Just Start: How to be a serious person

(According to a semi-serious person)

Some time in 2023, the writers of Succession came up with one of a very good show’s all-time best lines, when an exasperated Logan Roy said to his children:

''I love you, but you're not serious people."

The reason that’s such a great bit of writing, I think, is that we all fundamentally understand it. Some people are serious, and some people are not: some are born serious, some achieve seriousness, and some have seriousness thrust upon them.

But what is a serious person? That feels a bit more nebulous. Like being cool or Justice Potter Stewart describing his threshold test for obscenity, it’s tempting to say that you simply know it when you see it: maybe seriousness is just in the eye of the beholder, man.

I don’t agree with this idea. I think there are specific qualities that mark out serious people: ones that you can learn and refine. Military people, quite often, feel serious — there are clear reasons for this that I’ll outline in a second. People who can’t rely on their parents or have to look after children often become serious faster than people with fewer responsibilities and more safety net — the consequences otherwise can be disastrous.

I, personally, think of myself as a semi-serious person: I’m good at some of the below, and terrible at some of it, but at least I know what direction I need to move in if I want to become serious (which I think would, generally, be a good thing). So how do you become a serious person? Here’s what I think.

(Quick note: Connor Hutchings also did a good post on this idea which inspired this one, but his idea about seriousness is slightly different from mine. It’s worth reading, though.)

If you have you repeatedly do a thing, learn how to do it properly
Here’s a thing that happens in Brazilian jiu-jitsu: someone gets tapped out with the same move two or three times, and they either a) Realise they don’t know how to defend against it properly and take it upon themselves to find out or b) Ignore the problem, finding reasons to explain why it’s happening or workarounds that kind of do the job but not really. The first set of people are serious (about BJJ, at least) and the second are not.

As Miyamoto Musashi would say, this understanding extends to everything: if you have to clean the bathroom floor once a week, cook scrambled eggs every day or do your taxes once a year, it’s worth taking the time to sit down and learn to do the thing properly, rather than just iterating on the first half-formed version of doing it that you stumbled upon. John Wooden did this with the way his athletes put on their socks, military people do it for everything, Mark from Peep Show doesn’t even do it with the keys to his house. Two of those examples are worth following.

Stop saying you’re going to do things that you aren’t going to do
We all know that one person who’s constantly saying that they’re going to read more, quit Facebook, and hit the gym, and whenever they say it we mentally go ‘Uh-huh’ rather than being impressed, because we’re fairly certain it’s not going to happen. Try to be the the person who decides to do things and simply does them, rather than announcing them to everyone first.

Do the things you say you’ll do
This sounds similar to the above, but actually pretty different. By this one, I mean: if you say you’re going paint the kitchen or write someone a reference or organise a playdate, actually do it. There’s a lot of value in being the sort of person people can rely on to do the things they say they’ll do, even if those things aren’t stated promises that technically demand commitment. If you can say “Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out” and watch another person visibly relax, that is a superpower.

Do things before you absolutely have to
This is unquestionably the thing from this list I’m worst at, and I’ve carefully built up my own layered justifications for it (as a friend of mine said recently: “Imagine caring so little about something you’ve written that you hand it in before your deadline”), but serious people do things before they absolutely have to be done. It’s partly about stress relief — there’s nothing like getting your taxes done nine months early, I’m assuming — but also because, by leaving the must-dos until the last minute, the optional (and potentially life-changing) want-to-dos rarely get done. Tim Urban has a fantastic blogpost on this which you should read, so I won’t get into it further here.

Have systems for things
This is quite similar to ‘learn how to do things properly’, above, but it expands to more stuff. Being serious about things means having systems to organise your life: places for things to go, schedules and systems for doing regular tasks, ways to remember important information and events. This is why serious people often make good friends: they will remember to send you a birthday card or wish you luck on marathon day, and don’t flake out on events because they’ve forgotten them.

Make fewer decisions based on emotions
This is the suggestion on this list that I’ve thought about the most, because it’s probably the most nuanced and the hardest to articulate. What I mean here is that serious people don’t make important decisions because they’re mad, or scared, or infatuated: they try to put those things aside and do what’s actually going to end in the best result. What I don’t mean here is ‘make a pros and cons list instead of trusting your gut,’ because there’s a decent amount of evidence (some of it listed in books like The Gift of Fear and Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink) that our instincts, in areas where we have experience, can serve us very well. What I mean is, try to avoid making decisions when you’re actually angry, or lonely, or even hungry or tired. Give yourself a minute, take a breath, and work out what you actually think. This is what Logan Roy probably means when he’s talking to his kids (because they’re constantly making decisions based on their tiny hatreds of other people and him), but it’s also a mistake he repeatedly makes throughout the series.

Acting seriously, in the sense of never playing around or smiling or having fun, does not make you a serious person: some of the most serious people I know are capable of extreme levity and silliness. But I do think that treating serious things seriously, as in worthy of attention and care, might be one of the best ways to improve your life on a general level. I’m still working on it.

Have a great week!

Joel x

Stuff I’ve done

📝 Article - What do we tell the boys trapped in the manosphere?

I don’t write much on Easily Distracted (my ‘personal’ newsletter for stuff that doesn’t really fit on this one), but I felt like I had a take on the Louis Theroux doc I haven’t seen elsewhere, so I had to write this. It seems to have struck a chord with some people!

🎥 Video - 4 Types Of Audiobook You Should Listen To

I don’t listen to audiobooks all the time — most of the time when I’m walking around or doing chores, I’m just thinking or daydreaming — but there are some types so good that I thought it was worth talking about. My first video in YouTube for a while, and hopefully a return to your regularly scheduled service.

Stuff I like

📝 Article - Random Rules by Greg Gillis of Girl Talk

This was an old franchise for the AV Club, where they’d challenge artists to put their iPod on shuffle and riff on the first five songs that came up. I happened across it because apparently Moby ignored the format entirely, but Gregg Gillis, the greatest mashup artist ever, really jumps in with both feet. Very good.

🎶 Hype Music - Psycho by Mia Rodriguez

This is a great example of a genre that probably has a proper name, but that I think of as Despondent Girl Murder Pop. I’ve listened to it a bunch.

🎥 Video - Why The Metaverse Was Doomed From The Start

A great little video deep-dive into why Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse introduction video felt so weird, and (more broadly) how to make a corporate video that isn’t awful.

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