"Won't Fix" self help

Strategic nihilism, or: how I learned to stop worrying and write a wrapper

Every major self-help framework of the last two decades falls into one of two camps.

• Camp one is Stoic Acceptance: your problems are features, not bugs, and the path to contentment runs through radical non-resistance.

• Camp two is Relentless Optimization: your problems are solvable if you wake up at 4:30 AM, track your macros, journal with intention, and subscribe to the right Substack.

You have Marcus Aurelius on one side, Tony Robbins on the other, and a $13.4 billion personal development industry filling the gap between them with courses and coaching programs and hardcover books that all say some version of the same thing: you can // should // must be fixed.

I’d like to propose a third option: the reasonable // rational recognition that most of your personal flaws are “Won’t Fix” bugs, and the single most productive thing you can do about them is stop trying to patch them.