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> I find in political subs I’m always saying “don’t let great be the enemy of good”
I've found very similar issues, and it's maddening. My go-to is "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good."
> My boss loves "progress over perfection". He then proceeds to shoot down anything that doesn't get immediate results.
Your boss needs an education on "cognitive dissonance" as well as various logical fallacies. If he persists even after gaining the knowledge, then he's just an asshole.
> All the education in the world won't change optics and politics
I addressed this with the last sentence. "If he persists even after gaining the knowledge, then he's just an asshole."
Martin Luther King had plenty of things to say about that. None of them good.
For many who are on the edge (Rent, costs of living, debt) they're being told "be grateful for table scraps!"
that's a slightly different topic and you're misinterpreting it.
OP's talking about how "well, if this one measure doesn't fix all of climate change in one stroke, BETTER NOT EVEN BOTHER, LET'S DO NOTHING OR MAKE IT WORSE INSTEAD" is a pants-on-head kind of attitude. i can't imagine you disagree with them
MLK wouldn't intentionally vote for someone who wanted to reverse the civil rights movement because current leadership wasn't doing everything 100% perfectly.
MLK was the leader of a very large, very active movement that could push for better and get real results. If you can build a movement that big, you can make the world much better all at once.
If you can't build a movement like that, you have to settle for what's politically possible at the time. Want more, push for more, but celebrate wins when they come even if they're incremental.
Ironically the people who celebrate the scraps are part of a culture that channels efforts into the insufficient political system away from the movements that get more.
And when those movements manifest the same table scrappers complain loudly that BLM is asking for too much, no different to how MLK was told to ask for less.
People ignore how the energy to get more done comes from dissatisfaction with the system.
There is a difference between progress and table scraps though
Like for example making it so homosexuality is no longer a crime is objective progress. It didn’t also come with same sex marriage. If you had opposed the decriminalisation of homosexuality unless it also came with same sex marriage you would have been actively hurting LGBT people while doing nothing to help them immediately in the name of rejecting objective improvements over what was then a hypothetical ideological battle that was more distant than gay people still going to jail for being gay
Note that I did not say anything about wanting less. What I said was, if you can build a movement that can push for more you should push for more. If you can't, you can still do what you can within the existing system. You can still celebrate small wins while still recognizing that it's not enough. Those things are not mutually exclusive.
Generally, small wins are achieved by pushing for bigger and compromising. That's how you make positive change within a system that absolutely does not want it.
> For many who are on the edge (Rent, costs of living, debt) they're being told "be grateful for table scraps!"
It would be wonderful if overnight the USA saw a revolution to socially democratic political principles, establishing an NHS-style medical system, cut out wasteful military spending and subsidies, improving worker rights and establishing a strong social safety net that focussed on educating and treating people so that they could best contribute to the economy and workforce rather than being stuck in poverty.
But that won't happen. Only a minority of the populace have any faith it's achieveable, the roadmap from here to there is mysterious, and there are forces that would oppose it.
But I think most people could imagine a USA that by 2030 sees '10% improvements' in the categories of worker protections, minimum wages, working conditions, child support, drug treatment programs and healthcare.
That would be a country that had far fewer people 'on the edge'. And that's probably pretty achieveable, by slightly changing policies in a dozen different areas.
In the psat 50 years in the US, economic changes have occurred that increased inequality and centralised wealth. These didn't come from one policy overnight. The change came from a hundred key cases of action or inaction, over half a century. The wannabe-billionaires at that time didn't “let great be the enemy of good” when trying to increase the wealth gap. They made slow changes and re-made the world.
That can be reversed by pushing in the other direction with incremental changes.
> Martin Luther King had plenty of things to say about that. None of them good.
>
>
>
> For many who are on the edge (Rent, costs of living, debt) they're being told "be grateful for table scraps!"
There is a difference between "table scraps" and incremental change. The difference is the intent behind them.
It is but also I think there are issues even in science where the paradigm shifts are highly valued over the smaller incremental improvements. Sometimes the pressure to publish on those paradigm shifts leads to falsifying data and other ethics issues (it's hard to have a career in science on incremental improvements alone). I've just fallen down the rabbit hole of learning about the Alzeimer's papers retractions which is a fascinating Google for anyone interested and highly relevant to the discussion here.
The problem with the Alzheimer's papers retractions isn't just the 'paradigm shift' of "amyloid beta plaques cause Alzheimer's", but the countless incremental improvements on that premise that came afterward.
I don’t think they have to be mutually exclusive – I think about the implications of Kuhn‘s *Structure of Scientific Revolutions* a lot, and while it definitely challenges the belief in progress on a linear trajectory, the shifts that predicate leaps in our collective understanding are arguably the result of slow, incremental „progress.“
Like having to conduct 1,000 experiments exploring an accepted paradigm from 1,000 different angles before the 1,001st experiment/angle reveals a fundamental flaw in that paradigm.
> If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants
>
> Isaac Newton
That’s from a guy with at least a couple of paradigm shifts on his track record
I work in manufacturing. Kaizen (continuous improvement) is all about small changes: Reduce quality hits by 0.3% this week, or improve cycle time at one station out of eight by 0.5 seconds.
One project like this each week builds up over time to stabilize a process and reduce operator workloads.
Story of my life. Kaizen works, but driving it is tough because people expect big, immediate results. If they don't see those results, they give up.
I have a meeting with our board of directors this coming week, and I'll be discussing this specific topic with them.
I'm an Industrial Engineer. I think a lot of places just do Lean/Kaizen as a way to cheap out on investment in change.
The actual reason Kaizen is hard, is because management is not doing their part - they think they just discovered a tool they can hand over to employees without effort and now everything is suddenly better.
Implementing Kaizen properly into employee mindset and work culture is hard work, it requires major investment, a great deal of planning, some layoffs and is time consuming on management.
However lots of managers seem to think you can take a green belt and suddenly you have Kaizen.
"Planning" is a bad word. Nobody wants to put time into something that isn't physically making lots of stuff really fast.
"If people aren't staying busy, we're losing money!"
"I don't have time for this. I have a meeting!"
This all sounds very familiar as a software engineer, we have agile/scrum processes all about incremental changes too, similar problems in implementing it. Having a working product after each "sprint" (usually two weeks) even if it's not finished, the idea to have a working prototype for feedback from those with the money.
It's more about changing business processes and getting out of bad habits such as "want it now" or "I've changed my mind" and that's the difficult bit, letting the team plan the work.
It's an odd thing that I've never seen work successfully due to various factors, mainly trust issues from management or not understanding the process and still having it micromanaged and controlled, often as well it's supposed to work with varying experience levels of people on the team, but seems to work best with experienced coders and by those who understand the reasoning behind the process but don't follow it dogmatically (although we do have evangelists, who often come off as very rigid claiming wonderful things happen when it works, 20 years in the industry, still waiting)
It's difficult in some ways to maintain a process or argue with a manger that coding is a creative skill, not always working to a schedule, which also is the difficult bit, removing the iterative experimentation and not giving room for fun tangents really blasts a hole in team moral, scrum can make you feel like you're in a soulless production line at times, without those tangents you don't get the interesting ideas for improvement or you lose clever ideas for next avenue of potential revenue.
Oddly, nobody really respects the coders, when a lot of businesses are built on their skillset, or sometimes they get totally exploited when leaders are so detached from understanding their reliance on them.
It's always strikes me as an idealistic process which still needs tweaking because it's not self aware enough to fully understand natural human instinct, in all our flawed glory.
>coding is a creative skill, not always working to a schedule
100%. I started working as a consultant developer last year, and I work at odd times of day sometimes. If I get the spark on a sunday evening, then I will go do it. Suddenly you just have light-bulb moments. It can't always be scheduled. I find that I tend to get a lot of work done on the weekends, to then take some random time off on a tuesday mid-day. I guess I just function best like that.
I have noticed that my mentor does the same thing. If I send him an email on a saturday afternoon, it's not unusual that he is already sitting with some work as well. While in the mornings, he is often outside doing his hobby.
I was boots on ground in production at the Toyota plant in Kentucky. You're not wrong about resistance to actual Kaizen.
But I still tried to implement continuous improvements through the mountain of paperwork. There were both cash and physical benefits for me to do so.
I was also in a small group that uncovered an unknown but major source of waste.
We host “kaizen” workshops at my office.
Usually they are a week of single focus meetings with one big deliverable that is supposed to fix a major issue. Feels a bit different than the meaning of the word…
I've seen this a lot throughout my career. People know the buzzwords, but they don't really understand what they mean. Traditionalist approaches are often frowned upon because someone saw a seminar that "improved" the process. When it fails, chaos ensues.
We’ve been running at minimal staffing for 3 years and are now trying to grow rapidly. People seem to be surprised by how much incremental decline there has been over that time because it was gradual and no one was doing anything but the bare minimum to operate day to day… so it works both ways.
My previous company used to run Kaizen projects that were absurd like "reduce report hours by 50% ^because ^half ^your ^team ^quit ^and ^we're ^not ^hiring ^more". Of course we had been running report hour reduction programs for the past decade and nothing like that would have been possible. Well, I got a new job for a massive pay increase, the team is now half the size of when I left, and nothing is ever done on time.
This makes logical sense. That’s why day 1 to day 30 progress pictures can be so motivating. Once you see the shift a month made, it’s exciting to see where you might be in another, and then another…
It can be harder with other things, but I think coming up with a way to show yourself your progress is a good motivator when small incremental progress is involved.
Just finished the book, too! And loved the idea of being the kind of person who ‘X’. So many great ideas that are easy to put into practice immediately. Just have to still be patient with seeing results. That’s the hardest part for sure!
There are many studies reinforcing the fact that "thinking of yiurself as a person that does X" is the greatest weapon in trying to change oneself.
Its why the people in your life make such an impact. Them SEEING you as "someone who does X" reinforces your own belief you are someone who does X
And consistency sparks motivation. Lots of people get stuck on motivation being what they wait to have, when starting something. It should be a combination of consistency and discipline to start and will end up turning into motivation as time goes on.
I wish i did this ive lost close to 70lbs. I know I'm healthier, i even feel healthier but tbh I don't feel like i look any better. I still keep working out and semi dieting but sometimes feel like its for nothing
There is absolutely no *way* you lost 70 lbs and it didn't make a difference, both to your appearance and physical abilities.
Your mirror's lying to you because you're tunnel-visioned on one stubborn spot, I guarantee it. (or you just got acclimated to changes as you went).
Weighed almost 260 last October have gone all the way down to 187 currently at 200 (on summer vacation so I'm hoping once i start working again I go back down
And? Dropping 20 pounds you will need new pants. 60 pounds, you need new everything. Didn't you buy new clothes?
That's an important step so you enjoy your new weight and can't go back up.
I did i went from XXL to L just bought new clothes this week.
Idk like i said i know im healthier i legit got my good vision again after a couple of months of working out and dieting but i still feel feel fat and just feel like i look like i havent been working out for almost a year
> but i still feel feel fat and just feel like i look like i havent been working out for almost a year
You might want to explore what you specifically mean when you say you "feel fat". This is a statement that is often made by people who suffer from body dysmorphia and eating disorders, and health care professionals that work with patients struggling with these conditions commonly respond to these statements made by their patients by saying, to put it bluntly, "fat is not a feeling".
"I still feel fat" is a bit of a red flag that there might be more going on. If you are not feeling an emotional reward by seeing the pounds drop, the weight may have been a secondary symptom to a deeper emotional issue that still hasn't been addressed, which you are still experiencing and associating with "feeling fat".
Sorry if this is probing too much, but the "I feel fat" statement can be quite a significant flag that many people aren't even aware of. I hope this information might be able to help you or someone else reading this post.
One of the things that happens when you get in shape, is that it can focus you in on only the things that you still can improve without seeing the thighs that already are improved.
It's a little but like how bulimic people always go further and further.
I went from 260 to 210 last year over the course of 5 months and I took progress pics every 30 days. I looked DRASTICALLY different at the end. I’ve put on a ton of muscle being a “fat” power lifter for many years prior, but if you lost 70 pounds you look so different regardless of what your body composition might be. After I lost my first 15 lbs people started to comment how fit I was looking. Don’t beat yourself up too much!
It's better not to focus on oz, instead of the actions that help you lose weight. Focusing on oz can make you purge or drink less water, since that can easily let you lose some oz.
Celebrate each day eating healthy and you'll be better off.
It’s also like learning a musical instrument. Can you learn to play piano in a day? Of course not, but you could learn two notes in a day, then a couple more the next day, etc.
>but you could learn two notes in a day,
I'm not sure if teaching Piano does 2 notes per day...but I'm curious if it does!
(I'm just picturing a student excited to play the tune their doorbell plays)
Yup. I downloaded a smoking cessation app. Every day it told me how much better my heart is doing, how much I've lowered my stroke risk, etc. What got me tho, and what really kept me motivated was they had a "Time Saved" spot. Since smokers have been all but cast to the edge of society, smoking takes time now. You have to stop what you're doing, you have to go outside, you have to waste time. And it was staggering to see how much time I was wasting smoking.
This is also why people get discouraged after the first few months.
The first month/two months show large improvements. After that (considering the person was moderately overweight to start) the improvements are much slower and harder to see visually.
So people get discouraged and believe something isn't working. It's the same with people who aren't looking to lose weight but gain muscle at the gym. First two months they go from 10 to 30 pounds and after that it's 30-35.
The Wikipedia entry for [Kaizen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen) (continuous improvement) is a great read.
> The small-step work improvement approach was developed in the USA under Training Within Industry program (TWI Job Methods).[12] Instead of encouraging large, radical changes to achieve desired goals, these methods recommended that organizations introduce small improvements, preferably ones that could be implemented on the same day. The major reason was that during WWII there was neither time nor resources for large and innovative changes in the production of war equipment.
>... In the Toyota Way Fieldbook, Liker and Meier discuss the kaizen blitz and kaizen burst (or kaizen event) approaches to continuous improvement. A kaizen blitz, or rapid improvement, is a focused activity on a particular process or activity. The basic concept is to identify and quickly remove waste.
I wonder if this phenomenon may carry over to something like physical therapy. It can be slow, and very difficult to stick to it. The end results are good, but the small, incremental changes may not be enough to keep you going.
I lose many patients because of this. They expect their pain to be fixed right away. I try to show them how they have progressed and prove to them that they can move and do things they could not do before, but some people are just too stubborn and want quick fixes.
This may be the most serious problem society has, the main obstacle to making improvement. People expect a silver bullet, a magic pill that will completely fix a problem. We see it in opposition to gun regulations that will reduce but not stop mass killings and suicide: if it won't eliminate it then it's worthless and it gets voted down. We see it in the antivax movement: if it won't stop me from getting COVID then it's worthless and I'm not taking the vaccine. We see it in the opposition to all sorts of beneficial measures that improve our society but does not make it a perfect world, only a better world, which apparently never seems worth it to too many of us.
Resources, Time, Quality: pick two. Every company I've worked for pays lip service to this maxim, but when crunch time occurs they keep thinking they can somehow bypass its inherent meaning.
Telic vs atelic progress. Telic progress has an end point: eliminate slavery. Atelic progress doesn't have an end point: have fewer slaves today than yesterday. The thing is, even atelic progress has a criterion of more successful and less successful (amount of slaves), and this criterion has to be clear in order to not lead to backsliding, otherwise you can change the reduction to one slave a day, which is almost nil, and can hardly be called progress. Progress has to have criteria, otherwise it's not progress, but change.
Especially since they don't, coal has dropped from 55% to 22% of US electricity grid in the last 15 years and will be gone by the time an EV bought today is still on the road. Also the state where a majority of US EVs are sold has no in-state coal generation. Also put up solar panels on your roof, as many EV owners do, and it doesn't get powered by anything but the sun.
People just want excuses not to make change or think about stuff, that's the essential problem.
Even if they did, and we assume all the bonus efficiency is lost in transmission, it's much easier to sequester the pollution at a single point.
Same with the 'but what do we do with the batteries' argument. I'd rather have the potential pollutants in brick form than dispersed endlessly in the air.
(This also isn't even getting into how many of the arguments are basically "Why isn't this very new developmental technology as good as this century-old one??")
Yeah, coal-powered EVs are cleaner than gas-powered cars. And the toxic batteries they're thinking of are lead-acid batteries, which are much worse environmentally than lithium ion, and yet there's a program that results in 98% recycling rates - so you think maybe a larger, more expensive battery that's harder for individuals to deal with on their own might be able to reach higher recycling rates than lead acid, perhaps?
I mean I think it's fair with electric cars because they actively distract from the better alternatives. Public transport is objectively way better for the environment than electric cars, and electric cars aren't a step towards public transport, they're just a straight up alternative which is worse.
Edit: also the problem with electric cars is the upfront environmental damage in manufacture as I understand it, not the electricity use.
I kind of wonder if it's pre-society, where we lived in stark live or die circumstances - you harvest fruits and vegetables that were good enough or not, you killed the animal that fed you or not. So this modern problem would actually be efficiency back in the day where you don't want to waste time and energy in something that might not yield immediate success.
I think this is why coaches and whatnot are so helpful. We like to have some social proof (as group animals) that the thing works and we're not wasting our resources.
To expand on this:
I wonder if people in societies with strong safety nets tend to show reduced focus on these external goals and more ability to see incremental internal growth. If, for instance, there is no real safety net, and you need a job to survive, then you aren't going to spend time focusing on building skills outside your current areas of expertise if they aren't going to immediately pay off.
Whereas if there is less pressure on keeping and excelling in the role you already have, because you have something to fall back on, then you might be more able to continue growing your nascent skills. You don't need the quick, known payoff of a regular paycheck; you can (literally) afford to nurture a new set of skills and not see payoffs from them for some time.
Another realm where this would be worth studying is in people who come from wealth vs. people who don't for the same reasons.
I don't think we have fully adapted to living in an modern environment where we are protected in varying degrees from hash realities of natural selection where binary thinking was selected for.
The very traits that allowed us survive in our evolutionary past have now become a hindrance to further progress.
This seems like a dismissal of the guanine lack of progress we have made as a society - at least in the US.
Take the ACA - an incremental improvement to the healthcare industry that is likely the most progressive major bill of a generation - but also would be considered regressive in most wealthy countries.
The same generation can't afford rent or medicine or retirement or vacations or children or their own healthcare, even with the ACA. More than ever you need a second job just to not fall behind. You might need a job just to support your diabetes.
While there is certainly a tendency to undervalue incremental change, it doesn't explain the rising deaths of despair. Certainly not better than objective measures of the material conditions people live under. Ground has been lost.
Imagine if you're a sill, just sitting there minding your own business, getting worn down by the weather. That bit by bit seems almost nothing by the day, but decades come and you'll be worn down to nothing.
Yes, but how often have we seen an ACA like bill? It was like a decade ago, and at that rate we'll virtually never match other countries. We can't maintain a cadence, we're more like that one who goes to the gym a little bit then tires again and gets lazy while any progress made at that point wilts and makes the next goes too late for progress to really build (note that it's already been eroded some). Same with minimum wage. We've not passed even a marginal increase in an insane number of years. When you talk of incremental improvement, the flip side is that cadence and rate matter. You've gotta find the optimal running pace and training regimen, where you're making steady, efficient progress toward the goal, degrading neither by pushing too hard nor by being too leisurely and letting your gains erode.
Before the ACA, most of my immediate family was denied medical care due to pre-existing conditions. After the ACA, they’ve all got affordable healthcare.
So it’s certainly done more than just make insurance companies richer. I don’t care if they make money if we aren’t leaving people do die due to pre-existing conditions. We can improve it later, but without incremental change like that my family would likely be dead.
It is a dismissal, and a dismissal of the fact that obstacles to that progress are greater now than ever in recent memory. Incremental change is good in science, in life and learning, and it ought probably to be default way of changing society in an ideal world. But in the particular society we find ourselves almost every change on the right direction comes with very powerful opposition actors who will do their best to claw back whatever they might have lost with that change and then some, and they often succeed. A small change which doesn't deal with that fact is in serious danger of nullification. The ACA was much more useful to people 1 year in than it is today, insurance companies figured out how to game the market and make the plans less favorable and more expensive, that was happening even before the loss of the individual mandate which probably accelerated the process. That's why Bernie's medicare for all plan does away with the insurance industry, because if you leave them behind they're sure to make mischief. It's the same story all over, very troubling situation we find ourselves in
It's more demotivating for me when I'm forever stuck in a cycle of making an incremental improvement and then making an incremental step back. All the effort and exhaustion, none of the progress over time. Doesn't feel worth it and can't get the supports to help me make a change.
I think that is a symptom of the effect. It's hard to see the overall improvement if it is a) slow and b) punctuated by many setbacks. I'm certainly not immune.
It's twofold I think.
Not only do they want immediate results, but as you said they want the silver bullet - there has to be *one thing* that we can do that *fixes everything all the way.*
When in reality pretty much every real 'solution' to societal problems will be a bunch of smaller solutions that mostly make the problem better.
And the GQP members ride that train 24 hours a day. "What is the point of banning X when people still have Y?". By this theory, we would still be using leaded gasoline because on the day they stopped production of leaded fuel cars, there were still 100 million of them on the road. It took an entire generation to see the improvements in air quality, but they are truly dramatic.
> It took an entire generation to see the improvements in air quality
And that leads to another famous one from their playbook: "look how good air quality is today! See how banning leaded gasoline was pointless? The problem never existed in the first place! It was just an overreaction!"
No, you moron, air quality nowadays is better because we literally did something to avoid/fix it. Same thing with CFCs and the ozone layer, which I've personally saw being used as an example in a similar scenario.
Debating conservatives nowadays feel like arguing with a child, both in mentality and in knowledge.
The problem is that often times incremental improvements are only incremental because those in power refuse to do anything substantial. Not because substantial improvements are impossible, but because appearing to be incrementally working on something is their goal.
That goal of course is always to preserve systems designed to upwardly distribute wealth at all costs.
So, I’m skeptical of people reading this thread and drawing the conclusion that we should accept smokescreen ‘improvements’ just we because we have a cognitive bias against appreciating small changes.
Incremental change merely buys them time. The smallest amount that they can make the investment while still convincing us they're making progress is what they will try to spend as much time as possible paying.
A huge part of the problem is that politicians take advantage of the idea of incremental change being an acceptable pace of progress as an excuse not to do more. And when you’re talking about basic human rights, the health of the planet, wealth inequality, etc., it’s understandable to get discouraged by incremental change. I mean the GOP may exploit people’s desire for more to inspire cynicism and give them nothing but the Dems often exploit the GOP’s obstructionism to argue that a small amount of change is enough. But that’s indefensible when they have had power and have chosen not to use it.
This. Incremental change can be astounding in its effects, but when people are literally dying from lack of resources it doesn’t feel like anything at all.
Seriously, it feels like people who can't stomach the idea of incremental progress are one of the primary political arguments I end up in.
Everyone wants a silver bullet to solve all of their problems. This one thing you can do to make everything better. And a lot of ideologies will try to sell you the snake oil but such a thing exists.
All you can do is as much good as possible. And it adds up.
If you look at ideologies that have taken this approach, they get disproportionate power for it. If you take an inch and keep demanding another inch you're going to get ahead. But if somebody offers you an inch and you spit in their face because it isn't everything you want, you get nothing.
Ya, so how do I stop doing that?
I can recognize some growth in things but it doesn't ever make doing it easier.
I can practice for a week and recognize improvement. But in the moment it just feels like I'm doing nothing but failing at everything. It feels impossible to continue when you're constantly feeling like you're failing.
I just started guitar 3 months ago, when I started terribly playing songs, I would record a video of myself playing. Knowing damn well how terrible they were, but I wanted to physically see my progress. I've played almost everyday and I look back at those videos and I love it, because it really shows how much better I've gotten.
No sure if what you're doing is applicable?
That's really clever. I think I just did that by accident with 3D modeling recently, and it was strangely motivating.
I've found that I vastly overestimate the quality of my previous artistic works, but when I accidentally open my first attempt at box-modeling a human head from a month ago (instead of the one I'm working on now) and see that it looks like a deformed version of Andross from the SNES Star Fox game, it's easy to see how much progress I'm making.
I'd say it depends on the skill, motor physical skills like juggling and dribbling are proven to improve as each repetition physically stimulates the neuronal connection to make complex signal combinations reach your muscles faster (myosin).
You could even say each repetition increases your skill by 0.05% and it's just a matter of time before you reach mastery, if you trust science then you should also trust your own practice, it's only failure if you stop.
I'll also say that feeling like you're failing is a very good sign of improvement because you recognize you're making a mistake, you would never be able to improve if you didn't feel like that.
Mental/Creative skills also need careful, deliberate practice to improve which drains your focus very quickly, most people can't practice mental skills for more than 2 hours a day before diminishing returns set in and you're more likely to burn out than make any real progress so beware.
"I'll also say that feeling like you're failing is a very good sign of improvement because you recognize you're making a mistake, you would never be able to improve if you didn't feel like that."
This is a really good way to reframe it actually. Thanks!
"What about the dirty mining of batteries!"
"Where do you think that energy comes from stupid!?"
Now we have home solar power charging cars rated for 1 million miles and learned how oil companies held back innovation to perpetuate their profits. Keep the ball rolling!
It’s my impression that the people in these conversations who are against measures to stem climate change are arguing disingenuously. They don’t really see incremental changes in the areas you mention as insufficient and therefore not worth pursuing. They have decided their position a priori based on political partisanship and then flail around looking for something to support it.
This is the first thing that comes to mind. Many people find one small problem and dismiss the entire idea and that problem is usually an edge-use case.
“Electric cars are no good because once a year I have to drive 500 miles and I don’t like to stop to recharge.”
“Public transport is no good because I live in rural arse end of nowhere”
80% of people (in the UK) live in urban and suburban areas. We don’t have to solve everyone’s car dependency in one go, but let’s make a start with the significant fraction where there is an opportunity to do so.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
I'm learning programming and I'm completely lost at the beginning of every problem, but by the end I at least know enough to solve the previous problem much more easily. It's hard to keep that in mind during the struggle.
I'm seeing this a lot in attitudes to the climate crisis. I've heard so many people criticise ideas that don't solve the entire problem, which is a huge issue because the problem is so big that no individual solution could possibly address it entirely anyway.
Yes, but also it's worth noting that there definitely have to be situations where incremental change actually isn't enough - specifically things which are time sensitive and which the incremental change is not improving fast enough to satisfy the time constraint. So, this thesis probably applies more to e.g. softly defined or subjective issues more than material issues with hard technical boundary conditions like the climate crisis. Dead people stay dead if you're not fast enough to stop what's killing them, no matter what incremental changes you make if the carbon causing it all is already in the atmosphere.
Given the scale and rapidly approaching immediacy of the climate crisis (or really, just being faaar to late to take it seriously) we really do need massive change *now*. Sure, that massive change doesn't have a silver bullet, it has to be made of a bunch of smaller but still significant changes, but they do all have to happen all at once now rather than incrementally because we've run out the clock by being too slowly incremental (if at all incremental in any meaningful sense - if we wanted gradual and easy fixes to climate change we needed to start taking them seriously 50 years ago and we just didn't).
Edit: an analogy - it's only okay to ease onto the brakes if you do it fast enough to not hit the wall, otherwise you do need to stomp.
We're saying the same thing. I mean incremental changes in the sense of completely changing individual systems. Overall we need a massive change, but that change is made up of many many smaller (though still very big) actions. I see people panning these smaller actions because they won't be *the* solution and that's the wrong attitude.
Somehow this feels more like a personality or cultural type of issue. Some people who are perhaps more broad-minded can deal better with slower incremental positive changes as opposed to those that insist on fast responses to everything. There are quick responses to everything but not everything can be a true solution. Knowing the difference requires wisdom and experience.
So basically “humans are shortsighted and abandon projects that don’t see an almost immediate payout”. We kinda knew that, but it’s good to have the scientific research backing it.
I've been reading it in the past week and it's been quite eye-opening. I've changed my outlook on incremental improvements for the better and I'm really curious to see what else I might learn from this book.
>Grandpa taught me that 60 years ago. "Fools and children shouldn't see unfinished work."
Not sure I follow. Can you explain this quote?
My parents treated anything other than total success as a shameful failure. Took a lot of effort to start reversing that damage.
Not OP but I believe they're saying that Children and Fools don't appreciate things in progress. You show them the first Rendition of the Airplane and they laugh and say it'll never work, it barely flies, what a waste, where as someone who isn't a fool sees that it's a work in progress and that it could lead to great things.
Essentially fools and children want instant results and don't appreciate the work that goes into the end result.
Yup.
I'm studying for my Professional Engineering license (State Board Exam), and it's a two-test process.
I started a year and a half ago. That's right - 18 months!
I passed the first text about half way through, and went right into studying for the second test. People usually take years in between, but I'm doing it back-to-back.
I, unfortunately, did not pass my first attempt at the last test.
Frustrated and burnt out, I planned for some time off.
One person (who shal not be named), said "what? You're just going to give up????"
Don't discredit the 18 months of work I've done just because I haven't reached the final goal, yet.
I often see this at work. People dismiss solutions to problems that address most of an issue when those solutions don't cover 100% of it. One of my favorite sayings is "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
Today is day one of my new diet and exercise regimen and this is something I'm really going to have to push myself to keep in mind. I know I'm in for a lengthy period offrustration before observing any tangible payoff.
I practice kickboxing (to keep fit and do the odd competition). My main advice is to take pics/videos of yourself throughout the journey. I’ve seen lots of people come into classes stay for a while then drop out. At first they see huge progress because going from not being able to throw a punch to being able to throw one is a big deal. Instant gratification I suppose. But when all the basics are learnt it’s into the long grind of small improvements. Especially when you enter the sparring side of the sport.
I have regular personal training sessions where my coaches have been taking the odd video of my progress over the last 2 years. Seeing the difference between me just before covid and me now is hugely motivating. That and having a routine. Routine and discipline is crucial because motivation is very fleeting.
Here with you! If it's helpful, I've been thinking to myself not getting too caught up in the results. It's a success if I stayed committed to the process and showed up for myself, regardless of how quickly that reflects in any measurement.
Good luck!!
This is a cornerstone failure in liberal politics.
Conservatism is often built around fear, specifically the slippery slope. Whenever rights are expanded, you'll hear outlandish claims that "this will result in people being able to marry their dog" or whatever. It's evocative.
On the other side, liberals can't evoke their progress. You'll see the growth rate go up under US Democrats, and down during Republicans throughout the 21 century but Biden can't rally around that. Even ACA, aka Obamacare, the biggest thing to come out of Democratic party in 20+ years was somehow both demonized while also being a stepping stone to universal healthcare.
Rome wasn't built in a day, but it wasn't burnt in one either.
One could argue that all of these temporary patchwork solutions blind people to the real solutions that would fix the underlying problem.
Nuclear power is a clear example.
Conservatives have this problem too- they just went through a wrenching change over in which everybody was primarying everybody else. RINO still gets thrown around
Liberals and progressives have also had a long history of forming coalitions.
I’ve found this to be true with my weight loss. I knew I could hold out and see results anyway, so I kept going. Even though I knew it would happen if I kept going, I still had the discontent and worry that it wasn’t working after all, and that the day to day results weren’t enough. I’ve lost 50 lbs now and it still happens to me.
The hardest and most important part is just to keep at it. It’s hard to continue on when you don’t feel like it’s making a difference or you’re not making the progress you feel like you should. The goal should be the process not necessarily the progress.
I struggle with this because I *want* to see any progress on an issue as good, but with some issues the progress will ultimately still lead to a failure state. For example, carbon net zero by 2050 is a fantastic goal and we might actually achieve it! Unfortunately, the impact on global climate long-term, even if we achieved that goal today, will still be catastrophic and possibly put us on a path for an unlivable planet within <10 generations.
Small incremental improvements is how our current technology stack evolves. Transistors get a tiny bit better with every generation. Screens and batteries too. It's why a phone today outperforms a computer from a decade ago.
Isnt it also because if every interval has a chance for failure/success you cannot determine the full extent of the goal... without actually reaching said goal?
Its like premature celebration and its very understandable in moderation or relative to the event.
A person is 150lbs overweight and wants to lose it per doctors recommendations. They try a strict diet their friend recommended and over the week they lost about 8 pounds (a lot of it is water weight and such so massive losses are common early). The next week they lost 3 pounds, they are now 139 pounds overweight. A few more weeks go by, they are 130 pounds overweight, they look at themselves and think "All this work, and I'm not even close yet. I don't want to be on the strict diet forever" so maybe they start cheating a little without monitoring and that slows the results. They logically know the results will slow from that and they're still making progress, but now they feel even worse from how slow it's going and they start cheating even more and even more and even more. Eventually they kind of just drop out altogether.
Another example, a person is learning a new language. They learned the alphabet of the new language and how to say some basic introductions and sentences. Over a month they've learned 50-100 words (a pretty great amount for a new learner), they feel proud of themselves and try to read a children's book. That children's book is still filled with tons of words that they don't understand at all, they get demotivated at how much there is left just to understand something so simple and slowly give up.
>That children's book is still filled with tons of words that they don't understand at all, they get demotivated at how much there is left just to understand something so simple and slowly give up.
If you're not learning because you enjoy the process, you're not gonna enjoy the fruits, because they pale in comparison to the effort you have to put in.
I’m finding this now that I’m out of school. I apparently hate learning. Doing new things just isnt worth it anymore because I’d just rather not do it than need to put a ton of time into learning it just to be mediocre.
I tend to like the word measure instead of solution, as in measures taken to reduce the problem. Solution sounds like it is making promises it can't keep.
Here's a hypothetical example:
The U.S. has a gun death problem. The U.S. introduces
a gun law that reduces gun deaths by 10%. Many people say the U.S. government is acting in bad faith and not addressing the gun death problem because the new gun laws are only incremental changes.
I've spent a lot of my early twenties undoing this thinking as a college dropout. Love yourself people, we do amazing things if we let ourselves take many small steps. Enjoy the walk and the destination comes sooner than you think. Peace yall
This is what makes being depressed so difficult. If I’m not cured it’s not good enough. It’s called discounting the positive. But I think that’s peoples initial expectation, that is problems should be solved, not slowly chipped away at. A 2% reduction in suffering is still suffering. But eventually one has to realize that incremental progress is the only real way forward with themselves and especially in society.
For some things incremental is used to delay or deny progress. Politics as an example. Being happy with a small victory drains will to change the world in a meaningful way and that drain can and is a weapon in curruptions hands. Evey day they can delay Evey person they can get to feel like they did enough is one who will not try as hard tomorrow and will accept a finish line that is just a little farther away. So while I agree small victorys add up.. I think there is a danger to doing things in small slices as well.
I understand that this is /r/science but may I humbly ask you use a title instead of an abstract on the submission?
It may not always be easy to pare things down into a more succinct statement and it may be that a referenced article similarly has an outlandishly long title.
I feel there must be something in between.
At least 68,000 earnest working Americans die each year for the simple lack of health care in the world's wealthiest-ever nation. The human species is dancing on the precipice of extinction due to climate change. How can we accommodate this paper with those salient facts without being completely depraved?
Behold capitalism, Destroyer of Worlds.
Ugh, read comments on anything about renewables and EVs. Even though they are categorically better/empirical improvements over fossil fuels, there's still people in the comments going "Yeah, but xyz thing that means they aren't 100% perfect."
"just be patient and let the system do it's work as moderates work in increments" is a luxury for the well off. I mean, insulin prices going down by 0.5% is better than before, but when it's a choice between that and rent.
I am currently trying to design a product for my prospective business and how I feel about my entrepreneurship journey falls in line with this study. There won't be any substantive rewards any time soon (or ever) and as a result it is somewhat difficult to keep staying motivated. However, understanding it (i.e. understanding the results of this study) already helps compensate for this downfall in motivation (and helps with the resulting investments).
Changing this one element of my thinking patterns, realizing progress is success in and of itself regardless of the end goal of an endeavor has not only improved my general mood and wellbeing, but I find I feel a little more successful in everything I attempt because I am freed from the outcome.
I just do my best and hope it works out. I fail probably as much as I did before but each failure is just another stone placed in the bridge I’m building to my own success. It took a lot of time and work to get to this mindset but the mentality is incredibly freeing and I hope I can maintain it in the long term.
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Incremental improvements are the basis of science. “The scientist explains the world by successive approximations.” -Edwin Hubble
It's the basis for project management. I'm an engineer and it's the same as you described. Bite size chunks as opposed to eating the whole elephant.
I find in political subs I’m always saying “don’t let great be the enemy of good”
> I find in political subs I’m always saying “don’t let great be the enemy of good” I've found very similar issues, and it's maddening. My go-to is "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good."
My boss loves "progress over perfection". He then proceeds to shoot down anything that doesn't get immediate results.
> My boss loves "progress over perfection". He then proceeds to shoot down anything that doesn't get immediate results. Your boss needs an education on "cognitive dissonance" as well as various logical fallacies. If he persists even after gaining the knowledge, then he's just an asshole.
All the education in the world won't change optics and politics
> All the education in the world won't change optics and politics I addressed this with the last sentence. "If he persists even after gaining the knowledge, then he's just an asshole."
We say that in my group too, except it's "perfect is the enemy of good".
Martin Luther King had plenty of things to say about that. None of them good. For many who are on the edge (Rent, costs of living, debt) they're being told "be grateful for table scraps!"
that's a slightly different topic and you're misinterpreting it. OP's talking about how "well, if this one measure doesn't fix all of climate change in one stroke, BETTER NOT EVEN BOTHER, LET'S DO NOTHING OR MAKE IT WORSE INSTEAD" is a pants-on-head kind of attitude. i can't imagine you disagree with them MLK wouldn't intentionally vote for someone who wanted to reverse the civil rights movement because current leadership wasn't doing everything 100% perfectly.
MLK was the leader of a very large, very active movement that could push for better and get real results. If you can build a movement that big, you can make the world much better all at once. If you can't build a movement like that, you have to settle for what's politically possible at the time. Want more, push for more, but celebrate wins when they come even if they're incremental.
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And for every movement there's the inevitable backlash.
Many of the most effective civil rights leaders/organizers in the United States were quite literally assassinated. It's hardly a level playing field.
Ironically the people who celebrate the scraps are part of a culture that channels efforts into the insufficient political system away from the movements that get more. And when those movements manifest the same table scrappers complain loudly that BLM is asking for too much, no different to how MLK was told to ask for less. People ignore how the energy to get more done comes from dissatisfaction with the system.
There is a difference between progress and table scraps though Like for example making it so homosexuality is no longer a crime is objective progress. It didn’t also come with same sex marriage. If you had opposed the decriminalisation of homosexuality unless it also came with same sex marriage you would have been actively hurting LGBT people while doing nothing to help them immediately in the name of rejecting objective improvements over what was then a hypothetical ideological battle that was more distant than gay people still going to jail for being gay
Note that I did not say anything about wanting less. What I said was, if you can build a movement that can push for more you should push for more. If you can't, you can still do what you can within the existing system. You can still celebrate small wins while still recognizing that it's not enough. Those things are not mutually exclusive. Generally, small wins are achieved by pushing for bigger and compromising. That's how you make positive change within a system that absolutely does not want it.
Wow this was very succinct and wise. Thank you
> For many who are on the edge (Rent, costs of living, debt) they're being told "be grateful for table scraps!" It would be wonderful if overnight the USA saw a revolution to socially democratic political principles, establishing an NHS-style medical system, cut out wasteful military spending and subsidies, improving worker rights and establishing a strong social safety net that focussed on educating and treating people so that they could best contribute to the economy and workforce rather than being stuck in poverty. But that won't happen. Only a minority of the populace have any faith it's achieveable, the roadmap from here to there is mysterious, and there are forces that would oppose it. But I think most people could imagine a USA that by 2030 sees '10% improvements' in the categories of worker protections, minimum wages, working conditions, child support, drug treatment programs and healthcare. That would be a country that had far fewer people 'on the edge'. And that's probably pretty achieveable, by slightly changing policies in a dozen different areas. In the psat 50 years in the US, economic changes have occurred that increased inequality and centralised wealth. These didn't come from one policy overnight. The change came from a hundred key cases of action or inaction, over half a century. The wannabe-billionaires at that time didn't “let great be the enemy of good” when trying to increase the wealth gap. They made slow changes and re-made the world. That can be reversed by pushing in the other direction with incremental changes.
> Martin Luther King had plenty of things to say about that. None of them good. > > > > For many who are on the edge (Rent, costs of living, debt) they're being told "be grateful for table scraps!" There is a difference between "table scraps" and incremental change. The difference is the intent behind them.
Your mindset is exactly what the article is about
It is but also I think there are issues even in science where the paradigm shifts are highly valued over the smaller incremental improvements. Sometimes the pressure to publish on those paradigm shifts leads to falsifying data and other ethics issues (it's hard to have a career in science on incremental improvements alone). I've just fallen down the rabbit hole of learning about the Alzeimer's papers retractions which is a fascinating Google for anyone interested and highly relevant to the discussion here.
The problem with the Alzheimer's papers retractions isn't just the 'paradigm shift' of "amyloid beta plaques cause Alzheimer's", but the countless incremental improvements on that premise that came afterward.
science is just Taylor series
Sometimes that's true; sometimes, there are paradigm shifts.
I don’t think they have to be mutually exclusive – I think about the implications of Kuhn‘s *Structure of Scientific Revolutions* a lot, and while it definitely challenges the belief in progress on a linear trajectory, the shifts that predicate leaps in our collective understanding are arguably the result of slow, incremental „progress.“ Like having to conduct 1,000 experiments exploring an accepted paradigm from 1,000 different angles before the 1,001st experiment/angle reveals a fundamental flaw in that paradigm.
Every “paradigm shift” is built on hundreds of years worth of science before it
> If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants > > Isaac Newton That’s from a guy with at least a couple of paradigm shifts on his track record
Not really https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions
I work in manufacturing. Kaizen (continuous improvement) is all about small changes: Reduce quality hits by 0.3% this week, or improve cycle time at one station out of eight by 0.5 seconds. One project like this each week builds up over time to stabilize a process and reduce operator workloads.
Story of my life. Kaizen works, but driving it is tough because people expect big, immediate results. If they don't see those results, they give up. I have a meeting with our board of directors this coming week, and I'll be discussing this specific topic with them.
I'm an Industrial Engineer. I think a lot of places just do Lean/Kaizen as a way to cheap out on investment in change. The actual reason Kaizen is hard, is because management is not doing their part - they think they just discovered a tool they can hand over to employees without effort and now everything is suddenly better. Implementing Kaizen properly into employee mindset and work culture is hard work, it requires major investment, a great deal of planning, some layoffs and is time consuming on management. However lots of managers seem to think you can take a green belt and suddenly you have Kaizen.
"Planning" is a bad word. Nobody wants to put time into something that isn't physically making lots of stuff really fast. "If people aren't staying busy, we're losing money!" "I don't have time for this. I have a meeting!"
Sounds like, yet again, poor management.
This all sounds very familiar as a software engineer, we have agile/scrum processes all about incremental changes too, similar problems in implementing it. Having a working product after each "sprint" (usually two weeks) even if it's not finished, the idea to have a working prototype for feedback from those with the money. It's more about changing business processes and getting out of bad habits such as "want it now" or "I've changed my mind" and that's the difficult bit, letting the team plan the work. It's an odd thing that I've never seen work successfully due to various factors, mainly trust issues from management or not understanding the process and still having it micromanaged and controlled, often as well it's supposed to work with varying experience levels of people on the team, but seems to work best with experienced coders and by those who understand the reasoning behind the process but don't follow it dogmatically (although we do have evangelists, who often come off as very rigid claiming wonderful things happen when it works, 20 years in the industry, still waiting) It's difficult in some ways to maintain a process or argue with a manger that coding is a creative skill, not always working to a schedule, which also is the difficult bit, removing the iterative experimentation and not giving room for fun tangents really blasts a hole in team moral, scrum can make you feel like you're in a soulless production line at times, without those tangents you don't get the interesting ideas for improvement or you lose clever ideas for next avenue of potential revenue. Oddly, nobody really respects the coders, when a lot of businesses are built on their skillset, or sometimes they get totally exploited when leaders are so detached from understanding their reliance on them. It's always strikes me as an idealistic process which still needs tweaking because it's not self aware enough to fully understand natural human instinct, in all our flawed glory.
>coding is a creative skill, not always working to a schedule 100%. I started working as a consultant developer last year, and I work at odd times of day sometimes. If I get the spark on a sunday evening, then I will go do it. Suddenly you just have light-bulb moments. It can't always be scheduled. I find that I tend to get a lot of work done on the weekends, to then take some random time off on a tuesday mid-day. I guess I just function best like that. I have noticed that my mentor does the same thing. If I send him an email on a saturday afternoon, it's not unusual that he is already sitting with some work as well. While in the mornings, he is often outside doing his hobby.
I was boots on ground in production at the Toyota plant in Kentucky. You're not wrong about resistance to actual Kaizen. But I still tried to implement continuous improvements through the mountain of paperwork. There were both cash and physical benefits for me to do so. I was also in a small group that uncovered an unknown but major source of waste.
We host “kaizen” workshops at my office. Usually they are a week of single focus meetings with one big deliverable that is supposed to fix a major issue. Feels a bit different than the meaning of the word…
I've seen this a lot throughout my career. People know the buzzwords, but they don't really understand what they mean. Traditionalist approaches are often frowned upon because someone saw a seminar that "improved" the process. When it fails, chaos ensues.
Kaizen events don't work, because when the event ends, so does the support for the changes it brought.
We’ve been running at minimal staffing for 3 years and are now trying to grow rapidly. People seem to be surprised by how much incremental decline there has been over that time because it was gradual and no one was doing anything but the bare minimum to operate day to day… so it works both ways.
My previous company used to run Kaizen projects that were absurd like "reduce report hours by 50% ^because ^half ^your ^team ^quit ^and ^we're ^not ^hiring ^more". Of course we had been running report hour reduction programs for the past decade and nothing like that would have been possible. Well, I got a new job for a massive pay increase, the team is now half the size of when I left, and nothing is ever done on time.
I had to do some kind of training that discussed "Kaizen." No one I work with who also did the training seems to buy into it. Oh well.
This makes logical sense. That’s why day 1 to day 30 progress pictures can be so motivating. Once you see the shift a month made, it’s exciting to see where you might be in another, and then another… It can be harder with other things, but I think coming up with a way to show yourself your progress is a good motivator when small incremental progress is involved.
This is the same logic behind books like atomic habits. Basically, consistency is key.
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Just finished the book, too! And loved the idea of being the kind of person who ‘X’. So many great ideas that are easy to put into practice immediately. Just have to still be patient with seeing results. That’s the hardest part for sure!
There are many studies reinforcing the fact that "thinking of yiurself as a person that does X" is the greatest weapon in trying to change oneself. Its why the people in your life make such an impact. Them SEEING you as "someone who does X" reinforces your own belief you are someone who does X
Great line there at the bottom. I have this on audio book, I’ll have to go back to it
And consistency sparks motivation. Lots of people get stuck on motivation being what they wait to have, when starting something. It should be a combination of consistency and discipline to start and will end up turning into motivation as time goes on.
I wish i did this ive lost close to 70lbs. I know I'm healthier, i even feel healthier but tbh I don't feel like i look any better. I still keep working out and semi dieting but sometimes feel like its for nothing
There is absolutely no *way* you lost 70 lbs and it didn't make a difference, both to your appearance and physical abilities. Your mirror's lying to you because you're tunnel-visioned on one stubborn spot, I guarantee it. (or you just got acclimated to changes as you went).
Weighed almost 260 last October have gone all the way down to 187 currently at 200 (on summer vacation so I'm hoping once i start working again I go back down
And? Dropping 20 pounds you will need new pants. 60 pounds, you need new everything. Didn't you buy new clothes? That's an important step so you enjoy your new weight and can't go back up.
I did i went from XXL to L just bought new clothes this week. Idk like i said i know im healthier i legit got my good vision again after a couple of months of working out and dieting but i still feel feel fat and just feel like i look like i havent been working out for almost a year
> but i still feel feel fat and just feel like i look like i havent been working out for almost a year You might want to explore what you specifically mean when you say you "feel fat". This is a statement that is often made by people who suffer from body dysmorphia and eating disorders, and health care professionals that work with patients struggling with these conditions commonly respond to these statements made by their patients by saying, to put it bluntly, "fat is not a feeling". "I still feel fat" is a bit of a red flag that there might be more going on. If you are not feeling an emotional reward by seeing the pounds drop, the weight may have been a secondary symptom to a deeper emotional issue that still hasn't been addressed, which you are still experiencing and associating with "feeling fat". Sorry if this is probing too much, but the "I feel fat" statement can be quite a significant flag that many people aren't even aware of. I hope this information might be able to help you or someone else reading this post.
That is a huge difference. If you don't feel like you look different you might talk to a therapist. Body dysmorphia is very real.
One of the things that happens when you get in shape, is that it can focus you in on only the things that you still can improve without seeing the thighs that already are improved. It's a little but like how bulimic people always go further and further.
I went from 260 to 210 last year over the course of 5 months and I took progress pics every 30 days. I looked DRASTICALLY different at the end. I’ve put on a ton of muscle being a “fat” power lifter for many years prior, but if you lost 70 pounds you look so different regardless of what your body composition might be. After I lost my first 15 lbs people started to comment how fit I was looking. Don’t beat yourself up too much!
You are supposed to make smaller, in-between goals. If your goal is to lose 100 lbs, you celebrate every 5 or 10z
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It's better not to focus on oz, instead of the actions that help you lose weight. Focusing on oz can make you purge or drink less water, since that can easily let you lose some oz. Celebrate each day eating healthy and you'll be better off.
I mean we're gonna fluctuate a kilo or so everyday. Just look at the trendline
It’s also like learning a musical instrument. Can you learn to play piano in a day? Of course not, but you could learn two notes in a day, then a couple more the next day, etc.
>but you could learn two notes in a day, I'm not sure if teaching Piano does 2 notes per day...but I'm curious if it does! (I'm just picturing a student excited to play the tune their doorbell plays)
Well, there's only twelve total, so you should have it figured out in a week or so.
Yup. I downloaded a smoking cessation app. Every day it told me how much better my heart is doing, how much I've lowered my stroke risk, etc. What got me tho, and what really kept me motivated was they had a "Time Saved" spot. Since smokers have been all but cast to the edge of society, smoking takes time now. You have to stop what you're doing, you have to go outside, you have to waste time. And it was staggering to see how much time I was wasting smoking.
This is also why people get discouraged after the first few months. The first month/two months show large improvements. After that (considering the person was moderately overweight to start) the improvements are much slower and harder to see visually. So people get discouraged and believe something isn't working. It's the same with people who aren't looking to lose weight but gain muscle at the gym. First two months they go from 10 to 30 pounds and after that it's 30-35.
And you need to wait for connective tissue to catch up so you can't go as fast as you'd like
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The Wikipedia entry for [Kaizen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen) (continuous improvement) is a great read. > The small-step work improvement approach was developed in the USA under Training Within Industry program (TWI Job Methods).[12] Instead of encouraging large, radical changes to achieve desired goals, these methods recommended that organizations introduce small improvements, preferably ones that could be implemented on the same day. The major reason was that during WWII there was neither time nor resources for large and innovative changes in the production of war equipment. >... In the Toyota Way Fieldbook, Liker and Meier discuss the kaizen blitz and kaizen burst (or kaizen event) approaches to continuous improvement. A kaizen blitz, or rapid improvement, is a focused activity on a particular process or activity. The basic concept is to identify and quickly remove waste.
I wonder if this phenomenon may carry over to something like physical therapy. It can be slow, and very difficult to stick to it. The end results are good, but the small, incremental changes may not be enough to keep you going.
I lose many patients because of this. They expect their pain to be fixed right away. I try to show them how they have progressed and prove to them that they can move and do things they could not do before, but some people are just too stubborn and want quick fixes.
This may be the most serious problem society has, the main obstacle to making improvement. People expect a silver bullet, a magic pill that will completely fix a problem. We see it in opposition to gun regulations that will reduce but not stop mass killings and suicide: if it won't eliminate it then it's worthless and it gets voted down. We see it in the antivax movement: if it won't stop me from getting COVID then it's worthless and I'm not taking the vaccine. We see it in the opposition to all sorts of beneficial measures that improve our society but does not make it a perfect world, only a better world, which apparently never seems worth it to too many of us.
"Perfect is the enemy of Good."
“Good is the enemy of cheap”
Resources, Time, Quality: pick two. Every company I've worked for pays lip service to this maxim, but when crunch time occurs they keep thinking they can somehow bypass its inherent meaning.
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NoBoDy wAnTs tO WoRk AnYmOrE!!
"It'll work just this once" they say the 47th time.
Good is as close as we can get to perfect.
Nah, we can be great occasionally by being good consistently
But the problem is once you get to great everybody just considers it normal. And says you did nothing to get to where you are.
Or disparage it because they incrementally counted the expense of resources, while incrementally dismissing any improvements.
That mindset is maddening. It's the same type as "what do we need all this safety stuff for, we've never had an accident"
People to service people: Everything’s broken, why do we have you? People to service people: Everything’s working great, why do we need you?
Progress doesn't have an end point
Telic vs atelic progress. Telic progress has an end point: eliminate slavery. Atelic progress doesn't have an end point: have fewer slaves today than yesterday. The thing is, even atelic progress has a criterion of more successful and less successful (amount of slaves), and this criterion has to be clear in order to not lead to backsliding, otherwise you can change the reduction to one slave a day, which is almost nil, and can hardly be called progress. Progress has to have criteria, otherwise it's not progress, but change.
And any conversation regarding electric cars. "They still get powered by coal energy, so what's the point!?" Just endlessly frustrating
Especially since they don't, coal has dropped from 55% to 22% of US electricity grid in the last 15 years and will be gone by the time an EV bought today is still on the road. Also the state where a majority of US EVs are sold has no in-state coal generation. Also put up solar panels on your roof, as many EV owners do, and it doesn't get powered by anything but the sun. People just want excuses not to make change or think about stuff, that's the essential problem.
Even if they did, and we assume all the bonus efficiency is lost in transmission, it's much easier to sequester the pollution at a single point. Same with the 'but what do we do with the batteries' argument. I'd rather have the potential pollutants in brick form than dispersed endlessly in the air. (This also isn't even getting into how many of the arguments are basically "Why isn't this very new developmental technology as good as this century-old one??")
Yeah, coal-powered EVs are cleaner than gas-powered cars. And the toxic batteries they're thinking of are lead-acid batteries, which are much worse environmentally than lithium ion, and yet there's a program that results in 98% recycling rates - so you think maybe a larger, more expensive battery that's harder for individuals to deal with on their own might be able to reach higher recycling rates than lead acid, perhaps?
I mean I think it's fair with electric cars because they actively distract from the better alternatives. Public transport is objectively way better for the environment than electric cars, and electric cars aren't a step towards public transport, they're just a straight up alternative which is worse. Edit: also the problem with electric cars is the upfront environmental damage in manufacture as I understand it, not the electricity use.
I kind of wonder if it's pre-society, where we lived in stark live or die circumstances - you harvest fruits and vegetables that were good enough or not, you killed the animal that fed you or not. So this modern problem would actually be efficiency back in the day where you don't want to waste time and energy in something that might not yield immediate success. I think this is why coaches and whatnot are so helpful. We like to have some social proof (as group animals) that the thing works and we're not wasting our resources.
To expand on this: I wonder if people in societies with strong safety nets tend to show reduced focus on these external goals and more ability to see incremental internal growth. If, for instance, there is no real safety net, and you need a job to survive, then you aren't going to spend time focusing on building skills outside your current areas of expertise if they aren't going to immediately pay off. Whereas if there is less pressure on keeping and excelling in the role you already have, because you have something to fall back on, then you might be more able to continue growing your nascent skills. You don't need the quick, known payoff of a regular paycheck; you can (literally) afford to nurture a new set of skills and not see payoffs from them for some time. Another realm where this would be worth studying is in people who come from wealth vs. people who don't for the same reasons.
I don't think we have fully adapted to living in an modern environment where we are protected in varying degrees from hash realities of natural selection where binary thinking was selected for. The very traits that allowed us survive in our evolutionary past have now become a hindrance to further progress.
We naturally lived in small herds of 20 - 70 individuals. Living in mega-cities is an enormous adjustment in itself.
Came here to say something similar, but boiled down to, "see: politics."
This seems like a dismissal of the guanine lack of progress we have made as a society - at least in the US. Take the ACA - an incremental improvement to the healthcare industry that is likely the most progressive major bill of a generation - but also would be considered regressive in most wealthy countries. The same generation can't afford rent or medicine or retirement or vacations or children or their own healthcare, even with the ACA. More than ever you need a second job just to not fall behind. You might need a job just to support your diabetes. While there is certainly a tendency to undervalue incremental change, it doesn't explain the rising deaths of despair. Certainly not better than objective measures of the material conditions people live under. Ground has been lost.
Absolutely- society must also make cytosine progress or it’s all for naught.
Thymine progress is also not to be overlooked.
Imagine if you're a sill, just sitting there minding your own business, getting worn down by the weather. That bit by bit seems almost nothing by the day, but decades come and you'll be worn down to nothing.
I see what U did there.
Hey don't forget about adenine progress either...
Adenine is a lazy good for nothing amino acid that is a fifth column in our DNA
Yes, but how often have we seen an ACA like bill? It was like a decade ago, and at that rate we'll virtually never match other countries. We can't maintain a cadence, we're more like that one who goes to the gym a little bit then tires again and gets lazy while any progress made at that point wilts and makes the next goes too late for progress to really build (note that it's already been eroded some). Same with minimum wage. We've not passed even a marginal increase in an insane number of years. When you talk of incremental improvement, the flip side is that cadence and rate matter. You've gotta find the optimal running pace and training regimen, where you're making steady, efficient progress toward the goal, degrading neither by pushing too hard nor by being too leisurely and letting your gains erode.
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Before the ACA, most of my immediate family was denied medical care due to pre-existing conditions. After the ACA, they’ve all got affordable healthcare. So it’s certainly done more than just make insurance companies richer. I don’t care if they make money if we aren’t leaving people do die due to pre-existing conditions. We can improve it later, but without incremental change like that my family would likely be dead.
It is a dismissal, and a dismissal of the fact that obstacles to that progress are greater now than ever in recent memory. Incremental change is good in science, in life and learning, and it ought probably to be default way of changing society in an ideal world. But in the particular society we find ourselves almost every change on the right direction comes with very powerful opposition actors who will do their best to claw back whatever they might have lost with that change and then some, and they often succeed. A small change which doesn't deal with that fact is in serious danger of nullification. The ACA was much more useful to people 1 year in than it is today, insurance companies figured out how to game the market and make the plans less favorable and more expensive, that was happening even before the loss of the individual mandate which probably accelerated the process. That's why Bernie's medicare for all plan does away with the insurance industry, because if you leave them behind they're sure to make mischief. It's the same story all over, very troubling situation we find ourselves in
It's more demotivating for me when I'm forever stuck in a cycle of making an incremental improvement and then making an incremental step back. All the effort and exhaustion, none of the progress over time. Doesn't feel worth it and can't get the supports to help me make a change.
I think that is a symptom of the effect. It's hard to see the overall improvement if it is a) slow and b) punctuated by many setbacks. I'm certainly not immune.
It's twofold I think. Not only do they want immediate results, but as you said they want the silver bullet - there has to be *one thing* that we can do that *fixes everything all the way.* When in reality pretty much every real 'solution' to societal problems will be a bunch of smaller solutions that mostly make the problem better.
And the GQP members ride that train 24 hours a day. "What is the point of banning X when people still have Y?". By this theory, we would still be using leaded gasoline because on the day they stopped production of leaded fuel cars, there were still 100 million of them on the road. It took an entire generation to see the improvements in air quality, but they are truly dramatic.
> It took an entire generation to see the improvements in air quality And that leads to another famous one from their playbook: "look how good air quality is today! See how banning leaded gasoline was pointless? The problem never existed in the first place! It was just an overreaction!" No, you moron, air quality nowadays is better because we literally did something to avoid/fix it. Same thing with CFCs and the ozone layer, which I've personally saw being used as an example in a similar scenario. Debating conservatives nowadays feel like arguing with a child, both in mentality and in knowledge.
And yet they're ban happy when it comes to books and abortions and human beings loving one another.
The problem is that often times incremental improvements are only incremental because those in power refuse to do anything substantial. Not because substantial improvements are impossible, but because appearing to be incrementally working on something is their goal. That goal of course is always to preserve systems designed to upwardly distribute wealth at all costs. So, I’m skeptical of people reading this thread and drawing the conclusion that we should accept smokescreen ‘improvements’ just we because we have a cognitive bias against appreciating small changes.
Incremental change merely buys them time. The smallest amount that they can make the investment while still convincing us they're making progress is what they will try to spend as much time as possible paying.
A huge part of the problem is that politicians take advantage of the idea of incremental change being an acceptable pace of progress as an excuse not to do more. And when you’re talking about basic human rights, the health of the planet, wealth inequality, etc., it’s understandable to get discouraged by incremental change. I mean the GOP may exploit people’s desire for more to inspire cynicism and give them nothing but the Dems often exploit the GOP’s obstructionism to argue that a small amount of change is enough. But that’s indefensible when they have had power and have chosen not to use it.
This. Incremental change can be astounding in its effects, but when people are literally dying from lack of resources it doesn’t feel like anything at all.
You may be on the brink of homelessness, but don't you worry, we're building another homeless shelter!
Seriously, it feels like people who can't stomach the idea of incremental progress are one of the primary political arguments I end up in. Everyone wants a silver bullet to solve all of their problems. This one thing you can do to make everything better. And a lot of ideologies will try to sell you the snake oil but such a thing exists. All you can do is as much good as possible. And it adds up. If you look at ideologies that have taken this approach, they get disproportionate power for it. If you take an inch and keep demanding another inch you're going to get ahead. But if somebody offers you an inch and you spit in their face because it isn't everything you want, you get nothing.
30 years of doing everything the pundits said would alienate everybody, but never ceasing, and they ended up with control of the entire system.
Ya, so how do I stop doing that? I can recognize some growth in things but it doesn't ever make doing it easier. I can practice for a week and recognize improvement. But in the moment it just feels like I'm doing nothing but failing at everything. It feels impossible to continue when you're constantly feeling like you're failing.
I just started guitar 3 months ago, when I started terribly playing songs, I would record a video of myself playing. Knowing damn well how terrible they were, but I wanted to physically see my progress. I've played almost everyday and I look back at those videos and I love it, because it really shows how much better I've gotten. No sure if what you're doing is applicable?
That's really clever. I think I just did that by accident with 3D modeling recently, and it was strangely motivating. I've found that I vastly overestimate the quality of my previous artistic works, but when I accidentally open my first attempt at box-modeling a human head from a month ago (instead of the one I'm working on now) and see that it looks like a deformed version of Andross from the SNES Star Fox game, it's easy to see how much progress I'm making.
I'd say it depends on the skill, motor physical skills like juggling and dribbling are proven to improve as each repetition physically stimulates the neuronal connection to make complex signal combinations reach your muscles faster (myosin). You could even say each repetition increases your skill by 0.05% and it's just a matter of time before you reach mastery, if you trust science then you should also trust your own practice, it's only failure if you stop. I'll also say that feeling like you're failing is a very good sign of improvement because you recognize you're making a mistake, you would never be able to improve if you didn't feel like that. Mental/Creative skills also need careful, deliberate practice to improve which drains your focus very quickly, most people can't practice mental skills for more than 2 hours a day before diminishing returns set in and you're more likely to burn out than make any real progress so beware.
"I'll also say that feeling like you're failing is a very good sign of improvement because you recognize you're making a mistake, you would never be able to improve if you didn't feel like that." This is a really good way to reframe it actually. Thanks!
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"What about the dirty mining of batteries!" "Where do you think that energy comes from stupid!?" Now we have home solar power charging cars rated for 1 million miles and learned how oil companies held back innovation to perpetuate their profits. Keep the ball rolling!
It’s my impression that the people in these conversations who are against measures to stem climate change are arguing disingenuously. They don’t really see incremental changes in the areas you mention as insufficient and therefore not worth pursuing. They have decided their position a priori based on political partisanship and then flail around looking for something to support it.
This is the first thing that comes to mind. Many people find one small problem and dismiss the entire idea and that problem is usually an edge-use case. “Electric cars are no good because once a year I have to drive 500 miles and I don’t like to stop to recharge.” “Public transport is no good because I live in rural arse end of nowhere” 80% of people (in the UK) live in urban and suburban areas. We don’t have to solve everyone’s car dependency in one go, but let’s make a start with the significant fraction where there is an opportunity to do so. Perfect is the enemy of good.
I'm learning programming and I'm completely lost at the beginning of every problem, but by the end I at least know enough to solve the previous problem much more easily. It's hard to keep that in mind during the struggle.
I'm seeing this a lot in attitudes to the climate crisis. I've heard so many people criticise ideas that don't solve the entire problem, which is a huge issue because the problem is so big that no individual solution could possibly address it entirely anyway.
Yes, but also it's worth noting that there definitely have to be situations where incremental change actually isn't enough - specifically things which are time sensitive and which the incremental change is not improving fast enough to satisfy the time constraint. So, this thesis probably applies more to e.g. softly defined or subjective issues more than material issues with hard technical boundary conditions like the climate crisis. Dead people stay dead if you're not fast enough to stop what's killing them, no matter what incremental changes you make if the carbon causing it all is already in the atmosphere. Given the scale and rapidly approaching immediacy of the climate crisis (or really, just being faaar to late to take it seriously) we really do need massive change *now*. Sure, that massive change doesn't have a silver bullet, it has to be made of a bunch of smaller but still significant changes, but they do all have to happen all at once now rather than incrementally because we've run out the clock by being too slowly incremental (if at all incremental in any meaningful sense - if we wanted gradual and easy fixes to climate change we needed to start taking them seriously 50 years ago and we just didn't). Edit: an analogy - it's only okay to ease onto the brakes if you do it fast enough to not hit the wall, otherwise you do need to stomp.
We're saying the same thing. I mean incremental changes in the sense of completely changing individual systems. Overall we need a massive change, but that change is made up of many many smaller (though still very big) actions. I see people panning these smaller actions because they won't be *the* solution and that's the wrong attitude.
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Somehow this feels more like a personality or cultural type of issue. Some people who are perhaps more broad-minded can deal better with slower incremental positive changes as opposed to those that insist on fast responses to everything. There are quick responses to everything but not everything can be a true solution. Knowing the difference requires wisdom and experience.
> personality or cultural type of issue probably related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality
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Nobody lacks a culture. But people can certainly be trained to think progress is impossible
So basically “humans are shortsighted and abandon projects that don’t see an almost immediate payout”. We kinda knew that, but it’s good to have the scientific research backing it.
The book Atomic Habits is based on this exact premise.
I've been reading it in the past week and it's been quite eye-opening. I've changed my outlook on incremental improvements for the better and I'm really curious to see what else I might learn from this book.
My parents wouldn’t even believe I was looking for a job until I actually got one. It’s like proto-lizard brain thinking
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>Grandpa taught me that 60 years ago. "Fools and children shouldn't see unfinished work." Not sure I follow. Can you explain this quote? My parents treated anything other than total success as a shameful failure. Took a lot of effort to start reversing that damage.
Not OP but I believe they're saying that Children and Fools don't appreciate things in progress. You show them the first Rendition of the Airplane and they laugh and say it'll never work, it barely flies, what a waste, where as someone who isn't a fool sees that it's a work in progress and that it could lead to great things. Essentially fools and children want instant results and don't appreciate the work that goes into the end result.
“Fail fast. Fail often.” Every step forward matters.
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Yup. I'm studying for my Professional Engineering license (State Board Exam), and it's a two-test process. I started a year and a half ago. That's right - 18 months! I passed the first text about half way through, and went right into studying for the second test. People usually take years in between, but I'm doing it back-to-back. I, unfortunately, did not pass my first attempt at the last test. Frustrated and burnt out, I planned for some time off. One person (who shal not be named), said "what? You're just going to give up????" Don't discredit the 18 months of work I've done just because I haven't reached the final goal, yet.
I often see this at work. People dismiss solutions to problems that address most of an issue when those solutions don't cover 100% of it. One of my favorite sayings is "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
They also dismiss big changes. It is really difficult to implement changes in a corporate world.
Today is day one of my new diet and exercise regimen and this is something I'm really going to have to push myself to keep in mind. I know I'm in for a lengthy period offrustration before observing any tangible payoff.
I practice kickboxing (to keep fit and do the odd competition). My main advice is to take pics/videos of yourself throughout the journey. I’ve seen lots of people come into classes stay for a while then drop out. At first they see huge progress because going from not being able to throw a punch to being able to throw one is a big deal. Instant gratification I suppose. But when all the basics are learnt it’s into the long grind of small improvements. Especially when you enter the sparring side of the sport. I have regular personal training sessions where my coaches have been taking the odd video of my progress over the last 2 years. Seeing the difference between me just before covid and me now is hugely motivating. That and having a routine. Routine and discipline is crucial because motivation is very fleeting.
Here with you! If it's helpful, I've been thinking to myself not getting too caught up in the results. It's a success if I stayed committed to the process and showed up for myself, regardless of how quickly that reflects in any measurement. Good luck!!
this is why people play the lottery and have gambling addictions
This is a cornerstone failure in liberal politics. Conservatism is often built around fear, specifically the slippery slope. Whenever rights are expanded, you'll hear outlandish claims that "this will result in people being able to marry their dog" or whatever. It's evocative. On the other side, liberals can't evoke their progress. You'll see the growth rate go up under US Democrats, and down during Republicans throughout the 21 century but Biden can't rally around that. Even ACA, aka Obamacare, the biggest thing to come out of Democratic party in 20+ years was somehow both demonized while also being a stepping stone to universal healthcare. Rome wasn't built in a day, but it wasn't burnt in one either.
Are we closer to universal healthcare now than we were following the passage of the ACA?
One could argue that all of these temporary patchwork solutions blind people to the real solutions that would fix the underlying problem. Nuclear power is a clear example.
Conservatives have this problem too- they just went through a wrenching change over in which everybody was primarying everybody else. RINO still gets thrown around Liberals and progressives have also had a long history of forming coalitions.
I’ve found this to be true with my weight loss. I knew I could hold out and see results anyway, so I kept going. Even though I knew it would happen if I kept going, I still had the discontent and worry that it wasn’t working after all, and that the day to day results weren’t enough. I’ve lost 50 lbs now and it still happens to me.
The hardest and most important part is just to keep at it. It’s hard to continue on when you don’t feel like it’s making a difference or you’re not making the progress you feel like you should. The goal should be the process not necessarily the progress.
I struggle with this because I *want* to see any progress on an issue as good, but with some issues the progress will ultimately still lead to a failure state. For example, carbon net zero by 2050 is a fantastic goal and we might actually achieve it! Unfortunately, the impact on global climate long-term, even if we achieved that goal today, will still be catastrophic and possibly put us on a path for an unlivable planet within <10 generations.
Small incremental improvements is how our current technology stack evolves. Transistors get a tiny bit better with every generation. Screens and batteries too. It's why a phone today outperforms a computer from a decade ago.
Isnt it also because if every interval has a chance for failure/success you cannot determine the full extent of the goal... without actually reaching said goal? Its like premature celebration and its very understandable in moderation or relative to the event.
Also known as instant gratification
It’s taking my brain too long to break down this title. Anyone mind giving it an explainlikeim5?
A person is 150lbs overweight and wants to lose it per doctors recommendations. They try a strict diet their friend recommended and over the week they lost about 8 pounds (a lot of it is water weight and such so massive losses are common early). The next week they lost 3 pounds, they are now 139 pounds overweight. A few more weeks go by, they are 130 pounds overweight, they look at themselves and think "All this work, and I'm not even close yet. I don't want to be on the strict diet forever" so maybe they start cheating a little without monitoring and that slows the results. They logically know the results will slow from that and they're still making progress, but now they feel even worse from how slow it's going and they start cheating even more and even more and even more. Eventually they kind of just drop out altogether. Another example, a person is learning a new language. They learned the alphabet of the new language and how to say some basic introductions and sentences. Over a month they've learned 50-100 words (a pretty great amount for a new learner), they feel proud of themselves and try to read a children's book. That children's book is still filled with tons of words that they don't understand at all, they get demotivated at how much there is left just to understand something so simple and slowly give up.
>That children's book is still filled with tons of words that they don't understand at all, they get demotivated at how much there is left just to understand something so simple and slowly give up. If you're not learning because you enjoy the process, you're not gonna enjoy the fruits, because they pale in comparison to the effort you have to put in.
I’m finding this now that I’m out of school. I apparently hate learning. Doing new things just isnt worth it anymore because I’d just rather not do it than need to put a ton of time into learning it just to be mediocre.
Being mediocre at a lot of things makes you extremely flexible
We tend to ignore a solution that attenuates our problem if it does not completely resolve it.
I tend to like the word measure instead of solution, as in measures taken to reduce the problem. Solution sounds like it is making promises it can't keep.
Here's a hypothetical example: The U.S. has a gun death problem. The U.S. introduces a gun law that reduces gun deaths by 10%. Many people say the U.S. government is acting in bad faith and not addressing the gun death problem because the new gun laws are only incremental changes.
"Why are we forcing vaccines that don't even prevent you from catching Covid?" That's a recent example.
I've spent a lot of my early twenties undoing this thinking as a college dropout. Love yourself people, we do amazing things if we let ourselves take many small steps. Enjoy the walk and the destination comes sooner than you think. Peace yall
Any chance someone has a link to the full article?
Could it be cultural? they should do the same study in different countries.
This is what makes being depressed so difficult. If I’m not cured it’s not good enough. It’s called discounting the positive. But I think that’s peoples initial expectation, that is problems should be solved, not slowly chipped away at. A 2% reduction in suffering is still suffering. But eventually one has to realize that incremental progress is the only real way forward with themselves and especially in society.
masks arent 100% effective? might as well do nothing!
Distinctions are literally what people are looking for. I feel like that entire paragraph could be said clearly in one sentence
For some things incremental is used to delay or deny progress. Politics as an example. Being happy with a small victory drains will to change the world in a meaningful way and that drain can and is a weapon in curruptions hands. Evey day they can delay Evey person they can get to feel like they did enough is one who will not try as hard tomorrow and will accept a finish line that is just a little farther away. So while I agree small victorys add up.. I think there is a danger to doing things in small slices as well.
I understand that this is /r/science but may I humbly ask you use a title instead of an abstract on the submission? It may not always be easy to pare things down into a more succinct statement and it may be that a referenced article similarly has an outlandishly long title. I feel there must be something in between.
At least 68,000 earnest working Americans die each year for the simple lack of health care in the world's wealthiest-ever nation. The human species is dancing on the precipice of extinction due to climate change. How can we accommodate this paper with those salient facts without being completely depraved? Behold capitalism, Destroyer of Worlds.
Ugh, read comments on anything about renewables and EVs. Even though they are categorically better/empirical improvements over fossil fuels, there's still people in the comments going "Yeah, but xyz thing that means they aren't 100% perfect."
I definitely see this in the left leaning USA. And climate deniers and the opposite people.
"just be patient and let the system do it's work as moderates work in increments" is a luxury for the well off. I mean, insulin prices going down by 0.5% is better than before, but when it's a choice between that and rent.
Well our brains are wired for short term gratification
I am currently trying to design a product for my prospective business and how I feel about my entrepreneurship journey falls in line with this study. There won't be any substantive rewards any time soon (or ever) and as a result it is somewhat difficult to keep staying motivated. However, understanding it (i.e. understanding the results of this study) already helps compensate for this downfall in motivation (and helps with the resulting investments).
Changing this one element of my thinking patterns, realizing progress is success in and of itself regardless of the end goal of an endeavor has not only improved my general mood and wellbeing, but I find I feel a little more successful in everything I attempt because I am freed from the outcome. I just do my best and hope it works out. I fail probably as much as I did before but each failure is just another stone placed in the bridge I’m building to my own success. It took a lot of time and work to get to this mindset but the mentality is incredibly freeing and I hope I can maintain it in the long term.