Thread by @then_there_was

Alright, I've been throwing this idea around in my head for a bit and I want to put it out there in the world to play with it some more.

I'm not entirely sure if it'll work. I noticed I get so excited about an idea, I never stop to consider whether it can work.

A couple days will pass, and then I find some reason why it won't work, or I simply lose interest and can't figure out why.

So I've been trying to change the way I conceptualize my ideas.

I don't think of them as business ideas—that's too limiting. And I end up feeling bad when they don't work.

I think of them as prototypes and then allow myself to experiment with the ideas.

The purpose of prototyping is to quickly teach myself something I didn't know.

The faster I fail (or succeed), the better.

I want to iterate and cycle through ideas as efficiently as possible.

And I want to give myself permission to have crazy ideas.

The Medical Prototype:

I don't like the current medical institutions.

I don't think they're a quick way to help you solve your problem.

Ideally you want a resource that helps you:

1. Diagnose your problem
2. Offer the best solution to your problem

My idea was to build something like Akinator, where you'd list your symptoms and then, it'd scour the internet for the best solutions.

Over time you could build a very average pattern recognition database.

And so you could tell whether one solution was better than another.

You'd be able to determine whether say calcium or magnesium was better for osteoporosis.

Most people don't know Americans have enough calcium—it's magnesium they're missing.

You wouldn't get that from a marketplace solution like Amazon—the context is missing.

So right now if you look for a solution to your health problem, Amazon and YouTube are pretty good resources because they've managed to use the market to outsource to cognitive load of figuring out what's wrong with you.

So if you type in "ear infection" on Amazon, you'll get some good stuff.

However, often times Amazon and YouTube are missing information. Information that's vital for solving your problem.

My ideas was to manually add that context with humans, then scale it with algorithms.

So you would be able to tell the algorithm something like:

"I have an ear infection."

Not in words, because words are hard for computers to interpret but with specific presets.

And then it would measure the solutions with the best outcome for certain populations.

But the problem with that idea is you quickly run into diminishing returns.

It's more of a marketing solution than a business.

Why?

Because I'd only be solving diseases of modernity.

You can solve a lot of problems just by recommending people to live the way their ancestors did.

Back problems, knee pain, diabetes, acne, etc.

It's an information problem.

Namely: "What's the least amount of work I have to do to solve my problem?"

Nobody wants to live like a caveman just to make their back pain go away.

People still have to work and sit for long hours in certain contexts.

But people also don't want to spend even an hour of yoga a day just to solve their back pain.

So you can get pretty far just by finding the solutions that

1. Are effective
2. Are simple to understand
3. Require little physical or cognitive energy to implement.

But, even if I could do all that, it would not be a good business.

You'd run into a wall.

And the wall is something I call the Biological Barrier.

Namely, I do not have the knowledge to create molecules that can solve people's health problems.

All I'm doing is rearranging information so people can do the least amount of work to solve their health problems.

Or put another way, I'm finding the least intense form of work people have to do to put their bodies in a prehistoric environment, despite the perils of modernity.

But I can only point people to the solutions, if one already exists.

And it could work. It'd help some people.

But it just...doesn't excite me.

It's not useful enough.

I don't think it's interesting. It'd be a decent side project, but I have this fear the trajectory of technology will make all my information recommendations obsolete year after year.

It's just not sustainable.

Why walk in the sun for acne and change your diet when you can just spray probiotics on your face?

In the long trend of history, medicine will and should beat what our bodies are capable of doing.

I don't just want to be activating normal biological responses in humans.

I want to work on something that is literally the best possible idea, given our current technology.

And an idea that can scale decades into the future.

So I thought about it a bit, and I discovered one area pharmaceutical drugs and medical products can't really touch with precision:

Your mind.

I've talked about how I solved my insomnia and obsessive thoughts with cognitive-behavioral therapy.

It was a god send and a surprise.

I didn't realize the mind could...make you susceptible to so many issues.

But I didn't want to just give people CBT.

I thought to myself, "Okay well maybe...you can translate all the old cognitive behavioral therapy methods that you know, the ones found in books for anger, obsessive thoughts, and hoarding"

but it felt off.

It was useful. But it too wasn't sustainable.

Okay so I kept thinking.

I really wanted something that excites me.

And I started thinking about all those meditation and habit-tracking apps on the App Store.

And just how generic they were.

People didn't really know what habits they wanted to build.

The ones they chose were usually kind of shitty.

People didn't have a good idea of what they wanted, so they just picked cliche shit like "Exercise every day" or "Don't smoke".

But it did say people wanted something:

"I want to reprogram my mind in a new direction."

But the tools they have are really...really blunt.

So I thought, "Okay well maybe I can give people the tools to reflect on their emotions and articulate them."

Not the way I do it, because I go overboard.

But in a simple way.

A lot of males in particular want to be more stoic. Or more aware.

But it's unclear what that means.

And it's easy to forget, especially if you don't know how to practice it.

Most people aren't going to reread Marcus Aurelius book every other month.

And even if they do, just because they read the book, it isn't clear that they're actually practicing what the book teaches.

What should they specifically practice today?

They work in an office.

Well, one place to start is to complain less.

Jocko Willink is a good example of this.

He takes every negative reaction and transforms it into a positive.

"Good"

That's powerful. It allows you to move towards finding a solution instead of waiting for one to show up.

Alright so there's one technique.

How do you train it?

Well, it turns out the brain is really good at learning a habit if you set a goal and a restriction.

I tried not complaining for 21 days in a row and I found my mind transforming. It took like 4 months not to bitch. It was hard.

But at the end of it, I found myself seeking to solve my problems immediately, instead of just telling people about it.

And you can train that.

It's very simple.

The less I complained, the more problems I solved.

Which, incidentally, pairs incredibly well with David Allen's GTD book.

How?

A lot of times people procrastinate because a domain is too complex for their brain to wade in.

So negative emotions arise in their heart.

And then they tell other people, "Look, this domain is too complex to wade in" maybe because we're social creatures.

Maybe complaining is our way of warning other members of our tribe to stay away from complexity because

organisms tend to die in areas of high complexity. The risk is just so high from all the variables.

The problem is in this case the complexity is doing your taxes.

So complaining in the 21st century is not a useful technique, because you're not actually going to die.

Your brain think's there's a chance of dying.

But your limbic system doesn't know that.

And so you never get work done because of that negative emotion.

So here's the kicker:

As you complain less, you prepare your brain to decrease procrastination.

You decrease procrastination by writing and clarifying complexity.

Simple. Simple techniques you can train in your mind.

And I thought, "Oh shit. That can be an app."

It's a simple habit app with some details thrown in to solve specific problems in your life

without having to read an entire book.

Just the technique and example exercises.

Simple.

And the best part?

There's a lot of techniques you can cover.

A lot.

Literally hundreds.

For people who have anxiety.

For people who fear needles.

For those who want to not let others take advantage of them psychologically.

It goes on and on.

What I like about this approach is people underestimate the degree to which their minds can be rewired just by writing.

Repetition and writing.

Do it every day and you'll modify how your mind perceives the world.

It's a really cool idea and I'd like to think about it some more

One problem that I ran into:

The techniques are almost too easy to teach.

For example, solving someone's insomnia is simple.

1. Do these writing exercises every day
2. Watch a YouTube video

Same for teaching people how to complain less.

It's really simple. The power is in the consistency.

So I thought, "Okay well...if I'm just recommending an exercise, wouldn't this be better as a YouTube video with a link to a PDF?

Why make it an app?"