Most writing advice here is a hypothesis on what could work that writers are too lazy to test out themselves. — I’m trying to think of a power word to add to this hook while remembering Tim Dennings's advice on using them to convey emotion and keep the attention of the reader. And I’m going with “obliterate”. At the beginning of 2022, very enthusiastic about my newly found hobby, which seemed…

And why solitude doesn’t deliver on making us the most productive we can be. — Having achieved no noticeable difference in my capacity for productive output in isolation, I wondered what the hell had I been doing wrong. Be it Carl Jung and his stone tower in the fields that required people calling him with a horn for dinner, Jonathan Franzen’s dismemberment of his own…

And what I remind myself of when my soul is crushed by circumstances. — This quote from Dave Chappelle in Equanimity (2017) expresses it better than I can: “Everybody in the projects was poor. And that’s fair. But if you were poor in silver springs… n*gga, it felt like it was only happening to you” Does our capacity for adaptation come from the fact…

With the help of your inquisitiveness. — The hardworking personality. What do you make out of being placed on the 0th percentile of a dimension on a personality test which is said to have the most correlation — even above general intelligence, academic achievement, and economical background — in life outcome? “Conscientiousness is the personality trait of being careful, and…

And why I believe a constructivist approach is the answer. — My situation. So my cousin calls me to tell me they were back from my hometown and talking to my mom. That she was picking me up to talk about a delicate issue: My mother had confessed everything. Since last Saturday, when they told me, I’ve been trying to process the fact…

Getting rid of invasive thoughts/feelings for real — The thought or feeling keeps coming back. Leo Tolstoy had once his little brother sit down in a corner until he was able to stop thinking about a white bear, then he could stand up and go on and do something else. …

The strategy I use to go past exhaustion in cognitive-requiring tasks. “Fatigue should no longer be considered a physical event but rather a sensation or emotion”— Timothy Noakes 10 minutes more before stopping The 10-minute rule is mentioned in The Willpower Instinct by Kelly Macgonigal as a strategy for dealing with the reward system’s desperation…

And why you are better off focusing on what aligns with your goals instead — I score extremely low in conscientiousness on personality tests. When I told my friend of my 0th percentile result after taking Jordan Peterson’s online personality assessment, paraphrasing the assessment’s exemplification of what a percentile is (that if I was in a room with 100 people, I’d be less conscientious than 99 of them), we laughed after he said ‘you…

And oftentimes I’m wrong. — The way I tend to perceive the world. I’ve been studying psychology and personality after a lot of failures in several aspects of life. This is because, toward all the goals I’ve set myself out to achieve, I have all resources and intentions. …