Steve Pavlina was one of the first great motivational writers I read on the internet, around 2008. Unfortunately I think his writing, at least from back then, comes across as somewhat manipulative and so I can’t recommend it without reservation. But personally back then I found a lot of insight in his writings, and few years back I read this one piece by him about his youth and I was just blown away, see the very next section:

I started out as a criminal

I have immense respect for how open Steve is about his youth’s misteps. These are his writings I most wanted to share and would not have bothered to create this page otherwise. This article is the one:

https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/06/the-meaning-of-life-intro/

For the first half of my life, until the age of 17, I was Catholic/Christian, baptized and confirmed. […] I prayed every day and accepted all that I was taught as true. I went to Church every Sunday with my family. All of my friends and family were Christian, so I knew nothing of other belief systems. My father was an altar boy when he was young, and his brother (my uncle) is a Catholic priest. […]

Over a period of months the doubt only grew stronger, and I transferred more of my faith from my Catholic upbringing to my own intelligence and senses. Eventually I just dropped the whole context entirely, and in the absence of any other viable contexts to choose from, I became an atheist.

Having shed all my old beliefs, I felt like my brain had gotten an intelligence upgrade. I could think so much more clearly, and my mind seemed to work much better. I also felt more in control of my life than ever before. Without a belief in God, I assumed total responsibility for my results in life.

But I was doing so well in school that it was hard for [my parents] to complain, and they didn’t want to openly address any of my questions, even though I’d have been happy to do so. They did force me to keep going to church though, which I tolerated for a while because I knew I’d be moving out in a year anyway. But eventually I started sitting in a different part of the church and would sneak out the back and go for a walk and return just before it ended. But one time the mass ended earlier than expected, and I got back too late. My family was already at the car and saw me walking down the street. Whoops! They drove off without me. But instead of walking the two miles home, I stayed out the entire day and didn’t return until midnight. Aside from weddings and funerals, that was the last time I ever went to church.

While at Berkeley my atheism context was further molded. No longer surrounded by Catholics, I met a lot of interesting people there with a wide variety of belief systems. I quickly made a lot of new friends who were very intelligent, and some were open to discussing the nature of reality. I think my Catholic upbringing was like a coiled spring — as soon as I left behind the environment that kept the spring coiled, I immediately shot to the other end of the spectrum. But I went way too far with it. I not only shed my old religious beliefs, but along with it went my whole concept of morality.

I started embracing all the stuff that was basically the opposite of my upbringing. I completely lost all interest in school and hardly ever went to class. I really didn’t care at all about getting my degree. I went to parties almost every week and drank a lot

I also started shoplifting — a lot. The first time I did it simply because it was something I’d never done before, something I could never do as a Catholic. It was like a task to be marked off a checklist.

About a month into my first semester, I got arrested. 4 months probation. I took about a week off [shoplifting] and went right back to it, although I became a bit more cautious about it. One week after the probation period ended, I got arrested again and ended up with 40 hours of community service. I did the service, and soon went right back into stealing.

But things went from bad to worse when I met another student who was about as morally corrupted as I was, and we became fast friends. I stopped doing the (risky) shoplifting, and together we planned and implemented a two-person theft where the odds of getting caught were very low. It worked again and again, and we both started making some actual money from it.

Eventually I got caught again, this time for grand theft. Not good. Before this arrest I had discovered that because of my priors, I’d be looking at about two years in jail if I got convicted of grand theft. Not good at all.

Two years in jail… this would be a painful lesson. But at least I had learned it. I didn’t have a complete replacement context yet, but I began to plant the seed of one. That seed was the realization that no matter how bad things seemed, in the future they could be better.

Eventually I got a lawyer and met with him to discuss my case. Before I could open my mouth, he said, “Well, I’ve reviewed your case, and since this is your first offense, I’m pretty sure we can get it reduced to petty theft […]”

First offense? Huh? Immediately my brain filled with thoughts like, “Why does he think this is my first offense? Doesn’t he know about my priors? And if he thinks this is a first offense, will the rest of the court also think it’s a first offense? Should I correct my lawyer on this oversight?” After mulling it over in my mind for a few seconds, I decided I’d damn well better keep my mouth shut.

Sure enough when we got into the courtroom (a place that was becoming increasingly familiar), the court remained under the assumption that this was a first offense and processed it as such. I pleaded no contest to the reduced charge of petty theft and got 60 hours community service. I did those 60 hours like it was a dream job, knowing that it could have been 17,520 hours.

I knew I had a lot of personal rebuilding to do, but I also knew that I couldn’t go backwards. The morals and beliefs by which I was raised were broken, but living without a sense of conscience clearly wasn’t an option.

I became aware that despite how negative my experiences seemed, they forever changed me in a good way too. By going through those experiences, I had unlocked access to a part of myself that was previously dormant — my courage.

So during this year of quiet reflection, I gradually shifted my context to create a new personal code of ethics to guide me. But instead of being rooted in religion, I built it in a more humanistic manner, integrating values like honor, honesty, integrity, humility, and fairness.

The article continues from there.

https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2020/12/can-you-trust-a-life-of-fun Another interesting piece on the topic.

Polyphasic sleep

Around 2005 there was a sudden “discovery” of polyphasic sleep schedules and Steve was among the first ones to experiment. His account of successfully trying the most extreme variant with 2 hours of sleep per day was notable then, but these days there is more research on practicality of extreme polyphasic sleep which casts doubt on his claims (my impression). Read his posts and make you own opinion:

https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/03/polyphasic-sleep-one-year-later/

for 5-1/2 months (Oct 2005 – Apr 2006) I followed a pattern of sleeping about 20 minutes once every four hours around the clock — 6 naps every 24 hours, about 2 hours of sleep per day. I blogged about it as I went along, and you can find the links to all those log entries by following the link above.

Adapting to polyphasic sleep took many days, and I felt like a zombie the first week. At one point I just sat on the couch staring at a wall for 90 minutes, unable to form any thoughts. But eventually I was able to adapt, and it was one of the most unusual experiences of my life.

I wonder if in the end the polyphasic sleep idea was just nonsense, and people like Steve Pavlina were actual frauds claiming they could maintain the more extreme variants for long periods of time. The biphasic schedule seems workable, but I wonder if the body and mind really can do without one longer stretch of sleep (for whatever mysterious reasons it is that we normally sleep). Also, it feels very true to me that humans sleep in 1.5 hour periods of sleep, unless napping, so that periods shorter than that do not make sense even in a polyphasic schedule.

Freeware software business

I’m surprised Steve also used to create video games, one very successful in fact called Dweep. I’ve even played that one as a kid.

He wrote a phenomenal article titled “Shareware Amateurs vs. Shareware Professionals”:

https://www.sodaware.net/dev/articles/shareware-amateurs-vs-shareware-professionals/

Sun Tzu

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/03/cultivating-burning-desire/

Reading Steve Pavlina after many years. Not that impressing article but I liked this part:

In the classic book The Art of War, Sun Tzu notes that soldiers fight the most ferociously when they believe they’re fighting to the death. A good general knows that when attacking an opposing force, it’s important to create the illusion of a potential escape route for the enemy, so they won’t fight as hard. What escape routes are you keeping open that are causing you not to fight as hard?

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Steve Pavlina about creating a visually pleasing workplace:

I know a programmer who works in a completely dark room with no windows, he loves it.