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Ask HN: Why Is My Happiness Tied to My Productivity?
33 points by hnquestion12345 51 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 29 comments
I've had bouts with depression and feeling very low often in my life, and more often recently.

Reflecting on these moments, I think it's because it's at a point where I don't feel productive. Maybe I'm taking on a big task at work and I'm stuck and can't solve it. Or maybe I have an idea for a side project but I get stuck, it's too hard for me to accomplish, or after a few days I think the idea is dumb.

Does anyone here feel the same way? If so, was there anything that helped you?



I’ve had similar issues. I don’t think it’s productivity, but rather purpose. People need to feel some kind of purpose in life. If your job is all you have in your life, a lack of purpose in it hits hard. If you have a family, friends, and hobbies, in addition to the job, there is more balance. A lack of purpose in one area doesn’t lead to an overall feeling of unhappiness, because there are other areas where you can draw purpose to prop yourself up with.

I say this mostly academically, as I have had almost singular focus on my career, which has had its ups and downs (it’s still be stable and I make money, but I don’t know what it’s all for… I lack purpose). I know rounding out my life would help this, but dealing with my career is easier than facing those other parts of life I’m less adept at navigating. I’ve had nearly 20 years at the same company. I’m really not sure what would happen if that went away tomorrow, when I don’t have another stable area of my life to lean on.


This really resonates with me. The part about purpose is something that I've seen as a separate struggle but you might be right and they're the same. I've brought this up to family and friends but they don't really understand. I tell them that I feel empty because I don't feel like I have a purpose. I don't feel like I'm doing anything meaningful. If my work ended tomorrow, people would quickly find another solution or probably just not need another solution.

My friends have moved at a different pace than me. They're married and having kids soon so I expected to see them less. I think sometimes I purposefully distance myself because of this fact.

I do have hobbies like reading and drawing but I also get stuck trying to figure out how I can make those into projects instead of just enjoying them as they are.

I find myself in your story, especially "dealing with my career is easier than facing those other parts of life I'm less adept at navigating". It feels easy to just dive into work and avoid everything else. Even the last part. Thinking about what I would do if I didn't have my job as a constant. I'm sorry to hear about your feelings of lack of purpose. I read a quote that I don't really remember fully but it was something along the lines of you don't know the answer because it's not the right time. So I'm hoping that the answer to my question of purpose reveals itself in time.

Thank you for sharing your story and insight. It's given me more to think about.


I have been lurking on Hacker News for a little under eleven years now and have just now created an account, for whatever this is worth.

Within my own life, I've noticed a similar pattern to the one you've described: when I have felt low, such feelings have often coincided with me not feeling that productive at work. Perhaps I'm working on working on a project that isn't particularly motivating. Perhaps I've hit some technical snag that requires me to reconsider my approach and/or implement some inelegant solution that triggers my perfectionistic tendencies.

I'll now project some of my own thoughts / feelings about this stuff that may or may not resonate with you (perhaps they'll resonate with some other reader, though). As another commenter has already pointed out, I think a lot of this causal link between happiness and productivity (I think the causality is bidirectional, too), is conditioned in some way. Specifically, I think this sort of depression arises when we fail to live up to some internally-held, idealized image of ourselves. Having some standards to live up to is probably healthy, although, if the standards are too high or unrealistic, then neuroses will follow. For context, I'm drawing a lot on Karen Horney's ideas in _Neurosis and Human Growth_. If this diagnosis makes resonates, then the solution is to diminish the role one's idealized self plays in one's thoughts and actions, which diminishment probably involves a lot of mindfulness and also some sifting through of one's "shoulds". What are the top ten things that you're thinking of doing? For each of those things, consider: is this something that you think you should do, or it something you actually want to do? If the former, continue to introspect: why do you feel like you should be doing something you don't want to do.

Obviously, there's some things we all must do that we probably don't want to do. I think with work, though, it's very easy to become disconnected from what you actually want. If you don't like what you do on some fundamental level, or something feels off inherently (even if this feeling is unconscious), you'll probably begin to dissociate / compartmentalize in some way which might contribute to your underlying feelings of depression.

Again, I'm assuming a lot, here - maybe this applies, maybe this doesn't. Whatever the cause, I wish you the best in dealing with it. Life's too short to take too seriously :).


I have quite similar problems. Not at a depression level, but decent ups and downs attached to my work and satisfaction with it.

I don't feel much satisfaction in socializing, random conversations, hobbies, or relationships after the initial romance phase—they become boring. Work feels nice. My reflections and therapy have led me to realize this is more about proving self-worth and the desire to be proud of my work (for whatever broken childhood reason). It's a desire for external validation.

I haven't solved this yet. I can say that I feel happier when I go out and do activities like learning salsa dancing or participating in a debate club once a week. Though these activities work (I do feel happier), I never feel like I fit into those groups. Right after the activity ends and the free, unstructured socializing starts, people become boring... salsa people socializing (booze, dancing, shallow conversations) or debate club people (just shallow conversations). It just feels dull.

I recommend reading "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Dr. Robert Glover - https://www.amazon.com/No-More-Mr-Nice-Guy-ebook/dp/B004C438...

Either you'll find that it's about you and the book will highlight a lot of things, or it's not—then just toss it away. It helped me reconsider some parts of my life, as well as my behavior and attitude.


A mantra that worked for me: Productive engineers are happy engineers. Happy engineers are productive engineers. It's a self-sustaining loop.

One option is a minimum of happiness - brightly lit office, decent food, music.

The other option is a minimum of productivity. I like to wash dishes after a bad day lol. Work from office. Use AI to handle the blank page problem (you can reject everything it says afterwards).

The trick with side projects is to complete and ship them. The first side project should be limited to 10 hours max. Sometimes shipping is the hard part. Once you can do this, add more time. Do 20 hours, 40 hours, 100 hours, and so on. But progressively. If you start by making the world's greatest something, it will drain all your motivation and energy, especially once the bloat kicks in.


My living situation has been a bit chaotic over the last few years, mostly moving around between family members so I haven't really had a good working environment. Usually just a spot I can place my laptop down. I do think a better environment would help me out. Sometimes I go to Ikea and wish I could have a nice desk and setup.

It's funny you mention washing dishes because that's one of my favorite ways to relax haha. I really enjoy things like that but when I see all of things people are doing, especially on this site, I start to feel like, okay I have to create something cool to keep up. I feel like I can't just enjoy simple hobbies like reading and drawing without doing something "meaningful".

I'm really going to try the side project thing. The things I want to create always end up so grand in scale. Yesterday I had an idea and I was already looking for best ways to make it cross-platform before I even did anything with the idea. All the stuff around that takes away from the fun of the idea and adds so much complexity and I just let it go.


Rent a private office. Preferably with 24-hour access. Wifi is a bonus and commonly included. It helps to have dedicated workspaces. A coffee shop could work if it has a good setup for coding & good coffee. Create the space for the project, and then you'll have the time for side projects.

As for design it takes time but being able to dedicate time to the top-down grand scheme and then go bottom-up is crucial for any size project. What are the fundamental requirements? Keep it simple. Deconstruct all aspects into single-purpose functions. One input, one output, & repeat. The ongoing pattern is to change the level of abstraction used for reviewing the project at any range, from a function to the whole project. These reflexes take time to build, and working on a side project daily is an excellent way to discover what patterns work best for your programming style and the project you're working on.

And big project ideas provide a field of side projects to discover. So wade into the water and find some fundamental piece of your larger idea. And then zoom in on that. When you're considering optimizations of compiled code to run a single binary on a static empty container image, you've gone deep enough.


> I like to wash dishes after a bad day lol

Man, there is so much wisdom in that single sentence. I didn't think I'd read something like this here. Kudos for figuring that out and thanks for spelling it out so clearly.

Readers who think this is silly, please think twice.


Credit to a severely depressed friend for this one. After doing the cycle of therapist, pills, self-help books, etc, what helped the most was housework. It didn't solve the problems, but it kept her going day after day.

There's actual research on happiness a while back, and it ended with the concept of flow. Csikszentmihalyi found that people were unhappiest when watching TV and happiest when doing something of moderate challenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

But why is TV the natural response to stress?

I think people in an exploitative culture have trouble with work. There's the mindset that the rich are where they deserve to be because they exploit, while the scrubs that work hard are where they deserve to be because they're exploitable. So there's an aversion to productivity, and people think the escape is apathy.

But there's also some human nature to be productive and contribute; unproductive genes would likely go extinct. And there's also a desire to be challenged. A desire to move things from a state of chaos to order.


there is a saying "busy hands, calm mind"


Well, productivity is good. It's good to solve important problems and to move them out of other people's way, so that they can solve more important problems to move out of others people's way, and so on and so forth. It's probably a good and natural thing to feel happy when you've been or are being productive. I don't see a problem with that in a vacuum, that just seems normal.

What's less normal is tying yourself to being unhappy to being unproductive, which obviously sucks when you're in a productivity lull. I don't know what the solution is but I think that's the half of the equation I'd focus on.


Maybe your happiness isn't tied to productivity in itself but movement...you said "stuck" a lot.

I think productivity is about moving, doing, fighting, not giving up.


I've found that taking a real look at what energizes me is key. Find something, anything, even if it's not for the long-term. Just something that makes you feel alive. Run with it. It starts momentum and that helps a lot.


This comment brings back some memories. I've only had a few moments like that in my life so I think about them sometimes and funny enough, they've had nothing to do with my productivity.


Our minds thrive on the little dopamine hits we get from accomplishing something worthwhile. It can be something simple like cleaning your bedroom or losing 5 pounds. It can be coding a new feature or fixing a perplexing bug.

If your day is full of little victories, you can live a happy, fulfilling life; even if you don't do something grandiose like curing cancer or setting a world record.


I have had similar issues.

It has helped to remember to do things I know help me feel better: reading novels, going on walks etc. even though I know these help I can fall out the habit easily.

Another is to try to load balance my productivity by leaving low hanging fruit for the next day. Something easy to do or that I’m excited about. That helps me get started the next day on a good foot and avoid procrastination.

These have helped but have not solved the issue for me.


Recently I have started reading more and picked up artistic hobbies like drawing. I do find that they help a lot. It's hard for me to just keep something a hobby though. Like I think I should post my drawings but they're not good enough so it becomes stressful trying to learn how to draw well. I don't know why it's hard for me to keep a hobby a hobby.

Same thing with development. I see people making cool things and I feel like I should also be making cool things.


Because in our modern world, productivity is virtue. And if you want to live a virtuous life(= better self image, self actualization), you need to live a productive life.

That's what the modern culture have told you.

It wasn't always this way, but at some point, increase in productivity stopped being the burden of the system and shifted to burden of the individual.

Henry Ford or early factories didn't tell "each worker to be more productive", it looked at how the production system could be made more productive. At some point, this was offloaded to the individual. (it did both in reality)

But if you determine your self worth by how much you get done, you will forever feel worthless.

Maybe this can make you think it from another angle: Productivity rips you apart https://youtu.be/VQK64SrYkzs?feature=shared

For me it helped when I consciously trained to shift my attention from "how much I've done = how much left I need to do and/or compared to others" to "how much I've done = how much I've done compared to previous me (checkpoint towards the past) and if the trendline is upward OR I'm actually enjoying the process". In practice this meant that every time anxiety creeps in, at the spot (this is important), I "pause", and try to consciously steer my anxious thought patterns to one that evaluate my done/productivity the other way.


I'm feeling low same as you, my parents don't support my coding journey or anything I do and will do everything to stop me and push me to be a doctor.

My advice : Move on and don't care Abt anything


I don't know you personally and can't offer individual advice, but there are some general things about our culture and general psychology that might be helpful to people like you dealing with those sorts of feelings (and yes I have been/am one of them):

1. A lot of social status is attached to productivity. This makes it really easy to feel like you "should" be doing things that you don't actually care about because society convinces you that you should. If your self-worth or self-image gets wrapped up in these things (and that's very easy to happen to any of us as social creatures), it's can be an easy recipe for unhappiness and feeling like you're not driving your own life.

2. Doing complex projects is challenging, and it's easy to lose motivation quickly when your initial enthusiasm wears off and the slog kicks in. You may have high aspirations and not be comfortable / willing to pay the cost they actually require.

I highly recommend Dr. K's (Healthy Gamer) videos about motivation, especially internal vs. external motivation. Not a panacea or anything but I think they give you a good foundation to work through those feelings. Obviously you may also want to consider professional help if you suffer these sorts of feelings extremely or persistently.


I think your two points really capture the cycle that I'm stuck in. Being online, and especially on this site, I come across a lot of smart people and interesting projects that they're working on. I convince myself that I also need to make something interesting and usually it's something complex. After it gets complex, I start to see the flaws and start feeling low and lose motivation. I've also noticed this in some of my personal relationships.

I'll definitely check out the videos. Thank you for your insight.


Bad parenting. High expectations, or just ridiculous expectations, fuck up people to seek external validation at all phases of life. It's also a form of neglect because you get used to the concept of trading value for love.


I think about this sometimes, and my upbringing wasn't great, but it feels like the past is the past so I should move on. I've tried to bring it up to family before but it wasn't well received.

If this is something you've struggled with (trading value for love), have you found ways to break out of that cycle?


Just begin telling yourself you should have never had to earn your parents love with external outcomes. The love should have been free (this realization can make you break down and cry and it’ll be a really good cry, trust me). Really internalize that. Don’t be pissed about it, but always remember that daily.

Some small therapy (a few sessions) can help to articulate it and get it out. Should be okay. Basically you have to realize you have a dysfunctional version of self love from all of it.

You wouldn’t treat your own kid like that so that’s all you need to know. I was just reading a /r/ptsd (which is something you might have) about a girl who was single in her 30s and feels like a failure to her parents for not being married and having kids. It’s utterly fucked parenting, I hear about it all the time.

Also, your parents invalidating this is a form of gas-lighting. You’re gonna have to love the fuck out of yourself somehow, every last bit of you. Every little hobby, every little post, every little attire, every little imperfection, every little achievement. Your family didn’t know how to love properly and now you don’t.

As you start this process, you will feel shame. It’s part of the process. What kind of adult judges their parents like this? A fucked up one (seriously). Not fucked up as in “bad”, fucked up as in the conveyor built in the factory dropped you and you are fucked up. That’s okay, and your ass is going to have to deal with it (the most adult thing you’ll ever do, and it’ll take awhile).

PTSD is real.

——-

Lastly, people in life are not stupid. Everyone may not know everything, but just about everyone’s subconscious knows the truth. You can prove it to yourself by simply observing your emotions, they didn’t come out of thin air. You didn’t just hang out in a vacuum in space and return to Earth feeling this way and that way about things. Shit happened, you and the universe know it. Your soul will not let you rest until you heal it.

Best of luck!


Manuality is a dicease.


Happiness != good emotions.

If you’re seeking for good emotions to feel happiness you’re not any different from a junkie.

Modern culture promotes this false idea that happiness == good emotions. Because it sells.

The secret is not to buy into this myth. Whether by yourself or with help of psychiatrists depending on how deep is the problem.


If it's not happiness == good emotions then what does equal good emotions?


Emotions are just emotions.

They are important information signals to survive, and they add flavour and colors to our life.


Do you have a girlfriend or boyfriend? If not, get on that. Go have sex. This is not a suggestion, it’s a prescription.

Have sex, get an emotional attachment, fall in love. Obviously there are risks associated with all this.

I was insanely career obsessed. Found someone I adore. Helped me recalibrate my brain. They didn’t love me back the same, so I had other problems. But I grew a lot as a person.




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