I think a good rule of thumb is that people are strongly overly biased towards inaction and laziness. Humans evolved in a calorie-scarce environment. Conserving energy and effort was literally a matter of survival. It makes sense to select for lazy behavior, especially when rewards are intangible or not immediately guaranteed.
Of course in the modern world, calories are too cheap to meter. Our instincts no longer make sense. It's almost certainly the case that our laziness, driven by a vestigial impulse to conserve calories, far exceeds what's optimal or necessary.
The one exception to this is the tiredness of sleep deprivation. Critical biological functions occurs in deep sleep, and being exhausted due to lack of sleep cannot be made up with extra calories. The best advice is to never allow yourself to become sleep deprived. That removes any ambiguity about whether a perceived lack of energy is genuine exhaustion or can be powered through with willpower.
So true. I used to burn out fast whenever I was very motivated about some goal. Now when I feel that motivation, I think about the long term and make it a priority to keep a regular schedule and avoid burn-out.
Eh. Idk. Being lazy has it's advantages like inventing a machine that can do the plowing for you. There are definitely limits and tendencies but I'm not big into this kind of overgeneralization.
Actual laziness wouldn’t have led to such inventions. It is still work to create things. The programming community uses this kind of example a lot, but that’s a different kind of laziness more akin to hating repetition.
The book "Exercised" by the Harvard anthropologist Daniel Lieberman mentions exactly this claim - that in hunter gatherer societies, people actually rest for most of the day. Still their average lifespan is about 70 years.
> we see that on average 57 percent, 64 percent, and 67 percent of children born survive to age 15 years among hunter-gatherers, forager-horticulturalists, and acculturated hunter-gatherers.
In his book Oxygen, Nick Lane argues that most age related diseases are a function of cumulative oxidative stress, particularly in the mitochodria. He suggests that vigorous exercise is actually more stressful than lower intensity exercise, as well as the effects of calorie restriction etc on how the body handles the longevity vs reproduction balance. I think this may have a part to play in hunter gatherer societies, which were calorie restricted, and also relaxing most of the day :)
You make a good and valid point. But I'd suggest there is probably more than one exception. For people dealing with cancer, chronic fatigue, clinical depression or a bunch of other things I'm not thinking of, the advice to "just power through" is pretty damaging, physically and emotionally.
Just as often pointing out the 5% is then used as an excuse to not do something, even when the advice does apply. The number of times I've brought up how much a healthy lifestyle matters to have it dismissed because someone they knew/heard of died at 30 from cancer despite being vegetarian and exercising all the time is rather high.
These are probably people that don't want to live a healthy lifestyle and no amount of pointing at the negatives will change that. Their point isn't "healthy lifestyle doesn't help" but rather "some people beat themself up and make themself miserable with this health stuff and then don't even reap the benefits of that".
Not sure if you misread it but your “yes” sounds like maybe you read this as a question: “Is it...”, and not the “It is...” that OP wrote.
I want to reiterate that for people with few spoons [1], they don’t need to get permission to be allowed to only do what works for them, or to feel shame for not being able to do what can seem easier for others: i.e. ‘powering through’.
I’ve seen this ugly thing where people make all sorts of assumptions about me, and perhaps unconsciously, yet verbally, speak out their train of thought, which means they often say something that ‘excuses me’ for not ‘powering through’, or that after reminding them of my background, that they now understand why I do not force myself to ‘power through’. It feels shit and it sucks because it’s a constant reminder of the ruthless productivity that is expected in many areas in modern life. A conversation like this can also slowly lure me back into taking on way too much, way too fast, and not properly looking after myself or others.
Something like "But I'd suggest..." is a good example for using "'And' NOT Bbut'" [0] to avoid the connotation of contradiction implied when using 'but'. Very useful like in this case where the intention is amendment rather than contradiction.
Can you elaborate why "just power through" is pretty damaging?
Anecdote:
When I depressed or stressed, taking action and following a preset list of tasks (brush teeth, hit the gym, make lunch) doesn't 'cure' my mood, but it does reduce my anxiety/stress/depression.
By "powering through it" I stop stress driven by inaction (e.g. not brushing my teeth while result even more stress later).
If I stick with my routine, it reduces my cognitive load, allowing my brain time to calm down. Its similar to how mediation helps you stay calm. Following the routine reduces the number of decisions I need to make.
As much as I might want, taking a sick day to lay in bed all day doesn't help anything and would make me more depressed as I think about all of the stuff I should of done.
I totally get what you're saying with your anecdote and agree that taking action can often be helpful at reducing anxiety/stress/depression.
Another anecdote is that sometimes "just power through" is a trigger phrase that leads down a path of shame and self-criticism which only serve to fuel deeper depression/anxiety/stress and so forth. There's a cultural myth that people who struggle are weak and less than people who are successful. Depression can really amplify that story. When I'm in that place I need to scale back expectations, find something (anything) I can do that's healthy, and cut myself some slack. The truth is we all struggle and success has many dimensions.
The "just power through" line isn't wrong, in fact, it's exactly what I need to hear sometimes. But it can also be exactly the wrong thing. I think it needs a heavy dose of empathy and compassion along with it.
>Humans evolved in a calorie-scarce environment. Conserving energy and effort was literally a matter of survival. It makes sense to select for lazy behavior, especially when rewards are intangible or not immediately guaranteed.
i dont think that first part proves the second one, conserving energy is important but so is figuring out how to obtain more energy and more importantly reproduction and survival. I dont think its fair to say that humans didnt evolve to invest energy without imidiate gratification, or that our brains natural reward system is poorly suited for science/math.
Personally i dont see it as a struggle to overcome my nature so much as a struggle to alter my lifestyle and biases such that they are in harmony with my nature.
> Of course in the modern world, calories are too cheap to meter. Our instincts no longer make sense.
Maybe for intellectual laborers in the global north. Not for the starving billion who are barely surviving, yet are also producing all the commodities global north capitalists force them to make: often after having been forcefully bribed/expelled from their land, mostly by ruthless global north firms together with corrupt governments. [1]
As the author mentions, the most critical part of pushing yourself is setting up a lifestyle that enables you to do so.
A couple years ago I was extremely naive and prioritized my work over everything else. Exercise, nutrition, sleep, and even relationships were seen as a waste of time, and were just a barrier to achieving more.
Then, eventually I burnt out. But even then I still tried to push myself. I started having anxiety, dissociation (mainly depersonalization), and a lack of passion towards anything in my life. It was a really rough point in my life.
After a lot of work I am now at a stage in my life when I can push myself again. However my highest priority is to maintain a lifestyle that allows me to push myself in a sustainable manner. This means good nutrition, fitness, and prioritizing my own mental well being.
The effects of that burn out are unbelievable. I still live with a lot of that today, but have learned to manage it. Push yourself, but please take care.
I've noticed a lot of hard driving entrepreneurs seem to work very hard all the time. 20 years later when you read their autobiographies you notice some big breaks where they travel or hang out at their beach house, esp between projects.
Admittedly, upon burning out, it took a while for me to actually acknowledge the multiple issues I was having in my life. I still had the toxic mentality of “just push through”, and therefore a lot of the personal work I did was incremental.
The very first thing I did was reduce my workload. It was probably still too much, but at the time it was unthinkable to stop working entirely.
Sleep, diet and exercise were next. Diet was nothing crazy, but I just wanted to eat consistent meals (I was massively underweight). Unfortunately I also had to come to terms with the fact that I am part of the population that needs at least 8 hours of sleep. I really wish I could manage on less sleep, but it is what it is. I’m also not a huge fan of running, but it massively reduced the amount of depressive and anxious thoughts, so I kept doing it.
After those changes I found that my energy levels were much better than before.
The next phase was completely mental. I hated that I failed at something, and had to learn to forgive myself. To be honest, I am still working on that. Also, I was terrified of burning out again, and went through a weird phase of over thinking and analyzing everything. Turns out it was analysis paralysis. Experimentation/tinkering helped with that. It also helped me relearn how to learn, and how to enjoy work again.
A therapist probably would’ve sped up this part of my recovery, but I hated admitting that I had a problem that I couldn’t solve myself. Very toxic mentality and one I still face to this day.
I also recently started journaling. I’m not overly consistent (working on that!), but it forces me to take a step back and evaluate my mental state at the time of writing.
It’s an ongoing process, and there are probably a lot of steps I’ve missed. However these were the major goals that I had, and achieving them definitely helped. It’s very cliche, but forgiving yourself and being honest with your capabilities is crucial.
Hopefully someone reading this can take something away from this. Burnout is no joke, and it has permanently changed my life.
TL;DR:
1. Reduction of workload.
2. Prioritize physical well being (food, exercise, sleep), and being honest with my body.
3. Improve mental well being.
4. Start experimenting, and relearning how to learn/work.
I went through a very similar experience. I burnt out trying to balance work and family, and trying to give my 110% for both. I also started taking it easy (at the expense of career growth), started sleeping better and exercising. I am mentally and physically better now. But I am unable to bring myself to work hard as I used to do in the past. I am scared I will burn myself out again and won’t survive that.
I've personally not find pushing myself to ever yield better outcomes. I think we have this false causation between pushing ourselves and achieving something.
In fact, I think we often would rather push ourselves in an all out burst of max effort exhaustion, than put dedication and consistency behind a goal.
Pushing yourself just a little bit more, but sustainably, consistently, and actually taking your progression slower, giving yourself more time to achieve your goals, but making sure that you're constantly moving little by little closer to it. That's what worked best for me. It means the journey feels easy as well, it just becomes a routine of excellence.
I think what often happens is that we're too impatient, probably because we're anxious about the thing we're trying to achieve, we're stressed about it and would like to get it over with so we can be stress free again, so we give a big push, and you know what, most of the time that push does nothing, and you get more stressed but also exhausted. At that point, flight is often the only recourse left.
The only exception to this might be short little events, like sure if you have an exam, a bit of stress and a last all out effort can help. If you're competing in some athletic event similarly. But for most other life goals, I'm not so sure.
A physical illustration of this point: I read a book about bodyweight exercise about a year ago. One section of the book was about stretching. One piece of advice on stretching was "go until you're slightly uncomfortable, and then try to relax". Don't go until it hurts and you need to summon reservoirs of willpower to grit it out -- go until it's a little tough, and slowly let yourself see that it isn't that tough. Over time, the point at which it becomes tough changes. I've found this to be pretty useful applied to new experiences in general.
Very true; this is key to almost everything new we try to learn.
I came across a variation of this advice in the book Mathematicians Delight by W.W.Sawyer a long time ago. He said something like; when trying to learn new mathematical ideas/concepts always start with a book 80% of which is already known and 20% is what is new. That way you bolster your confidence with the refresher and have to struggle with only a few concepts at a time. Your motivation and energy can be used optimally. If you think about it, this makes eminent sense. This is the reason i really dislike the "bro/competitive" time-based approach to learning and am a great fan of each person learning at their own pace and only competing with their past selves.
> In fact, I think we often would rather push ourselves in an all out burst of max effort exhaustion, than put dedication and consistency behind a goal.
I keep reading all these words about patience, consistency, how it compounds over time. I believe in all of that. But my own reality is this: I seem to have a very high activation threshold around most of things. For some, this means I'm unable to maintain steady, casual pace. By the time I work up enough energy to move past the potential barrier, the scheduled time is up and I should go do something else. In these cases, I naturally fall back to the pattern of working up the energy and then going non-stop. It tends to make the activation barrier even higher, but over time it seems to integrate to more actual progress.
(On that note, being a husband and a father, forcing me to keep a semblance of regular schedule, made this difficult for me.)
> The only exception to this might be short little events, like sure if you have an exam, a bit of stress and a last all out effort can help. If you're competing in some athletic event similarly. But for most other life goals, I'm not so sure.
I wish I knew how to reach that state, instead of having this natural tendency of turning things into "short little events".
If I have a relatively focused task to work on, but I also have meeting in the middle of the day, can be a 30 minute call, I know I will not succeed. I really need that build up and then hold on to that momentum. And after, even when I'm satisfied and happy with my work, its super hard to let go. I will keep looking into improvements during the evening and will linger on it in bed.
I still have to figure out how to deal with this. But then I'm only 29 and just starting my professional career, so enough time to learn and grow.
It is and it isn't. There are professional athletes who start doing their sport at 7. If you start at 29, you'll quite probably never make it to the top. At the same time, you could surely make it to the top of an orthogonal career, such as one of the top coaches.
On the other hand, things that mostly stretch your mind, such as science disciplines, you can do well in your 70s, 80s, or possibly even 90s. If you start at 29 with studying physics, you could get on top of your field by 45-50, leaving you quite some time to enjoy your top of the field.
29 is fine to start with most things I'd guess, especially if you've got experiences you can bring to your new career that others might not have.
Yeah i have similar problems. I seem to be very momentum based, as in it costs time to get into a state where i can put in effective work (also takes time to get back into a relaxed state). With that being the case i construct scenarios in my head where i put lots of tasks together so i can do them when i got the ball rolling and there is a synergistic effect of not duplicating effort. Plus there is a strict divide between stress and relaxing.
But through that all these tasks form a big daunting mountain of stress and effort together and then i keep putting them off and procrastinate.
I have similar challenges. I want to reduce the time and effort required to select and start a task, while also improving my ability to focus on that task. It’s easy to lose 10 minutes over and over again through insufficient focus.
There's two quotes related to my prior comment that I like to keep in mind, thought others might find them insightful as I did:
> There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
That one reminds me what success even means. Simply growing myself, being slightly better today than I was yesterday is accomplishment and success in itself. When you focus on others or external achievements, you tend to get lazy in your approach to growth, you look for shortcuts, push harder than is smart, and you get anxious, nervous, stressed in a way that will slow your growth long term.
> Most people overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can do in a month. We overestimate what we can do in a year, and underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade.
This one reminds me why you got to give yourself longer horizons to success. Success and accomplishment follow an exponential curve in my opinion, you need to keep that focus and continue to accumulate that momentum until the tipping point.
For some reason, I find meaning in pushing myself as far as I can, despite the constant stress it entails. A family member has commented more than once “why do you have to obsess over everything you do to the point of sucking all of the fun out of it?” But to me, the obsession is what makes it rewarding. I guess my view is that anything worth doing is worth overdoing. It’s not enough to play piano as a hobby; I have to do it 12 hours at a time. It’s not enough to get into cooking; I have to read all of the archived blog posts I can find from world class chefs and attempt to duplicate their approach at home with week long meals.
I’m not really sure why I am this way, but I do know that the periods in my life when I have tried to not be this way have been some of the most miserable.
>I’m not really sure why I am this way, but I do know that the periods in my life when I have tried to not be this way have been some of the most miserable
After getting diagnosed with ADHD last year at 32 a lot of things in my life made sense, including why I tend to focus on whatever I'm interested to the exclusion of almost all other things and just get into things way, way too intensely. There is no getting a little bit interested in something and just engaging with things casually for me. If I get into something it gets extreme. That can last 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months, or 3 years. I tend to like it when it's 3 years as the short duration hyperfocus tends to lead to a lot of impulse buys related to the obsession that then become useless once I'm no longer interested. The times when it goes for years I wind up outstripping my peers as most noone can match the time and intensity I put in.
Yeah, this really resonates with me. I am starting to feel it's a burden, though, because I really feel that I have no life.
I can't do multiple things... either focus on studying and studying alone (and get above average grades).. but basically end up like I am now -- friendless, with boring hobbies and interests and very lonely. Or focus on things that fill my life, and catastrophically mess up my education. And for the discipline I want to work in, I really need good grades (but also good social skills).
I also want to add that despite studying nearly 24/7, and fully understanding every single concept (and much more!), I still manage to mess up in exams due to the lack of concentration (I.e. accidentally saw that plus as a minus, didn't see that term, etc. Dumb things like that). (I need time to hyperfocus, and the exam durations don't permit this)
I am still young, so this really worries me. I feel that I have basically wasted my teenage-hood, childhood, and now on the path of wasting my youth as well.
I feel ya man. The more interesting thing always wins and the other thing gets forgotten about or "I'll come back to it". Trying to do more than one thing feels conflicting pretty quickly.
When I was younger in my mid 20s before I was diagnosed there was a period where it was amazing. People around me couldn't understand how I was able to get on the level I was able to get on. But if you zoom out and look at my life on the whole from 17 to 27 I had 5 different jobs and _in aggregate_ only managed to be gainfully employed for 1 year out of those 10. My early adult life was a wreck.
Now I'm in my early 30s Ive got a decent career because I hyperfocused on that and instead now my health is a wreck. After suffering a brush with burnout last year I'm now trying to focus on my health.
I think I cycle back and forth on it being a burden. Pre-diagnosis I just had no idea why I felt consumed by what I was into to the point where some days I felt like I had no agency because I was starting to get that burny-outy feeling and wish I could do something else with my time but was always find myself sucked into "just. one. more". Though there are times when you just are constantly in this deep flow state and nothing else matters. It's just impossible to balance. There is no balance.
Some point after I got diagnosed and I was having a conversation with my wife and I just burst out crying as I explained to her how after spending north of 1000 nights doing the dishes at 2am sometimes 3am because I was determined not to let our marriage bust up over me not doing the dishes and thinking to myself night after night "I wish I knew what this was called so I could get her to understand" I was just so overwhelmed with relief to finally know why and to be able to communicate that and to know there really is a reason underpinning it etc.
It helped tremendously with that aspect. Balance so far I haven't been able to obtain still. I haven't had any luck with medication yet as apparently 20% of people don't respond to it and I might be one of those people. So far I've only tried a sustained release formulation of Methylphenidate and I don't notice any difference. For other people the difference is quite dramatic. I've been encouraged by r/ADHD to be persistent in trying to find if there is a combination of meds that works for me. Next I will try the instant release version.
It's helped my health a lot. I would always put off going to the doctor or dentist and thought if I ignore it it'll go away. Since learning that untreated ADHD has a life expectancy that's shorter by 13 years on average (due to increased risk of a accidents, obesity, drug addiction, suicide etc) I've really started to put an emphasis on fixing my litany of health problems and in the past 12 months have started to see progress.
Getting diagnosed was the biggest revelation of my life and a very positive thing for me. The down side is is you go through this honeymoon phase where you feel like "now that I know what this is I can finally solve all the problems" and eventually realising it's a neurological condition and not a curable disease.
But for sure if you have suspicions seek an evaluation. One thing that I found interesting is that it presents very differently in people, so how one person describes it might not be how you experience it. Generally speaking though if the patterns that emerge when you start looking through r/ADHD and How To ADHD YouTube channel and the book "Driven To Distraction" resonate with you then it's probably a pretty good indication.
Thank you so much, truly. This is all really helpful. r/ADHD and your comments do resonate a lot with me, but I haven't checked out "Driven to Distraction" nor How to ADHD. Will check them out and see how things go, then go seek diagnosis.
Also this video highlights some really interesting research which shows why we get distracted. Basically the Default Mode Network and Task Positive Network are supposed to anti- correlate and in ADHD brains they don't perfectly do that.
I've found that for exams, mixing it up is the best way to stay attentive. Depending on the length (especially if it's a really long multiple choice–think SAT or something along those lines), I like to do a few problems then flip to the back of the book and work problems from there. When I feel my focus lapsing, I go back to the beginning and pick up where I left off.
I've found that this strategy works elsewhere as well. Simply mixing up my environment (working in a coffee shop vs a library vs my room vs etc) tends to make me focus better as I adapt really well to new situations but grow complacent in routines.
As for the social side, I've found that forcibly inserting myself into situations I might find uncomfortable is the way to go. I tended to group up with people who are trying a similar thing and we ended up forming a close bond, because I (and others like me) prefer fewer, closer relationships.
For example, I joined a Discord server someone made for my dorm. On the first day, someone offered to play cards with people and I went even though I would maybe normally stay in. About half the people there are in my friend group now.
I never really tried mixing things up before. In hindsight, I really should have because routine does bore me a lot.
Getting out of my comfort zone is what I have been doing this semester, and it's going well, I'd say.. haven't really made any friends (like you, I prefer fewer, closer and deeper friendships), but I have been having fun and gained some valuable experiences, so I guess it balances out.
I also had phases in university where I was focused on learning and lonely, and also phases where I was partying too much and not doing as well as I could have on the tests. But after a while, my life naturally balanced out. Maybe it was the long bicycle rides where I can peacefully wonder about what I want to focus on today, but I'm not sure.
In any case, by now I've seen firsthand how little practical relevance most school and university lectures had. So I guess the first step for you should be to stop worrying too much about doing well on any given test. Chances are, being more relaxed will also help you avoid these little concentration mistakes.
>Maybe it was the long bicycle rides where I can peacefully wonder about what I want to focus on today, but I'm not sure.
Yeah, I have recently picked up the habit of walking daily for 30 - 60 minutes, but at the end of the day. It's quite refreshing and helpful, not to mention the physical exercise aspect. It feels good to think on the day's decisions / what happened, and think if what I am doing is what I really want or not.
>[...] by now I've seen firsthand how little practical relevance most school and university lectures had.
Yeah, I have heard this a lot. My problem lies in GPAs being used as filters, both for job applications and scholarships. It just hurts to think of the possibility that I could be passed over, not because of my actual skillset or level, but due to exam performance.
I know several people in high management positions who didn't even finish their degree. Also, I've never been asked about my degree because I got all of my jobs from word of mouth so far.
You are probably right if your goal is to work in a large conservative corporation. But for startups and medium sized companies,nobody cares.
A lot. So called "hyperfocus" is a hallmark of ADHD. Most people might think of ADHD as can't concentrate or get distracted easily due to the "attention deficit" moniker but in reality ADHD is badly named, and it's much more an inability to direct your attention. Hyperfocus is the the opposite extreme of not being able to concentrate and getting distracted easily as you find yourself unable to switch your attention away from what it is you're interested in. This is especially problematic when you have other activities that require your attention like filing your taxes, folding the washing, taking out the trash and doing the dishes as you tend to not be able to get your brain to accept engaging in those tasks and often some of them wind up left undone. Sure you made progress in whatever the latest obsession was, but you find relationships with those around you strained with this constant back and forth of "you left dirty dishes in the sink again last night, you forgot to take out the rubbish again, and when you fold the washing don't just fold the washing but also put it away please" and all you want to talk about is the cool new stuff you learned last night.
Edit: I find it quaint that people can consider how hard they should push themselves and have the option of doing it or not. I get sucked into it no matter what.
This line of reasoning was precisely why I ended up missing a diagnosis of ADD by 17 years. It was because the specialist said that since I could pay attention to the things I "liked," a diagnosis was not appropriate for me. My life could have turned out a lot differently if I was medicated sooner.
I believe that people should no longer treat AD(H)D as an acronym. It isn't accurate to call it a chronic "deficit of attention" and hyperactivity isn't necessarily a symptom. It's unfortunate that the name has to stay for the purpose of recognition in the face of the new evidence we've gathered in the past few decades.
>Why did they disqualify you based on being able to focus on things you like?
Lack of knowledge on the part of the person assessing them. Some people who go for diagnosis wind up going to people who don't specialise in it and they wind up being told these kind of things.
ADHD is an "executive function" disorder -- it's hard for your brain to consistently focus on doing what you "want" it to do.
It's stereotypically thought of as an inability to focus your attention ("can't sit still and concentrate"), but it's also an inability to stop focusing on something you know isn't in your overall interest/plans.
At least in my own experience, when I take things in my life this way, I burn out on them fast. Consistency becomes elusive, and without consistency, real long-term progress is very difficult to achieve.
At least in my own experience, when I do not do things consistently, real long-term progress is difficult to achieve. And that is what makes me obsess over things like OP.
And yet most people's code (in my team at least) after 6-7 hours of work tend to be crap and is usually refactored later when they are fresh.
For it to count as "constant" in humans it has be in periods smaller than what period of time the individual can stay focused... Which is anywhere between 30 minutes and 1 hour, for most people.
> And yet most people's code (in my team at least) after 6-7 hours of work tend to be crap and is usually refactored later when they are fresh.
I've observed that, and it's definitely the case for me too - but often, the choice isn't between crappy code in a day vs. good code in two - it's a choice between crappy code in a day and no code at all.
> For it to count as "constant" in humans it has be in periods smaller than what period of time the individual can stay focused... Which is anywhere between 30 minutes and 1 hour, for most people.
Don't forget to count the time it takes to spool up to achieve focused productivity. Which can easily be 30 minutes or more.
I've found that this strategy doesn't work over time. My goal isn't, "make the best meal ever tonight", my goal is, "shop, cook, and clean every week in order to have a good home cooked meal every night". Those are two very different challenges, where the latter requires a more pragmatic approach to time and energy management.
> But to me, the obsession is what makes it rewarding. I guess my view is that anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
My father is like this. I've described him as a "serial obsessionist". I recognize in myself several unhealthy behaviors that likely developed due to his influence in this regard.
Same here. The whole thread is giving me a great chuckle. My son often asks, "why did Granddaddy do all this?" And I reply, "because for Granddaddy, anything worth doing is worth overdoing." Awesome to see that phrase repeated elsewhere.
> "because for Granddaddy, anything worth doing is worth overdoing."
One wonders if there is a correlation between this trait and people who end up in tech these days. The rampant overengineering and workaholism would suggest the possibility.
This burns me out. Might be different for you. I try to pursue things to the level of just being good at it. I relate to you, but I know that pushing myself to the extreme is not joyous. Tried, succeeded in excellence, and then mentally crashed.
You speak directly from my heart of my former younger self. Never stop being obsessed, what i learned that obsession and fun needs to be one (for sure it's not always that fun but at the end of the day/week/month it has to be)
A lot of people are obsessed on things are interested at the time. So is my younger self. Now I can mostly control myself by learning it’s time to let it go and being selective on what I should be obsessed about.
In my experience, and what the article also mentions, despite the title: it is fundamentally different if you push yourself, or if you're pushed by circumstances.
Pushing yourself, to file the taxes, finish your personal project, go for a run, lookup something in wikipedia.. that is almost always good.
Being pushed by clients, the organization, dead lines. Often bad.
My theory, burnout and stress, happen in environments where you receive responsibilities without the power to fulfill them.
This creates the false impression there is a neat separation between internal and external pressure. In reality, life is a tangle.
You're pushing your taxes because you had a busy quarter at work getting that project out the door. Your pushing your running because you've been overeating due to stress at work/with kids/etc. Your pushing your personal project because dealing with a personal situation is just too much right now. Maybe you're pushing because you drank the koolaid (and who hasn't?) that you should 'live life to it's fullest' and be busy every waking second.
In general, pushing is I think a crutch that we sometimes need to use, but probably should use a little as possible. In an ideal life, all those things would fit in naturally.
I find accepting limits, revising my priorities, and taking freedom I actually have (as opposed to me and/or society being trained to not recognising it) to do what feels good is a better approach.
Discipline is not in pushing, discipline is in understanding yourself, your environment and setting honest priorities.
> Being pushed by clients, the organization, dead lines. Often bad.
I disagree with this part, respectfully of course, based on my own personal experience. I can see how external forces do lead to poor decision making and short sightedness; on the other hand I also think of the vast ways I've grown and new things I've learned from designers who drew something I originally thought was impossible, or clients who wanted something built in a language I'd never had any interest in using before. Generally speaking these external forces may push you beyond the limits of your own imagination.
It’s amazing how envious one can be of another’s suffering. I really want nothing more than to be driven and stressed about if I should relax more. I’m moderately successful at whatever I do, but I could be so much more if I could find a way to apply myself even 10%. Instead I always take the low commitment, easy money, do the minimum required route. It’s so natural.I’m sure it sounds nice to many people but I despise myself for it.
I feel you. I had few experiences of prolonged hyperfocus in my life, and I'm still amazed about how much I could accomplish in short time, how full of energy I was, and how happy I was then. Alas, I can't reproduce this state.
I've mentioned this on HN before and got some good ideas in replies[0], but I still can't find a formula that can bring that state back. Unfortunately, I concluded that the most plausible answer is somewhat dysfunctional and... "base", for a lack of better term - those hyperfocus achievements had a big component of impressing my peer group. They started with me telling myself or someone else, "like hell I/we can't do X, hold my beer...". Something I can't really recreate these days.
>It’s amazing how envious one can be of another’s suffering.
No problem, start Climbing and Mountaineering you will learn really fast that there is no low commitment, not a community or other peoples that can push or judge you, the situation (nature) demands that from you, there is no NO, and there is no give up. At the end of the day you feel like buddha and superman, repeat that 100s of times and your focus will compleetly shift away from the commitment standpoint to the "what do i really wanna achieve"-point the rest is nonsense and will come automatically.
My barometer is whether I'm passionate about how I'm spending my time and excited for the future potential.
It's interesting because I'm currently at that crossroads in my life. I just left the PE that bought my firm and am unemployed for the first time in 20 years. Wife is freaking because loss of income is detrimental to the house we're currently trying to buy and just scary to her.
Building great things from the ground up with great people is where my passion lies. I'm not really the guy to get a job with one foot out the door or do 2 things halfways - and I know ultimately living my time passionately will win out. I guess I'm just saying that I understand where you're at, from an inverted perspective.
It's an exhausting life at times but feels well lived.
For me it is the polar opposite. I just do constantly. When people ask me what I did that week I have to stop myself from listing things exhaustively because it would take to long and I don't want to excert that kind of pressure.
For me this is more a mode of operation. My way to relex is to be productive in a different field (e.g. to relax from programming I'd do electronics, build a thing in Blender, etc.)
If it helps you talk about it at all, one of my friends calls just doing things to stay busy as "tinkering". Nice catch all term for whenever you're relaxing in a different domain.
Are there steps you could point to that indicate how you found your way to that mentality? I'm sure it's genetic to some degree, but if you could help other people get comfortable in that mode of operation it would be worth a lot.
I’m the same and I think it comes from the personality trait ‘Conscientiousness’ from the Big-5 personality test (an extension of Myers Briggs).
I score high on that trait and I assume parent author does too.
> just knowing you have the option to reduce stress is enough to make something less stressful
I believe this is a huge source of stress today, with 24-hour news and addictive social media all constantly screaming "the sky is falling" and there's absolutely _nothing_ you can do about any of it. As an experiment, for every bit of news and every tweet you read, ask yourself "is this actionable?"
The best thing you can do for your personal mental and physical well-being is stop paying attention. If you can find a source of local, actionable news that actually affects you, great (good luck). Otherwise just focus on the immediate world around you - family, friends, job, community - and let the larger world do what it's going to do anyways.
> The best thing you can do for your personal mental and physical well-being is stop paying attention.
Last month, I deleted all of my social media accounts outside of LinkedIn, Tildes, and Hacker News. Additionally, I blocked news sites in my browser and subscribed to both the Economist for current events and the Athletic for my sports addiction.
At first, it was strange- there was a constant feeling that I was missing out on things happening that all my friends and family were in on. I realized, after a while, that I now spend more time improving myself personally rather than worrying about what others are doing.
I wouldn't say I am less distracted.. but it's a different kind of distraction. Rather than finding myself aimlessly browsing a never-ending stream of posts on Reddit, I am now trying to answer questions on Stackoverflow. Rather than reading through posts of my peers landing internships and stressing myself out, I spend time on my resume and learning Go.
Also, people text and call me now rather than shooting me a message on social media which is honestly really nice. Even more so with the current COVID climate.
The most important part though is that I feel as if I have spent more meaningful time with my significant other.
Another change is that I separated my devices.
My laptop ONLY has stuff for school and programming on it. Our iPad has the entertainment in books, games, etc (radio.garden has been fun exploring). My phone has all the default Apple programs only. Since doing so, I can't count the number of times I picked up my phone subconsciously, swiped through it realizing there isn't anything on there, then asking myself why I even picked it up to begin with.
Sorry for the rant.. it's just been a strange adjustment that is showing benefits personally.
To me, Radio Garden has been the app delight of 2020. I found it tremendously fascinating to listen to people living in faraway countries talking on radio, both the hosts and the callers. Often, normal, but nonetheless less interesting, people: the barber in Argentina describing how he started his business 50 years ago; the pissed-off lady who's calling to complain about the traffic in Lisbon. I found it refreshing; I recognized that I was (and I am) still quite fed up with the Tim Ferriss, Weinsten or Joe Rogan's wildly accomplished or popular-on-Twitter guests, and with the dramatizations that after 5 podcast episodes leave you as clueless as you were 5 episodes before.
Why "The Economist"? I've been trying to find a news source I can trust and won't leave me feeling like we're f--ked as a species and nothing is worthwhile doing.
What are your thoughts on choosing that publication?
It's delayed a week which is enough to avoid the panic and clickbait news but not too long that I miss out on what is occurring in the world. The articles are in-depth and lead me to doing a lot of my own research on the topics.
It's essentially a macro view of the world that allows me to dig more into the things I want.
Many areas have a local NPR-type news source regarding decisions and policy disputes of city councils and mayors. You can reasonably organize efforts to influence these types of decisions.
I think the answer for everyone is different. Never pushing yourself enough that you don't know how you respond to that type of stress is clearly too conservative if you're hoping to accomplish things that require hard work and dedication. Once you know how you respond it's important that you account for that. If your stress response is extreme, it's important that you dial things back. If your stress response is quite manageable then you can probably push yourself harder than others. There is a lot of individual variation in how people respond to stress so the right answer is different for everyone. For instance, if you respond to stress by becoming paranoid you may want to dial things back dramatically as you might be at risk of developing mental illness from prolonged stress. Similarly, if you respond to stress by having illnesses become hard to shake you might want to dial things back or at least design your environment where you can turn off the stress when you get sick and focus on getting better. Being self-aware is an important skill and I think it's probably the most relevant variable in stress management.
Can't remember where I picked this up, but this has been a good mental model for me for understanding the dimensions of this problem of picking what I should pursue in my career & life. It's a riff on "Good, Cheap, or Fast. Pick two."
* Low Risk
* Low Stress
* High Reward.
Pick two.
It seems less down to choice than personality in terms of which two you personally should choose, but understanding the tradeoffs you're making is a good thing regardless.
To me this seems overly simplified. I'm sure there are other situations. I.e. I'm sure sometimes it's "pick three", "pick one", "you don't get to choose", or even "pick none".
And also, if you get a choice of "pick two", you could also: "pick one, balance the other two", "balance all three", etc.
Finally, high risk seems tied to high stress, as also mentioned in sibling comment [1].
I could see truth in the sentiment that if you're receiving high reward, stress and risk are inversely correlated. e.g. if you're working at FAANG, and not working hard enough to be stressed, you're at risk of being fired. Or you're working hard enough to be stressed and therefor have low risk.
A 40-hour a week job jumped to mind for me when I read this. Steady salary without too much risk (if you have decent job security), but half your waking hours during the week and stress that comes with that.
I think I follow but I'm not sure this is correct. Looks like you're saying that jobs with steady salary and job security are stressful. What would be a less stressful alternative?
A low-stakes job at a startup where the bulk of your compensation is equity maybe? Though that situation probably wouldn't stay low-stress for long, as you'll want to do everything you can to make those stocks valuable...
I'd say something like becoming a plumber satisfies that: it's hard, gross work, but it pays well and absent a breakthrough in robotics, I think has a low risk of disappearing as a career.
this is sincerely ingenious. so simple and yet so meaningful.
for a long time I've dabbled on "low risk + low stress" and the new me is trying to go to the 'high reward' mode but yeah, something is got to give.
I basically went from a government worker to an entrepreneur so basically from one side of the low risk of the spectrum to the other. needless to say ,things have been stressful :)
> Stress isn’t good or bad. It’s a tool. In small doses it’s good, but too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing pretty quickly.
Actually, I think this is a wrong rule of thumb. In my experience, there is more of a "barbell dynamics" (Taleb):
I can take a lot of stress at once, but then I need some time to recover. I find this perfectly healthy and it grows me as a human being. On the other hand, when I'm under constant stress with no relief in sight, that's the real killer.
Whatever is the opposite of what is habitual for you.
If you push yourself hard often, relaxing and taking more time off will be a challenge for you and reveal new aspects of yourself with which you were not previously aware.
If you half ass everything, taking on as much responbility as possible and working as hard as possible will be a challenge for you and reveal new aspects of yourself with which you were not previously aware.
I wish my coworkers that spent 10x the energy that I do would instead go work on projects for their community and not just their company. They literally have no time for that because they spend so much time at work e.g. nights and weekends.
On the one hand, most people say that you shouldn't push yourself hard. You should take a rest. Take your time.
Pushing hard may lead to burnout/big stress/depression/anxiety/whatever.
On the other hand:
1. I see that well-known people who work hard has some results. Literally, a minute ago I saw a tweet from a guy is very well known, and dedicated his life for one thing. And he's working really hard.
2. For me, it depends. If I don't push myself, if I'm not being strict with myself, if I'm not angry I usually don't get any result. However, after continuous hard-work I eventually got burned out.
> Literally, a minute ago I saw a tweet from a guy is very well known, and dedicated his life for one thing. And he's working really hard.
He is tweeting. That means his goal is to portray a certain image. Given your impression, that is part of his intended image and he almost certainly does not work as hard as his social media makes out.
(And, if he is that well-known, he might employ people to take care of his social media)
I would say avoid blanket advice like "don't push yourself hard you'll burn out". Burnout is a real thing but it's ridiculously overblown. I get burned out often but it usually only lasts a few days. Successful people mitigate this by taking vacation days, not by deciding to coast through the year.
Some people are healthier, happier and thrive through the feeling of productivity - whether it be work, a hobby, or a side project. I'd say depression is more common with people who don't have anything to do.
> I get burned out often but it usually only lasts a few days.
It sounds like what you're describing here is simple fatigue and not burnout. Burnout is psychologically different from fatigue in important ways, just like depression is different from feeling sad and PTSD is different from feeling worried.
> Some people are healthier, happier and thrive through the feeling of productivity - whether it be work, a hobby, or a side project. I'd say depression is more common with people who don't have anything to do.
Yup. People thrive when they feel they are using their strengths towards meaningful ends.
> I would say avoid blanket advice like "don't push yourself hard you'll burn out". Burnout is a real thing but it's ridiculously overblown. I get burned out often but it usually only lasts a few days. Successful people mitigate this by taking vacation days, not by deciding to coast through the year.
You probably get frustrated. You're not getting burned out.
If your point is that some people confuse frustration with burn-out, I can't really argue with that.
But from someone who has experienced burn-out, it's definitely not something to take lightly. Real burn out kills your curiosity, your capacity to concentrate, to enjoy things. It's close to depression. And like any disease, once it has you in its fangs, it realise how much you miss the life you took for granted before. I know people that have had to abandon a network and a carreer, and that have not recovered three years on.
Sorry about your friend, I knew someone who went through something similar and it's awful. To rephrase, mental illnesses are very real and horrible. Seek the right resources when you encounter such issues.
I just want people to avoid reading articles on burnout from the internet and thinking it immediately applies to you. Trivializing and attributing burnout with hard, driven work is equally harmful, in my opinion, because burnout is just as much a larger combination of other factors. Worse, one could easily overlook actual mental issues present in their lives because the internet tells you its burnout.
I mean, I truly believe that each person is unique.
For some persons it's okay to live a measured, calm life
But for others it might be okay pushing. E.g., in the evenings some people go home & drink bear & relax. Others lift weights and "suffer". Some work 24x7 while being happy.
"Burnout is a real thing but it's ridiculously overblown" - I like that :) Let's keep pushing than!
> Burnout is a real thing but it's ridiculously overblown.
True burnout probably isn't as common as the internet makes it out to be. But, actual burnout is a real thing and can be completely debilitating.
It's a lot like over training when exercising. It's serious when it happens, but it isn't that common among the workout for 30-60 minutes/day type people.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Like anything, balance is the key. I am beginning to realize that it’s really important to plan for balance and pushing myself at the same time. If I plan to have a decent baseline of time for basic activities (this is different for everyone) then I can push hard on some things over short periods of time and not burn out. I know that incremental achievement will still boost my confidence and life satisfaction. I used to just push until I burned out: it’s not a good approach.
"If I had seven hours to cut down a tree, I would spend five hours sharpening my axe" - attributed to Abraham Lincoln.
You should push yourself. You shouldn't push yourself too hard. In terms of physical activity, you should push yourself to the point that it's hard, but not to the point that your injured, nor to the point that you're exhausted for several days. For mental activity, it's kind of the same.
Thanks for sharing this article! Even though I know more people are thinking about/struggling with stress, its good to read others assessment on it.
When covid came around and I started working from home I realized how much stress I had at the office. For at least the last 2 to 3 years I would get these huge headaches which would completely disable me and completely drain my energy. I was convinced that it was purely physical for the longest time. I did yoga, worked out, when to chiropractor, ... nothing really helped. I ended up at a physiotherapist with a lot of experience, who was able to look beyond the physical. After having yet another huge headache during my work week I discussed this with her, we were looking for the what could have stressed me. It was an email.
I was working on one project that I needed to finish to continue the work of my team when an email came in about another project I had been pushing away for a while. This email reminding me of that project stressed me so much that it completely disabled me.
I still regularly have these headaches, but now I can start thinking to myself, what stresses me here? And I can focus on fixing those issues. Most of these issues aren't just an easy fix, especially now, but its helping me. I'm helping me, I'm listening to my body.
Also related to the topic of stress and its consequences is When The Body Says No by Dr. Gabor Mate [1]. He did a few talks on the subject, you can find them on Youtube [2].
I think everyone is different. But, for me, to live a happy life, I have to balance my relationships, work, and exercise. I try to make systems that keep my working while at work and keep me focused on people when not at work. I think a lot about making sure I am enjoying the journey and not just focused on the destination.
Funny that there is a mountain (Matterhorn) because that's exactly the question on a mountain, you should push as hard as possible to come back safely to your bed and not the top, and that my friends is the answer to the question, on a mountain that is 1.Survive 2.have a great adventure 3.stand on top...
It's clear from my posting history that I am hugely biased towards "pushing myself" to extremes career-wise. But at least in my experience, that doesn't really translate to more stress, and quite often to less.
I have a theory that there's a constant level of happiness and misery that we experience in most normal situations that really has more to do with who we are than our situation. So for example, a guy may experience a certain level of anxiety about losing his job that doesn't depend on whether he's the janitor or the CEO. He will feel the same amount of pressure and exertion whether he's trying to finish mopping the floor on time or launch a successful IPO.
To the extent that this is true, you might as well be the CEO.
A related view is that our perceived difficulties are relative to our challenges. I used this example before: my wife and I are pretty busy with our 1 kid. Our rabbi is seemingly equally busy with his 10 kids. I bet we'd feel roughly as busy if we each doubled our number of kids.
Similarly, I didn't feel that it was "harder" to go to business school while working fill time than it was to just work. It all kinda feels the same, so the "pushing" part is more about being able to get yourself into the situation than handling the situation on on-going basis.
And the kicker is that it all works out way less stressful. If the CEO and janitor worry about losing their job about the same, but the CEO has a much nicer cushion if he actually gets fired, you might as well try to be the CEO. Similarly, if being an individual contributor and being a manager are about equally hard on you, be the manager because if you ever get sick of the job, you'll have 2x the opportunity (all the management jobs along with all the IC jobs) versus just being the IC.
All this is a long winded way to say - people over-estimate the stress of being at the next level, and under-estimate the reduction in background stress that actually being at that level brings.
> I have a theory that there's a constant level of happiness and misery that we experience in most normal situations that really has more to do with who we are than our situation.
Once I think about personal progress in a performative way I doom myself to failure because I get seriously stressed out about it (there's likely a significant genetic component in this, my stress-resistance is really low for some reason).
I could not exist like that guy in the article, props to him.
Personally I try to stay in balance, that way things come more naturally, and there isn't this sword of Damokles hanging over every day I "don't perform".
Fostering natural curiosity and intrinsic motivation seems like a worthwhile goal to me (I'm not much of a people person). Then even if you can't combine this with work there'll still be something to look forward to afterward.
For what it's worth, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, who wrote one of the books that this article draws on, has a fascinating set of lectures, free online, from his Human Behavioral Biology course at Stanford[1].
I personally haven't listened to it in very great detail as if I were taking the course, but I often skip around to listen to the dissections of various aspects of human behavior.
Few things are more fun than running up a steep hill in the cold rain. Unfortunately, pushing your body too hard will have diminishing and then receding returns.
Pushing myself during covid has been a somewhat frivolous and failed effort. Sure, I managed to stand up a handful of small "test" side projects, two of which are now small businesses - however I actually struggled more to immediately apply myself at my day job while working remote.
I know the immediate comments will be - focus on your job not side projects, this is obviously why you struggled to buckle down on "actual work". However, I would say that my day to day work gives me more stress and "pushing myself" just lead to further meetings and stress being more involved with other people's problems.
Like a few other commenters here I received an ADHD diagnosis in my early twenties - for this reason college was a significant challenge. My deepest moments of "pushing myself" have come from trying to escape situations or life circumstances that make me deeply unhappy. Supposedly, ADHD sufferers commonly focus anxiety like this - however, this is certainly my vice. Being able to gauge risk and make hard decisions with this anxiety is great - but it comes at a huge personal and social cost.
It took me multiple visits with a therapist to find that I need to have more self-care, otherwise I fall off a cliff. I need to take care of myself to be able to help others. What that is to be able to recognize symptoms and have techniques for coping with the stressors that have become too much.
I still struggle these days. The metrics from the "Body Battery" and "Stress Levels" let me acknowledge that I've had a bad day and need to rest.
People aren't pushing themselves anywhere close to their limits. If you look at extreme athletes who run 100+ miles or swim for hours or lift weights multiple times a day without taking breaks it's evident that human limits are far higher than what the average person is willing to endure. For the average person they should probably be pushing themselves harder.
"Should" is a moral of value judgement but you provide no argument for it.
You could just as easily say: "People aren't pushing themselves anywhere close to their limits. If you look at the extremely obese who eat jars of mayo in one sitting or consume tens of thousands of calories a day it's evident that human limits are far higher than what the average person is willing to endure. For the average person they should probably be eating way more."
What is so intrinsically good about reaching one's limits?
It's also true that young gymnasts retire in their mid-to-late twenties. They get injured a lot. I'm not sure what they get for their efforts, besides medals and prestige.
There's definitely value in getting out of your comfort zone, but that doesn't have to be hard. IMO it's only worth pushing yourself hard if you really believe in something. Don't do it just because others are pressuring you to do so. Rest when you need it.
Just gonna add on to your athlete and weightlifting example: should take into account progressive overload when training, because overtraining is absolutely a thing and you'll end up spinning your wheels without recovery. I think the same idea applies with stress in purely mental situations too.
I disagree. This might be true for professional athletes but not for the average athlete. So I would not use that to conclude what the average person should do. Professional athletes are rare and to get into that position, they also have to be lucky.
I'm not saying the average joe should try to go run a 100 miles untrained.
I'm saying that the average person could easily push themselves more in the athletic realm. If a dude has been going to the gym for a while and can't bench their body weight or run a few miles they're probably not pushing themselves at all.
That is interesting, because in my experience trainers and weight lifters tell you the opposite. I have been told to start with light weights and to slowly progress, even if I could have started with heavier weights and would have seen results more quickly.
This is because that way it is healthier in the long term. The goal isn't to be able to lift a lot in a short period of training time. It is usually to consistenly stay healthy going forward.
But again, that's just my experience. I disagree with you anyway, I even think it would benefit the workforce if there was a third "weekend" day. I think that that would reduce stress and thus increase productivity.
On reading this and reflecting on personal experience also, there have been instances where I've pushed myself and there have been instances where I've been under stress. The two are not identical sets though - relatively little overlap actually.
The pushing myself towards a goal or exceeding some benchmark wasn't generally stressful ... it was exhausting sure, but more thrilling than stressful. Other times when I've been stressed I haven't really enjoyed it as much as the pushing. I suppose one aspect is intrinsic motivation versus external factors.
The post uses mountains as an imagery to indicate pushing yourself. Even in exactly that endeavour, I've had physical struggle, but have not felt stressed but more in tune with the climb (not a pro level by any stretch) and enjoying it at the bottom of it all.
Any others who think we may be confusing "stress" with "pushing yourself"?
I find Hans Selye’s theory of adaptation[1] to be compelling and useful. Among other things it clearly indicates when to stop. It’s also useful for understanding how to train your body, be it for strength, poisons, or any number of other non lethal stressors.
> If you put a human in a room where loud noises are going off, you’ll activate their stress response. If you give the human a button to reduce the volume of the loud noises they’ll be less stressed—regardless of whether they even use the button.
And if you put a person in a large room with no sound dampening, many people eating chips and typing, and no way to escape it while you try and solve programming problems, you'll go crazy.
Please note this says "your sense of" not "your actual control". This step so often fails for me because I realise I have no actual control over anything relevant, so I get screwed right out of the starting blocks. How are you supposed to develop a sense of control when the idea of any actual control in your life is false?
As someone who has pushed themselves far beyond what I thought was possible for a person not experiencing literal life/death situations - I'd highly recommend against pushing yourself far.
> It makes you more susceptible to heart disease, it makes it harder to recover from illnesses, it can affect your sleep, and it can even affect your working memory.
If you start experiencing chronic insomnia from chronic stress where you're getting 30 minutes to 2 hours of sleep everyday for weeks... Know that you're not pushing yourself - you're fucking yourself over. You won't remember anything. A couple days will feel like a week. Things that happened a few days ago feel ancient. You'll be living the life of Sisyphus because you will have to redo things because you will inevitably have forgotten what you did.
If you get sick (and you will get sick), you will take months to recover from a simple cold. Your body will eventually shut you down and put you in bed from the stress and simple cold you got. The stress will compound because you are not able to do your basic duties due to the sickness and now you're even more stressed. Stress begets stress - in my experience. It's easy to find your stress levels on a runaway train.
So, now, ask yourself - is it worth it? Is it worth being unable to stay healthy, unable to sleep, unable to even remember anything, and constantly being miserable as fuck just to think you're gonna turn Super Saiyan or some crazy shit if you just push yourself further? (Pro-tip: You won't ever have some anime level breakthrough - those don't happen in real life. That's why it's anime!)
You likely won't. I haven't. I don't think I've had a single breakthrough or meaningful change in my life that came from putting myself through incredibly stressful times. So, IMO, avoid highly stressful situations. They don't really prepare you for anything - they just deal out trauma and set you back.
Some stress can be nice - but if you're like me - your daily stress levels are way higher than most people's. So, your idea of what a "normal" amount of stress is very likely highly distorted. You're probably living - like I am - just one bad day from getting riddled with sickness, insomnia, and amnesia but you don't even realize it because you've thought for so long that this is "normal" or "healthy" or what you should be doing to break through. After all - life is a game... More stress means more XP, right? More XP means higher levels. Higher levels means I can do more. Doing more means more $$$. More $$$ means that house in Palo Alto finally. That house in Palo Alto means someone will finally notice me. Someone finally noticing me means I'll have happiness. Something like that I guess - for the typical HN crowd.
Balance can be found within. Only when we are capable to remove outside motivation and create internal meaning things start to click and the idea of pushing one self towards a goal is healthy. Health and natural harmony must be the end goal of our lives. Burn outs are dangerous and no monetary or life achievement reward can compensate the loss.
The Wim Hof method rests on the assumption that peaks of stress are good for you, thus we benefit from artificially generating these peaks through exposure to cold and breath holding. Anecdotally this seem to work rather well and there is growing scientific evidence to confirm it.
To motivate you further, I have been doing for 30 days or so, and I love it. More energy, better workouts, deeper meditation sessions and improved mood. Hope it works for you as well.
I think it comes down to certain people and what they are driving towards, my belief is that if you are the 0.1% who have the stamina and you find that goal that you are willing to live and die for, then its magic. For everyone else > there is burnout.
I think its much more common that other people are pushing you, than you are pushing yourself. So I think there are a lot of people who feel social pressure to put in extra hours at work and give in to that just to be safe. Because jobs are important.
I have mixed thoughts about this. An upside is that you can accomplish things that surprise you, that you probably wouldn’t otherwise experience. But if it leads to knocking your head against a wall, it’s probably not the way to go.
Be brave at work, Push your risk tolerance. Be brave with your transactions, push your risk tolerance. Don't push your stress limits, it will not end well. Having said that, work your butt off.
Your next push is only as good as your last recovery. I'm surprised how often people focus on the work and neglect the recovery phase like nutrition, sleep, etc.
This is a really good article. I wished it didn't jump so quickly from pushing yourself to stress, though. I think there is likely a lot of variance across people in how achievement and stress are connected. Sometimes you can motivate yourself in ways that are joyful and exciting and not just a miserable grind.
It's important to really understand your psychology around why you want to achieve and why you might want to push yourself. Is it because something is fascinating and you want to sink yourself into it? Is it because reaching some goal will help others in meaningful ways? Is it because others are relying on you? Or that you are afraid they won't like you if you fail?
If your drive is coming from some place negative, then pushing harder isn't gonna fix that. You'll be miserable while you push yourself, and then miserable afterwards when you discover the achievement didn't fill the hole in your heart. But if it's coming from some place positive, it can feel amazing to live up to your potential. For most of us, it's probably a mixture of all of these.
> But humans have evolved this anticipation ability to extend far beyond other animals. We anticipate bad things months, years, or even decades out.
This makes me wonder if part of the reason we anticipate stressors so far out is because we have relatively few near-term ones in today's safe modern society. Maybe if we all went into the savannah and slept in a tent hoping the lions didn't eat us every now and then we'd be less anxious about something ten years down the road.
> What that means is, just knowing you have the option to reduce stress is enough to make something less stressful—even if you’re not actually controlling the stressors at all.
This is such a key point, especially right now in the pandemic. Like another commenter, I like the suggestion to avoid consuming worrying information that isn't actionable. If the asteroid is gonna crash into the Earth either way, you may as well enjoy your time before it hits.
In addition to the pandemic, I've found politics the past couple of years really stressful. One thing I did that helps is set up recurring donations to a few charities that work on issues that matter to me. This way instead of feeling like everything is horrible and I'm sitting here doing nothing about it (which makes me feel guilty too because so much of the horribleness is primarily affecting other people), now I feel like I'm using some of my privilege to help.
> But there are also many productive ones, like exercise or journaling. Making a list of outlets and making sure to return to them again and again can reduce the havoc that chronic stress can wreak on your body.
I do this a lot. Many of my most productive hobbies are really just escapes from outside stress. If I didn't find parenting overwhelming at first, I probably would have never written a textbook on software architecture.
However, I found out the hard way over the holiday break that there is a perilous failure mode. I've obviously been drained by the pandemic, burned out about working from home, and really fucking stressed out about politics and the election. So during the holiday break I told myself I'd spend a bunch of time on my new electronics hobby to unwind.
And then in short succession I broke a tiny part that had been custom 3D-printed and mailed to me, failed to build a module correctly, found out I ordered the wrong parts for a case, and nearly fried my audio interface. It felt like not only was everything external falling apart, but I couldn't even control the things I was supposed to be in control over. I nearly broke down in tears.
I'm better now, but I try to be mindful that when I really need some escapism and artificial control to choose a hobby that I'm more skilled at. Lesson learned.
These sort of articles need a gigantic preface: you’re talking about a minute portion of the population who gives a damn enough about things to legitimately push themselves hard enough to suffer consequences from doing so.
For rest of the population, they aren’t pushing themselves anywhere near close to their limit. They don’t even know where their limits lie.
People can stress and get ulcers from whatever. But to be wired in a way where you are stressed because you’re not at the top of your game and you think you’re losing it, is a certain kind of personality.
This article is directed at people who consider pushing themselves hard (whether or not they do). As someone who doesn't do shit, but thinks about doing lots and pushing myself hard, I still found it an insightful read.
Across the course of a lifespan, the number of people who have pushed themselves that hard is much higher. Some get disillusioned by the process, others get full-on burnout.
That said, the people who have it in their future are not reading persuasive writing about it, and haven't discovered hackernews. Possibly never will. Some of the people who are currently living it are within the HN demographic, but only a fraction, in either sense. So practically speaking this is more of a nostalgia piece for much of HN instead of persuasive writing.
Human are special (but not unique) in that they keep juvenile features well into adulthood. A phenomenon called neoteny. Playfulness is part of it, and what is playfulness if it isn't "pushing yourself", both are an "unnecessary" expendure of energy.
Also, animals do all sorts of crazy stuff to attract mates.
So yes, humans may be crazy, but they are not the only crazy species on earth. And even if it isn't, that craziness made us quite successful.
That's not a fair representation in my opinion. Appeal to nature is saying cyanide is healthy because it's natural.
But when it's our own evolutionary biology, I think appeal to nature makes perfect sense. It's what we were born to do, literally. Antidepressants and stimulant drugs allow us to bypass this evolution, but at some cost.
> Do wild animals "push" themselves? No. So theres your answer.
Have you ever watched squirrels go after food in a feeder? Lots of YT videos of people setting up insane obstacle courses that squirrels learn to run through.
Some breeds of dogs are infamous for how hard they work, collies being one.
Heck some species, such as salmon, rely on do or die as the very key of their survival.
I would argue that animals _do_ "push" themselves, but only in certain areas. Mate-selection competition among mammals being the first area that comes to mind, see [1]. There is no set goal of "enough" in that category(unlike, say, gathering N nuts to last through winter).
This is a strange way to look at it. Do you live your life as a wild animal? There are many things wild animals DO do that would be insane to do as a human.
They absolutely do. The animals that don't push themselves are the ones that get eaten or end up without a mate and so fail their biological imperative.
Looking at my 2 T. hermanni tortoises I can really see their species having pushed themselves for the past 100 million years.
Sarcasm aside, what they're really doing when the sun is out in summer: Lying in the sunlight, eating, walking, eating, hiding under a bush, hiding under piece of wood, bathing, etc all the way until they're 80. Quite peaceful animals.
What matters not that you constantly push yourself... it's well-being and that you are in personal equilibrium. Anything else is probably gonna end in a crash some time.
>> Sarcasm aside, what they're really doing when the sun is out in summer: Lying in the sunlight, eating, walking, eating, hiding under a bush, hiding under piece of wood, bathing, etc all the way until they're 80. Quite peaceful animals
Are you still talking about your pet turtles here? because that lifestyle is not natural for them. If they tried too much lying in the sunlight in the wild they would quickly get eaten by some predator.
I was simplifying somewhat. They do like to sunbath especially in the morning though and from what I've read in their natural habitat in Greece as well (to adult tortoises there's few natural predators there, but younglings tend to stay hidden in their first few years).
My point was more that wild animals do not push themselves in the same way we humans do. There's fulfilling basic needs and stress from disease or predators, but no voluntary exercise beyond what's necessary for finding food/drink or obsession for self-improvement.
I'd be curious if one could teach some smarter animals that they're able to self-improve but that probably requires higher-order thinking...
Of course in the modern world, calories are too cheap to meter. Our instincts no longer make sense. It's almost certainly the case that our laziness, driven by a vestigial impulse to conserve calories, far exceeds what's optimal or necessary.
The one exception to this is the tiredness of sleep deprivation. Critical biological functions occurs in deep sleep, and being exhausted due to lack of sleep cannot be made up with extra calories. The best advice is to never allow yourself to become sleep deprived. That removes any ambiguity about whether a perceived lack of energy is genuine exhaustion or can be powered through with willpower.