learning to draw, or play an instrument, or practicing a sport, can often feel like frog eating. the joy of it comes through and after the discipline. was it always so easy for you to write, or did you have to struggle through many essays before it felt easy?
I think we need a way of distinguishing between the “eventually rewarding” frog eating of deliberate practice from the “pointless and/or morally objectionable” frog eating of the rat race.
I loved every bit of learning to draw. Most of the other artists I know did too, and still enjoy it. I was good at the being support staff in the brokerage industry, encouraged to become a consultant, another firm offering me almost double salary - which convinced me to quit.
There is a difference between doing something you hate but are obliged to like homework for a class you don't like or washing dishes, and feeling frustrated during the learning process. When you learn a new skill and fuck up a lot, it's uncomfortable and feels hard because it's new! With practice, your skills improve to match the challenge of the task which means you get into flow more and it feels easier.
I agree that we should be gentler on ourselves when contemplating our distaste for frogs, but unfortunately, the world of *paid employment* is mostly just full of frogs that need to be eaten. Finding something you like doing so much that the angels start singing is easy, finding somebody to *pay* you a living wage for doing it (without putting so many constraints on the task that it turns into yet another frog) is another matter entirely. (Is anyone paying you a non-trivial sum to write your blog?)
There are very, very few people who are good enough and lucky enough to be able to make a living wage doing something other than eating frogs. It requires either a lucky and easy match of skills/aptitudes/passions to labour market requirements, or the resources/lack of other commitments to allow a lengthy period of search and experimentation to make a harder match. That is especially true in this age of credential inflation.
OK, time to turn on my Pomodoro timer again and get back to it (yes I use that too).
I never learned to eat the frogs (or just lacked the discipline). As a result, I had low-paid self-employment (I turned down projects I didn't want to do) or short-term contract work for my entire life. I have been happy doing the free things that life offers (like reading books from the public library, cooking nice food, walking in nature, or having good conversations) and living in shared accommodation fairly often (good housemates are a blessing--love you guys). It is possible to do this...I made it to retirement age and now have minimum Social Security to live on. I never ate the frog of doing exercise, so that may get me in the end.
"Editors and reviewers demand that scientific papers be extremely boring—'This paper is fun to read,' a reviewer wrote to me a few years ago, 'But there are many places where the paper is a little too fun.'—and you have to listen to them or else they reject your paper and tank your career. This sucks the fun out of what is otherwise a tremendous joy and privilege."
I heard that myself, and that's one of the reasons I stopped writing academic papers.
Laziness is pretty rare. It turns out that the world is kinda hellish instead, and this feature of it, specifically this hierarchical 'riggedness'(gameification is such a great word-- check this out: https://askwhocastsai.substack.com/p/why-everything-is-becoming-a-game) where everyone has to bust their ass and jump through hoops and if they don't like it, they're unworthy, lazy, etc.
This starts in school by the way, school is largely just a kind of worker conditioning center. It's a place where people get socialized(that sounds like a good thing, but I'm thinking in a largely bad way-- bullying, cliques, exclusion/ostracism, etc). It's a place where the incredible potential of children gets squandered.
(Tangent: How *amazing* are children? Have you ever interacted with a child? I don't have kids but I bet most people reading this do. I was sitting in a park a few days ago and a little girl is taking a morning walk with her dad. She says Hi to me, I say Hi back, thinking that was it. But then she's gesturing behind me. We struggle to confirm what's going on. "Tree?" I point, asking. "Tree!", she says. We confirm it is indeed a tree and then we have to say bye because dad's getting impatient far up ahead. But yeah, that will eventually turn into some degree of anxiety, depression, self-blame, etc. )
The real problem is this is all a feature of humanity, and not really a bug. It all seems insane of course but the unfortunate news is psychopathy kind of runs things around here. That's the bit about Lucifer and the frog eating. Yeah, it's not literally Lucifer, but I do think calling it "evil" still works, and use the word psychopathy/evil pretty interchangeably, it's the same thing functionally. It's domineering, callous, it doesn't care(it can't care-- again, feature, not a bug), it's manipulative, unscrupulous, lies casually to engineer self-serving narratives(lies to itself, because it's deeply egocentric, so any proposition that benefits it, becomes firm), and can be charming/captivating.
You can't beat this, it's just like a badly designed video game where one character is too strong, and ruins the game. Makes it not meaningful. In real life game scenarios, we have game admins who can look at this and say, "Ah okay, time to reduce the power of this character, it's making everyone not have fun", but when it comes to the game of life, the core problem is that the character *itself* becomes the game admin.
I'm repeating myself, but I'm easily sidetracked...,
re: the more extreme cases for children...
David Gosselin, via the Canadian Patriot Review, had an interesting article ... that gets into family influences on a child's path.
"It is a well-known fact that from an early age, children learn to see themselves either in reflected glory or disgraced shadows. So, when faced with some cognitive dissonance, or abuse (whether emotional, physical, or psychological), the child is faced with a bind: recognize that they are powerless and have no ability to resolve the situation, and must therefore learn “to cope,” or try to defend one’s self and then experience the threat and feeling of alienation or exile from the tribe, in this case the dysfunctional family. In either case, one loses.
Usually communicated covertly in the form of “shaming” or threats of “punishment,” given the child is unable to face the unmanageable reality of there being something deeply wrong with the family or tribe itself, the child resorts to “make-believe,” that is, rather than accepting that there is something wrong with the family, they come to believe that there must be something wrong with them. A world of “make-believe” emerges, serving as a means of convincing oneself that things are “normal” and that “this is the way things are.” We learn what to see and what not to see."
I've been thinking about this too and a major epiphany for me was when I realized a child cannot possibly think, "Hmm... I'm being neglected and abused, therefore mom and dad seem off. Something is wrong with these people as parents". This just doesn't work, evolutionarily. Any child who would think this way would probably just die, it's too in-conflict with the environment, even if it is the environment that is insane, and the child that's perfectly okay.
So what happens is the child internalizes: "I must not be worthy of love and attention and care. Something is wrong with me."
Of course, it's complete bullshit, because how could that ever make sense?
Love this. NEEDED this. To all the other commenters who are like "but life IS frogs; capitalism IS frogs" -- sure. But also? The beauty is that frogs are subjective. And the "goal" -- the ideal income:frogs ratio - is very personal.
I've been slaving away as a Knowledge Worker since college, and if I had a dollar for every time I beat myself up because boy did I hate those frogs even though they were the most glamorous, supposedly tolerable frogs of all... well, I'd be retired and none of this would be a problem.
But I recently started bartending at an upscale restaurant (that happens to offer benefits). Are there frogs involved? Yup. Would my old tech coworkers HATE my new frogs? Yep. But they're tolerable FOR ME, because the good people and fast pace and decent tip-based pay outweighs them. For the first time in my career, I don't dread my work. My subconscious mind instinctively knows that there's enough GOOD to outweigh the occasional finicky customers and lost flexibility in my schedule and having to fish gross lime wedges out of the sink drain that I accept all those frogs happily.
It's been such a bizarre and alien experience for me. I don't think I'll get rich doing this or that it's my forever career, but it feels like iterating toward better balance is possible. And I think that's available to ALL of us.
Not eating frogs, as you wrote early on, may not be a choice for all. Many commenters seem to feel you're being overly idealistic. Throughout life, we're all going to swallow things unpleasant but necessary, unexpected but too far down the throat to throw up (because we're polite?). Overall I agree with you. I learned long ago, we have all the time in the world to do right, none to do wrong.
Well written, but I think this is fundamentally terrible advice. Feels like survivorship bias 101, most people cannot get paid doing what they love, and the mindset espoused in this essay set people up for a lifetime of bitterness.
I'm so glad you shared this again. It was a delight to read the first time and a timely reminder to read it again.
In the year since you first published this I've been gently suggesting to people that perhaps, just perhaps, the solution to their feeling sad and unmotivated all the time is not to shit talk themselves into trying harder. We all know people don't take advice like that, but hopefully that permission note I wrote them will be there when they're ready to use it.
There are actually several things I liked about this issue. I'll try to talk about it in a concise and orderly way:
1) the topic of productivity and 'eating too many frogs' as a symbol of the possibility of burnout today sees an importance in discussing it seriously and with clear visions, like this one, which is quite urgent in my opinion. In my personal vision I have always said that 'productivity' is above all the fruit of personal experimentation and that it must be calibrated to the individual person, that there is no method but in my opinion it is also important to know and know oneself;
2) the way in which the topic was discussed, also bringing scientific evidence, especially the specific part on insights into human nature, is the one that captured me the most, together with the one focused on relational aspects;
3) there will always be a lot of debate on the topic and there is certainly no 'single opinion' that is beneficial for everyone, but reasoning of this type is important in my opinion in crucial moments such as the choice of a university, a path and in the constant comparison that people make with respect to others.
A haunting metaphor, choking on frog! But you make a tiny portion of us feel like a hero for being able to resist eating frog not because we are stronger but because we don't care about productivity.
You need to read unconditional parenting by Alfie Kohn - a lot of ideas you’ve touched on have been talked about there + in specific context to raising kids
Of course I get to read this two weeks after deciding to master out of my PhD. I never was quite good enough at eating frogs. I would instead eat one of every kind of amphibian just to see what they tasted like. Some of them weren't too bad. Soon I will be out there again, in that wide water, hunting for novel prey. Maybe some will be juicy enough to sustain me for a while.
learning to draw, or play an instrument, or practicing a sport, can often feel like frog eating. the joy of it comes through and after the discipline. was it always so easy for you to write, or did you have to struggle through many essays before it felt easy?
I think we need a way of distinguishing between the “eventually rewarding” frog eating of deliberate practice from the “pointless and/or morally objectionable” frog eating of the rat race.
Maybe one should be called a frog and the other a toad
I loved every bit of learning to draw. Most of the other artists I know did too, and still enjoy it. I was good at the being support staff in the brokerage industry, encouraged to become a consultant, another firm offering me almost double salary - which convinced me to quit.
There is a difference between doing something you hate but are obliged to like homework for a class you don't like or washing dishes, and feeling frustrated during the learning process. When you learn a new skill and fuck up a lot, it's uncomfortable and feels hard because it's new! With practice, your skills improve to match the challenge of the task which means you get into flow more and it feels easier.
I agree that we should be gentler on ourselves when contemplating our distaste for frogs, but unfortunately, the world of *paid employment* is mostly just full of frogs that need to be eaten. Finding something you like doing so much that the angels start singing is easy, finding somebody to *pay* you a living wage for doing it (without putting so many constraints on the task that it turns into yet another frog) is another matter entirely. (Is anyone paying you a non-trivial sum to write your blog?)
There are very, very few people who are good enough and lucky enough to be able to make a living wage doing something other than eating frogs. It requires either a lucky and easy match of skills/aptitudes/passions to labour market requirements, or the resources/lack of other commitments to allow a lengthy period of search and experimentation to make a harder match. That is especially true in this age of credential inflation.
OK, time to turn on my Pomodoro timer again and get back to it (yes I use that too).
This. "Do what you love" is such BS advice.
But Adam is also right that the Puritans sucked.
I never learned to eat the frogs (or just lacked the discipline). As a result, I had low-paid self-employment (I turned down projects I didn't want to do) or short-term contract work for my entire life. I have been happy doing the free things that life offers (like reading books from the public library, cooking nice food, walking in nature, or having good conversations) and living in shared accommodation fairly often (good housemates are a blessing--love you guys). It is possible to do this...I made it to retirement age and now have minimum Social Security to live on. I never ate the frog of doing exercise, so that may get me in the end.
The description of the ocean brought tears to my eyes.
What about folks who have given up eating frogs or tomatoes but don't have anything else to eat?
"Editors and reviewers demand that scientific papers be extremely boring—'This paper is fun to read,' a reviewer wrote to me a few years ago, 'But there are many places where the paper is a little too fun.'—and you have to listen to them or else they reject your paper and tank your career. This sucks the fun out of what is otherwise a tremendous joy and privilege."
I heard that myself, and that's one of the reasons I stopped writing academic papers.
Laziness is pretty rare. It turns out that the world is kinda hellish instead, and this feature of it, specifically this hierarchical 'riggedness'(gameification is such a great word-- check this out: https://askwhocastsai.substack.com/p/why-everything-is-becoming-a-game) where everyone has to bust their ass and jump through hoops and if they don't like it, they're unworthy, lazy, etc.
This starts in school by the way, school is largely just a kind of worker conditioning center. It's a place where people get socialized(that sounds like a good thing, but I'm thinking in a largely bad way-- bullying, cliques, exclusion/ostracism, etc). It's a place where the incredible potential of children gets squandered.
(Tangent: How *amazing* are children? Have you ever interacted with a child? I don't have kids but I bet most people reading this do. I was sitting in a park a few days ago and a little girl is taking a morning walk with her dad. She says Hi to me, I say Hi back, thinking that was it. But then she's gesturing behind me. We struggle to confirm what's going on. "Tree?" I point, asking. "Tree!", she says. We confirm it is indeed a tree and then we have to say bye because dad's getting impatient far up ahead. But yeah, that will eventually turn into some degree of anxiety, depression, self-blame, etc. )
The real problem is this is all a feature of humanity, and not really a bug. It all seems insane of course but the unfortunate news is psychopathy kind of runs things around here. That's the bit about Lucifer and the frog eating. Yeah, it's not literally Lucifer, but I do think calling it "evil" still works, and use the word psychopathy/evil pretty interchangeably, it's the same thing functionally. It's domineering, callous, it doesn't care(it can't care-- again, feature, not a bug), it's manipulative, unscrupulous, lies casually to engineer self-serving narratives(lies to itself, because it's deeply egocentric, so any proposition that benefits it, becomes firm), and can be charming/captivating.
You can't beat this, it's just like a badly designed video game where one character is too strong, and ruins the game. Makes it not meaningful. In real life game scenarios, we have game admins who can look at this and say, "Ah okay, time to reduce the power of this character, it's making everyone not have fun", but when it comes to the game of life, the core problem is that the character *itself* becomes the game admin.
I'm repeating myself, but I'm easily sidetracked...,
re: the more extreme cases for children...
David Gosselin, via the Canadian Patriot Review, had an interesting article ... that gets into family influences on a child's path.
"It is a well-known fact that from an early age, children learn to see themselves either in reflected glory or disgraced shadows. So, when faced with some cognitive dissonance, or abuse (whether emotional, physical, or psychological), the child is faced with a bind: recognize that they are powerless and have no ability to resolve the situation, and must therefore learn “to cope,” or try to defend one’s self and then experience the threat and feeling of alienation or exile from the tribe, in this case the dysfunctional family. In either case, one loses.
Usually communicated covertly in the form of “shaming” or threats of “punishment,” given the child is unable to face the unmanageable reality of there being something deeply wrong with the family or tribe itself, the child resorts to “make-believe,” that is, rather than accepting that there is something wrong with the family, they come to believe that there must be something wrong with them. A world of “make-believe” emerges, serving as a means of convincing oneself that things are “normal” and that “this is the way things are.” We learn what to see and what not to see."
Breaking the Binds: Curing Western Schizophrenia - https://canadianpatriotreview.substack.com/p/breaking-the-binds-curing-western
Some things are worth repeating.
I've been thinking about this too and a major epiphany for me was when I realized a child cannot possibly think, "Hmm... I'm being neglected and abused, therefore mom and dad seem off. Something is wrong with these people as parents". This just doesn't work, evolutionarily. Any child who would think this way would probably just die, it's too in-conflict with the environment, even if it is the environment that is insane, and the child that's perfectly okay.
So what happens is the child internalizes: "I must not be worthy of love and attention and care. Something is wrong with me."
Of course, it's complete bullshit, because how could that ever make sense?
As an ethnic Chinese I felt a strange urge to feel offended by the title that seemed to question my dietary choices.
Love this. NEEDED this. To all the other commenters who are like "but life IS frogs; capitalism IS frogs" -- sure. But also? The beauty is that frogs are subjective. And the "goal" -- the ideal income:frogs ratio - is very personal.
I've been slaving away as a Knowledge Worker since college, and if I had a dollar for every time I beat myself up because boy did I hate those frogs even though they were the most glamorous, supposedly tolerable frogs of all... well, I'd be retired and none of this would be a problem.
But I recently started bartending at an upscale restaurant (that happens to offer benefits). Are there frogs involved? Yup. Would my old tech coworkers HATE my new frogs? Yep. But they're tolerable FOR ME, because the good people and fast pace and decent tip-based pay outweighs them. For the first time in my career, I don't dread my work. My subconscious mind instinctively knows that there's enough GOOD to outweigh the occasional finicky customers and lost flexibility in my schedule and having to fish gross lime wedges out of the sink drain that I accept all those frogs happily.
It's been such a bizarre and alien experience for me. I don't think I'll get rich doing this or that it's my forever career, but it feels like iterating toward better balance is possible. And I think that's available to ALL of us.
Not eating frogs, as you wrote early on, may not be a choice for all. Many commenters seem to feel you're being overly idealistic. Throughout life, we're all going to swallow things unpleasant but necessary, unexpected but too far down the throat to throw up (because we're polite?). Overall I agree with you. I learned long ago, we have all the time in the world to do right, none to do wrong.
Well written, but I think this is fundamentally terrible advice. Feels like survivorship bias 101, most people cannot get paid doing what they love, and the mindset espoused in this essay set people up for a lifetime of bitterness.
I'm so glad you shared this again. It was a delight to read the first time and a timely reminder to read it again.
In the year since you first published this I've been gently suggesting to people that perhaps, just perhaps, the solution to their feeling sad and unmotivated all the time is not to shit talk themselves into trying harder. We all know people don't take advice like that, but hopefully that permission note I wrote them will be there when they're ready to use it.
There are actually several things I liked about this issue. I'll try to talk about it in a concise and orderly way:
1) the topic of productivity and 'eating too many frogs' as a symbol of the possibility of burnout today sees an importance in discussing it seriously and with clear visions, like this one, which is quite urgent in my opinion. In my personal vision I have always said that 'productivity' is above all the fruit of personal experimentation and that it must be calibrated to the individual person, that there is no method but in my opinion it is also important to know and know oneself;
2) the way in which the topic was discussed, also bringing scientific evidence, especially the specific part on insights into human nature, is the one that captured me the most, together with the one focused on relational aspects;
3) there will always be a lot of debate on the topic and there is certainly no 'single opinion' that is beneficial for everyone, but reasoning of this type is important in my opinion in crucial moments such as the choice of a university, a path and in the constant comparison that people make with respect to others.
What do you think about this topic?
Keep that up my man! Loving the newsletter
A haunting metaphor, choking on frog! But you make a tiny portion of us feel like a hero for being able to resist eating frog not because we are stronger but because we don't care about productivity.
You need to read unconditional parenting by Alfie Kohn - a lot of ideas you’ve touched on have been talked about there + in specific context to raising kids
Of course I get to read this two weeks after deciding to master out of my PhD. I never was quite good enough at eating frogs. I would instead eat one of every kind of amphibian just to see what they tasted like. Some of them weren't too bad. Soon I will be out there again, in that wide water, hunting for novel prey. Maybe some will be juicy enough to sustain me for a while.