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I like to follow Arnold Schwazenegger's Pump Club free newsletter, but not because I am a body builder.

You're right, it's a community where you get solid no-nonsense advice, like, ditch the supplements except creatine and maybe whey protein or vegetable protein.

At the same time, he emphasizes building desired habits, to the point where thinking is not required anymore for that purpose. He even goes as far as saying your own brain can be your worst enemy, it wants you to be comfortable.

If I say any more, I'd be overthinking it. It's a good motivational community for fitness in general. Just like you said, specialty communities for specialist advice. But the google news feed I get just scrambles my brains. They've profiled me for 30+ years, and they feed me nonsense now, because I answered many of those questions many years ago. AI is not good at forgetting.

Note: many neurospicy brains do not get the thing where something happens on “automatic”. If you’ve tried to “build a habit” and never got to the “now it’s automatic” stage, don’t beat yourself up about it. AFAIK, we have to rely on patterns and explicit attention and reinforcement (“everyday I do this, I have a good day, so now I’ve got more motivation every day to do it”)

For me it’s often that once a habit gets automatic, I forget about it and stop doing it. My habits are mostly formed by things I fear and think about a lot like getting out of shape and fat, going broke or dying lonely.

This seems implausible. People with mild mental illnesses are still animals. All animals can be conditioned. When you leave a building, do you exit through the door or the window? I assume the door.

Except it’s harder and harder the more you age. And it’s true for animals too.

> AI is not good at forgetting.

There is also a related feeling of fatigue with our own digital archives - photos, old writings. We like to save them but not to look at them. They evoke powerful and somewhat uncomfortable feelings. And once we write something down, or take a photo of it, it gets out of our head, we don't care about it as much. The simple presence of the archive changes how we think.

A fun idea, but I'd like to read someone writing not about the concept, but about their experience trying to consciously shape their participation in community to help them achieve their goals. How well does that work in practice? What's awkward about it, and what goes smoothly? When does it break down? Which interests map well onto this approach?

Been "doing" community for 10 years from technical to leadership communities (focused on Brazilian CTOs). I can answer the question above if you'd like to know.

I don't have much written, but I think about it daily.

What are the most common issue/mistakes that make communities fizzle out?

Communities are basically promises: you create expectations, and they usually fizzle out when that commitment isn’t met. Same applies to events.

Most people think structure or rules keep a community alive, but they are just tools. What keeps communities alive is just being there for the users and in the channel they are used to talk and be active (whatsapp in my case)

Also when leading a community it is important to step back. Let others speak/ to leave them be. It is easy to "monopolize the mic" but the real magic happens when others start owning the space. Your role as a community organizer is to create a stage for others.

if you ever moderated an IRC channel, it’s the same energy: keep the lights on, be present, but don’t over-control :^)

I have a simple question. Is it worth building a community? Outside of being paid to do it, is it worth doing? Seems like more trouble than it's worth to me.

when it's a community of practice, yeah, I think it absolutely is worth it.

it’s where I learn the most. Talking to people facing similar challenges, hearing how they approach things, learning new tech, and new businesses models. It also builds networking and creates opportunities.

That said, I don’t think everyone needs to build community. Most people won’t, and that’s fine; but just participating makes (and helping the organizer whenever you can) is good

Check out "Atomic Habits" by James Clear - he documents precisely this approach with numerous case studies of how community accountability transformed people's habits across various domains.

Also suggests 100% WFH is not as good as some weekly face to face time if part of the goal is to keep people motivated and disciplined

I feel like I grind harder if anything when I work from home. Just because you aren’t physically in the same place doesn’t mean there isn’t community.

I do occasionally do onsites that are valuable for community building so perhaps it’s more 98% wfh

WFH does not mean you can't have face to face in today's age

"Face to face" is a protected term that means meeting IRL.

Come on let's not twist the meaning of phrases (assuming you're saying a video call is "face to face")

I feel like I am constantly looking for relevant communities but I find it really really hard to find anything. Maybe I live in a too small city or something.

I suspect that my current social media addiction tendencies is a compensation for not finding good communities for my interests.

Also applicable to living alone vs. living with someone else imo.

Obligatory Schwarzenegger:

"The kind of people who train alongside you in a gym makes a difference. If you are surrounded by people who are serious and train with a lot of intensity, it's easier for you to do the same thing. But it can be pretty hard to really blast your muscles while the people around you are just going through the motions. That is why good bodybuilders tend to congregate in certain gyms. By having the example of other serious bodybuilders constantly in front of you, you will train that much harder.

That is what made Joe Gold's original gym in Venice, California such a great place—a small gym with just enough equipment, but where you would constantly be rubbing shoulders with the great bodybuilders against whom I had the privilege of competing-like Franco Columbu, Ed Corney, Dave Draper, Robby Robinson, Frank Zane, Sergio Oliva, and Ken Waller. Nowadays, it's rare to find that many champions in the same place, but if you aren't sharing the gym floor with great bodybuilders like Flex Wheeler, Shawn Ray, Nasser El Sonbaty, or Dorian Yates, it can be very motivating if there are pictures or posters of these individuals on the walls or championship trophies displayed.

In 1980, training at World Gym for my final Mr. Olympia competition, I showed up at the gym at seven o'clock one morning to work out and stepped out on the sundeck for a moment. Suddenly the sun came through the clouds. It was so beautiful I lost all my motivation to train. I thought maybe I would go to the beach instead. I came up with every excuse in the book-the most persuasive being that I had trained hard the day before with the powerful German bodybuilder Jusup Wilkosz, so I could lay back today—but then I heard weights being clanged together inside the gym and I saw Wilkosz working his abs, Ken Waller doing shoulders, veins standing out all over his upper body, Franco Columbu blasting away, benching more than 400 pounts, Samir Bannout punishing his biceps with heavy Curls. Everywhere I looked there was some kind of hard, sweaty training going on, and I knew that I couldn't afford not to train if I was going to compete against these champions. Their example sucked me in, and now I was looking forward to working, anticipating the pleasure of pitting my muscles against heavy iron. By the end of that session I had the best pump I could imagine, and an almost wasted morning had turned into one of the best workouts of my life. If I hadn't been there at World Gym, with those other bodybuilders to inspire and motivate me, I doubt that day would have ended up being so productive.

Even today, when I'm training for other reason, such as getting into top shape for a movie role, or just trying to stay in shape, I absorb energy from people working out around me. That's why I still like to go to gyms where bodybuilders are training for competition. Even today, after all this time, it still inspires me."

p. 87 in the 1999 edition of /The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding/, by Schwarzenegger and Bill Dobbins. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0684857219/

very nice. that captures it.

But it's the same deal with the folks you work with, run with, climb mountains with.

In fact, in a recent Pump Club newsletter, he said coworkers can make you or break you. Especially if they're sub par.

So sure, maybe individuality is overrated. Sure, community helps.

That’s the case for everything. I remember training in a boxing gym with some pros. Everything was on a level so much higher than I had seen before and I raised my own level a ton until I had to realize that my natural speed and strength was just not sufficient to really make it.

I think that’s also why children from high achieving families usually do better in adult life. What they view as “normal” is just a higher standard than what most children see. I remember being friends with the son of the local (big) factory owner. They communicated with their children on a totally different level than what I was used to with my parents. When they entered professional life they had a better understanding of the business world than most of us will ever achieve.