> A writer needs readers. An entrepreneur needs customers. An athlete needs competition. A lover needs someone free to reject him. Any worthy pursuit needs a mat.

Nah. I judge myself by how I progressed from yesterday, not by whether what I am or what I built is useful to others.

Is keeping a diary pointless if you're not planning to make it a memoir?

Is staying healthy pointless if you aren't using that health to compete with others?

It's hilarious to me that the author calls the cave "grinding", when to my eyes the "grindset" guys are the ones always trying to very visibly compete with others about wealth/status/women.

I've never heard of some guy trying to build the best Rimworld colony (in what is probably a very cave-like setting, no less) try to portray it as grinding.

Despite my other comment in this thread I strongly agree with this! I have "stupid" schemes and do "useless" side projects purely for their own sake and for my own enjoyment, and I am very happy with them. Those things are expressed freely, and never came from a cave.

But I think this article is for people who may not be introspective and self-aware enough to know the difference between private, self-satisfied enjoyment and private, self-inflicted suffering. Some people fool themselves into thinking they do something for the joy of it, and remain unsatisfied, because they harbor higher hopes they never admit to themselves.

For Rimworld: some people like making hyperoptimized minmax colonies for their own satisfaction (haven't played it myself, but I do play Factorio so I get it). But you can imagine that some people who _think_ they play for fun, but also really want the validation of posting their killbox on Reddit and having people acknowledge how good it is, and if they don't get that then they retreat to their cave and work on an even "better" colony, and maybe this one will be the one that people will praise [0, maybe? looked for an example]. And so they get wrapped up in a whole meta-argument about their playstyle and how they choose to enjoy the game and can't just simply... enjoy it?

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/1v0nwg4/alright_y...

Thank you! The author makes one large assumption about why people do what they do. If I'm doing something for the fun of it, I don't think I need anyone else to see my results in order for me to get exactly what I wanted out of it.

The mat is the objective (or at least distinct from your own personal judgement) measure of your goal. If your goal is important to you, an objective measure of your progress towards it is more valuable than your own flawed and biased opinion.

The mat for the diary might be the times you consulted back to it for useful introspection and came out better for it, the mat for your health goal could be your blood test from the doctor, etc.

The point is that the mat doesn't care what you think of yourself. I would ask you: when you judged your progress from yesterday, was it with a mat - a brutally objective test - or was it with something less honest?

Whatever your goals are, if you really, truly care about them, and you understand what your true objective is, you'll value the mat. The mat is not about what other people think, it is about undeniably simple and real feedback on your objective.

Agree. A good reminder that people project their thoughts as fact in the writing, and our brains accept it faster than coming to our own conclusion.