to build that habit
The article references Dale Carnegie. Related to that, and with much better exercises to build habits, I’d recommend the book The Charisma Myth. It addresses the type of situations mentioned in the article and a lot more, all with great step by step, habit-building exercises on each chapter
What the post describes is essentially some form of micro journaling to build a cached hashmap of the thought patterns you want your mind to have.
I certainly feel that the overall quality of hackernews has been garnished by having this drivel on the front page. Unfortunately in the second sense of the word, not the first.
As I've gotten older I've had to discard this kind of maximalist thinking with exercise and think of every workout as just a smidge more than the last, after an appropriate period of rest and recovery.
My favorite version of this is the guy who imagines a village of dwarves in his head. When he feels annoyed or angry or whatever, he imagines the "angry dwarf" making his case in front of the dwarf counsel. "We should strike back!" Then he imagines how the rest of the dwarven counsel would respond. "Ah, but this could be chance for us to practice compassion," says the compassionate dwarf. And so on. According to him he finds this very helpful.
There are quite a few but a lot of power has gone to the strategist who developed the dating coach and meditation self back in the day.
Or like I agents?
The article itself is not that bad, but it is surprising that it received nearly 50 upvotes in two hours.
Anyway, instead of buying yet another journal, `w:` could be made into a handy keyboard shortcut to open a certain file in your favorite editor so that you can write your "whisper" with current datetime. One could also LLM it to automatically provide the "garnish". And BOOM a new AI start-up! The first 10 garnishes a month are free. Above that you have choice of slow garnishes and premium garnishes (36c per garnish). Email me directly for BYOK and enterprise deployments. YC, yes, I am looking for investors. This could be big. Let's do this!
What would my virtue garnish be if I wanted to think of this blatant attempt at shilling a book as a waste of digital space?
If I take this concept seriously for a few seconds, it's one massive exercise in begging the question. The argument boils down to "notice when you do something wrong" while simultaneously admitting that people don't do that. And the ad's advice for doing it? Do it. What?!
That's profoundly stupid as a concept, where "profoundly stupid" here is defined specifically as an argument with a clear reasoning issue.
You know one great way to stop smoking? By stopping. OP is stealing Bob Newhart's bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcSAQyzPcl0
What would my virtue garnish be for that?
If I had a garnish that turned anything objectively stupid into something that has objective value it would probably revolutionize chain-of-thought reasoning.