6 - 12 Type Thinking

I saw something on Reddit that I thought seemed like great advice. I forgot to save the page and I didn’t know how to look for it so I’ll have to go from memory. In essence it showed how 9am to 5pm constitute work hours, but getting ahead requires putting in extra time. The 6pm to 12am window is for exploring additional paths, hobbies, making additional money and exercise. Obviously the frame of time is different for everyone. Some work early morning hours and others work long shifts 10 or 12 hours at a time.

The point is that to learn a new trade, talent or skill, one needs to put in extra work. It doesn’t have to mean killing yourself until you fall asleep from exhaustion.

Reddit commenters blistered it with negative feedback and outright hostility. What’s the alternative to improving your own lot, waiting for someone to give it to you? Stealing from the rich? The meme was nothing more than “Make the best use of your time and become a better you”. Hardly controversial stuff, but then people read meaning into quotes based on their biases. We all do this sometimes. 

  

 It sounded like advice from an individual who achieved success by using time wisely. Or, maybe they learned a new language, enough to get a job where knowledge of the language made the difference between working and not working. Maybe they taught themselves to code and wrote a program they later sold. I know internet communities aren’t real life; a handful of trolls can have an outsized impact. Still, if the reaction to studying hard and striving gets such nasty blowback what is being taught about self-improvement?

I did a quick google search for “self-improvement tips” to get a sense of the blogosphere’s advice, ideas. A lot of similar items pop up, “learn a new skill”, “develop good habits”, “have a plan”, “reflect”, “make time to relax”. Basically what I thought I’d find but with a few variations. When I googled “Is self-improvement bad?” I saw a better idea of what some might be thinking. 

“Essentially, the self-improvement culture invalidates your negative emotions. It sends a message of toxic positivity that prevents you from acquiring the skills you need to deal with the “real world.”

I don’t agree that the self-improvement culture is as rigid as this author thinks. Or maybe we are defining two different things. In the movie American Beauty Annette Bening plays a cold, sexless real estate agent trying in vain to get meaning from her career, extramarital affair. She is clearly unhappy but keeps on repeating silly positivity mantras. To me that sounds like toxic positivity, assuming that's even a real thing. It's not what I'm describing.

A lot of this seems too competitive to some, like the purpose of self-improvement is to ‘get ahead’ and ‘win’. Either that, or it sounds judgmental, like if you aren’t at the gym for an hour and reading Tolstoy in Russian then you aren’t trying. Maybe that's where the Reddit mob was coming from.

 I find it encouraging every time some 'average joe' makes one small, steady change in their life that causes other changes. Some lose weight and transform their diet completely. Others begin crafty projects that earn extra money and sometimes even become the primary source of income. By taking the notion of working after hours seriously, they’ve transformed their life.

 Think Dale Carnegie not Tony Robbins. We don’t need to break down every psychological component of ourselves to make steady changes to lifestyle or learn a skill. How many people got a real estate license just studying after hours or became a certified trainer at their gym? It doesn’t need to be competitive, it just needs a starting point.  

  

I don’t see another option for most of us. We survive in a vibrant economy that’s constantly churning out new ways to make money and disrupt old ones. Free market capitalism always contained some elements of disruption, but technology kicked it into hyperdrive. What’s tough to accept is that many jobs that had been staples of employment, factory labor, switchboard operator, semi-truck driver either disappeared or just got harder to come by. But with all the turnover and unease about the future, it’s never been easier to do something else, or spend time learning to do something else.

I get that people want to go to work, drop the kids off at basketball practice, make some dinner and watch Netflix before dozing off. But the idea of self-improvement from 6 to 12 isn’t meant to be literal. It’s a goal to use the free hours wisely. For a lot of us facing the real possibility that our job might disappear, it’s insurance.  It’s scary to see the industry you work in losing ground every day, but fortunately the barriers to learn, train, buy and sell are much lower.

A lot of us just entering the work force will have multiple jobs before we retire. Self-improvement means always being ready to acquire new talents, skills and trades.