Ask Paul: February 3 (Premium)

It’s another month, and another Friday, and here’s another installment of Ask Paul to kick off this weekend, and February.

Self help

ggolcher asks:

You left me with a lot to think about after reading your newsletter, so thank you for that!

Thanks. As a bit of background, I originally intended to write about addiction broadly in the first newsletter this year as a sort of end-run around the usual “resolutions”-type topic, and I had listed out eating, drinking, videogames, and technology (generally) as examples, but in writing about the drinking part of it, I realized that it could be its own thing, and that maybe each topic deserved its own editorial. And so January sort of became “addiction month,” or maybe self-help month. Or whatever. But I do feel there’s that moment when you realize you have a problem, hopefully, and it’s not someone else telling you. And I have a lot of problems.

With regards to the most recent editorial, which is about coming to terms with the fact that I don’t handle certain things—one might say, “life”—particularly well, there was one big difference with the previous topics: I have enough self-awareness to recognize the problem, which is good, but I don’t see the solution, which is bad. And when my mind races, as it has this past week, leading to a loss of sleep and other side effects, it just makes the problem worse. Knowing that doesn’t help if you can’t fix it.

When I was a teenager, my mother was a mess, and one day she burst into my room in tears, excited that she had discovered the problem: “I just figured it out,” she told me. “I’m the adult child of an alcoholic!” (This was a 1980’s self-help moment.) My response still amazes me today.

“That’s nice,” I said. “But what are you going to do about it?”

She had no response to that, and that’s the problem I’m facing now in a nutshell. I am the way I am.  I don’t like it. But how do I fix it?

I used to be a person that complained a lot, or got upset about things often, but I’ve mellowed out by working on myself. I’m by no means perfect now and still get irritated (especially dealing with customer support), but now I’m much more often in a place of gratitude and serenity. This new center has had a massive impact in my life, personally and professionally.

I have probably written on this topic in the past, but I’ve noticed that we can have two types of influences in life, some positive and some negative. And while positive influences—those people we look up to for whatever reason—get all the press, the negative ones are important too because they teach you how not to act. My parents are good examples of that, and when it came time to be a parent myself, I knew that there were certain things I’d never do to my kids based on my experiences growing up. I’m less successful in other areas, for sure.

But that most recent editorial was an interesting collection of positive influences in the same area, and that can help guide me, or others, to at least understand the gap between where we are and where we want to be. I know I wrote about the insipid “Family Circus” cartoon with the ambulance where one kid is sad someone was hurt and the other was happy they were getting the help they needed, but there’s that gap explained concisely: different people see the world, or react to the same situations, in different ways.

I guess I’m just at the place where I recognize the problem but I’m struggling with the solution. At least I want a solution.

I know lvthunder suggested professional help, and that’s one avenue that’s been valuable to me, as have been self-help books.

Yes. I haven’t written about this too much yet, but at the prodding of my wife, I did see a therapist in late 2022, not for therapy per se but to find out whether I had ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder), an unfortunate term (especially in my case because there’s no hyperactivity component). The short version is that, yes, of course, I have this. It’s off the charts. And that perhaps taking Vyvanse, the medication my daughter takes for this same issue, could help.

I’m not a fan of medication of any kind. As an extreme example, I had ACL surgery, twice, once on both knees, and in each case, I came off the painkillers much earlier than I needed to. But I don’t like taking anything for headaches or anything else. And I’m not a big fan of our cultural addiction to treating the symptom instead of the problem: people with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type-2 diabetes, and the like are all taking medications that don’t solve the underlying problem. I have a huge problem with this.

And in the case of ADHD, I have another concern: what if the thing that makes me good at what I do is numbed or neutered by this medication in the course of trying to treat this other issue? I want to still be the good me while wanting to diminish the bad me, if that makes sense. I’m told this is not an issue. That I may, in fact, amplify the things I like about me. But … medication. I still haven’t started down the route. But it doesn’t hurt to try it. And I will.

But, what’s made the most impact in my life by far are personal development seminars, like those offered by Tony Robbins, Landmark, Gottman Institute, etc. As I’ve always valued your analysis, I’m curious: what is your perspective on these types of seminars? I don’t think I’ve ever read your thoughts on them.

Anything that causes you to look at things differently and seek a solution to a problem you have can be good. And on that note, I actually watch a lot of videos that fall into the self-help/educational category. Many are health and nutrition-based. Some are developer-based. Some are travel-based. And so on. And in a weird coincidence, in that story I told about George walking up to me at the gym when I was on the elliptical, the other half of that story, which wasn’t related to the bit I told, was that he asked me what I was watching, and I described it as a “how-to” video on YouTube. Generally speaking, education of any kind is not just great, but vital. If we’re not constantly learning, we’re dying.

(On a related note, I used to go to a small gym that was just personal trainers, and when I’d come in, the woman who trained with me would be sitting at the front desk reading a People magazine or similar. As I got to know her over time, I could see that she was intelligent and had a bright future, and I finally said something to her like, “you know, you can spend your time any number of ways, but if you’re going to be reading, why not read something that will make your life better?” Or similar. This was well-intentioned, I guess. But looking back on this now, I sort of recognize that sometimes people just need to zone out. Sometimes we do this at night: just watch something pointless to wind down after a long day.)

Anyway. I do spend a lot of time learning and I want that to be as broad as possible. We’ve watched a lot of TED talks, just last night my wife and I watched some videos about the impact apple cider vinegar can have on visceral fat, and that triggered her doing some actual research into this topic since that’s what she does for a living. I split my reading between fiction and non-fiction, with a lot of history especially. There are very good reasons to include self-help topics in whatever list of content you are exposing yourself to. Sometimes the epiphany comes from an unexpected place.

Quarterly results

helix2301 asks:

I noticed you did not cover Apple, Spotify, or Facebook earnings this month is this just because you had more stuff to write about?

When you posted this, Apple hadn’t yet reported its earnings, but I did write about that last night, and I did write about Meta (Facebook). And Laurent covered Spotify, which I was happy to see he handled as I would have, by focusing the headline on the new userbase count. But the issue is that these things mostly happen over a very busy week, and our site is kind of inundated with quarterly results stories. They can get lost in the mix. (Alphabet and Amazon also reported their earnings last night, and I wasn’t able to get to those until this morning. I was too busy watching apple cider vinegar videos on YouTube.)

Maybe we need a financial results topic. 8 years in, that might be tough.

Favorites 80’s movies

j5 asks:

What are some of your favorite 80’s movies; action, sci-fi, comedies. I LOVE Short Circuit, Caddy Shack, Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Dragon, and tons more. Of course a lot of these…probably most of these couldn’t be made today and that’s ok. But just curious what are some of your favorites. Thanks have a nice weekend!

Ah boy. 🙂

I mean, there are favorites. And then there are guilty pleasures. And my wife and I, and some friends, enjoy watching really bad 80’s movies just so we can rip on them too.

I will miss many of them. But …

In the favorites category, I’ll nominate 2010: The Year We Made Contact, Aliens, Back to the Future, Caddyshack, Christmas Vacation, The Dead Zone, Die Hard, ET, European Vacation, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, A Fish Called Wanda, Fletch, Fletch 2, Highlander, Major League, “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” Platoon, Predator, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Raising Arizona, Romancing the Stone, Spaceballs, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Terminator 2 Judgement Day, Time After Time, and Vacation.

For guilty pleasures, Breakfast Club, Cannonball Run, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Sixteen Candles, and Three Amigos.

For the truly terrible but popular, there’s Dirty Dancing (which I just saw for the first time recently), Road House, St. Elmo’s Fire (which I believe to be the worst movie ever made), and Weekend at Bernie’s.

And I really like horror movies. Some of the better ones from the 80’s include Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Friday the 13th, Friday the 13th The Final Chapter, Fright Night, Halloween 4, Pet Sematary, Poltergeist, Re-Animator, and The Shining. I won’t bore you with the bad ones, but I’ve watched them all.

What a decade. And there’s so much more. For example, I really like James Bond, and I loved all the Bond movies as they came out in the 80’s, but looking back on them now they’re the weakest of the series.