www.raptitude.com
Open in
urlscan Pro
74.121.205.83
Public Scan
URL:
https://www.raptitude.com/
Submission: On November 25 via api from CA — Scanned from CA
Submission: On November 25 via api from CA — Scanned from CA
Form analysis 12 forms found in the DOM
GET https://www.raptitude.com/
<form method="get" class="searchform" action="https://www.raptitude.com/">
<div><input type="text" value="Search Raptitude" name="s" class="search-text" title="Search Text">
<input type="submit" class="searchsubmit" value="Search" title="Search">
</div>
</form>GET https://www.raptitude.com/
<form method="get" class="searchform" action="https://www.raptitude.com/">
<div><input type="text" value="Search Raptitude" name="s" class="search-text" title="Search Text">
<input type="submit" class="searchsubmit" value="Search" title="Search">
</div>
</form>GET https://www.raptitude.com/
<form method="get" class="searchform" action="https://www.raptitude.com/">
<div><input type="text" value="Search Raptitude" name="s" class="search-text" title="Search Text">
<input type="submit" class="searchsubmit" value="Search" title="Search">
</div>
</form>GET https://www.raptitude.com/
<form method="get" class="searchform" action="https://www.raptitude.com/">
<div><input type="text" value="Search Raptitude" name="s" class="search-text" title="Search Text">
<input type="submit" class="searchsubmit" value="Search" title="Search">
</div>
</form>GET https://www.raptitude.com/
<form method="get" class="searchform" action="https://www.raptitude.com/">
<div><input type="text" value="Search Raptitude" name="s" class="search-text" title="Search Text">
<input type="submit" class="searchsubmit" value="Search" title="Search">
</div>
</form>GET https://www.raptitude.com/
<form method="get" class="searchform" action="https://www.raptitude.com/">
<div><input type="text" value="Search Raptitude" name="s" class="search-text" title="Search Text">
<input type="submit" class="searchsubmit" value="Search" title="Search">
</div>
</form>GET https://www.raptitude.com/
<form method="get" class="searchform" action="https://www.raptitude.com/">
<div><input type="text" value="Search Raptitude" name="s" class="search-text" title="Search Text">
<input type="submit" class="searchsubmit" value="Search" title="Search">
</div>
</form>GET https://www.raptitude.com/
<form method="get" class="searchform" action="https://www.raptitude.com/">
<div><input type="text" value="Search Raptitude" name="s" class="search-text" title="Search Text">
<input type="submit" class="searchsubmit" value="Search" title="Search">
</div>
</form>GET https://www.raptitude.com/
<form method="get" class="searchform" action="https://www.raptitude.com/">
<div><input type="text" value="Search Raptitude" name="s" class="search-text" title="Search Text">
<input type="submit" class="searchsubmit" value="Search" title="Search">
</div>
</form>GET https://www.raptitude.com/
<form method="get" class="searchform" action="https://www.raptitude.com/">
<div><input type="text" value="Search Raptitude" name="s" class="search-text" title="Search Text">
<input type="submit" class="searchsubmit" value="Search" title="Search">
</div>
</form>GET https://www.raptitude.com/
<form method="get" class="searchform" action="https://www.raptitude.com/">
<div><input type="text" value="Search Raptitude" name="s" class="search-text" title="Search Text">
<input type="submit" class="searchsubmit" value="Search" title="Search">
</div>
</form>https://forms.convertkit.com/landing_pages/413607/subscribe
<form id="ck_subscribe_form" class="ck_subscribe_form" action="https://forms.convertkit.com/landing_pages/413607/subscribe" data-remote="true">
<input type="hidden"
value="{"form_style":"minimal","converted_behavior":"show","days_no_show":"15","delay_seconds":"10","display_devices":"all","display_position":"br","embed_style":"inline","embed_trigger":"scroll_percentage","scroll_percentage":"70"}"
id="ck_form_options">
<input type="hidden" name="id" value="413607" id="landing_page_id">
<input type="hidden" name="ck_form_recaptcha" value="" id="ck_form_recaptcha">
<div class="ck_errorArea">
<div id="ck_error_msg" style="display:none">
<p>There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="ck_control_group ck_email_field_group">
<label class="ck_label" for="ck_emailField" style="display: none">Email Address</label>
<input type="email" name="email" class="ck_email_address" id="ck_emailField" placeholder="Email Address" required="">
</div>
<div class="ck_control_group ck_captcha2_h_field_group ck-captcha2-h" style="position: absolute !important;left: -999em !important;">
<input type="text" name="captcha2_h" class="ck-captcha2-h" id="ck_captcha2_h" placeholder="We use this field to detect spam bots. If you fill this in, you will be marked as a spammer.">
</div>
<button class="subscribe_button ck_subscribe_button btn fields" id="ck_subscribe_button"> Submit </button>
<span class="ck_guarantee"> We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time.
<a class="ck_powered_by" href="https://kit.com/features/forms?utm_campaign=poweredby&utm_content=form&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=dynamic">Powered by Kit</a>
</span>
</form>Text Content
Switch to mobile version
RAPTITUDE.COM
Menu
* About
* Archives
* Experiments
* Courses
* Contact
* Best posts
HUMANS ARE ABOUT TO LEARN LIKE NEVER BEFORE
Share
Tweet
Pocket
Pin
Email
{ 52 comments }
Humans aren’t good at predicting the future, but sometimes you can see a trend
that promises something great — like “a genie is granting your wish” great. I
think this might be happening right now with one of my genie wishes, maybe yours
too.
For me it has to do with the piles of unread books I own. There’s almost nothing
I want to do more than plow through stacks of 600-page history and philosophy
books, but my efforts are mostly thwarted by the cognitive difficulty I have
with processing line upon line of printed text. While I’m reading, my attention
veers off at least once or twice per sentence (unless I read aloud, which is
slower, hard on the throat, and not always appropriate).
It’s not a small impediment to learning. Not to sound dramatic, but those books
represent something I want badly that feels locked away from me, like I’m stuck
in the middle act of some frog prince fable. Imagine you loved swimming more
than anything, but water happens to cause you horrendous itching.
Audiobooks allow me to spend more time reading (e.g. in the car, at the gym) but
lapses of attention still occur frequently. I rewind a lot, but I still miss the
context needed to understand the next point. Missed context accumulates until
the content is mostly lost on me, then interest crashes completely and I stop.
This happens because books, in any form, are essentially long strings of
interdependent sentences, which must be read and understood in order. They
operate something like old strings of Christmas lights – miss an important
“bulb” and the rest might not work for you at all.
Read More
by David Cain on November 22, 2024
{ Read More }
TWO WAYS TO CHANGE YOUR MOMENTUM
Share
Tweet
Pocket
Pin
Email
{ 35 comments }
This is hardly a brilliant insight, but I’ve noticed that making small, “good”
decisions early in the day makes the whole day work better. If I wake up and
avoid screen time and loafing around, I get more and better work done, I make
more sensible meal choices, I’m less needy and thought-addled, I don’t get as
tired in the afternoon, and so on.
The exact causal paths here aren’t necessarily traceable. Maybe my
procrastination neurons miss their usual early-morning workout, so I become less
inclined to unlock my phone reflexively, which means I get more done and feel
better about myself, so the future feels brighter and more within my control, so
I don’t hit a wall of motivation loss at 2:30.
There countless variables involved, but the clear pattern is that good begets
more good. This seems like a general principle that affects everyone.
It works the other way too, of course. Bad choices beget bad choices. In a
moment of weakness you order cheesecake on DoorDash at 9:40 pm. You proceed to
sleep poorly, and wake up distracted and screen-hungry. You start late, get
annoyed at the first setback at work, compromise your afternoon plans, and feel
bad about it, perhaps leading eventually to some evening ennui and more cake
delivery.
Read More
by David Cain on October 24, 2024
{ Read More }
GROWTH MEANS CHOOSING A DIFFERENT KIND OF PAIN
Share
Tweet
Pocket
Pin
Email
{ 36 comments }
I never threw a party until I was in my late 30s. I was always afraid people
wouldn’t show up, or, even worse, that they would show up and quickly want to
leave.
It felt like this particular fate could not be risked, which meant
party-throwing was off the table. Other people could throw parties I guess, but
I could not.
“No parties may be held in this lifetime” is quite a high cost to pay, just to
protect yourself from a very occasional sort of pain. Yes it feels bad to have a
lame party, but does it make sense to station yourself forever outside of the
party-having population, solely to avoid having to feel that bad feeling two or
three times in your life?
When I did start hosting parties, the usual outcome was that they were
tremendously fun. Only one was genuinely disappointing. I had unwittingly
scheduled it on the same day as another, more elaborately planned party. Several
loyal attendees also got called into work or got sick and/or injured. Still,
five or six excellent people showed up, including some who had gone to both
parties. We sat around the kitchen table eating snacks and collaborating
hilariously on a crossword.
Of course, now that I’ve actually “suffered” this long-avoided type of pain, it
barely registers as a meaningful risk anymore. Why did I give up so much to
protect against it?
I think this situation is common – to be giving up way too much in an effort to
protect against certain kinds of pain. When protecting yourself from a certain
unpleasant possibility becomes non-negotiable, you’re liable to suffer in other
ways, often to a much greater degree.
Read More
by David Cain on October 1, 2024
{ Read More }
IN FAVOR OF READING ALOUD
Share
Tweet
Pocket
Pin
Email
{ 47 comments }
When I read Jane Eyre, I stalled for a full year between the opening part at the
boarding school and the rest of the book.
I tend to dislike boarding-school openings in books, but the real problem was I
found myself having to reread too many of Charlotte Brontë’s winding,
multi-clausal, colon-encrusted sentences. Her writing is beautiful, but some
sentences contained so many twists and detours that I would often lose the flow
of them and have to take a second go. The book was clearly a special one, but
whenever I looked at it I got tired at the thought of diving back in.
I finally regained traction by reading it aloud. I finished the whole book this
way, which made it an unfettered joy. Because each of its complex Victorian
sentences had to pass through my mouth, I found it easy to stay with their
meaning and structure. The reading was slower, but much smoother, with very
little doubling back. It felt like I was finally driving in the appropriate gear
for the terrain.
Read More
by David Cain on September 11, 2024
{ Read More }
SOMEBODY HAS ALREADY FIGURED IT OUT FOR YOU
Share
Tweet
Pocket
Pin
Email
{ comments closed }
Let’s say you want to cross a river.
There’s no bridge, because it’s 3000 BC and you are a nomadic goat herder.
You’ve never seen a bridge that wasn’t just a log over a creek. Crossing a big
river is something you haven’t figured out. Maybe nobody has.
You could maybe make a raft, but it’s hard to find suitable wood for that, and
you don’t know if it would be safe. Are there man-eating water-lizards lurking
out there? Will the current dash you on some rocks before you get across?
You never cross the river.
Say you want to learn accounting. You’d love to be able to track every penny
that comes in and out of your life in a great big ledger. It would satisfy your
desire for order and efficiency, and probably save you a lot of money. You could
even provide accounting services for businesses in your village.
The problem is it’s 1590, and you are an illiterate tavern owner. There’s maybe
one guy in a nearby town who might know about accounting, and the town is eight
miles away and you don’t have a horse. Also, that guy is a monk and he has no
reason to devote any time to teaching you accounting.
Read More
by David Cain on August 20, 2024
{ Read More }
DO QUESTS, NOT GOALS
Share
Tweet
Pocket
Pin
Email
{ comments closed }
South Island, New Zealand, a.k.a. Middle-Earth
If you were to make a list of what you want to get done this week, it would
mostly consist of things you have to do. Get groceries. Book a hair appointment.
Get back to so-and-so. Read that health and safety thing for work.
If you were to make a list of things you want to get done in the next two years,
it would probably be more personal and more empowering. Learn to record my own
music. Double my client base. Set up my dream office. Write my screenplay. The
list would contain fewer things you must do –- since, by definition, those
things will get done anyway — and more of what you actually want to do with your
life.
We usually call these optional aspirations goals, but doing so immediately
introduces a few problems that make them less likely to happen.
Read More
by David Cain on August 8, 2024
{ Read More }
WHAT HUMAN CIVILIZATION IS ALL ABOUT
Share
Tweet
Pocket
Pin
Email
{ comments closed }
An assassin is coming to kill you! At midnight tonight! Unless you do 100
pushups first, that is.
If this were true, you would do the pushups, no question, no problem. Any
motivation issues would evaporate, thanks to your assassin. If the assassin did
this every weekday, you’d have amazing pecs, even if you didn’t want them. Your
fitness would become an inevitable result of circumstance.
The real question is how to get yourself to do 100 pushups, or some other
rewarding feat, without an assassin coming to kill you. If your amygdala isn’t
getting forcibly activated by an Anton Chigurh-like force, you have to rely on
something else.
But why is that “something else” so much less dependable? Why is it so hard to
just do the thing we think is best?
Someone emailed me a while ago and said, “Hey Dave, I notice what you mostly
write about is self-control. Why all the talk about self-control?”
I do have my particular struggles with self-control, but I also regard the
battle for self-control as the central theme of human history. Everything people
argue about, all the news, all the political discourse, all the gossip and
outrage, all the big religions, all the punditry and proselytizing — it all
centers on what some person, or all people, should do or refrain from doing. All
humans care about is good and bad, and the voluntary human actions that make
good and bad happen.
Another word for this fixation on human self-control is morality. Everyone
agrees that it matters what we do. A given person, at a given moment, might do a
good thing or bad thing, and a lot hinges on that – much more than just that
person’s own fate.
Read More
by David Cain on July 25, 2024
{ Read More }
PUSH THE FENCE
Share
Tweet
Pocket
Pin
Email
{ comments closed }
I know how to replace a kitchen faucet. If you have a janky old faucet that
needs to be replaced with a smoothly operating new one, I can do that for you or
show you how.
This wasn’t always true. It became true May 27, 2024, after pulling everything
out of the under-sink cupboard, lying uncomfortably on my back inside it, and
fiddling my way through several sets of internet-derived instructions.
The exact moment in which I became capable of faucet-replacing is hard to pin
down precisely, but it was a real moment in time, sometime that afternoon, in
that sweaty and contorted position under the sink.
Just before that, I had been dismayed to discover that the various hoses and
hardware coming out of the fixture didn’t correspond to the ones in the
instructional YouTube video. I could easily have abandoned the mission there,
telling myself I’d “come back to it later” or “figure something else out.”
Instead, I chose to lay uncomfortably a little longer, pondering the problem,
testing my hunches. Within an hour I had a sparkling new tap that worked
perfectly.
Now that I’ve done it once, the mechanics of faucet installation seem
straightforward and self-evident, and I’m confident I could do it a hundred
times over.
Read More
by David Cain on July 16, 2024
{ Read More }
FEEDBACK IS WHAT MAKES EVERYTHING WORK
Share
Tweet
Pocket
Pin
Email
{ comments closed }
The other day I closed a savings account at a tiny credit union branch. I
expected it to take about five minutes, but the teller took so long that I
started to experience time distortion.
I knew it had been at least fifteen minutes, but perhaps it was much longer.
Twenty-five minutes? Forty? There was no visible clock, and I didn’t want to
take out my phone. The young teller seemed to be Googling how to close an
account while maintaining her professional bank teller countenance.
I waited patiently, occupying myself with an eyes-open meditation practice, and
didn’t complain.
I did feel self-conscious though. There were only two tellers, and half of them
were dealing with me while the other one, clearly more experienced, handled the
rest of the line one at a time.
Another customer did complain, to the other teller.
She said, with an edge to her voice, “I would suggest that if a transaction is
going to take more than ten minutes, it should be done by appointment,” and then
went on to make a few more suggestions. The teller cited extenuating
circumstances (scheduling problems, somebody is on lunch) and also said she was
very sorry about that a few times.
Everyone in the tiny building heard this exchange, and it made for an
uncomfortable few minutes for all of us.
Read More
by David Cain on June 27, 2024
{ Read More }
NOBODY KNOWS WHAT’S GOING ON
Share
Tweet
Pocket
Pin
Email
{ comments closed }
A major online publication once reported in a profile on me that I had retired
at 33. A few old friends and acquaintances reached out to congratulate me on my
financial independence.
I think it was an honest mistake on the part of the reporter. I told her I had
quit my job to write full time, and I guess she thought that meant I must have
millions of dollars.
To be clear, I was not then, and am not now financially independent. The 100 or
so people that actually know me could discern that just by seeing my kitchen.
Yet perhaps 20,000 people read somewhere that I am. That means potentially 200
times more people are wrong than right on this question, because of an inference
made by a reporter.
This scenario, in which there’s much more wrongness going around than rightness,
is probably the norm. People make bad inferences like that all day long. These
wrong ideas replicate themselves whenever the person tells someone else what
they know, which the internet makes easier than ever.
Consider the possibility that most of the information being passed around, on
whatever topic, is bad information, even where there’s no intentional deception.
As George Orwell said, “The most fundamental mistake of man is that he thinks he
knows what’s going on. Nobody knows what’s going on.”
Read More
by David Cain on June 12, 2024
{ Read More }
{ Older Entries }
Desktop version
* SUBSCRIBE
Join thousands of regular readers. Never miss a Raptitude post.
Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription.
There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.
Email Address
Submit We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time. Powered by Kit
* I'm David, and Raptitude is a blog about getting better at being human --
things we can do to improve our lives today.
* SUPPORT RAPTITUDE
Raptitude remains ad-free thanks to small, voluntary contributions from
readers like you. Supporters of Raptitude get access to extra posts, ebooks,
and other goodies. Join our Patreon community today!
[Learn more]
*
* ESSENTIAL RAPTITUDE
* Wise People Have Rules For Themselves
* You Never Have Time, Only Intentions
* The Only Thing You Need to Get Good At
* Five Things You Notice When You Quit the News
* Where There’s Stress, There’s a Story
* Getting What We Want Isn’t What We Really Want
* 7 Years and 21 Self-Improvement Experiments: Where They All Are Today
* Mindfulness is the Opposite of Neediness
* Don’t Forget How Strange This All Is
* A Basic Skill We Should Have Learned as Kids
* How Mindfulness Creates Freedom
* The elegant secret to self-discipline
* An interview with The Man
* How much of your life are you selling off?
* The person you used to be still tells you what to do
* How to walk across a parking lot
* RECENT COMMENTS
* Yes David, I agree with the sense that attention spans are diminishing as
a result of smart phone use. I am 70 years old and learned to read in the
1950s, learned to meditate in the 1970s. Writers are getting better at
writing. I will read well-written, recently written books. Writers...
November 24, 2024 at 5:15 pmToni
* My suspicion is that our decreasing attention spans are mainly due to
smartphone usage, and all of the rapid-fire sort of content we browse now.
Ultimately we will get better at what we do, and worse at what we get away
from doing. That is up to how the individual...
November 24, 2024 at 4:08 pmDavid Cain
* Being able to get a summary at any level of detail on basically anything
is so useful. I also appreciate how your query can be very unformed and
off-the-cuff, when it isn't clear exactly what information you want to
find out.
November 24, 2024 at 4:03 pmDavid Cain
* I don't see why it would make humans any less curious, it just increases
ease of access to information. I want to dig into topics, that's the whole
appeal for me.
November 24, 2024 at 3:57 pmDavid Cain
* The hands of the times... My washing is dark. ♬!♬!
November 24, 2024 at 11:18 amSardarDarggiushsa
* PRIVACY POLICY AND TERMS OF SERVICE
Copyright © 2024 Raptitude.com - All Rights Reserved.
Designed By rtCamp
RAPTITUDE IS AN INDEPENDENT BLOG BY DAVID CAIN. SOME LINKS ON THIS PAGE MAY BE
AFFILIATE LINKS, WHICH MEANS I MIGHT EARN A COMMISSION IF YOU BUY CERTAIN THINGS
I LINK TO. IN SUCH CASES THE COST TO THE VISITOR REMAINS THE SAME.