Agreed, the author attacks a strawman and then prescribes the most trite cliche in all of self-help: "do you what you love and the rest will take care of itself". Its anti-advice.

I've had essentially the same goals and dreams for over a decade, and still grow more deeply fascinated by the month. But I'm not getting any younger, old enough that I can no longer expect that things will naturally fall into place. That I too often find myself compulsively reading HN at 3pm and ahem navel-gazing at 3am, instead of "moving my feet" down the path of progress, is not due to a lack of love or inherent drive. Rather, its the steep learning curve against a background of distraction which disrupts "flow". Has for years.

I wish I hadn't thought so cynically of self-help when I was younger. But its only recently that I've found insightful any particular resources. "The Willpower Instinct" audiobook is readily available and highly recommended, and BJ Fogg's free program at tinyhabits.com complements it well. The lift.do app complements both (daily dont's can track your will-not-power). Also, the Pomodoro Technique is a good no-nonsense alternative to GTD and other complex productivity systems.

One last thing I read somewhere and keep in mind, was a study which showed that focusing on the positive outcomes of not doing [bad habit/thing] is more effective at changing behavior than fearing the anxiety and guilt felt after doing [bad habit/thing] (which was actually found to be counter-productive as a preventive technique).

Well the way I see it, self improvement is like playing guitar - initially it's bloody hard and doesn't make sense and when you do lock down a chord it takes ages to then play the next one and is a whole mess and is super awkward and annoying, however, once you get vaguely good at it then it becomes less about the gruelling learning and more about playing around and enjoying what you're good at - it's not just a learning exercise, it's something you understand and can develop in your own sweet way.

Self improvement, learning, guitar skill - nobody, unless you're innately talented, is something anyone just "slips into" naturally because it "feels right and is easy" as this article suggests - making the most out of this pointless spec of time takes hard work, paying attention, taking risks, learning the hard way, but it's like, deferred gratification...being bored easily helps (otherwise we'd just devote our lives to the mundane shit children enjoy), it's a fantastical journey of discovery, and it's not necessarily easy to reach things that can reward us the most.

I thought the point of the article was that hard work, paying attention, and taking risks can itself be fun. Perhaps I'm just projecting my own views onto the author.