whatever you do, have goals and be purposeful. have criteria of success and failure. and write them down. put them into words, don't just think them vaguely in your head and assume you know what you mean.
if you play video games, have goals. you can try to get highly skilled. other goals are possible too. you could collect all the things, or complete all the achievements, to see what that's like and then evaluate if you think it's a good goal to use in the future.
if you watch TV, don’t watch random TV shows. don’t just watch whatever's on. be selective. how do you select which things to watch? according to some purpose.
if you read non-fiction books, you should often read in a targeted way: skim them, use the index, read a particular chapter in search to knowledge about a specific issue you’re currently dealing with.
if you have a romantic relationship, have some idea of what you want from it. and make it your own idea, that you think about, not just a cultural default. even if you agree with 80% of the cultural default, still customize it and make your own version of what you want. think about it. at least decide which parts of the cultural default you want to emphasize, and which you want less of. decide something. have some purpose to it.
purpose makes success possible and purpose also makes failure possible. it’s a risk but it’s so necessary to a worthwhile life.
https://twitter.com/patio11/status/983351143999795200
How far ahead of a soft [poker] table does "I have read one book and have done whole hours of directed practice" put you ahead? A staggering, staggering amount, even if the average participant theoretically has years of practice and is not, strictly speaking, unintelligent.
reading one book and practicing for a few hours is purposeful, goal-directed behavior where you’re aiming at success. this can beat years of non-purposeful activity. the quote is about poker tables, but this applies to tons of other stuff too. people manage to spend hundreds of hours playing poker, over a few decades, and never get good. other people read a book and practice with a goal of getting better (not great or top level, just to gain some skill) and outcompete the non-purposeful people.
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>purpose makes success possible and purpose also makes failure possible. it’s a risk but it’s so necessary to a worthwhile life.
yeah, and if you're not trying to make clear objectives your life will not be random, it will still have some purpose. so failure will happen, just that it will be harder to find and correct it.