Replacing Guilt: Minding Our Way

by Nate Soares

The goal is to address the guilt that comes from a feeling of listlessness, the vague feeling of guilt that one might get when they play video games all day, or when they turn desperately towards drugs or parties, in attempts to silence the part of themselves that whispers that there must be something else to life.This sort of guilt cannot be removed by force of will, in most people. The trick to removing this sort of guilt, I think, is to start exploring that feeling that there must be something else to life, that there must be something more to do---and either find something worth working towards, or find that there really isn't actually anything missing. This first sort of listless guilt, I think, comes from someone who wants to find something else to do, and hasn't yet.Unfortunately, addressing this sort of guilt isn't as easy as just finding a hobby. In my experience, this listless guilt tends to be found in people who have fallen into the nihilistic trap---people who either believe they can't matter, or who believe that no one can matter. It tends to be found in people who believe that humans only ever do what they want, that nothing is truly "better'' than anything else, that there is no such thing as altruism, that "morality'' is a pleasant lie---that class of beliefs is the class that I will address first, starting with the Allegory of the Stamp Collector...

Genres: Psychology, Self Help, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Personal Development, Productivity, Personal Growth

213 pages, Paperback

Published March 29, 2020

Reviews

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

pinch yourself, and remember what you are. What do you see?

I see bundles of proteins and lipids arranged in a giant colony of cells, lives given over to the implementation of a wet protein computer that thinks it's a person... Look at us, the first species among the animals that can figure out what the stars are, still tightly bound to impulse and social pressure. (Notice how silly it is, monkeys acting all serious and wise as they try to affect the course of history.)... [but still] see the lost monkey who's trying to steer an entire universe...

Consequentialism for humans. Important because it is rare for discussions of "demandingness" or "scrupulosity" to speak about specific behavioural patterns or phenomenology. (It also has the most important part of self-help, an awareness that positive advice is never universal: "remember the law of equal and opposite advice. For every piece of advice useful to one person, there is some other person who needs exactly the opposite advice.")

(I put off reading this for a whole year, and felt bad about it. So.)

He'd have you move from external motivation to intrinsic motivation because it's more sustainable, and so more effective. He's quite radical about this, ditching normal moral psychology:

the way that most people use the word "should," most of the time, is harmful. People seem to use it to put themselves in direct and unnecessary conflict with themselves... imagine the person who wakes up feeling a bit sick. They say to themselves, "ugh, I should go to the pharmacy and pick up medication before work." Now picking up meds feels like an obligation: if they don't get meds, then that's a little bit of evidence that they're incompetent, or akrasiatic, or bad... this disconnects the reason from the task, it abolishes the "why". The person feeling sick now feels like they have an obligation to pick up medication, and so if they do it, they do it grudgingly, resenting the situation... Now imagine they say this, instead: "ugh, if I went to the pharmacy to pick up medication, I'd feel better at work today."

Your true shoulds, if I could show them to you, would not look like a list of obligations. Your true shoulds would look like a recipe for building a utopia.

Many treat their moral impulses as a burden. But I say, find all the parts that feel like a burden, and drop them. Keep only the things that fill you with resolve, the things you would risk life and limb to defend.

I find it amusing that "we need lies because we can't bear the truth" is such a common refrain, given how much of my drive stems from my response to attempting to bear the truth.

"Badness" is not a fundamental property that a person can have. At best, "they're bad" can be shorthand for either "I don't want their goals achieved" or "they are untrained in a number of skills which would be relevant to the present situation"; but in all cases, "they are bad" must be either shorthand or nonsense.

Wouldn't Nietzsche in his better moods (or Laozi at any time) smile?

---

The strategy is roughly:

1. Find something to care about. (Obstacles: hiding in bed, defensive relativism or nihilism, hiding in routine.)
2. Drop all obligations and see what you still care about.
3. Build intrinsic drive (change environment, train willpower and habit)
4. Draw on the fact that the world is broken as fuel
5. See guilt as an alien concept, unnecessary for the higher goals.

An important distinction:

* Listless guilt: feeling bad because you feel you should do something with your life, but not really thinking about what.
* Specific guilt: feeling bad because of unmet obligations to a particular goal.
* Akrasia guilt: feeling bad because you're not following the endorsed plan.

---

One startling bit: some people report that following his advice has "broken" them, in the sense that guilt was indeed propping up their lives. His response is, "good":

Some people, when they stop forcing themselves to do things because they "should," will do a bit less to improve the world. They'll bow a bit less to social pressure, and insofar as the social pressure was pushing them to do what you think is good, you might count that as a loss. Some people don't care about things larger than themselves, and that's perfectly fine, and making them more resilient to social pressure might lose the world some charity.

I expect that far more charity is lost from people convincing themselves that their altruistic desires are external obligations and resenting them. I expect that most people who feel obligated to improve the world and only do it because they "should" will become much more effective if they stop forcing themselves...

You can recover from breaking a few parts of yourself, so long as you're modular rather than fragile.

(This attitude is strongly reminiscent of the person Scott Alexander is incredulous about at the end of this great, great piece, though with instrumental harm.)

I'd probably be more cautious, and advise you not to read this if you don't have lots of slack, support, and stomach for horrible facts. (Soares finds intrinsic motivation in attending to how awful the world is, how much it needs fixing.)

---

It's short but dense with interesting ideas. (e.g. the nice concise rebuttal of naive internalist egoism.)

Each post repeats its point at least three times, which I suppose is intentional pedagogy, but it made me skim a lot. Soares also often links forward to posts you haven't read yet, confusingly.

I'm not particularly guilt-ridden or scrupulous, on the scale of things, but I still found this good. Not sure I buy everything in it, but the rough method (move from vague to specific guilt, and then view the specific guilt as an external and unhelpful force in the light of your specific goal) seems sensible.

If the following worldview or prose doesn't appeal to you, it's not for you:

you will not be measured by the number of moments in which you worked as hard as you could. You will not be judged by someone rooting around in your mind to see whether you were good or bad. You will not be evaluated according to how unassailable your explanations are, for why things you couldn't possibly have prevented were the things that went wrong.

You will be measured only by what actually happens... this is the driver that takes the place of guilt... All we need to do, in any given moment, is look upon the actions available to us and take whichever one seems most likely to lead to a future full of light.

Why should we listen to self-help, unless the author has done something impressive? I don't know if you find these things impressive, but they serve.

[Teo · Rating 5 out of 5]

2018.05.01–2018.05.02,
2020.01.23–2021.03.11

2021: Many thanks to Gianluca Truda for the audio narration, freely available at https://anchor.fm/guilt

2018:

This series of 40 blog posts by Nate Soares—who is also Executive Director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)—is the most sensible thing I know to recommend on human motivation. It is specifically written to help readers replace unnecessary guilt (all of it) with intrinsic drive. These very readable posts present memorable and practical concepts that flow together into an interlinked whole, making a strong case for completely replacing guilt- or ‘should’-based action and thinking with the alternative: an intrinsic motivation system fueled by ‘seeing the dark world’, refusing to ‘tolerify’ it, and thus allowing the growth of one’s resolve to defy and to fix the unacceptable realities (from one’s own choice independent of ‘Oughtorities’).

In total, I felt this to be a very influential mix of ideas. It felt increasingly Taoist as it went on, and at around 97% the author did confirm some Taoist inspiration/parallels. At the same time it’s explicitly in the rationality / Effective Altruism memespace, dealing directly with the common problem of ‘EA guilt’. Still, I believe there’s space for anyone to find it useful even without sharing the examples of common causes of guilt that were used. This is a bunch of metacognitive tools and habits that I’ll start applying immediately to shift into a completely guilt-free motivation system—not that I should, but it seems more fun!

Highly recommended!

Readable online here.
Free and legit ePUB online here.

Contents

Soares N (2016) (05:43) Replacing Guilt Series, The

Preliminaries

01. Half-assing it with everything you've got
02. Failing with Abandon

Part I: Fighting for something

03. Replacing guilt
04. The Stamp Collector
05. You're allowed to fight for something
06. Caring about something larger than yourself
07. You don't get to know what you're fighting for

Part II: Drop your obligations

08. "Should" considered harmful
09. Not because you "should"
10. Your "shoulds" are not a duty

Part III: Half monkey, half god

11. Working yourself ragged is not a virtue
12. Rest in motion
13. Shifting guilt
14. Don't steer with guilt
15. Update from the suckerpunch
16. Be a new homunculus
17. Not yet gods
18. Where coulds go
19. Self compassion
20. There are no "bad people"
21. Residing in the mortal realm

Part IV: The dark world

22. Being unable to despair
23. See the dark world
24. Choose without suffering
25. Detach the grim-o-meter
26. Simply locate yourself
27. Have no excuses
28. Come to your terms
29. Transmute guilt into resolve
30. The best you can
31. Dark, Not Colorless

Part V: Fire within

32. Stop trying to try and try
33. There is no try
34. Obvious advice
35. The Art of Response
36. Confidence all the way up
37. Desperation
38. Recklessness
39. Defiance
40. How we will be measured

[Tarmo Pungas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible series. The best source I've found on understanding motivation. If you find yourself feeling listless guilt (feeling guilty for being "unproductive" with no specific reason), this is the place. I'll go over the book one more time and make more notes because I feel like I read through without putting the knowledge into practice. This series is free to read online and it really can be transformative. Highly recommend.

[Jiwesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not a reader or promoter of self-help books, but this series of essays swept me off my feet. A combination of structured as well as practical advice is rare as is, and this series gave me multiple epiphanies. I was prone to a lot of listless guilt, as the author calls it, where I had vague guilt for not doing anything substantial with my time. The cynical observation that nothing truly matters was not a resolution to the persistent feeling.

From encouraging the reader that there are things worth fighting for, to helping them eliminate guilt-based motivation entirely, this award-winning book provides a lot of answers.

I have sent multiple articles to multiple friends, most of whom are more ambitious than the average person, and who feel guilty when slowing down. The first essay is one of my favourites, and resonance with it, or the lack of it, would give the reader a fair idea if the series is relevant for them.

[Aditya Prasad · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is such a brilliant book I can highly recommend this to all my friends. It's a must read.

Here are some ideas from the book I found particularly compelling.

I found this frame of looking at humans including myself as monkeys and not god's as a super useful. I'm not a fallen god. I'm an ambitious monkey. We didn't evolve to handle this sort of environment. It makes sense how much struggle we have in going against our impulses


We should we way more compassionate towards ourselves. We are way more understanding towards small animals... We understand they are flawed.


Most people I know seem to sadly use guilt as a way to motivate themselves. Replacing guilt as a tool is very important.

It's important to reframe your efforts as trying to optimize your goals, be it learning, income, fun, status, etc with minimal effort. The goal isn't to keep maximizing some quality line that society throws at you. It's true that our cultures typically shame people who aren't working themselves ragged in some domain.

A common failure mode once you throw yourself into your work is we start seeing rest as a kind of reward while we should be able to rest in motion.

[Neel Nanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most valuable things I've ever read about mental health and motivation. It perfectly articulated a bunch of problems centred around motivating myself with guilt and obligation. I'd been aware on SOME level that I was doing something wrong, but this made the problem feel Much clearer to me, and this has made it much easier to make progress (though it's still far from solved!)

Key takeaways:
- Altruism doesn't have to be ultimately selfish. It is perfectly fine and consistent to have preferences about the world outside of myself and to care about those. It doesn't HAVE to boil down to "what makes me feel good"
- The core problem with guilt-based motivation is that it decouples the task from WHY I care about the task. It sets a penalty of -Infinity for not doing the task, and my motivation needs to come from THAT. Whereas, for many of my obligations, I do genuinely want to get it done. But the obligation closes me off from enjoying it
- The core problem with being a perfectionist is that I am not acknowledging the opportunity costs of my time - everything else I can do with it. This is hard to resolve by trying to not feel the pain of leaving something unfinished, as negative motivation rarely works. But I can make progress by replacing it with something positive, a drive for efficiency
- If all my guilt was removed, I still care about achieving some of my obligations. There IS intrinsic motivation there, I just need to figure out how to access it.

[Sudeep · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you enjoyed reading any of Eliezer Yudkowsky's works or found lesswrong.com articles helpful, or if you use guilt as a motivation in anyway, you'll find the Replacing Guilt Series really useful.

It talks about different kinds of motivation, and argues that guilt as a motivation is not sustainable, and often leaves people bitter. Certain self-help books are plagued with platitudes, which sound right, but can hardly change your mind. Not Replacing Guilt Series - its treatment of guilt is precise, methodical. It progressively builds its case and shows a clear vision of a motivation system which is guilt-free, but still strong and healthy.

[Shrilaxmi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is easily one of the most useful things I've read this year. Filled with simple analyses of things like motivation, guilt, and procrastination, it also has a ton of practical advice on understanding your cognition and changing it in the ways you would like to. The underlying goal was to stay sane and mentally healthy while being as productive as possible. I feel like a lot of productivity literature out there is geared towards capitalistic hustle culture but I like how here you're urged to find what you truly care about (and given concrete advice on how to do that!) before anything else. Basically, I came across a blog post called "Half-assing it with all you've got" which just so happened to be the first instalment of this series and I simply found it way too useful to not finish.

P.S. I just really love how Nate Soares' brain works. I had a few fangirl moments. He heads MIRI and is now my role model for all my autodidactic endeavours.

[Cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is an excellent book everyone should read because it has some great productivity hacks as well as address underlying motivations and guilt 👍🏻

[Gianluca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update: I found this so valuable that I got permission to make the official audiobook version, which is freely available at https://anchor.fm/guilt

I think I came across this compilation of blog posts at precisely the right time in my life. Soares' Replacing Guilt series makes for the kind of book that feels like it was written just for you. Of course, it has some imperfections and many caveats but, on the whole, this is one of the most valuable things I've ever read.

Soares is incredibly adept at writing with an accessible and motivating tone. Replacing Guilt not only points you in the right direction, but energises you to start moving forward. Until this series was recommended to me, I had no idea that it was guilt that was driving much of my self-defeating behaviour and dysphoria. I read this series daily over the course of a month and reflected on each post throughout the day. I can already notice how it's reshaped my concepts and intuitions about personal values and motivation.

I know at least a dozen people who would benefit tremendously from Replacing Guilt.
Thank you, Nate.

[Niel Bowerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

My top three takeaways:
- Don't force myself to invoke willpower. Instead set up systems so that the easiest path is for me to to do the thing I want. E.g. don't have computer games installed; use uBlocker to block the Facebook Newsfeed; etc.
- "Have-ass it with everything I've got". I was trained at school to do a great job at everything because that's how you get great grades. In the real world there's far more value in achieving a lot, rather than doing it well. I should put even more emphasis on half-assing things and getting them done fast.
-Positive motivations get you much further than negative motivations. I've been trying to shift my motivations towards thinking about the impact that I can create rather than being motivated by hitting some input goal or something like that.

[Sangeetha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the EA NYC book club pick of the month of January. I can be motivated by guilt, particularly when I think about the fortune of my circumstance. People don't deserve being born into poverty, and it's just the luck of the draw that I didn't. I like that Nate distinguishes between a feeling of listlessness and specific guilt, that he questions the purpose of guilt overall, and that he provides examples of techniques we can use to build new cognitive patterns. I can take pride in what I do and how I contribute to the world. I can question whether I'm doing the right things. I can try different approaches. But I don't need to feel like a "good" or "bad" person if I don't get the outcome I expect. The biggest takeaway for me was: the point of life isn't to be "good" or "bad". The point of life is to try to leave the world a little better than we found it. May we all find ways to do so, however big or small.

[Corwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good. Lots of interesting frameworks and ideas. I liked a lot.

Separating out the effective altruism stuff, the motivations and emotions and describing certain feelings and drivers and suggestions was incredibly helpful. Daoist streams. Choosing self-reliance over hopelessness. The difference between the thing and our conception of the thing. Naive philosophers. The point of My Hero not gaining the lady's respect and that it doesn't matter. Before the start. Getting out of your brain. Letting go. Starting afresh. Making sure you are incorporating rest into your streams of goals. The journey before the destination. Ensuring that you aren't thinking of things as shoulds and instead a win win. Don't take damage.

It's not how hard you work. (It is how hard you work). It's how much you do that you will be measured on. (It's how much you learn while you are doing). Negative motivations, nihilism, blinders.

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would have given it 6 stars if it were possible! Absolutely brilliant and a huge source of motivation for me.

[isaac smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with another reviewer who found the beginning of the book a bit slow. And, the metaphors didn't quite hit the mark. The focus seemed a bit scattered. But, as I kept reading, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Soares has practical (practicable) advice for guilt and procrastination. While Soares has the typical tone of Bay Area evolutionary psychology and hustle culture, he crushes a number of today’s popular man-o-sphere opinions—even if he is not trying to.

He does better than Marcus Aurelius’ advice that—if you don’t think you’re hurt, then you’re not hurt since “hurt” is psychological. He does better than misguided Nietzschean adolescents, caught up on “The Gay Science” and “The Will to Power”. He does better than the Objectivist Randians who read “Atlas Shrugged” and now believe that benevolence is hurting both human progress and flourishing. He even does better than typical advice (sometimes even directly refuting the ideas—if not the authors) like Pomodoro, cost-benefit t-charts, eating the frog, 4-hour work week, and all of that nonsense. It is closer to Paterson's “How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use” than it is to Clear’s “Atomic Habits”.

My initial interest for the past few weeks has been about "Half-assing it with everything you've got" which often comes into conversation with Anna Salamon’s article, “The correct response to uncertainty is *not* half-speed”, where sometimes, we face a situation where two different actions seem sensible based on different ideas, leaving us unsure which idea is correct—but as a result, we end up taking a half-speed action, even if it doesn't make sense under either idea. I’ll leave the review of the "Half-assing it with everything you've got" in a note below. It’s idea is that—you should be minimizing effort for the goal you want, where putting in effort to get an A grade in a class is wasteful if you just want and need to pass the class.

Each chapter or essay boils down a slight twist on a usually problematic idea from self-help or from business management. This is stuff like: Put in your best effort, even if it's for a mediocre result. Don't give up just because you fall short; strive for improvement. Care about the world beyond yourself and fight for change. Embrace values over fleeting emotions and resolve inner conflicts. You may not always know what you're fighting for, but you can still make a difference.

But, in the right light, and even without the need for excessive generosity, there is something to be learned. There is not a shortcut to Soares’ presentation of his opinions without reading his book (or reading these as his blog posts).

1. Minimize effort for the precisely hitting the results you want instead of wasting time, energy, and focus on overachieving.
2. Embrace progress despite falling short of goals; don't abandon effort at the first setback.
3. Engage with both external and internal worlds; caring extends beyond personal interests.
4. Transform vague guilt into specific action by recognizing and addressing injustices.
5. Navigate conflicts between emotions and deeper values; prioritize meaningful pursuits.
6. Clarify values amidst uncertainty; urgent global issues demand action.
7. Avoid the limiting impact of 'should'; focus on benefits and practical outcomes instead.
8. Decisions are best made by evaluating options, not by following 'shoulds'. Rejecting 'shoulds' often leads to more effective and sustainable help.
9. Genuine obligations feel like opportunities, not burdens. True 'shoulds' are privileges that align with one's sense of right.
10. Long-term productivity outweighs daily exhaustion. Thoughtful effort allocation enhances overall productivity.
11. Tasks are never truly finished, and contentment lies in steady, sustainable activity, not in idleness.
12. Refinement of guilt entails converting vague guilt into specific actions.
13. Manage guilt effectively by questioning its purpose and targeting specific actions. Implement science, not guilt, to address recurring behaviors.
14. Immediately update from immediate guilt but release lingering regrets. Differentiate between useful and unnecessary guilt.
15. Adopt a fresh perspective during guilt by imagining a new start. Analyze behaviors and thought patterns to mitigate future regrets and avoid sunk-cost fallacies.
17. Recognize limitations and avoid self-blame for not achieving impossible standards. Decisions reflect constraints, not infinite willpower.
18. Foster self-compassion by imagining your actions from a parental perspective. Self-compassion entails understanding without self-pity or excuses, acknowledging humanity's limitations.
19. Challenge the notion of inherent 'goodness' or 'badness' in individuals. Explore underlying beliefs when feeling labeled as 'bad', akin to questioning 'shoulds'.
20. Focus on achieving goals and shaping the future rather than pursuing abstract notions of 'being good'.
21. Recognize that 'doing nothing' is still an active choice among many responses. Embrace possibilities rather than despair.
22. Combat tolerification by confronting harsh realities without rationalizations. Use 'what if' questions to reduce tolerance and motivate action.
23. In challenging choices, seek third alternatives and assistance. If forced to choose between bad and worse outcomes, choose without unnecessary suffering.
24. Utilize the grim-o-meter to tackle immediate tasks. Adjust intensity based on work demands, not external circumstances.
26. Reject excuses, even when valid, to foster accountability and improvement.
27. Confront worst-case scenarios to grasp their finite costs and alleviate exaggerated fears.
28. Transform guilt into resolve by acknowledging suffering and injustice, using it as motivation for positive change.
29. Accept limitations and aim for the best possible action rather than seeking total victory.
30. Embrace the darkness of reality without losing sight of its depth and complexity.
31. Amidst darkness, recognize the world's potential for improvement, dispelling feelings of meaninglessness.
32. Reframe efforts from vague "trying" to concrete actions, focusing on tasks and problem-solving.
33. Prioritize obvious steps before making decisions, considering past successes and seeking assistance.
34. Approach challenges by focusing on problem-solving and effective responses.
35. Identify instances of unproductive flailing and develop effective responses, such as using a checklist.
36. Embrace confidence in reasoning processes and adapt despite flawed models, embodying "confidence all the way up."
37. Explore the concept of desperation as a driving force for fervent commitment to worthwhile causes.
38. Embrace defiance as a response to injustice, rejecting wrong and broken states of the world and striving for change.
39. Our measurement lies not in effort or justification strength but in tangible outcomes and how our actions shape the future.

It is a resource even more regrettable than LessWrong, but Effective Altrusim forum user, Akash, has chapter summaries and a “tier list” where he describes his S tier chapters in more depth. A summary of every Replacing Guilt post — EA Forum


Notes

Here’s the initial review of "Half-assing it with everything you've got"
The pursuit of effective altruism often involves leveraging guilt and shame to drive positive change, but these emotions can also hinder productivity and lead to procrastination. Instead, it's crucial to explore alternative motivators. Take the example of a college student with a paper due: societal pressure often pushes for maximum effort, but this approach can lead to inefficiency. Rather than being a slacker or a try-hard, focus on understanding your true goal and aiming for the quality target with minimum effort. Efficient action involves identifying the minimum standard for success and aligning effort with purpose, whether it's passing a class or saving a life. It's essential to balance the energy invested in pursuits with the resources needed to sustain them, recognizing when to prioritize other tasks or goals. Even lofty objectives like building an intergalactic civilization require efficient allocation of effort to maintain balance and avoid burnout.
The pursuit of effective altruism often involves leveraging guilt and shame to drive positive change, but these emotions can also hinder productivity and lead to procrastination. Instead, it's crucial to explore alternative motivators. Take the example of a college student with a paper due: societal pressure often pushes for maximum effort, but this approach can lead to inefficiency. Rather than being a slacker or a try-hard, focus on understanding your true goal and aiming for the quality target with minimum effort. Efficient action involves identifying the minimum standard for success and aligning effort with purpose, whether it's passing a class or saving a life. It's essential to balance the energy invested in pursuits with the resources needed to sustain them, recognizing when to prioritize other tasks or goals. Even lofty objectives like building an intergalactic civilization require efficient allocation of effort to maintain balance and avoid burnout.
In the pursuit of real-world solutions, it's important to hit quality targets with minimal effort, recognizing that time and attention are valuable resources. Distinguishing between implicit quality lines and personal preferences helps avoid the planning fallacy and overconfidence. The slacker objection questions the value of pursuing minimal passing grades quickly, suggesting that if tasks feel meaningless, leaving may be best. The tryer objection stems from perfectionism but can be managed by focusing on efficient strategies and learning from mistakes rather than fixating on high-quality outcomes. Balancing quality and effort requires making irreversible decisions and breaking free from external expectations to foster intrinsic motivation. The dichotomy between the slacker and tryer mindsets highlights the need to explore personal targets over societal norms for effective action.
In problem-solving, people often fall into two modes: doing the minimum to avoid trouble or giving their all. Many switch between these modes, excelling in some areas while coasting in others. Stories often portray slackers excelling in unexpected areas, perpetuating the idea that adopting arbitrary quality standards makes one a good person. Few aim for the middle ground, preferring to either barely meet standards or strive for excellence. Reject this dichotomy and focus on your true preferences: succeeding without wasted effort. Embrace both slacker and tryer tendencies by aiming for the minimum necessary target and reaching it efficiently. If you lose sight of success, pause and remember your true goals.

https://open.substack.com/pub/coconif...

[Gerrit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This essay-series has the goal of restructuring one's motivation scheme in such a way that negative emotions, guilt in particular, become irrelevant.
Apart from that, its sparkling of wisdom and the author is brilliant. 11/10 would recommend it, reading it in a slow pace one essay at a time.

"Guilt was made for us, not us for it. Guilt is useful only insofar as it helps you wrest yourself from the wrong path. If you're already walking the path you want to walk, if you're working on becoming kinder, or more generous, or psychologically stronger, or wealthier, or smarter, if you're already moving as fast as you can given your current constraints, then the fact that the world is still hurting and you aren't strong enough to fix things yet is no reason for guilt.

You are a mortal, who often struggles to follow their own will, and your actions set the course of the entire future. Instead of berating yourself for your shortcomings, figure out how to do the best you can *given* the shortcomings — sometimes by spending time and effort to fix them (mere willpower seldom suffices), and sometimes by taking them as given and working around them.

Guilt has no place among mortals: we already know we're fallible. We don't need to suffer over that fact: our failings provide only information about what to do next, if we want to steer the future." (Nate Soares, Removing Guilt Series)



Other quotes:

"I don't like that solution, as it requires an application of willpower, and in general, any solution that requires an application of willpower is a stopgap, not a remedy. I much prefer solutions that get all of myself onto the same page, including the parts that make distracting arguments so they can shovel more food into my mouth while I'm not looking.
A problem isn't solved until it's solved automatically, without need for attention or willpower." (Nate Soares, Removing Guilt Series)

"I have found that it's usually in the moment when I refuse to make excuses even if I do fail, that I start really trying to win in advance." (Nate Soares, Removing Guilt Series)

"Working yourself ragged is not a virtue. You don't get extra points for effort. In fact, you lose points for effort: effort is costly; spend it only to purchase better outcomes. The goal is not to appear to be working hard, the goal is to improve the world. Sometimes you do need to push yourself to the limit, but before you do, acknowledge the costs and weigh the tradeoffs, while keeping your long-term goals in view.
We're not yet gods. We're still apes. Remember to pay attention to the distance you need to cover, and remember to pay attention to yourself." (Nate Soares, Removing Guilt Series)

"Rest in Motion: The work that needs to be done is not a finite list of tasks, it is a neverending stream. Clothes are always getting worn down, food is always getting eaten, code is always in motion. The goal is not to finish all the work before you; for that is impossible. The goal is simply to move through the work. Instead of struggling to reach the end of the stream, simply focus on moving along it." (Nate Soares, Removing Guilt Series)

"As it turns out, you can do the right thing after missing the initial target! Just promise yourself that you'll allow yourself to do the right thing, no matter how late.
I have found that there is significant power in signalling to myself that I'm willing and able to do the thing that I want to do, no matter how futile it may seem; that I'm willing to get as close to the target as possible even if I've already missed it. This prevents me from the impulse to "fail with abandon" in the first place." (Nate Soares, Removing Guilt Series)

"Your preferences are not "move rightward on the (artificial) quality line of grades." Your preferences are to hit your specific quality target with minimum effort.
If you're trying to pass the class, then pass it with minimum effort. Anything else is wasted motion.
If you're trying to ace the class, then ace it with minimum effort. Anything else is wasted motion.
Remember what you're fighting for. Always deploy your full strength, in order to hit your quality target as fast as possible.
Half-ass everything, with everything you've got." (Nate Soares, Removing Guilt Series)

"So this week's advice is obvious advice, but useful nonetheless: find a way to gain a reflex to actually do all the obvious preparation and checking, before undertaking a new task or making a big decision.
This advice becomes stronger the further you extend the number of obvious actions: 5-minute brain storming for alternatives, asking someone for advice, pro/con list, being aware of biases, noise and social reflexes.
I still often find this advice useful myself: when my attention slips, I am often helped by someone just asking me to consider the obvious — "what would make the task less dreadful?" or "have you thought for five minutes about alternatives?" or "have you considered delegating this?" and so on.
Much of my advice for how to manage guilt was generated by this very process, by me imagining feeling guilty, and then imagining which obvious things I'd try to do to engage with the feeling. _I would ask myself questions like "what is the cause of this feeling?" and "how is it being useful to me?" and "is there a better way I can achieve those goals?" and I would spend time listening to myself and brainstorming options_, because those are all the obvious ways to address the problem." (Nate Soares, Removing Guilt Series)

Define what exactly you are doing instead of just 'trying':
"Try" is a useful word, but saying that you're "trying" to do something is a high level description, and it can often hide some very silly behaviors, like "sitting around staring at the problem waiting for enough time to pass that I can give up without losing face."
Describe what you're doing on the level of granularity where at each step you describe, it would be silly to say you were "trying" at that step, in the same way it would be silly to say that you wake up and try to dress yourself — describe your actions on a level of granularity where each step is definitely something you're doing, rather than trying.
As such, I recommend, as an exercise, spending a few weeks refusing to use the word 'try'. This can help you train yourself to notice the difference between "trying" as in taking intelligent, concrete, fruitful actions; versus "trying" as in waiting for enough time to pass that you can safely say "well I tried."

[Quinn Dougherty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely phenomenal. Would have been 5 stars if I read it when I was younger and hadn't independently derived some of its lessons. Must-read. I might read again if I'm finding that I haven't sufficiently internalized certain parts of it.

[Sandy Maguire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, inspiring read about kicking your life into gear. The advice didn't really resonate with me, but the attitudes towards life certainly did. Nate is an extremely motivating sort of dude.

[Benno Krojer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and helpful but sneakily too much imposing his own world views while assuring people he doesn't

[Tristan Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

With the number of people who had found this series helpful, it was already set that I would read it, further decided by reading the Half Assing it With Everything You've Got post while in college and finding it to be really, really well written.

Yet I struggled to get into it on my first attempt. The first section brought little that felt relevatory or insightful to me, and I stopped there before reading on.

This second time around, I found the second section dabbled in psychology in a way that felt too quick or underdeveloped. Dropping "should"s is a really powerful argument, but there's not much in the way of guidance as to how one actually would implement this in their life. "Stop saying should" and other recommendations as such would seem to speak to an audience that has full control over their emotions and leads their life from reasoning outwards. I'm sure carrying such a principle into my life can help reduce how much I use should, but I think it fails to address the shoulds that develop from a more emotional side, the shoulds which guide me towards competing priorities within myself which must be resolved. But maybe I'm also failing to internalize something here, or imagining should in a distinct way.

Generalizing throughout the rest, I suppose I find a lot of the ideas here agreeable and sensible, but don't really see the way I lead my life changing much as a result from having encountered them. Perhaps that's because I'm already closer towards some of these positions that the target audience, or perhaps it's because there aren't sufficient day to day examples or stories which bring these principles to life.

That being said, Working Yourself Ragged Is Not a Virtue, Rest in Motion, Be a New Homonuculus, Where Coulds Go, Detach the Grim-O-Meter, and Stop Trying to Try and Try are sections which presented something new which I found valuable, or further reinforced convictions I already had in some sense. All of those I think are well worth the read.

[Je Qin Chooi]

Good read for people who have internalized the philosophy of effective altruism (and if they are wondering if it was for better or for worse, certainly I was). Sticking points for me:

- Helping people makes us feel good, but we shouldn't guilt-trip ourselves that we are helping others *because* of the feel-good feeling. Instead, we can *choose* to have the goal of helping others, independent of what we feel, and *then* be encouraged by the helpful fact that we are wired to feel good when helping people.
- Minimum effort to achieve a goal. No more no less. Consequentialist thinking. Don't do something just to hit an arbitrary goal that probably you didn't choose for yourself (e.g. striving to be perfect on a chore). Similarly, don't put in effort to "shoot your shot", but rather put in a calculated effort that maximizes the expected return (i.e. be conscious about why you are putting effort, and how much). A recurrent quote: "you will not be measured by the number of moments in which you worked as hard as you could. You will be judged only by what actually happened (as will we all)"

Writing style is definitely very EA Forum/LessWrong-ish, and I'm not sure that this book is not a memetic hazard (quote: "Over the last few months, three different people have informed me that I broke their motivation system") so this book really depends on what you take away from it. I will give it 5 stars for the dozen or so nuggets of wisdom I found for myself in this book which are helpful and eerily relatable, which aside from the above, includes observations on "trying", on failing, on effort and rest, and seeing past life as a social status game hardwired into our brain and instead as seeing ourselves as modern humans building the world into a better place. (By modern humans, I mean our generation in the 21st century, that of no historical precedent has this abundance of prosperity and freedom and technology, incl our parents and grandparents)

[Naveen]

Would highly recommend reading; it basically gives some mental framing exercises that makes you get rid of thought patterns based in extrinsic motivation, like "I should xyz", and replace them with intrinsic motivation, i.e., "I want to xyz".

As someone who has had executive function issues in the past, one of my biggest realizations from reading this is that "being at rest" isn't the optimal state of being - i.e. you aren't "taking damage" every time you do things. We're happiest when, from moment to moment, we're doing things we want to do - in some cases, that might mean relaxing, but in some cases, that might mean doing interesting things. I think part of my executive function issues came from believing that I *should* be at rest in order to "maximize" my happiness in a utilitarian sense (in practice this would look like lying in bed and scrolling Reddit). In reality this was just a form of choice-supportive bias (“I spend hours on social media, therefore it must mean that I enjoy it”).

Kind of echoing Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, the ebook recommends that you force yourself to face the worst-case possible outcome and outline what would realistically happen if you're worried about something and avoiding taking action. Soares claims this works because then you are no longer imagining the worst-case outcome as infinitely bad, but rather as finitely bad - and our brains can plan and engage with things that are finitely bad.

So far I've been way more intrinsically motivated since reading this and mostly stopped avoiding work. But I'll update in a few months or so to assess whether the book has had a lasting impact.

[Arthur Conmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The value of a life" https://mindingourway.com/the-value-o... had quite a strong effect on me two years back when I first got into Effective Altruism. It's just one blog post in this series, and probably my favourite of them all, still.

The audiobook is quite intense. It's difficult not to see the similarities to The Sequences (readthesequences.com), also front shelf rationality reading by a MIRI theoretical AI safety researcher, about their worldview. I think the "life advice" is probably better than the sequences here, but the life advice in the sequences is just one part.

I think the author should spend more time justifying that guilt-based motivation decreases productivity and/or limits worldview. I'm not sure how much to weight the importance of this compared to other life advice, hence it's difficult to make the advice actionable compared to everything else one can do (start meditating / work more / work less / ...).

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’ve read or practice stoicism, if you find yourself caught in pretense, if you have bouts of anxiety or grim tolerance, this beautiful book will have high impact. Consider it a game theory handbook for being in your head.

For me I’ve noticed that “buckling down” has been having fewer returns both in outcomes and good feelings. Knowing this I’ve started quitting and saying ‘no.’ And while I’m quite good at sorting present-past, present and future present, this book has alleviated a lot of suffering. It comes at a time when my coaching activities needed these amazing distinctions. Turns out, guilt is a force in all our lives. And we can use it without manipulating ourselves.

[Panashe M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, a lot of very clear, actionable advice here about replacing guilt as the basis of your motivational system. I imagine that Yudkowsky's binned Art of Rationality would have been quite similar, this reminds me of Rationality: From AI to Zombies. I haven't implemented the advice within yet. If I do, and find it personally effective, I'll add the fifth star.

[Nadvornix · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a need for a good self-help for people who are highly motivated to do good. I think one is popular because it is first one, not the best one. Good ideas are better said elsewhere, novel ideas seemed half-baked.
Good was theory about how to be equanimous with what one has done and still be highly motivated to help in the world. By novel ideas I mean techniques and connection of this theory to EA. I believe that this is very useful for Nate and some people, but it seems somewhat half-baked compared to other psychotherapeutic/spiritual books.

[Silver · Rating 1 out of 5]

I went into this book with one big question: "How?" How do I do the things I want to do? How do I work? What is the framework or series of steps I can do to achieve the things I want?

In short, this blog/book did not answer that question. It spent a lot of time discussing the how to think about worthwhile actions and why to do them but I didn't see a single entry explaining how.
I read about half the posts and skimmed through the rest and overall, I did not find what I was looking for here.

[Aayush Kucheria · Rating 5 out of 5]

From now on, this is probably the only book I would recommend about productivity or motivation. Written from a rationalist perspective, Nate recommends us to dig into why we feel what we feel or do what we do - and then tinker around at the root level.

As abstract as it sounds, I can safely say that for one I've been able to significantly remove guilt from my motivation system (2 months and counting) and I'm very glad about it. So that's one rough data point for you.

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soares puts into words techniques to literally rid yourself of guilt and replace it with a healthier motivation system. I particularly appreciated the fifth arc, as it gave me the most new ideas, and felt the least drawn-out; many of the earlier essays felt like they were over-explaining rather intuitive concepts.

[Jibby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super interesting perspectives. While I certainly don't take the text as inerrant (the series itself openly advises readers not to), it does have a lot of wisdom and thought-provoking ideas. Definitely worth the read for anyone interested in mindset/motivation techniques especially if you are into altruism. I found it very moving at times; there were a lot of emotional moments.