I think what’s going on behind the verbal sleight of hand here, is focusing on the process (quest) instead of the outcome (goal). It’s the difference between doing a thing and having done a thing. I might enjoy having written a book, but I don’t think I would enjoy writing a book. And I don’t think calling it a quest instead of a goal would make much difference
I am generally skeptical of systems that apparently mostly rely on the methodology of "call this thing another name and you'll change your approach to it". This thing works because there's a community / group session around it, but it would probably still work even if you just called goals - goals.
A different name offers a different perspective, because of all the associations with the name. Problems that are hard to solve are often hard because we're stuck on a particular perspective as to how to solve them. Reframing with new associations is a way to gain a new perspective, to look at the problem differently, to gain insight that you previously did not have. This is an extremely common and effective problem solving technique.
just bad unreproduceable psychology research. there is zero proof of this. we actually have examples going the other way though.
the idea that changing the words used can change your ideas about something is a weak form of the sapir whorf hypothesis, which is close to universally panned in stronger forms and highly suspect in weaker forms except in pop psychology.
pinker called a similar idea - changing a word to avoid previous negative connotations - the euphemism treadmill: from retarded to handicapped to disabled to differetly abled, but never changed anybodies views. they just carried them over. its because language is a reflection of our inner thoughts, not the other way around.
That's weird because I find value in using this technique in both personal and creative contexts, and these kinds of reframes are used all the time in therapy, in school, with parents talking to their kids, etc.
Perhaps the finer points of those studies are not applicable to the topic at hand, which is an individuals strategy to gain new perspective on their own problems, rather than the nth-order effects of proxy words in culture, or researcher's anthropological interpretations and comparisons of languages effect on worldviews across extremely different cultures.
I get that it's a popular topic on HN to point out the replicability crisis in psych research, but the nature of the beast of a high level / subjective / messy subject like human psychology is that you have to be extremely precise about what you're testing and what conclusions you draw, or you're at risk of generalizing beyond the data. What you've cited has surface level similarity to the topic at hand, but is quite different in the specifics.
Plus it doesn't even stand up to the sniff test - language impacts us. Words impact us. The subtleties of how language is used can have profound effects on how we live our lives. Haven't you ever read a beautiful sentence over and over, or marinated in an obscure word and all its intricacies? This is a common sense proposition.
I second this. I could have said I "agreed" with this, but to "second" this conveys something different. Or rather, from my intent it seems to convey X but maybe you receive it as Y.
The challenge I find with so much language is the vast number of associations we carry with words and how connotations can vary so extremely even amongst people who "have the same background."
One of the best descriptions I heard for language I think was written by James Pennebaker talking about expressive writing and how words were basically putting a digital categorization onto an analog signal of experience.
Words are not very precise and are often very relative approximations that require so much negotiation to reach shared meaning. Some will read "quests," as I did, and immediately think of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and feel a bit goofy and have a hard time saying "I'm going on a quest" seriously. Others will feel excited and maybe encouraged to see it that way. Others might be annoyed because they love the word "goals" and have built their brands and careers around the word "goals." At the same time, with repeated usage of the word "quests," even my emotional reactions to it may change and I start to embrace the word with more seriousness.
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just bad unreproduceable psychology research. there is zero proof of this. we actually have examples going the other way though.
For example, I read something like this and in my head, I often reframe it. I read "just bad unreproduceable psychology research" as "I do not trust the research you are quoting because I think it is not reproduceable." I read "there is zero proof of this" as "I have not seen any proof of this or do not believe any proof exists." I read "we actually have examples going the other way though" as "I have seen examples that seem to dispute what you are saying."
The way it was originally written, in terms of word choice, seemed to describe to me an objective truth in the universe, whereas the reframe I applied shows more of a relative belief that you may have. That's not to say your beliefs are not the capital T truth, but rather for me to feel less angry when someone tells me "how the world is" and to try to see the world from their perspective and learn from it.
I have a different take. A pet peeve of mine is give things a good name and define what you mean by it. A good name is as much as possible self-explaining. Quest rhymes well with adventure, detours, heroism,... the word itself tends to create the mindset that the author wants you to have.
Quest rhymes with mindless grinding in my mind, go there fetch this, kill that, get the gold or the item, rinse repeat. It’s the opposite of fresh and process focused in my mind. Better yet is define our work as trips (like psychedelic) where the outcome is unknown until the end and the expectations are malleable. Goals and quests are both corporate nerd speak and make me sick.
This view ignores the importance of, and empirical data around, psychosemantics.
Additionally as others touched on, a precise vocabulary or nomenclature allows us to be precise about our intentions and gives us a framework for making decisions.
"Quest" orients you around the journey instead of the destination, which can have many benefits.
It helps to not consider this, or any other technique, as one-size-fits-all doctrine. I personally have always considered myself very goal-oriented, but this article allowed me to understand things from a different angle and realize that I'm actually much more process-oriented. This will help me make future decisions around projects when planning them out and accounting for the need for sustained motivation.
Names matter. Subtle differences in perception change your stance in approaching and interpreting the thing. Like "violin" vs "fiddle", or "assertive" vs "aggressive".
See also: nonviolent communication
Your interpretation is inaccurate. It was not about calling it differently and it will become something else kind of message, but to look at the things you do differently so you'd have a chance doing differently eventually, doing what is important at last.
Some (quite a few actually) need specific tags and title on everything so this assign very specific words to matters having different composition for everyone works for them, this is a typical way of relaying ideas to masses (regrettably). But the message is not what words to use but how to do things. We only can speak - exchange ideas and information - about things with words, unfortunately. Well, some can dance specific ideas and todo list to each other, but that is just freak exception. We use words for thoughts.
Is a type of gamification which could work for some like this fella
Don't be skeptical. Be inquisitive.
And make that change because I, a stranger on the Internet told you to. Also pay for my woo training!
/s
I think it's subtly insightful because a goal focuses us on the endpoint and a quest focuses us on the journey that we need to undertake to get there. But to each his or her own!
I don’t think it’s any secret that learning a new language has the effect of remapping the neurons of your brain, and we already know that we associate a lot with words, not just their meanings but what they mean to us.
I don’t think there’s been sufficient research in this area really but I also don’t think that’s enough in itself to downplay it as woo.
If the word “quest” doesn’t conjure images in your mind of a long winding journey with pitfalls and successes that eventually lands you in a place where you’ve achieved a goal and also changed as a person, maybe just use the word in your vocabulary that _does_ conjure those images and see if you feel the same way.
It's about changing your mindset and how you approach your goal/quest
I've always found it interesting that when people encounter challenges and roadblocks when playing a game like Dungeons and Dragons, they are energized and sometimes even relieved the game is not too easy. But when encountering setbacks in work the default is to get frustrated.
I'm pretty sure it's not the type of challenge that differs. In DnD a lot of the challenges are logistical in nature or some kind of interpersonal conflict.
My take is that the main difference is perceived risk / perceived high stakes. In a game you are in a circle of safety, so you don't get as stressed about roadblocks - whereas if you perceive negative consequences for failing to reach a goal in real life, then any obstacle looks like a survival threat and the anxiety about failing distracts from fully engaging with the challenge. As an example outside of work: if you're playing DnD and the DM says: "the bartender gives you a rude look" you are intrigued and curious. If a waiter in real life gives you a rude look, most of our brain's will at least temporarily go into ego threat mode and fall into a default of freezing, leaving or arguing back. We will be distracted, bothered, and generally the opposite of open-minded and curious. My point is not whether these are ideal responses but to note how differently our brains respond in a situation where there is actually minimal risk, but our brain perceives high risk because of outdated programming. Another example in the other direction: people can easily start taking games too seriously and become ego-attached to the goal, and the same brain response occurs. These extreme examples strongly suggest that it is the perceived threat rather than actual threat that drive our responses, and perception can often be very out of whack with reality and inhibit effective problem solving.
For most people in most work challenges, the actual survival threat from obstacles is small. Our brains massively overexaggerate it because we evolved in a context where most problems (especially social ones) actually were life-threatening. I would even say that in cases where survival (or your income) is threatened by an obstacle, downregulating the fear/threat response will usually improve your chances of finding a solution. Negative emotions narrow attention, draw us inward and prevent both mental flexibility and engagement with the world, which make solving difficult problems much harder.
To summarize: given how much more inherently motivating it is to work on challenges that are similar in nature to the ones we procrastinate on in life, it seems worthwhile to try to downregulate our evolved fear/threat response when encountering obstacles.
I wonder how much of it has to do with the reward. In D&D you get experience points, gain levels, get powerful magic items, etc. There is generally immediate positive feedback when you accomplish a goal or overcome an obstacle in the game world. But in real life, most times the only reward is that the obstacle has been cleared.
In the work environment this is where talking and praising becomes important again in my opinion. Acknowledgement of achievements, even very small ones by colleagues, managers etc has its purpose.
Agree that games design for immediate feedback and visual, tangible rewards. I think this is a big part of it.
For many, it depends what kind of setback it is. A technical problem can be intriguing and challenging in a good way. People problems or red tapey stuff can be frustrating(or vice versa depending on roles).
I am a weird person and for me thinking about the ultimate outcome (death) helps. Cannot be avoided, only procrastinated, but not by much and with great cost. Also the realization of my insignificance helps too. If I was not here, I was not born, if I did not turn that corner in my life, all the people in my surroundings would do very very similarly. Not the same but likely along the same trajectory. Similar good, similar bad. Have friends, child, colleague, husband. Someone was achieving in my place what I achieved. There are rare examples in history for exceptions, but even if my unique gift for humanity achievement was missing, the humanity was doing well anyway (we surely had one off people like Einstein or Taylor Swift - hehe - wasted yet here we are, we cope without that some way we call our precious life).
No point tiptoing around my precious life because it is so boringly ordinary that it exists in the billions. It is fragile, a little miracle in fact, so better not waste it by taking too big risks but not risking it by putting it into a protective case and put in a guarded corner for show either. Risk it, so not to risking it becoming too insignificant. Insignificant not for the crowds and social media outlets but for yourself! Bad things will hapen to cautious and not that cautious people alike. At least at and around the end. Better not wasting the time until then by putting us in a comfort cage.
Nothing new was said here actually, with different words this was told a million times perhaps, yet, it needs to be repeated.
How to down regulate the threat response?
You're being either naive or disingenuous.
If you die or fail in DnD, it just makes up for a story, there's no actual impact to your life, no consequence.
Setbacks at work could absolutely have a real consequence. Indirectly making it harder to get a promotion, bonus, better QoL at work, etc.
I agree that one should be used to challenges and avoid becoming stressed due to work but saying "you get excited when you encounter a problem in a game" is just ridiculous. The game is designed to tweak that obstacle to be just enough and you can always turn it off and go back to your life.
A problem in your actual life is not the same. Life is not a game.
For most people in most work challenges, the actual survival threat from obstacles is small.
It's all fun and games until someone from HR reaches out to you for "a quick call".
The difference is, in games like DnD the risk is effectively zero because you’re dedicating time and resources to the game for your enrichment
In all other cases it’s a challenge that you don’t want, and impedes time and resources for desired enriching activities
So the former is growth, the latter is stagnation
I can't engage with this now. I'm a big GTD user because of my ADHD, I don't trust myself so I use the GTD system as a big crutch.
I pattern match "Quests" in TFA to "projects" in GTD, and "goals" in TFA to "3-5 horizon + someday/maybe list", I don't have time to give nuanced thought to this, but I'm posting my hot take that this looks like a useful tactical method to help oneself take projects off of your someday/maybe lists and work on them, but does not fully address how to make the time.
Wait, no, it probably does, but I'm already running over my break time so I'm leaving this comment here as an anchor to come back and review after work.
I thought I had ADHD but then I got tested and I have high functioning autism
What kind of tools / treatments have you used / learned afterwards to deal with your ADHD like symtoms?
I’m actually super organized and can hyperfocus.
I have emotional regulation issues. Abilify (medication), yoga, and running. Those keep me centered, reduce my (embarrassing) adult tantrums.
Social skills are the hardest part for me. I can read emotions but trying to understand people’s motivations is as complex as tracking bugs for me. It just doesn’t come naturally.
tl;dr exercise tho
I feel this comment in my soul. If you have any recommendations for resources on general project/life management, please feel free to share.
In my quest (ahaha) to not spend my days doing life management system bingo, I've settled on GTD tried mostly flat out the past few years.
However, I have recently looked into Zen To Done, and while I see it as Insufficient because I've already put in the GTD work, I think it could be a lower-effort potentially-close-enough alternative method to getting to the GTD Mind Like Water state.
"I don't trust myself" stop saying that to yourself and you will trust yourself more, especially if you reinforce that feeling with reparative action.
I think you're looking to much at the practice, and too little at the framing.
The point is not that the structure of a quest works better. The point is that the framing of a quest works better. It inspires, it acknowledges there will be adversity, and thus makes adversity feel like much less of a setback.
Same here! Most of my life is in Omnifocus specifically (GTD-focused todo app), and I structure the projects like the quests this author mentions. I have to make them gut-feeling boolean checks if that makes sense. "Declutter the house" is perfect, because I know when it's decluttered: when I feel like it is. If I get too specific, there's pretty much 0% chance I'm going to honestly complete it with any sort of accuracy to that goal.
Also, hope you had a good day at work!
Still, the tendency is to wait for a better, less cluttered stretch of time to appear before you do that. You will execute your great plans as soon as life becomes a little easier and more spacious than it is now.
This is exactly backwards. Forming and achieving aspirations is how life gets easier and more spacious.
Whoever thinks this is good advice has an extremely easy life. Most people have literally no slack time at all. You're supposed to execute your great plans in the 1 hour per day you have after work, commute, taking care of family, and occasionally taking care of yourself? The hour in which you are deeply exhausted? If that doesn't sound like you, congratulations: you have an easy life.
So the real advice is the same as all life advice under the hood: just be born into privilege.
Do you really think there’s no upward mobility for someone not born into privilege?
A lot less than most people seem to think. By far the best predictor of someone's wealth is their parents' wealth. By very far. The vast majority of wealth is generational.
But even if you believe in upward mobility, the point is that needs to happen first before you possibly have time, energy, and money to devote to your passions. It's not backward; if you'd argue "no, succeeding in your passions is what enables upward mobility", then you (A) are thinking of a very small subset of highly marketable passions, and (B) have identified the catch-22 that makes upward mobility so uncommon.
Do you happen to have any studies to back this up? It makes sense that parental wealth would be one of the strongest predictors of wealth, but I know of at least one study that has demonstrated that 79% of millionaires did not receive any inheritance from their parents.
Source: https://www.ramseysolutions.com/retirement/the-national-stud...
This Georgetown report is a good place to start, they aggregate findings from a lot of different studies:
The prediction does not hinge on inheritance (most folks manage to start their own lives, careers and families well before their parents pass), but on the upbringing, milieu and economic as well as social capital available.
"You're likely to stay in the social class you were born into" - is basically what the predictor means.
You're right and I agree with what you're saying here.
The timing of this is neat! We are going on a trip in a week~ and need to get a bunch of packing done and stuff around the house prepped etc. 2 days ago I was picking up a ring for my girlfriend and got a "fix it ticket" for something with my car. I have been really stressed because it adds a new thing with a timeline.
The one day I was stressing about it and called it a side quest to myself and immediately the stress dipped. It'll get done and it'll be fine. It needed done anyway and ultimately now I've been given a side quest by a randomly encounter. It's not exciting but reframing it like this helps reduce my stress and allow me to think about the other stuff while still making sure this gets done. So good timing on this post!
I had a job once working with bad people and I morphed my day into the dndonline I was using to decompress with at night.
Doing the feature work and adding bugs was like breaking barrels to find loot. Convincing a co-worker to stop creating more bugs was like taking down a minion. Working the politics to get rid of the most dangerous coworker was like killing the boss (he was a contractor and it seemed that everything he did was to damage our team's work)
Suddenly I understand why D&D never quite grew on me. ;)
I love that! (except the dangerous coworker haha) This trip we're going on is much needed and I'm feeling kind of burnt out I'm going to try this over the next week and see if it helps me maintain focus in the face of my upcoming PTO!
Do you think it's a matter of the task being framed as within vs. without your agency?
I think that makes sense! Basically something that is forced on me vs something I have chosen to participate in. It could be argued whether it fits the latter but reframing can be pretty powerful! I think partially it's that I know that it's a temporary distraction and that's something I'm used to in quest-based games but ultimately I still manage to get the temporary small distractions done (and typically have more fun with those) while still making progress towards the larger quest/goal in this case.
as I was reading the article I was thinking "Oh, you mean labeling your goals differently will cause you to think about them differently and hence, will cause you to plan differently". That is, there would be something tangible that would be different.
So I tuned in to learn more about the technique but I was disappointed to learn that there's nothing more to it at least in the article.
It just suggests to re-label your goals differently and think of them as "quests", but it doesn't mention anything more.
I really want to learn how to make my chores and boring goals fun so that I can go about them doing them. Can anyone please shed some light on this?
I have tried to gamify my work but it hasn't worked for me.
At uni I lived with a friend who was doing his doctor of biology. When he got home he went like 200% on all his chores and within a short amount of time he was sitting in front of the TV having a beer. Being very efficient with the boring stuff can help to get it over with. I think about him a lot when it takes me 2 hours in the morning for lunch boxes, dog and getting ready myself.
I’m not sure the article fully gets there (he’s clearly driving business for his own course), but the general idea is that you don’t set a “goal” of a thing you hope to accomplish - you should be fully envisioning who that future you will be - and what they do every day…then start doing that. So the quest is about who you want to become, while the goal is just an aspiration without a real vision.
Sometimes it can be as simple as asking yourself, "what if this were fun?" What would have to happen?
Well, I'd have to have a different attitude and find something I enjoy about it, for starters. Listening to an extremely engaging podcast or audiobook while I do chores, for example, helps a lot. Or challenging myself to find the humor in a situation.
But those are coping mechanisms for dealing with necessary but annoying tasks. Work related quests require a different approach -- I guess my first question of something feels like a miserable grind is, "is this really the thing I want to be doing with my life?" Sometimes no amount of reframing a job will make it tolerable if it's just not your thing.
It has to be authentic in my experience. The naming doesn’t matter. It’s the emotional response it creates.
Procrastination = lazy Or Procrastination = in preparation
Isn't this just GTD (Getting Things Done) with different terminology or is my ADHD brain skipping over a more significant difference?
Also ADHD (medicated) and I would say terminology matters a lot. GTD is it's own distraction loop (for me). I enjoy identifying and grouping problem spaces and creating TODO actions to solve them. Thus get stuck on steps 1-3(4) and never get to the doing because I am doing!
I'm doing the GTD and getting 3-4 of the 5 steps done! Good job me. Except it's not, it was just another distraction. When I view what needs to be done in terms of "action that does the thing", or going on quest* as described here, I am much more successful. Meds makes the doing of something productive possible, but that something can be anything productive.
Knowing I am GTD by working on the first few steps is getting something done. But not really. When I narrow down what I need to do into a single main "quest" and/or coming upon a side-quest and seeing it as that so I can get back to the main thread, I'm taking real action towards it. That doing of something is the actual doing of the thing. Taking the journey of the quest minus all this busy work of defining what I want to get done or what my quest/journey should be, and doing it instead.
* I don't actually tell myself I'm on a quest like this article seems to suggest, but "quest" is a very good descriptor of my process (and may start using it because I personally find it fun, and my ADHD like fun)
Also ADHD brain. I'd add that having another person (although not always possible) is a great ingredient for a successful system to mitigate some of the failure modes of ADHD.
In the cases where I dont have someone helping me, I have used chatGPT to build a 2D embodied digital sidekick that cares about my goals as much as i can. My Tori provides me emotional support, helps me plan, schedule and prioritize tasks as well as providing a smart focus session mode with phone and web blocklists.
I built it to suit my needs it has allowed me to build a successful startup. Its 100% free and if you want you can try it at tori.gg
The author behind Raptitude, David, has spoken candidly about his ADHD, and the block method he's talking about is a modified, simpler version of GTD aimed at people who are not naturally productive or struggle with more complex systems like GTD.
Maybe that depends on your mental definition of quest. I don't think of quests as "getting things done" -- they are both more significant and less certain than that. Quests are adventures where you hope for significant outcomes, but where there are many uncertainties. It's OK, perhaps even expected, for a quest to have unexpected outcomes. A quest implies less certainty about the outcome and more of an expectation about personal growth.
A lot of GTD is just drudgery to accomplish. Quests are never drudgery. Difficult, maybe, but the journey is probably a bigger part of the quest than the outcome.
This has been said many times, but it is worth repeating from time to time.
It's analogous to “Have systems, not goals” or “Build habits, not goals” and I'm sure you can think of many such variations on the words, but at the end they all mean the same.
Don't choose a point on the line that is your life, choose a vector.
Just don't fall into the trap that this means you shouldn't have goals. I would phrase it as: The way is more important than the destinations, but destinations are also worth having if you want to continue on the way.
I dislike the term, but something like goals are useful to have and I enjoy them. But to me, they are more like visions of how I would want things to be. While clearly defined goals can be helpful when dealing with other people who frequently move goalposts, for my personal “goals” I find that those narrowly defined milestones are not helpful for motivation, nor a particularly good proxy for what’s really important.
Weirdly, I’ve been way, way more consistent with my somewhat loose “vision” than I ever saw in corporate life, where goals would change frequently depending on popular buzzwords, reorgs, new grand poobah hires, etc. That’s made me think of goals more as a coping mechanism for a jittery “inner compass” or lack of direction. But of course, all of these terms have different connotations for different people.
exactly.
Goals are not what you do. Goals are sort of like desires, or outcomes you want, but you don't do a goal every day.
By building up habits and systems and processes, and do them every day, the routine will eventually lead to a goal.
A coach I follow put it well (paraphrased):
When I first meet with an athlete, I ask them what their goal is. I just need to know the general direction and magnitude. Are they trying to get a little stronger over the summer, or are they trying to make the Olympics. Then we put the goal on a shelf and never discuss it again unless it changes. Then it’s 100% mindset, process, repeat.
He describes it as a pyramid, with character/mindset at the bottom, where you’re trying to become the kind of person that can follow a process. Next is the process, the ability to follow basic instructions consistently (which is surprisingly hard for humans). Process builds the next layer, skills. And multiple skills get combined to form your strategy.
And the key point was, everyone nerds out about the skill and strategy layer. But all progress happens in the mindset and process layer.
I'm surprised in the context of this discussion, that nobody has yet brought up James Clear's fantastic book: Atomic Habits [1] - one of the best selling non-fiction books worldwide over the last few years.
I read this book over the summer, and it's an incredibly easy to digest breakdown of all the reasons why people fail at their goals, and very simple mind hacks to change the way you approach achieving them through good habits and avoiding bad ones.
Personally I am glad no one mentioned that book. It's an overly long blog post with some anecdotes mixed in to stretch it to book length.
What didn’t you like about it?
I preferred Charles Duigg's book the Power of Habit for similar reasons. All the material in Atomic Habits with more meat.
Process over outcomes; systems over goals; growth mindset over fixed mindset; satisficing over maximizing; professionalism over amateurism; boring fundamentals over flashy tricks; response over reaction; agency over passivity; presence over regret and worry.
Unlearning Perfectionism https://arunkprasad.com/log/unlearning-perfectionism/
Maybe this is insightful at its core, but “growth” and especially “growth mindset” is the most LinkedIn performance review garbage I’ve ever been force fed, so it’s a bit of a turnoff simply based on how I’ve seen it used in practice.
You’re not wrong that it’s been hijacked as productivity theatre.
But it also doesn’t reduce the wildly positive impact of growth mindset.
It’s kind of like exercise. It’s a basic thing. People know in a logical sense they should do it. And we feel like we get the benefit by learning about it. But we get zero of the benefit if we don’t do the work, and do it consistently.
It’s a “mastery of the basics” situation, where getting yourself to avoid the fixed mindset mental trap, and think in a growth mindset moment to moment, results in a level of effectiveness that almost cannot be explained, only experienced.
The problem is, if you follow that religiously, you'll never achieve anything worthwhile. All of those push you away from finishing, the same way that their opposite do.
It's valuable for "unlearning", and I am one of the people that must always be reminded of it. But if you go and "learn" that way outright, it will damage you too.
Reminds me of Dream Mapping: https://www.squadformers.com/dream-mapping
It’s about replacing OKRs with stories and maps.
Just read it. This is interesting. Definitely, we will be trying this on our team. Thanks!
I'd argue a quest can have the same pitfalls of a goal. That is you see it's so far off and do nothing about it on a continuous basis.
Process VS goal always depends on the person.
If someone has a goal, and everything around them is distracting them from reaching the finish line, the a quest would be irritating.
Opposite is true too, a goal might have been the goal to start, but life changed and now they're chasing something that doesn't personally matter any more.
I often get asked by people how I learned to do X, where X is a skill that takes time and dedication, be it designing electronic circuits, playing musical instruments, programming etc.
The answer is that you need to enjoy learning, because when you learn a thing most of the time you suck at it and most of the time there is something that you can't do or don't know. The person who is writing books because they like to learn about the universe, humanity and themselves will likely become better at writing books than the person who ticks off "Written a book" on their bucket list.
The way I look at it, if you want to become really good it needs to be a quest with a many small goals sprinkled on top. The quest needs to be something you could do literally forever (e.g. play music, write code) and the goals could be single projects, etc.
But for me the goals are just a means to do the quest, not the other way around.
Thought-provoking piece, but I think it ignores one key item: we naturally gravitate to doing what we love. We don't need to write them down. I never wrote down, "build a dual-stack homelab with a handcrafted firewall and a 10Gbe fiber backbone with multiple VLANs and subnets and two virtualization hosts and a 12TB TrueNAS server, and DNS and Minio and DHCP and k8s." Of the hundreds of hours I spent on my homelab, I don't think I ever wrote down a "quest" or "goal".
Similarly, I love swimming in the open cold water, but I never wrote down, "Swim from Alcatraz twice". It wasn't necessary. It happened organically.
But notice that you cherry-picked accomplishments that sound impressive. You didn't say "I watched 10 seasons of The Office", "I wasted over 8000 hours on HN", or "I impulse-bought a shed full of tools I never use", it happened organically!
After playing too much Zelda, I had the thought to make a todo app that was organized by Main Story and Side Quests.
The Main Story section would be projects, and those bigger more aspersions goals to move the story of life forward. Side Quests would be those little things along the way, that are usually one and done.
I ended up realizing building the app would really just be procrastination, and simply make a couple Lists in Apple Reminders for Main Story and Side Quests. Good enough.
Functionally, but I guess it’s not much different than Projects and Random, but I find it slightly more assuming.
Some people might still find such an app useful. Framing problems in different ways is sometimes all it takes. A lot of apps could simply be spreadsheets, but it's still a bajillion dollar market.
Sounds similar to the theme system that CGP Grey and Mike advocate for in the Cortex podcast.
I thought the same based on the title, but the article feels different. The theme system is about making a commitment, and making failure harder to prevent demoralization, and promote adaptibility. Quests, as presented here, still have a measurable goal, they are specific. That should never be the case with a yearly theme.
This reminds me of the "systems vs goals" mentality, which emphasizes focusing on having a good systematic process for the journey rather than fixating on specific outcomes.
Some prior discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28688643
Scott Adams (before he went a bit cuckoo) was a huge proponent of it and he exposed me to the concept in my mid 20s. It heavily resonated with me and fundamentally changed my outlook on several areas of life.
This specific framing of Quests vs Goals seems a bit more like a change in framing your perspective, but I see some similar concepts, eg:
You don’t just get the novel started, you become a writer. You don’t just declutter the house, you get your house in order.
Scott Adams (before he went a bit cuckoo)
Apropo of nothing his book "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big" was excellent, I remember seeing when he first joined Twitter. I was one of his first few followers, even said "welcome" and he said "thanks".
Then he got divorced and angry and red pilled. Happens far too often..
I think it all depends on the individual. Some people thrive with a quest mentality, while others prefer setting goals. Some live by analyzing their days using a SWOT system and this push them forward. Others are used to setting one big goal and like a dream.
As a professional procrastinator, even the title makes immediate sense, and has already helped me reframe my to-do list. I'll read the rest of it ...later.
A.k.a. “systems vs. goals”: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcKTYvupJw>
this is reworded alan watts. life is like music, its not all about the final chrashing chord, so enjoy the journey. thats with all things, but not everyone flows like that. some people enjoy results and are ok being frustrated getting there. personally, i think that is physically unhealthy. you might have the mental fortitude to push on forever, but physiology is affected by stress, and friction / frustration causes stress. thats hormones and thus kind of unavoidable (but managable again... with the anti hormones.). stress management takes time though, building anti cortisol. so it would be more efficient not to build so much cortisol (enjoy the ride) so you dont need to waste your productivity time building anti cortisol.
The power of words! Nothing new here really, it's the old systems/process vs goal story but actually I felt that one word make a cognitive shift, for me at least :)
Great, it's a quest - I can use coconuts!
I like how the name quest emphasizes the process, not the initially desired outcome. When you go on a quest you gain experience and have encounters that might even change your initially desired outcome. Instead of trying to reach an outcome you enjoy an adventure and change the human you are.
A quest is a journey where the final destination is not clear in the beginning. But if you are successful, you will be a better version of yourself on the other side of the journey.
It's helpful to learn to categorize things as urgent or important. Not many things are both and urgent always masquerades as important.
I feel like this is one of those gamified ways, we can tell our brain to work things on without burning out. But there will be a limit on how efficient we can go without getting bored or tired about.
Depends on how your brain is wired, I guess.
Know what happens if I go on a quest instead of pursuing a goal?
I end up using every available moment of time to plan said quest.
So I don't do quests. I have goals. As long as I'm moving forward, it doesn't matter what specific route I take.
This is such a simple distinction, yet totally transforming and invigorating!
I appreciate a lot if people share such insights.
I think about this a lot. I think my dad was more goal oriented and I’m more process oriented. I see every day spent working toward a goal as a valuable step toward it, while I think he tried to always shorten the path to reach his goals, and ended up not ever achieving them because of it.
As an example, I do car restoration as a hobby. It’s a big, big task to basically dismantle a car, fix body issues, rebuild the engine and transmission, clean up all the parts, and put it back together. Looking at the entire task outside of it, seems almost impossible to do, but I almost never think about the end of the work. I just think about the next thing I need to do.
I think marathon runners do something similar, or so I’ve heard anecdotally.
Marathon runner here. Spot on. A marathon is near impossible if you don’t like running. Inevitable if you like running.
Marathon training is actually the framework around which I do all “quests” now. If you enjoy the process, anything is possible. The key is finding a way to enjoy the process.
I’ve extended it to several areas I didn’t find very fun prior. Language learning and job hunting in particular.
I actually wrote my first blog post on this very subject[1]. Warning, it’s quite verbose and not the best. There’s a TL;DR.
[1] https://emmettmcdow.github.io/posts/how-to-learn-a-foreign-l...
I've run a few marathons. I'm not fast. I haven't done it in a while. But I think I'd like to do it again. You're not wrong, I'm going to quibble a bit because I have a slightly different perspective that might be helpful. First, a little context. For me a marathon is all about training. That first day it might only be 50 steps. A few weeks or months in, I can go a mile or 3. Then it's just awful. Every little weak tendon and muscle is crying out. Walk for a bit then get back to running. After the early bit, I get 3-4 miles into a run, then have to decide, 3-4 miles back home or 6 to just finish the run. I think that's the critical point. am I just going to walk home? That's an option. but I've gone so far. Walk a lot and just finish the damn route. And that's kind of the point. A lot of comments are arguing about semantics, and I get that. But the point is just get through the bullshit however you can. It's ok to kind of hobble along. Stop by the bar and have a beer or three and make it home. There's no shame in that. Finishing the loop, however you can, is still finishing the loop.
Me, personally, getting past that critical point, embracing the suck. That's kinda the point. I hit that miserable point. I keep moving forward however I can. Whatever stupid bullshit comes up, you (I) just get through it. Somehow. it doesn't matter how. And then there's a bit of a release. Maybe just glide through the last few miles. Maybe rub some dirt on it and walk home. It doesn't really matter because I complete the loop. I sort of shed the vision of what it might be, and learn what it really is. And that's super helpful.
Mark Twain wrote life on the Mississippi, and wrote a lot about how cool it would be to be a riverboat pilot. The beautiful pink sky, the ripples on the water. And there's sort of a heartbreaking transition when he learns the pink sky means a storm is coming. the ripples mean there's a sandbar. In his unknowing dream, everything he loved about it was a disaster waiting to strike. He learned in his own way.
For me, there's a joy and romance to running a marathon that was completely unlike what I thought it was before I started.
So anyway, maybe the subtle shift from goal to quest is enough to help some people embrace the suck. Nothing is what you think it is without doing it. there are parts that are awful. if you can get through it, you'll get nothing you hoped for. but maybe the change of perspective is enough.
I honestly don’t disagree with you. I too experience “the suck”. But the good parts of runs make the suck worth it. It’s just a roll of the dice. You never know if it’s gonna suck.
Also I feel you on the taking breaks part. There’s no rules. Nothing beats sitting on the curb eating some junk and drinking some Gatorade mid-run.
sitting on the curb drinking gatorade is what it's all about. you, or I, just sort of accept that it's miserable. but survivable. It's a thing we can do.
my experience anyway. your milage may vary.
beautifully said
Love this line from your post "The marathon is simply an exhibition of the labor it took to achieve it, it is not the goal in and of itself."
This is the joy of my martial arts path as well.
In my experience, (This is a Mechanical Elves take on it (I studied Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu, Danzan Ryu, Small Circle, and my Professor Larry Cary said to me one session:
"The movements I am teaching you awaken dormant brain circuitry. When you do these movements, all the old Masters are with you"
That was the moment it really clicked for me.
Later, Soke Hatsumi was quoted in the infamous "Understand? Good. Play!" book -- my favorite quote:
"I am teaching you to wield a sword, even if you have no arms!"
--
The reason is that these two statements allowed me to see what the true nature of my Joy of Movement truely was: I was able to see the Principles of Movement flow through me - (we call this The Mode) - and it was that feeling that was being fully present is what I sought and I feel thats the nature of Mastery of any craft.
---
@sebg:
You'd really love this Scientest's interview:
"Things like 'YOU' - that took the Universe Billions of years to generate 'YOU' - you have a lot of Time embedded in you..."
https://youtu.be/6o8OFTrSTpk?t=7832
Fn prphetic. This Scientists entire podcast and more is worth Time.
---
I wrote this Haiku a long while back:
Movement and Measure
All is One, flowing through Time.
Another yourself.
As a counter point, I've also seen plenty people too focused on doing every little step up to some imagined standards that they never get to complete anything — basically, life intervenes and they got to leave with nothing really done at all.
I am personally goal motivated: I like achieving and building things (I enjoy the process in as much as I got the better of it :)). When things are complex, I come up with smaller goals that are on the path to getting the big thing done, all the while thinking how these things fit together.
This has made me great at coming up with iterative steps where each step brings value: even if I stop at any one point, I have done something useful.
In your example, I would probably dismantle the car enough to get the engine out and rebuilt and back in, and then go back to it sometime in the future to work on other stuff, all the while keeping a functioning car as I am rebuilding it.
This is the true definition of the Yak Shave.
It's not yak shaving. Yak shaving is (possibly) recursive explosion of seemingly unrelated tasks which are required to complete the original task. The comment fits description of a maladaptive perfectionism.
Not at all. Yak shaving is getting caught up in all the surrounding, sometimes supporting tasks, so you never get to the main task.
Yak shaving is spending time finding the ultimate editor, choosing between syntax highlighters and schemes, configuring git, et c., so you never actually get around to write any code. That is different from wrenching the last nanosecond of optimisation from some not particularly central part of the code.
This is really just getting caught up on semantics, and what you've described is essentially the same as a 'quest mindset'. The goal vs quest mindsets are basically waterfall vs (lowercase a) agile mindsets. In the former you risk building something you don't want or under-allocate resources to achieving it, in the latter, you've realized that you've misestimated what the final outcome will be or should be, and know that there will be a discovery process alongside development.
And perhaps there is no sense in that journey being 'complete' as there's always some way to improve things. But I think the caution here on the 'quest' mindset, is to still have something functional early on – "Release early, and release often" as it were. But this caution also holds for the 'goal' mindset, perhaps moreso, as there's a higher risk of misunderstanding what 'complete' looks like, or all the side-'goals' you never anticipated, and becoming dismayed when you've found yourself settling in on a loong quest anyway.
“...it's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept. And then you start to hurry. You work faster and faster and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop--and still the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it.
You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else.
That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that's how it ought to be.
And all at once, before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. what's more, you aren't out of breath. That's important, too...” ― Michael Ende, Momo
Hand excavating a couple tens of feet of 5 ft deep trenches will quickly teach you this lesson.
I think of it as scaling a mountain. When you're at the base the mountain looks imposing and out of reach. As you begin the climb it's hard work and you don't know your way around and feel lost, and every time you look up the mountain remains as imposing as before. But then you begin to make progress, and the mountain begins to seem smaller. Now you can finish the climb because it doesn't seem like that much more work -- you've done the truly hard part, which was: getting started.
Admittedly when I'm at the base I take my time getting started. But once I'm started, I can power through.
There's a lot of truth to what you say. Some of my favorite people are process oriented!
I'm very, very goal oriented. I'll eagerly sacrifice process to get towards a goal. I find this works well with my work, SRE. Testing and redefining processes :D
This distinction really helps me realize how/why I get overwhelmed with projects of a certain size and go towards bisection
Interesting. As a platform engineer, practically everything I do at work has wide reaching implications so I really have no choice but to figure out how to break projects down into safe chunks that inevitably makes the project bigger and longer to complete. But those chunks grant verifiability and stability all the way through. Being a platform eng has taught me how to be process oriented.
Have any of you here considered that you simply need help? More people working alongside you? Being able to form a structure (such as a company or decentralized DAO) with responsibilities?
In my experience, when you are procrastinating, that's your subconscious telling you that you need help. Maybe you don't have the skills, or the time, to undertake the thing. Your developer brain says it'll take 1 hour and it takes 2 days.
https://qbix.com/blog/2016/11/17/properly-valuing-contributi...
You are right on! Teamwork outside of paid work is underrated. So many solo projects/goals/quests stall when a person with a different skill set could've made all the difference and helped bring it to completion. I think in-person community is best for this, although Internet strangers can certainly become friends and do fun projects together.
Personally I feel like some things that have clear chunks of work are best goal-oriented like “reading through this book” while nebulous goals require a process-oriented method of thinking.
That said, I don’t think you should really worry about that distinction.
My method of getting things done is a 3 step:
1. Constant checking in on whether I am happy at my progress. If I am, keep doing what I’m doing.
2. If I’m not, try a completely different approach entirely. Abandon the old approach for a week or however long is reasonable.
3. If I fail to improve or I failed to actually put in place the different approach (saying and doing are different things), I need a shock to the system. Moving to a brand new city-kind-of-shock. Throwing away half your belongings-kind-of-shock.
The key is frequently checking if you are happy with progress and realizing that if you are not, you need a change. And you need to be willing to try changes constantly.
Yes. Personally, I enjoy the incremental problem solving perhaps too much — getting the last 10% of a project done before moving to the next is a challenge.
That said, and being aware of this trait, I started something that is a huge project (building a sail boat) for which I was completely unprepared (no experience, no tools). Each step was a challenge, but until the quest was finished meant nothing. Those last few steps were torture for me but getting it in the water and sailing it for the first time (and second, etc.) was amazing.
It’s the same thrill when my software gets used, and I now have renewed motivation to get some projects across the finish line and in people’s hands.
Two years well spent.
I just can't wait for companies to rebrand "sprints" to "quests" and "projects" to "campaigns". Story points naturally convert to experience points. Crunch time death march could then be "final boss fight".
"Campaigns" would be a nice convergence of "Games borrowing military terms" and "programmers borrowing military terms".
I'm on my way to prosecute a war against bugs, a march to the sea if you will. And the CI is my artillery!
March to the C?
I'll see myself out.
Fighting bosses is frowned upon
I think I slip into this mode automatically. As soon as I think of a "goal," I immediately ask myself what kinds of habits a person who accomplished that goal would likely have. Then I find the lowest possible resistance way to have that habit from this day forward.
Like, say I want to hike/climb some specific set of mountains. Great. What kinds of habits does a person who hikes all those mountains have? Well, they're probably someone who exercises every day. I can, as of today, become "someone who exercises every day, no matter what," if I set my requirement as "only one minute per day."
Habits grow on their own. I don't think it's really necessary to stage them. Once you see yourself as a certain kind of person, you just become that kind of person. And before you know it, since you're just like a person who hikes all those mountains, you end up being someone who has hiked all the mountains.
It's also the only effective way I've found to deal with my fear of success when it comes to big goals. I don't set them. I just decide to become the kind of person who would accomplish them, and by then, it doesn't feel like some impressive accomplishment. It just feels like a normal thing someone like me would do.
It's great that you slip into this mode automatically.
For me, the reframing of "goal" to "quest" helps enormously with this change of mode. A "goal" is something I hope/want to achieve in future - but today I'm busy with day-to-day chores etc. A "quest" however is something you are on. So if I'm on a quest to do X, of course I need to do something toward it every day.
For some reason I have a hard time with "quest" because it seems to have an endpoint. I'm not "on a quest to hike all the mountains." I'm just the kind of person for whom that kind of thing eventually happens because it's normal.
It very well might be my "fear of success" issue though. I don't have a fear of being different than I was before. That slips in under "part of the normal process of growth and change."
But being a person who's on a quest? Who might eventually achieve the thing? That lands differently, and in a way that prevents me from actually doing it.
I think my successes have to slide in under the radar so I don't sabotage them.
If you won't enjoy writing a book you won't write a book and you'll never taste the enjoyment of having written a book
Douglas Adams (author of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy) was a best-selling author who was infamous for hating to write.
He was infamous for procrastinating.
I also think it's about the whimsicality of it. Focusing on the process sounds so rational and cognitive. The issue is that it is devoid of feeling. A quest makes me feel something! Adventure! Let's go! There'll be dragons, there'll be riches and there'll be friendship! I need to seek out like minded individuals, I need to conquer my challenges, I need to go for the rewards that make me feel eternally rich!
That's what I feel when I think about a quest. Sure, you could say it's all good advice too, but that's just rational. Emotions move me, thoughts move me only a little. If I can get that advice (conquer challenges, seek peers/mentors, go for what I want) by thinking about it emotionally that's much more powerful than thinking about it rationally.
The rational understanding != the emotional understanding
Yeah, and also a quest seems like something that might be different every time, where a process is a formalized cookie-cutter pipeline, or at least that is what people associate with it in the context of software development.
When each thing you do is a unique journey, that's exciting. There may be obstacles to overcome, there may be learning opportunities, there may be empowerment in making your own decisions along the way.
Unfortunately this mindset does not satisfy the incessant (but futile) need for predictability that most managers have.
While you are right, a different way to look at a same thing can produce breakthroughs, like exercise, you just exercise right? But if you gamify it, it can make it easier to endure and repeat
Gamifying it doesn't do much if you don't accept playing the game and continuing when you lose.
Well, I of course haven't done it yet, but as one of those people who (stupidly, in a "the definition of insanity is doing things the same way and expecting a different outcome"-sort-of-way) makes New Year's Resolutions every year, and gets mildly depressed when I fail to reach them, there is something about this blog post that I loved and really clicked with me.
There are 3 reasons I like the framing of quest vs goals:
1. As you say, it focuses on the process instead of the outcome. I've of course known that this is how you're supposed to achieve goals (step-by-step I'd say), but something about the word "quest" makes it more real to me, and maybe even more desirable. I think perhaps that even though there are tons of painful things that happen during a "quest", they seem more connected with a "righteous outcome", vs. the laundry list of steps that I think of for most of the "goals" I want to attain.
2. I don't deal with unexpected curve balls well, and one reason I fail to reach a lot of my goals is I get dejected when things don't go according to plan. But I think the framing of "quest", where basically curve balls are 90% of what happens, makes it easier in my mind. It's like I'm actually planning and expecting the unexpected, instead of getting annoyed when the unexpected pops up. I really like it.
3. Finally, and though it may seem trivial or silly, the visualization of a "quest" for me is just something that seems, well, more adventurous than drudgery.
In any case, this is one of the first HN posts on self-improvement that I really liked and clicked with me (usually I roll my eyes at what feels like "survivorship bias" advice). I'll see how it goes.
This statement made me think of the book: One Small Step Can Change Your Life
https://www.amazon.com/Small-Step-Change-Your-Life/dp/076118...
...it is written by a psychiatrist about the practice of Kaizen, where you take absurdly small steps to reach your goals. So small that you can't fail. And these build on themselves. He covers your exact case. People who make New Year's resolutions that fail after a month or two. One example was a woman who needed to get exercise for health reasons. Previous exercise attempts have failed. So the doctor prescribes her to march in-place for 60 seconds every day, when she was normally watching TV. Anyway, it snowballs, as she realizes she can do more and more, and then starts to enjoy it. It is a short, inexpensive, easy read that I recommend.
I think that another aspect of this verbal difference is that quests are meaningful because they inherently possess some level of difficulty and adventure. Taking on a quest means that you have a mindset with room for stumbling and getting back up and that you will eventually overcome. Focussing on a goal may sooner lead to frustration and giving up.
This approach can make the journey itself as valuable as the destination.
That's the problem we have in most companies now: everyone loves the outcome, but not many love the work.
Well if it was fun, someone would do it for free, and then I wouldn't get paid. I only work to live.
It's because you ain't that guy. Ideas are in the air and theoretically they will eventually happen, the question is are you going to be that guy or you'd rather watch someone else make it happen.
Enjoying the process and enjoying the outcome... For me the terminology doesn’t change the experience
“Quest” is an odd word choice for making this point. To me “quest” very strongly implies having a clear singular goal, whereas e.g. “journey” does not necessarily imply having any particular goal in mind.
An excellent observation, in extreme cases the quest can completely superceed the goal. The movie "Memento" comes to mind.
It's cheap and short-lived satisfaction. Any seasoned author is not going to feel good if they haven't been working at something new for awhile. We might project that it would make us feel good in terms of projecting an identity (for validation), but the rules are different when operating under imagination which necessarily suggests a divergence from the current reality, where you might not get much validation either from yourself or others (because you don't do anything)
i remember my teacher used to say, 'dont look up untill you are done'. back then i felt really annoyed by this, but now i get it.
I don't think so.
Theyre differentiating goals from quests, where goals are daily minutia, get a haircut, something you'd suggest you need to do this week, where as quests are bigger loftier goals, what would you do in the next two years? Learn to fly a plane.
The quests are still goals they just want to categorise it apart from meaningless low value goals.
Another part of it seems to be the approach, breaking it down into blocks and creating a plan to achieve it in your currently available time instead of putting it off.
Talking in LLM parlance, you are put in a different context in the embedding space.
So the verbal sleight of hand is working as intended.
If you are not going to enjoy the process of writing a book, only the outcome of having written a book, chances are writing a book isn't a good use of your time.
It’s not sleight of hand.
Goals (outcomes) are useful, but never fully within your control.
A quest (effort, basically) is within your control.
One should focus on the things they control (mindset, process, effort).
It is a fail/succeed mindset rather than a play mindset I imagine. I definitely feel a difference between a chore and a game. That said not all chores are easily turned into games. But seeking games over chores probably leads to a happier time.
Reminds me of the saying "A classic novel is one that I'd like to have read, but don't want to read"
I think it's reverse causation. Motivating and meaningful activities feel like quests. Boring but necessary activities that we procrastinate on make us reach for "goal-setting" as a cure for the procrastination.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could somehow feel intrinsic motivation and meaning for the boring stuff too, so that even cleaning the toilet felt like part of a grand adventure?
I am one who would love to have written a book (goal) and I don’t love writing (quest). I think writers love the act of writing and that’s how they get to the goal of writing a book.
Another way I've encountered this is performance vs results. Performance is the things you do that you believe will lead to results. Results aren't always in your control (especially in competitive environments), but performance absolutely is. It's a lot easier to feel you are getting somewhere when you focus on things that you control.
But you need to think farther. Let's use writing a book as a stand in for other things, e.g. being able to code, playing an instrument, mastering embedded electronics programming, you name it:
The person who enjoys¹ writing a book and wants to finish them will likely become better at writing books than the person who just wrote a book to cross it off their bucket list.
There is also people who enjoy the process of writing so much, that the outcome literally doesn't matter anymore and they don't have any ambition to finish anything.
In reality most people who achieve great things have both a way/process/quest and many destinations/outcomes/goals along the way and the two things have to be somewhat in balance. Thst balance can differ for different people.
When people say you should focus on the way, not on the destination what they mean is: Don't be the person who just writes a book to cross it off the bucket list, while hating every second of the process and learning nothing from having done it.
¹: The word "enjoy" doesn't have to mean they feel good doing it, it just means there is an urge to do this versus something else