[faceplanted]

> On a side note : am I the only one who is tired of the current (decade(s)-long...) trend in blogs/articles of "deconstructing" positive/common-sense behaviors? "The dangers of tidiness", "Embrace your bipolarity", "Why I stopped aiming for excellence" etc... (I am not denying the risks of being too extreme and I understand the "click-bait" need of those writers, but still, it is very telling...)

I think the you're seeing unconnected things as connected here, it's very much a problem with the internet in general, these blog posts and articles aren't aimed at everyone, they're talking to a specific subset of people who do have in fact have issues with toxic ideas about work, "The perfect is the enemy of the good" is important advice _for perfectionists_ like my sister desperately needed to hear that growing up, I most certainly did not.

The internet in all of it's design tells you that any advice that gets popular enough must be some universal wisdom even when the people who write these articles do prefix everything they say with constant reminders that their advice is only for specific people (and the ones that don't do that claim to have found the answer to everything and start cults).

This trend you're seeing isn't a cultural shift, it's just a collection of people with specific problems trying to help each other. I could say the same about the life-optimisation obsessed section of the self help market that does shout about hard work, discipline, and grindset.

tl;dr they're only "positive common sense behaviours" to you, but the article's are for the people for whom they are in fact toxic blockades to happiness. My sister really could've done with hearing that tidiness isn't more important than being able to actually use your space.

[the_omegist]

Well, I agree there is no planned things & that I am just connecting random dots.

But would you have found the same proportion of books or articles promoting what seems counter-intuitive behaviors/mindsets just for the contradiction itself?

I think the authors just need to find an easy way to say something new, and what is more easy than going against something "common"?

[faceplanted]

> I think the authors just need to find an easy way to say something new, and what is more easy than going against something "common"?

I'm sure some of them do, but having seen first hand the damage to productivity and happiness these "common behaviours" can do to people who don't have my personality type, the books deconstructing them and putting them back together for people you start to realise are just another kind of productivity guide but for atypical people.

There are lots of books deconstructing ordinary weight loss advice for people with eating disorders as well, the thing is that once you get cynical enough you start to realise that they really are just the other side of the same coin, the goal is the same "tell people how to get to a healthy weight" just with different perspective.

It took a whole hell of a lot of "deconstructing common behaviours" for people to settle on not beating children in schools, we didn't get rid of the concept of discipline and punishment, we just picked up a new, more universal framework that works better.