[HN Gopher] Thinking hard makes the brain tired
___________________________________________________________________
Thinking hard makes the brain tired
Author : gyre007
Score : 436 points
Date : 2023-04-02 09:50 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| ilaksh wrote:
| I wonder if GPT4 gets less effective at following directions if
| you give it too many instructions in a single prompt?
|
| I know it doesn't have any fatigue for the next prompt though. So
| over time it is indefatigable.
|
| I wonder what a deep integration of GPT-like technology with the
| cortex via BCI would look like and if that could reduce mental
| fatigue.
|
| Sometimes I think the next metasystem transition is basically
| like The Borg except it's a bunch of Mini-Borgs. And at first
| people will be completely horrified but then overnight it will
| become normal for a large segment of the population to be
| attached to an Overmind. I think you would call that transhuman.
|
| Pretty sure there would be serious conflict with the normal
| humans at that point.
| kgodey wrote:
| I've been coming to terms with the reality of this recently. I
| had a concussion and post-concussion syndrome last year which
| meant my brain got tired extremely quickly for a few months. In
| order to get work done, I had to pay close attention to what
| kinds of cognitive tasks would end up being debilitating and make
| sure to take lots of breaks.
|
| I'm mostly recovered now, but I'm more self aware about cognitive
| fatigue and how to structure my workdays to avoid it. It's
| decreased my general level of stress measurably.
| nashashmi wrote:
| What cognitive functions lead to brain fatigue for you?
| aendruk wrote:
| Same story here. Post-concussion syndrome gave me an exquisite
| awareness of how different kinds of tasks tax the brain.
| beefield wrote:
| I'd be curious to hear examples, especially if there are some
| tasks that are surpricing to either direction?
| BossingAround wrote:
| Could you elaborate a little bit on what tasks bring cognitive
| fatigue, and possibly why? Just wondering for structuring my
| own work day.
| zh3 wrote:
| Doesn't seem to happen to people who love their work. Wouldn't
| that suggest it's less of a physical thing?
| findthewords wrote:
| There are three ways to flush acute glutamate buildup from the
| brain:
|
| 1. Exercise. The brain can direct glutamate to be used as an
| energy source to dispose of excess amounts. Glutamate naturally
| flows by diffusion from areas of high concentration (in blood
| vessel wall cells) through the blood vessel wall into the
| circulating bloodstream, where the concentration is lower.
|
| 2. Eat a tuna sandwich or drink an energy drink. Vitamin B6 is a
| a coenzyme in the synthesis of the inhibitory neurotransmitter
| GABA from glutamate. Thinking jobs is also coincident with rising
| popularity of energy drinks from 2000s onwards.
|
| The Economist is most likely regurgitating Nature:
|
| 11 August 2022 Why thinking hard makes us feel tired
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02161-5
| shostack wrote:
| Would a good tekka maki do the trick in place of a tuna
| sandwich?
| aftergibson wrote:
| What's the 3rd way?
| latortuga wrote:
| It's gotta be sleep, right?
| relaxing wrote:
| > "We're still far from the point where we can say that
| working hard mentally causes a toxic buildup of glutamate
| in the brain," says the study's first author, Antonius
| Weihler, a computational psychiatrist at the GHU Paris
| Psychiatry and Neurosciences. But if it does, it
| underscores the well-known restorative powers of sleep,
| which "cleanses" the brain by flushing out metabolic waste.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/mentally-
| exhausted-s...
| baby wrote:
| Stimulate another region of your body to flow the blood there
| notfed wrote:
| I hope we're still talking about exercise...
| rayrey wrote:
| Sigh.
|
| <unzips>
| layer8 wrote:
| Cache invalidation, probably.
| disqard wrote:
| ...though "naming things" also qualifies :D
| [deleted]
| agent281 wrote:
| No, I think it's off by one errors.
| cesaref wrote:
| I was just saying the same thing :)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kmod wrote:
| I also discovered a parallel effect that at least in my case is a
| bigger issue: if you strain while thinking, you can end up
| engaging head muscles which can fatigue quickly and become
| painful. For me, thinking hard hurts and I thought it was a brain
| thing, but now I think it's primarily strain-related tension
| headaches, which oddly can feel like a brain thing.
|
| So from my experience there seems to be a possibility that when
| you think you are having brain tiredness you're actually having a
| physical headache.
| karl42 wrote:
| I have that problem, too. Can you recommend any counter-
| measures?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I tell my wife, "My brain hurts, I'm going for a walk." There
| does appear to be only so much paper shuffling my mind can do
| when working on programming problems before it requires the
| drawers be emptied or whatever it is the walk induces.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I've a hypothesis that a lot of the actual work is done in the
| background.
|
| Focused thinking about a problem just sort of spawns new
| threads (some of which get OOM-killed if you keep spawning
| more). The process seems to need not actively thinking about
| the problem for the jobs to actually resolve.
|
| It's like thinking about the problem triggers the background
| calculations to start, it doesn't actually perform the work.
|
| Then you get that famous "aha!" in the shower or when you're
| off on a walk or whatever.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Same. This is why it's so important to go to bed late at
| night when working on a bug instead of grinding it out. I've
| found that when I wake up, I almost immediately have more
| ideas on what to do instead of beating the same dead horse I
| was at 3am.
| Verdex wrote:
| The most productive hours at work for me has either been
| things I'm doing for the third time OR 15 minutes after I've
| left for the day after 8 hours of going in circles.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Privately, some of my most productive development has been
| when my girlfriend and I had separate apartments. I'd spend
| days working on problems undisturbed at my place, and then
| I'd go visit her for a few days (bringing no computer).
|
| I always came back to my apartment full of inspiration,
| with half a notebook full of ideas and plans, which I'd
| spend the next days implementing, while spawning new
| background jobs that would mature the next time I was AFK.
| Rinse and repeat.
|
| Something about this set-up was just insanely good for my
| productivity. I was much more productive than periods I
| didn't have these forced breaks away from input.
| tpoacher wrote:
| Indirectly this also betrays the kind of job where you
| had the "luxury" of being in a position to be able to
| take such forced breaks in the first place.
|
| This is already a good situation to be with regard to
| burnout.
|
| I'd love to do this (and try to when I can), but more
| often than not it's a balancing act between "rest but
| fall behind" vs "don't rest but catch-up".
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| While there's some element of privilege involved, I
| wouldn't have been able to ever work like this if I
| wasn't willing to take risks that many would consider too
| much. But the pay-off from taking those types of risks
| also (sometimes) ends up opening doors for more
| unconventional career steps.
|
| I'm grant funded for the next year, and after that I have
| some savings to live off that may last another year or so
| (maybe less if this inflation keeps up), but after that I
| haven't got a singular clue where my money is coming
| from.
|
| But I also don't have kids, and don't want any either. If
| I had or wanted, none of this would be possible. I'd
| definitely choose the golden handcuffs in that
| counterfatual.
| Nevermark wrote:
| You just reminded me that I have also experienced a two
| location split week, with one side consistently in
| isolation.
|
| It was a wonderfully creative & productive situation.
| gilbetron wrote:
| There's a really great book called Consciousness and the
| Brain that goes into all the various research around how our
| brain works, and there is a huge amount that we think of as
| "thinking" that is totally unconscious to us. As I've aged,
| it seems like more and more of my thought processes are
| unknown to me. I just get agitated thinking about things, go
| do something for a while, then my unconscious "me" is
| suddenly like, "ok, here's the understanding".
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-
| Codes...
| Bartkusa wrote:
| This is similar to Rich Hickey's talk on "Hammock Driven
| Development":
|
| https://youtu.be/f84n5oFoZBc
|
| Spend your conscious time loading your brain with data. Spend
| your unconscious time randomly making connections... until
| "Eureka!"
| Timon3 wrote:
| This seems to match my experience. I'll pile on a hypothesis
| of my own:
|
| When we encounter a new problem, our brain spans a decision
| tree of assumptions from the closest known solution to a
| similar problem. The area around this tree is searched depth-
| first, which often brings good results (e.g. thinking about
| whether you'll put some threshold value at 0.2 or 0.25), but
| it's best at refinement. The more time passes and the more
| different things you do, the more the search is moved into
| breadth-first (which makes intuitive sense - the deeper the
| tree, the more processing power would have to be put towards
| it). Often times we literally cannot conceive a good solution
| to a problem, because our brain is focusing on finding the
| right deep leaf of the wrong subtree!
| hakehakehake wrote:
| The background processing can still happen while sleeping too
| (which is useful to use).
|
| I went through the Navy's Nuclear Power program a lifetime
| ago and that was often 16-18 hours of instruction and study
| (and exercise) per day to do well. When you recognize that
| you're at that point of mental exhaustion you can sneak in
| something like a 30 minute nap to power through the remainder
| of what you need to achieve that day...
|
| My general approach was to physically write down and do some
| checks to verify that I understand all of the material
| (reinforced memorization) and get as much in per day like a
| sponge.. and then sleep on it. The retention was nuts (was
| top of my class) and it kind of just becomes habit at some
| point.
|
| I think the odder thing is that if you just keep doing it for
| decades you notice the missing information too. Those loose
| associations are still there for sure but the brain can only
| pack in so much at a given time or some such.
| metadaemon wrote:
| This is the basis for my personal system of working with ADD
| misschresser wrote:
| read Cleese's "Creativity"
| moffkalast wrote:
| Gotta clear that cache.
| jauhnthecossin wrote:
| Same here. When I try to force it I even get anxiety symptoms
| (sweating etc.)
| leobg wrote:
| My problem is that the walk usually just fills my head with new
| ideas that I then frantically try to write down during the
| walk.
| sumedh wrote:
| Why not try voice recording on your phone?
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Add Voice Memo app to phone locked screen
|
| have idea, press button to record
|
| use syncthing to sync the memos to your machine
|
| run whisper to have them transcribed instantly
|
| use syncthing to sync the whisper output back to your phone
| (if so desired)
| nuclearnice3 wrote:
| Consider building a memory palace and storing the ideas there
| during your walk.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Palace-Matteo-
| Ricci/dp/0140080... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-
| Einstein-Science-Remember...
| Robotbeat wrote:
| That sounds like even more work, though! Off-loading memory
| to a simple notepad sounds like a pretty straightforward
| win.
| nuclearnice3 wrote:
| It is absolutely more work especially in the beginning.
| Personally, I don't find doing work some huge burden to
| be avoided. I like doing things. Mileage may vary.
|
| I agree the notepad could absolutely be straightforward
| win for some. However, the OP describes writing the ideas
| down as a "problem." If the OP says writing down things
| is a problem, I offer that we can't legitimately propose
| that same solution as a "win."
| [deleted]
| painted-now wrote:
| Sounds familiar.
|
| I really wish I had a good way to just get ideas into my
| phone quickly when on the road. Far too often I think I have
| some good ideas or make progress in something I thought of
| earlier, but I have no way to "save" it.
|
| I bought a Bluetooth keyboard at some point that I can hook
| up to my phone if needed, but I almost never have the
| keyboard with me :-(
| Wolfbeta wrote:
| You need Go Note Go
|
| https://github.com/dbieber/GoNoteGo
| leobg wrote:
| I use Drafts on iOS. But I hate Siri dictation. Too many
| mistakes which are difficult to correct while walking.
|
| Was thinking Mic > Whisper transcription > GPT to take in a
| rough brain dump including instructions like "scratch
| that!" and convert it into the form you want (say, bullet
| points or action items). Should even be possible to dictate
| concept maps that way. Or even write Python functions on
| the go.
| emberfiend wrote:
| Voice notes, maybe? As long as the app also handles speech
| recognition and stores the plaintext alongside it.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Just run the recording through whisper!
|
| Although make sure you hit record first, and it records
| more than 30 seconds if you do.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Sounds functionally correct. I imagine that if glutamate levels
| are building up in the brain, then exercise that increases
| blood flow to the brain while also increasing oxygenation and
| carbon dioxide removal via increased breathing would help flush
| the brain and reset the metabolite levels. This might be
| assited by also relaxing the cognitive functions during
| exercise, i.e. not thinking about much of anything.
| witx wrote:
| Walking, on a fast pace, is the best stress reliever and mind
| clearing activity for me. I still think about stuff but usually
| my mind wanders through unimportant stuff like books I'm
| reading, movies or even hobby projects. It's so cathartic that
| afterwards I feel my body a bit numb and the fog in my brain is
| gone.
|
| I found about this after covid lockdown where I'd go for 3h
| long walks.
| Avlin67 wrote:
| nothing better than 2g taurine / black tea 500mg aspirin stack
| provenance wrote:
| After falling on hard times post failed-startup/implosion/burnout
| (years ago), tried getting back into coding/hacking/sw dev last
| summer. I reached out here on hn, and was given help (thank you
| to everyone who helped: as my survival was in question, your help
| truly got me through). Did a few projects, did a ctf, and my
| brain started hurting and I imploded again.
|
| I finally got another laptop a few months ago. Local guy brings
| me his Flutter codebase. Good chance to learn a new tech. It was
| going ok: I was superman for a few days learning the flutter/dart
| tooling, solving dependency hacks, getting it to compile, fixing
| bugs, and then, Bam. Can't code any more. Backed away.
|
| Now, still burned out and homeless, but trying to start (another)
| hackerspace. Good distraction from the ashes of devastation.
|
| I am unsure if I can write software for any sustained period of
| time ever again. It's scary since that's my only marketable skill
| and I'm still homeless and constantly scrapping for food money.
|
| Some backstory: Despite repeated insistence from peers, skipped
| investing in bitcoin and ethereum at their beginnings and
| repeately thereafter, instead plugging away non stop on a dead
| SaaS product for a startup for years, which slowly failed; lost
| my partner, the life I had built, reputation, assets. Probably
| dealing with some trauma burn-in from this.
|
| As for last summer, I distinctly remember the headaches from
| participating in the CTF. I had to, you know, think! Cool,
| solving tasks. Then, Bam! Splitting headaches.. :(
|
| I still wonder if there's some zen place where one can focus
| intensely on a problem while remaining calm and at peace - never
| was able to find such a state of mind..
| kapperchino wrote:
| That does not sound normal, you need to get this checked out.
| Meanwhile do work that doesn't require too much thinking until
| you can get it checked.
| provenance wrote:
| I suspect that, under such conditions, the headaches are
| normal for someone at my age.
|
| I can go from 0-100mph on a dime, which may have led to the
| headaches. I'm not passionate about coding, so I dive in
| without being warmed up.
|
| Contrarily, with passion and a slow pre-heat, the headaches
| probably wouldn't happen. But I am not a passionate coder.
|
| I may need to strongly consider nurturing non-coding tech
| skills. I'm doing some (very part time) engineering research
| for food money. No headaches.
|
| Coding may be out for me, that's all. I can still participate
| in tech otherwise.
| tekkk wrote:
| It sounds your brains need some serious rewiring. I wouldnt
| worry about coding or focusing intensely at anything, just
| start exercising, doing hobbies and hanging around / making
| friends. Maybe a job that is more hands-on. You need to
| reprioritize and let go of the past failures. Therapist would
| probably help as well, but best is to learn to how to help
| yourself first.
| provenance wrote:
| I am outdoors 24/7 besides time in public food
| establishments, I bike 12-15 miles daily and am in good
| physical condition, I am starting a hackerspace, I speak to a
| therapist, and I have long since let go of past failures. I
| have done and still do hands-on jobs for food money.
|
| A month or so ago, I was offered a prestigious cybersecurity
| job interview but declined. It would not be sustainable for
| me.
|
| Very intense screen time gives me splitting headaches and I
| am generally unable to re-engage with coding.
| tekkk wrote:
| Well, it seems the conclusion is like in the old joke.
| "Doctor it hurts when i do this." "Stop doing that."
|
| Just my outside perspective. I've had headaches as well
| from intense coding but those came from overexposure to
| blue light. I dialed down brightness, set up a red shift
| mode after evenings and used shield protector for a while.
| Went away after few months.
| provenance wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your perspective. I still would love
| to re-invigorate passion for coding as I had in my 20's.
| If I am in a better situation to try again, will keep in
| mind your experience regarding blue light overexposure.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I remember my friend told me her trick during the SAT was to tell
| them she was hypoglycemic, because otherwise they wouldn't let
| her bring in a small snack to eat. Her logic was that during the
| SAT, the body consumes so much energy that replenishing sugar is
| necessary half way through for proper brain function, and they
| won't let you bring in food unless you have some sort of issue.
| But the SAT creates the issue!
|
| I have no idea if she was right, but she did do better than me on
| the SAT, and she is a doctor now, so suffice it to say I always
| have a snack when coding. You know, for thinking.
| stasmo wrote:
| Is this why MSG makes people feel sleepy?
| jasfi wrote:
| Exercise can help a lot with this, and getting enough sleep.
| boyka wrote:
| I can confirm this. In my case I have to exercise at least
| every 3rd day to maintain a high mental work capacity, and
| immediately feel the effect of not exercising on my brain
| fatigue.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| It also gives you wrinkles, according to Malibu Stacy.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Taken to the extreme - I used to multi-table online poker for a
| living. 5 hours pretty much turns your brain to mush. 8 hours
| straight is unthinkable.
|
| Pretty much everyone experiences this, even 18-year-olds. The
| brain has its limits.
| p0nce wrote:
| 5 hours seems to be about the limit of programming one can do
| without making the next day improductive (at least in my
| experiece). Walking/running seems to help with that.
| pastaguy1 wrote:
| I can do more than 5 if I'm able to maintain discipline and
| work at a normal pace.
|
| Normally though, time pressure or "get shit done" pressure
| gets the better of me, and my brain goes into turbo mode.
| After about 30 minutes of that, the rest of the day is more
| or less standby mode
| butterisgood wrote:
| Depending on how much context switching I do in a day, it can
| really vary how exhausted I feel at the end of a work day. I get
| to a point where someone might tell me to remember 3 things at
| the grocery store and I'll remember only one.
|
| I should note that depending on the level of empathy or
| understanding of this situation, and argument can ensue after
| this further piling on the stress.
|
| So I think things like this are really important to understand,
| and appreciate. This is real!
| sumedh wrote:
| > Depending on how much context switching I do in a day
|
| I always tell my wife that I am pretty tired because I was
| thinking too much, she finds that hard to belive because her
| job involves moving around and so a job where you sit all day
| is not tiring.
|
| Now I have the science to prove my point :)
| billti wrote:
| A day where I'm constantly dealing with incoming random crap
| that has me context switching all day leaves me exhausted and
| unhappy.
|
| A day where I can shut that out and focus on a couple things
| intensely usually leaves me feeling energized and happy and
| like I actually did something productive.
|
| I think a good manager tries to keep his team mostly in the
| second camp, but sadly means spending more of their own time
| in the first.
| jstarfish wrote:
| Remind her that she remains in much better shape than you
| because of it. She even retains the mental sharpness to try
| to call you out on it.
|
| Once she's spent a decade behind a desk, the mere _thought_
| of doing anything will sound exhausting to her too. It 's
| unnatural and physically deconditioning. The mind being the
| only "muscle" you exercise makes its unavailability doubly
| crippling...it's what gives your physical half its marching
| orders.
|
| She may be dead on her feet at day's end, but if she saw a
| car coming at her she'd find the adrenaline to respond and
| _move_. Myself, I 'd struggle to move past "is that really a
| _car_ driving down the _sidewalk_? But cars are supposed to
| drive on the _stre_ --".
| veb wrote:
| Your last paragraph reminded me so much of an XKCD, haha.
|
| In the past I've done a lot of landscaping work on the
| side, as well as development remotely. My old man has a
| landscaping company and obviously needs the help at times.
|
| I gotta say also: if you spend your day cutting/pruning a
| hedge, cleaning the property up - you actually get to look
| back at all of that and go "Hell yeah, that looks awesome".
| I never get that feeling of accomplishment with the dev
| work. In the past, sure - when I've built something big.
| But it's just not the same. I can't really explain it more
| than that.
|
| A couple of years ago I wasn't really paying attention
| where I was and I was on top of a 10m high Macrocarpa hedge
| that's... about 120 years old. Anyways, I fell off that
| straight down on to the footpath. Fortunately there was
| another (much smaller) hedge in the way that was about 100
| years old too and that broke my fall except I parted the
| hedge so to speak. (We fixed it, wired it up and it grew
| back together). I managed to get up and walk away, I was
| very very lucky. Damn though I was wired up so much for the
| rest of the day, I felt like I could've done 50 marathons!
|
| Since then I have stayed away from doing anything like that
| - because I am a software engineer really, I just have some
| skills in landscaping with certain tools but at the end of
| the day for me personally, getting say an injury from a
| fall or chainsaw would be devastating to my actual career.
|
| If I spend all day programming (8hr)... I'm really buggered
| and I simply cannot even brain. Cook dinner? Ugh no. If I
| mow lawns all day and get home (6-7hr), I'm like "oooh what
| should I cook for dinner, I'll have this cold beer while I
| do that and ..." it's like COME ON BRAIN.
| cromulent wrote:
| Surely if being tired was not about your brain, then sleeping
| would simply involve lying down, not being unconscious :)
| ChatPGT wrote:
| context switching is a nightmare
| zikduruqe wrote:
| And we as humans are terrible at it.
|
| Time yourself writing sequential numbers 1 through X as fast
| as you can in 30 seconds. And note your results.
|
| Then time yourself writing the alphabet A through .... as
| fast as you can in 30 seconds.
|
| Now, in 30 seconds, write A1, B2, C3, D4.....
|
| You would think it is easy to do this because you have been
| writing numbers and the alphabet your whole life, but context
| switching is hard.
| jstarfish wrote:
| [flagged]
| goodpoint wrote:
| Please don't make things up.
| ChatPGT wrote:
| Source?
| ChatPGT wrote:
| I don't even remember the alphabet completely from A to Z,
| because in my country they added K, W and Y some years
| after I had learned it as a child lol, so I never get the
| right sequence. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| grrdotcloud wrote:
| That's interesting.
|
| I show my students that cognitive abilities declined
| significantly with lack of oxygen. I have them do jumping
| jacks while reciting the alphabet backwards. There is
| often a 50% decrease in speed when they are working out.
|
| I can recite the reverse alphabet almost as fast as
| forward without the added stress. While working out I can
| do it with a10% decrease. This leads me to believe that
| the additional stress can be compensated through
| drilling.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > do jumping jacks while reciting the alphabet backwards
|
| That would be one more classroom nightmare for me. The
| only way I can recite the alphabet is by singing that
| stupid song I learned in grade school. To do so backward,
| I would first have to sing forwards until I reached the
| next 'backwards' token, for each and every letter, so
| jumping jacks or not it would be at least 50% slower.
|
| Even with the song I sometimes get stuck, but I also have
| a dyslexic mind and absolute hate any alphabet exercises.
| I would absolutely hate your class (but not you
| necessarily) and would spend my time in there counting
| down the school year to never have to go again.
| nend wrote:
| >I get to a point where someone might tell me to remember 3
| things at the grocery store and I'll remember only one.
|
| Too real. If someone gives me two or more items to get I tell
| them I'm not going without a list. If it's the end of a day,
| whatever I'm trying to remember just gets pushed out after
| fifteen minutes.
| m463 wrote:
| What gets me is doing stupid things.
|
| Sometimes its easier for me to take the long way around and fix
| a problem, than to do a short pointless workaround.
| jasfi wrote:
| Reduce context switching by batching similar tasks.
|
| A broader version of this is only working on a single project
| for the whole day, or the whole week (if you have multiple
| projects to work on).
| everythingswan wrote:
| I also communicate this to people I work with since I'm not
| always in full ownership of what needs to get done. I am
| highly capable of deeply working on several wildly different
| things per day but if I get pulled around too much, sometimes
| for great reasons, then I can't maintain the energy for as
| long as I would if I fully owned my work. I think it's a
| compromise I have reluctantly (yet happily) made: sometimes
| allowing this to happen and being individually less
| productive in order to remove bottlenecks for the org.
|
| My biggest issue is when I use 100% of that context-switching
| capacity at work and then have little to give after work.
| It's cyclical that I do this well, then poorly, then well
| again. But it does feel like I'm doing this significantly
| better than I was 3-5 years ago.
| JestUM wrote:
| Give your brain 10 decision points.
|
| Aim to finish these by EOD.
|
| Repeat.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| 10 decisions in one day? I'd be a relief to have just 10 per
| hour.
| Numberwang wrote:
| [dead]
| einpoklum wrote:
| Obligatory Monty Python reference:
|
| My brain hurts!
|
| https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcl8qr
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I suspect geniuses have a much larger tolerance than ordinary
| people, plus a much larger memory pool so that they rarely go
| OOM.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I wonder if not thinking hard makes the brain atrophy?
|
| What is the prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases amongst
| chess grand masters or some other intense psychological activity,
| I wonder if the studies have been conducted on this.
| Madmallard wrote:
| [flagged]
| majkinetor wrote:
| Actually, something new appears to be learned. U will have to
| read the artcile though, not just the title.
| Madmallard wrote:
| There is no why answered here just speculation. Anyone with
| sufficient knowledge of metabolism would think a fatigue
| process and stress process is happening during heavy thinking
| just that we lack the specific knowledge of what's happening.
| This article has one tiny finding and who knows how
| reproducible the study is, along with a tautological title.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Speculation based on measurements, not based on chit
| chat...
|
| What is your complaint really? That science progresses tiny
| step by tiny step?
| Y_Y wrote:
| > What has been will be again,
|
| > what has been done will be done again;
|
| > there is nothing new under the sun.
|
| Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NIV)
| woolion wrote:
| There is a much more interesting article about the subject, "The
| metabolic face of migraine" [0]. Besides Glutamate levels, a
| TL;DR is that migraine is a mechanism to trigger a 'brain
| shutoff' when brain energy levels are critically low. This
| happens if you there is a deficit between what can be absorbed
| and what is consumed. So if you can absorb the energy from sugar,
| sweets or energy drink do help, as the popular belief goes
| (caffeine also helps through different mechanisms, including
| blood flow changes, but can also cause a backlash). If it's not
| the case it is suggested to go to a ketogenic diet, to provide an
| alternative brain energy source (knowing that the transition can
| be particularly hard as the brain needs to adjust, which is known
| as ketogenic flu).
|
| TFA advances that glutamate is a byproduct of brain activity and
| thus its level correlates with brain fatigue. The Economist
| article does not link to the original research article [1], and
| besides adding fluff to the highlights, it makes some outlandish
| conclusion ("no doubt some researchers will now be looking at
| potions that might hack the brain in a way to artificially speed
| up its recovery from fatigue") but it's not clear what comes from
| the research article. Or, more interestingly, how it is intended
| to fit in the big picture.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27076095
|
| [1] https://www.cell.com/current-
| biology/pdfExtended/S0960-9822(...
| xivzgrev wrote:
| This makes sense. I think hard in my job, and by the end of the
| day I end up taking the night east - long dinner, a workout, talk
| with wife. I have many personal "to dos" I'd like to do, but it
| has been really challenging for me to consistently set time for
| them during the work week because I'm so "tired" from work.
| dhab wrote:
| Does it make it stronger over time?
|
| Is it like muscles- pain few days after exercise but over 6mos,
| significant difference?
| progrus wrote:
| [flagged]
| ilyt wrote:
| I get that with my hobbies vs work. The work is pretty varied so
| when the work is mentally hard I tend to engage in more brain-
| simple hobbies, and vice versa.
| carapace wrote:
| The brain uses something like 20% of the oxygen you breathe.
| (Sorry for the factoid, I don't have a good source for that at
| the mo'.)
| [deleted]
| lanstin wrote:
| In other news, physics is the basis for human intelligence.
|
| There are also interesting sub cases of this: exercising self
| control or will power fatigues the ability to exercise self
| control.
|
| Making important decisions (as in by a judge judging) fatigues
| the ability to make important decisions.
|
| "Religions of the World" speculates that one of the keys to
| Buddhas long and productive life was partially a result of his
| taking time each day for quiet non-action, each week , and for a
| portion of each year (the rainy season).
|
| High productive humans are in it for the long haul and plan for
| that.
|
| Short term, high productive corporations are good at making
| people feel that everything is a life or death emergency and when
| the humans burn out, they hire more.
| amai wrote:
| But the reverse is not necessary true: Just because you are tired
| doesn't mean you thought hard.
| majkinetor wrote:
| https://archive.is/lCPxw
| rosebay wrote:
| Thanks for sharing
| DonHopkins wrote:
| "I'm tryin' to think, but nothin' happens!" -Curly Joe
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlejsgxOxrU
| mlhpdx wrote:
| I'm reading through the comments carefully because this is
| something I think about literally every day (and I mean
| literally, not figuratively). For my health and performance, yes,
| but even more so for the health of people around me (employees,
| family, friends, etc.).
|
| I remind myself that I have no idea what other people are
| thinking - only what I think of their actions, the signals from
| my senses. That may be a weird way to work, but for whatever
| reason it helps me slow down and reason more carefully about the
| nature of situations.
|
| As for my own habits, I find concentration and focus addictive. I
| don't burn out from thinking deeply and working on intricate
| solutions. The more I do the better it feels and around the
| spiral I go. Unfortunately the further I go the less "room" is
| available for other, often more important, things. So I'm also
| constantly reminding myself that my brain is a machine that
| adapts so I need to be careful how I use it. If I train my brain
| to resist certain tasks by rewarding it for avoiding them, it
| will become harder over time to perform those tasks. And vice
| versa.
|
| Brains are fun. :)
| stephendause wrote:
| Are you saying that you don't suffer (or at least consciously
| feel the effects of) cognitive fatigue? If I am interested in
| something, I like to focus on it for quite a while, but after
| enough time passes, I just can't any more. I do think that
| there are some people who can naturally last much longer doing
| cognitive work than is the norm, though, much like some
| athletes are natural ultramarathoners. So perhaps you are one
| of those people.
| mieubrisse wrote:
| I have exactly the same. Unlike some friends, I don't seem to
| get a negative feedback loop to focusing. When I do it, I want
| more of it - to the detriment of showering, sleep, food,
| romance, etc. I really like the modelling of "if I train my
| brain to resist tasks by rewarding it for avoiding them, it
| becomes harder to perform them".
| dollo_7 wrote:
| I have sometimes found myself into that situation. I have to be
| careful not to overthink where to put my "brain room" for that
| day, otherwise I carry this overhead burden that rumbles all
| day long, questioning if I should be putting that effort
| elsewhere.
|
| Definitely, brains are fun. They can be your best ally and
| worst enemy.
| jongjong wrote:
| Thinking and doing gets you nowhere. What works is talking.
| arnejenssen wrote:
| So a better way to relax from mental work (between pomodoros),
| might be to avoid hacker news and social media, and instead do
| meditation, naps or walk in nature?
| MVissers wrote:
| Juggling is great as well. Motor activity.
| arnejenssen wrote:
| My test suite takes about 5 deep breaths to run. An excellent
| opportunity to close the eyes and take a nano break.
| grugagag wrote:
| Similarly we're still using a very slow TFS setup at work and
| checkins and get latest take forever even for the smallest
| changes and I turn the frustration into a mini meditation
| makach wrote:
| Everyone playing chess knows this!
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| I recommend 15-21 minutes naps. After a period of adjustment,
| they work like magic in resetting mental fatigue. And, bonus
| points, if the nap period is always the same (21 minutes in my
| case), you will wake up before the alarm. Speaking of the alarm,
| I suggest using an alarm that gradually increases in volume,
| starting from zero.
| topoftheforts wrote:
| any advice on falling asleep quickly? I love naps but most
| times it take me 30+ minutes just to fall asleep (+ feeling
| groggy when I wake up) so a 15min nap would often take an hour
| of my day
| sowbug wrote:
| Set a timer for 25 minutes. Lie or sit somewhere with an eye
| mask on. When the alarm goes off, get back to work.
|
| Repeat until successful. Your body will learn that the "30+
| minutes just to fall asleep" count against the rest time.
|
| The eye mask tells your brain it's sleepy time, and if you're
| at the office also tells others not to interrupt you.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Exactly this, OP. Eventually you will fall asleep, the
| brain will slowly adapt.
| ycombinete wrote:
| I could never nap. After I quit caffeine I could nap on
| command at any time of the day.
|
| Also a nap doesn't have to be a deep sleep. Just a period of
| short and deliberate rest for the mind.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Not OP, but I'll take a swing at this.
|
| I do 15-20 minute "naps" on a regular basis. I find them to
| be equally refreshing regardless of whether I actually fall
| asleep. If I do fall asleep, it's normally only for a minute
| or two. As far as I can tell, the refreshing effect of a
| catnap doesn't come from sleeping, but from spending at least
| a couple of minutes in that weird twilight state that
| precedes sleep.
|
| That doesn't quite solve your problem, so here are a few
| things that help me fall asleep quickly:
|
| 1) Try to plan your naps so that you avoid stimulating
| activities immediately beforehand. If you try to nap right
| after gaming/doomscrolling/social media, your mind will be
| abuzz and it'll take much longer.
|
| 2) Nap in darkness. If you can't turn off the lights, put on
| an eye mask or pull your hat over your eyes.
|
| 3) Stimulating sounds can pull you back into wakefulness.
| Mask them by listening to white noise.
|
| 4) If you have trouble quieting your mind when it's time to
| sleep, try doing a handful of Vipassana meditation sessions.
| I found the practice of observing and dismissing thoughts as
| they arise to be really helpful when trying to clear my mind
| and fall asleep.
|
| 5) Don't sleep where you play. If you watch TV, use social
| media, or do other stimulating stuff in bed, your mind may be
| expecting some sort of stimulation (like Pavlov's dog) when
| you get into bed, which can make it harder to sleep. Either
| quit doing that stuff in bed, or sleep somewhere that lacks
| the pavlovian baggage.
| cloudripper wrote:
| Naptime is my favorite pastime. That said, I've also found
| mindfulness meditation for the same amount of time serves as an
| equivalent mental reset without the added drowsiness I
| occasionally get from naps.
| grugagag wrote:
| Only possible if you're not required to be in an office
| Matumio wrote:
| Some offices have a separate room for meditation or
| stretching or a short nap or whatever.
| cloudripper wrote:
| Only if your colleagues are suspicious of you sitting
| painfully still at the computer with sunglasses on and a
| noodle neck.
| grugagag wrote:
| And a single snore can get you fired? I sometimes snore and
| couldn't do that. Also knowing it's culturally not accepted
| in work environments would not allow me to relax, sleep and
| recharge.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| one of my biggest reasons to want to keep WFH!
|
| I always think if I ever built a company from ground up we'd
| have a set of sleeping pods with 15 minute timers in them and
| actively encourage staff to use them several times a day. If
| not to sleep, meditate etc.
| shswkna wrote:
| I do exactly this and have been doing for some time. It gets me
| through those demanding days where I need to show results. My
| "magic" nap time is 13 minutes.
| rsolva wrote:
| This has been my superpower for a ling time. I do not need to
| fall asleep, just close my eyes for 15 or 20 minuttes. I have
| used the free sleep/nap app Pzizz since 2008. Having the same
| sleep-in routine primes my brain for a nap.
| blcknight wrote:
| https://archive.is/n81gT
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| Has anyone successfully introduced a siesta to help combat this
| effect during a workday? I've tried to do so in the past, after
| reading some of Piotr Wozniak's writing on the subject:
|
| https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Healthy_napping
|
| ... but I'm relentlessly awake in the afternoon. In fact, I've
| had an issue with taking breaks from work for years now: once I
| start I have trouble stopping.
| tayo42 wrote:
| do you drink caffeinated drinks?
|
| i do nap in the late afternoon a lot. is it successful? idk i
| just do it and it feels good.
| grenoire wrote:
| Our brain simply seems to have a lot of cache misses and bad
| garbage collection.
| aldanor wrote:
| I had a similar thought as well. The questions are then, first,
| how do we think/work in more cache-friendly manner? Do things
| linearly, plan things ahead, don't branch out on random noise?
| And, how to minimise allocations? Don't try to ingest more
| information than what you can fit on your "stack"?
|
| // and don't forget about "stack unwinding" before going to bed
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| [flagged]
| INTPenis wrote:
| Define hard.
|
| A regular work day leaves me noticeably tired, not physically but
| somehow mentally and it translates to yawning and feeling a bit
| drowzy. It's like being tired in the head, and sans any bodily
| aches it feels exactly like a hard days physical work.
| naillo wrote:
| Eat more carbs (literally)
| ChancyChance wrote:
| Someone didn't read the article. Hint: it involves tic-tacs.
| niemal_dev wrote:
| How is it that a low-carb diet boosts your cognition and mental
| stamina?
| orangepurple wrote:
| The brain performs more local gluconeogenesis and otherwise
| utilizes a stable supply of ketone bodies
| cloudripper wrote:
| Or eat less carbs. Ketones literally have a positive effect on
| brain metabolism.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33233502/
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32739015/
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| b0afc375b5 wrote:
| I wonder if there's a connection between thinking a lot and
| having a sweet tooth.
|
| I know that they're generally bad for the health but I can't
| seem to stop buying them, especially when I expect to grind
| leetcode later at night.
| jauhnthecossin wrote:
| From personal observation (I think it is even backed by
| research) not having enough sleep causes craving for
| sweets/junk food.
| niemal_dev wrote:
| That's a bit too generic I believe.. What if you don't have
| a sugar/junk craving in general due to diet? i.e. keto
| CapsAdmin wrote:
| I feel like sugar in general makes me tired and makes it
| difficult to concentrate. Sometimes (though rarely) I consume
| sugar in the evening to make me tired.
|
| I can't help but eat candy if it's available, so I just
| learned not to buy it in the first place.
| leobg wrote:
| [flagged]
| wuiheerfoj wrote:
| He ran an authoritarian regime over a large country for 10+
| years including through a world war without thinking??
| leobg wrote:
| Mein Kampf doesn't read like the work of a deep thinker.
| If that's what a sweet tooth gets you, I don't want it.
| detourdog wrote:
| Sucrose is what bees crave so its pull must be deeply
| embedded in our reward system. I associate the high sugar
| consumption with short circuiting the reward system.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I had the same habit. You eat sweets -> blood sugar goes up
| and you feel energetic. Problem is, it also goes down very
| fast, at which point you feel sleepy and hungry at the same
| time.
|
| Really easy to become overweight this way.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Then you get diabetic and your blood glucose levels don't
| fall off as fast anymore, which solves the problem in its
| own macabre way.
| karmelapple wrote:
| Every full-day on-site interview for an engineering role I've
| done results in me being pretty exhausted, even when there's
| minimal technical questions. My theory, which maybe is slightly
| related to this article, is that thinking through all the
| potential future things that might happen as a result of choosing
| this job is mentally draining.
|
| Your brain is evaluating what you might be working on, what the
| future boss might be like, what your coworkers are like and if
| any seem particularly compatible or not with you, etc.
|
| That sounds like some hard thinking to me.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Handling social situations is one of the most energy intensive
| tasks our brain does, I think. Meeting new people, thinking
| about how to present yourself and how to understand others, is
| an intense social activity.
| offsky wrote:
| Can someone please explain the picture at the top of the article?
| khalilravanna wrote:
| Children sleeping under their desks. Presumably hinting that
| learning is tiring and/or maybe adults need nap times too.
| awesomegoat_com wrote:
| [flagged]
| awesomegoat_com wrote:
| Downvote me all you want. :-)
| geraldyo wrote:
| It's just that doesn't even make any sense :(
| sandworm101 wrote:
| "Thinking" is only one thing that the brain does, and it is
| actually a very small part of its job. All brain activity causes
| the brain to get tired and burn out to the point that it needs
| rest. Try driving a car around a racetrack competatively, even in
| a simulator. Talk to a ballet dancer about keeping their balance
| for hours. Talk to a soldier under fire hour after hour. Talk to
| a pilot trying to negotiate with ATC all during a weather event.
| All brain activity, even the basic biological stuff we don't
| classify as "thinking", causes the brain to get tired and
| eventually lapse into a survival/maintenance mode to handle the
| stress.
| khalilravanna wrote:
| The driving one reminds me of how absolutely brain dead I feel
| after riding a motorcycle for 8-12 hours in a day. Nevermind
| that my body is rocked from the wind all day but just being
| able to do basic math or have a conversation with the person at
| the front desk of the motel I'm staying at becomes difficult.
| Any sort of sustained concentration obliterates your brain over
| a long enough time period.
| grugagag wrote:
| Even driving a car can have similar effects after driving for
| 8-12 hours sans the wind and elements exhausting the body or
| the uncomfortable motorcycle posture
| dron57 wrote:
| The wind and the posture aren't as much of a problem as the
| mental strain of riding a motorcycle. It is simply more
| difficult than driving, the constant gear shifting,
| cancelling turn lights manually and always being in a kind
| of defensive posture where you assume that you are
| invisible and someone might run into you.
|
| I've always gotten into a kind of flow state while riding a
| bike. The exhaustion after hours of riding felt very
| similar to studying or coding all day.
| bennysonething wrote:
| By Friday afternoon I feel sick. I'm wondering if this explains
| why.
| butterisgood wrote:
| Sometimes I'm fried by Thursday evening. I don't think I'm ever
| "sick" from this in a physical sense but definitely all
| cylinders in my brain don't seem to be firing properly.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Does it burn more calories? I seem to remember reading somewhere
| that chess players burn a lot of calories during a match.
| quercusa wrote:
| I have a standing desk that I use up about a third of the time.
| But if there's something that requires a lot of concentration, it
| always seems to work better if I lower it and sit.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| I do the same with the same ratio estimate. The two deterring
| thoughts I notice are: (1) balancing and shifting around when
| standing is a little disruptive. (2) I don't want to interrupt
| my focus to lower the desk as my body physically fatigues from
| the standing position.
|
| Focus is the driving factor in this for me.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| For comparison, running an internal combustion engine causes
| chemical changes in the engine. There will be a reduction of
| certain hydrocarbons in the fuel tank, and an increase in simple
| hydrocarbons in the exhaust manifold, as well as a reduction of
| chemicals in the inlet manifold.
|
| Perhaps in future scientists will find a way to restore the
| chemical balance in internal combustion engine systems, thus
| keeping them at peak performance for longer.
|
| (In other words: The Economist's article is rather light on
| actual useful details. The same kind of story applies to a very
| wide range of topics. It might be more helpful to read the actual
| scientific article.
|
| ps. For some reason newspapers/magazines never provide a good
| reference to the actual article and you end up having to go
| hunting.)
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| >For some reason newspapers/magazines never provide a good
| reference to the actual article and you end up having to go
| hunting
|
| That seriously annoys me to no end
|
| Does anyone know why the heck don't they just provide the damn
| DOI along with it?
| _Nat_ wrote:
| Corresponding study (paywall'd):
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.07.010
|
| From their summary:
|
| > [...] these results support a neuro-metabolic model in which
| glutamate accumulation triggers a regulation mechanism that makes
| [lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC)] activation more costly,
| explaining why cognitive control is harder to mobilize after a
| strenuous workday.
| knaik94 wrote:
| There's free links if you look on google scholar
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098222...
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I hit some bad burnout last year, and it's become hard to think
| hard about anything ever since. Like a defense mechanism has been
| installed in my brain preventing me from hurting myself like that
| again. When I have to think hard about something for work I have
| to push past that and then I feel an intense dissociation while I
| do.
|
| It doesn't feel good.
| foxandmouse wrote:
| when you're anxious it becomes hard to think for yourself, and
| it becomes very easy to let the anxiety make decisions for you.
| Anxiety can impair creative thinking and lead to decision-
| making based on survival instincts.
| sandermvanvliet wrote:
| I have the same problem, need to really push to actually think
| properly. Not only for work but just in general.
|
| I've taken a break off work for ~7 months but it seems that
| wasn't enough to get back to the level I was used to before.
|
| While this sucks, I'm kind of happy I'm apparently not the only
| one that experiences this
| neongodzilla wrote:
| I learned this week that "occupational burnout" [1] _often_
| results in the brain developing a trauma response to the idea
| of returning to the same job /tasks, which is why people will
| sometimes entirely switch careers. It absolutely is the brain
| trying to protect itself.
|
| Not all forms of burnout results in trauma responses, but they
| all require extended recovery. Burnout is preventable, but once
| it has been reached, the damage has been done and rest is
| required. No joke: 3-6 months is the usual recovery time.
|
| Paths to occupational burnout: - No mental rest from work.
| "Taking it home with you." Often skipping breaks to keep
| focused. - Jobs that require high amounts of mental processing
| for long periods (customer service, development,
| troubleshooting, multitasking, urgent-response).
|
| "Brown out" is the stage when you're still capable of
| functioning in spurts, but your brain/body is sending warning
| signs (that we have been taught to ignore).
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_burnout?wprov=sft...
| Metus wrote:
| What are the warning signs? The paths you described kind of
| describe things I do. Sometimes they are necessary and I am
| taking steps to prevent them. At the same time I worry I
| already shut down the warning signs.
|
| Sometimes I wonder whether "burnout" or "occupational
| burnout" describes something I have experienced in college.
| It was not a spectacular or intense thing, just losing
| interest in my subject completely and avoiding getting
| started with exercises, even though I was decently good at my
| subject and loved the hours and hours I spent studying.
| thoughtFrame wrote:
| > Sometimes I wonder whether "burnout" or "occupational
| burnout" describes something I have experienced in college.
| It was not a spectacular or intense thing, just losing
| interest in my subject completely and avoiding getting
| started with exercises, even though I was decently good at
| my subject and loved the hours and hours I spent studying.
|
| I think this is my experience right now. I love CS and
| almost all my classes were great, but now it's like I can't
| study, I can't will myself to work on a class' project,
| etc. I have an exam that I have been avoiding for months
| and it's blocking my other classes that require this exam
| to take their exams
|
| The fact that you use the past tense means you got past it?
| If so, I'd appreciate any advice
| Metus wrote:
| > The fact that you use the past tense means you got past
| it? If so, I'd appreciate any advice
|
| I'd love to give you advice so much, however I forced
| myself through it and started to work in a different
| carreer.
| thoughtFrame wrote:
| Thanks anyway. I'm learning a lot from this subthread.
| robocat wrote:
| I felt the same with Electronic Engineering in my final
| year - because I had realised that what I was learning
| was so academically focused that it was almost useless in
| the real world. I forced myself to finish that last year,
| but I think that effort destroyed my love for electronic
| design work (fortunately, I fell into a software job
| instead, in part because I got my degree).
|
| Perhaps if you can get out in the real world then you
| will find real problems and those will likely motivate
| you (if you are anything like me, anyway). The most
| motivated students I recall were already working, and
| they picked and chose relevant academic focus that could
| help them with their design work (i.e. they could get
| some value from the academic system). Even though work is
| often depressing in itself (varies on a huge number of
| factors).
|
| Ideally, try and discover what really motivates you. I
| like this idea, although I haven't tried it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29912252
|
| Edit: perhaps relevant: I was depressed due to a
| relationship. She ended the relationship with me, and the
| next day I was long-term happy. Turns out situational
| depression is a thing, and that it is entirely different
| from clinical depression (which doesn't fix itself in a
| day - exception fast bipolar?). If you feel unhappy,
| sometimes you have the ability to fix the situation that
| is making you unhappy!
|
| Good luck.
| Sharlin wrote:
| The usual, some combination of sleeping difficulties or
| sleeping too much, constantly being annoyed by nothing in
| particular, brain fog, forgetting things, procrastination,
| difficulty reaching a flow state, general disinterest in
| certain or most things, acute anxiety/stress response to
| thinking about things that should be done, increased "self-
| medication" with alcohol or other drugs, comfort eating, or
| alternatively forgetting to eat, loss of appetite.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| i see you've listed out the side effects of existing in
| 2023
| Levitz wrote:
| Sounds an awful lot like depression to me.
| Metus wrote:
| Thank you for the list, I will take the advice to heart
| immediately.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| This is me since... _at least_ high school. Probably
| earlier, but my memories are spotty. Almost all the
| things you mention present, often acutely, in relation to
| _anything_ that is "to be done" - be it work or
| personal. Anything can trigger it, the moment it stops
| being something I do on a whim, and becomes something
| that I plan or is expected of me. No underlying medical
| condition to attribute it to. What to do then?
| sprkwd wrote:
| Oh god. That might be me. But then I've always felt all
| of these things as long as I remembered.
| alrs wrote:
| It's exponential back-off. It's three months the first
| burnout, six months the second, one year for the third.
| tayo42 wrote:
| 3 to 6 months is interesting, it almost exactly lines up with
| my experience of leaving work for a bit. at around three
| months, i mostly stopped feeling like shit and angry about
| some of the things that happened. i felt like i was a
| baseline. at around 6 months i started to feel actually good.
|
| also at 6 months im trying to get back to work and the
| interview process and job market sucks so im feeling
| miserable again haha
| leetrout wrote:
| I just finished 4 weeks back at work after 6 months off.
| Same timeline as you- took 3 months to just let go.
|
| Interviewing sucks.
|
| My email is in my profile if you want to chat. Good luck
| with the return to work.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| If you ever wanna chat I'm in the same boat. Just keep your
| head above water and try to think positively. Playing with
| ChatGPT and the dirty cheap OpenAI APIs has helped me a lot
| =)
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Curious, as in it's something you just found interesting
| or as in it's something you use to talk through your
| issues with?
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Oh, I just meant, I'm also looking for jobs, the market
| sucks, interviews go fine and then I hear nothing back.
| I'm just doing my own thing and I empathize is all I
| meant!
|
| Oh and in terms of ChatGPT, I just meant it's something
| fun that I use for other interesting projects due to how
| flexible the composability is (LangChain, etc)... not so
| much directly as a therapist-bot if that's what you were
| asking.
| csallen wrote:
| I've never conceptualized of burnout as trauma, but this
| makes a lot of sense. The best definition I've read of trauma
| is, "an event or series of events that overwhelm a persons'
| ability to cope." Almost like tearing a muscle by trying to
| lift something that's just too heavy to bear.
|
| But if burnout is trauma, is taking a break from work really
| enough to resolve the trauma? I ask because that seems
| insufficient in the case of other traumas, e.g. undergoing
| physical or emotional abuse, surviving violent accidents,
| etc.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _But if burnout is trauma, is taking a break from work
| really enough to resolve the trauma?_
|
| Apparently it isn't, much like in case of physical trauma.
| GP mentioned people switching careers.
|
| I know a person who got burned out when their boss tried to
| make them do 2D and later 3D design for the company, on top
| of their normal assignments, because he didn't want to hire
| a new graphics designer after the last one quit. Said
| person gained basic proficiency in some CAD software,
| Photoshop, Corel, and then burned out on 3DS Max, to the
| point of having strong physical reactions at the very
| _though_ of it, even many years later. It 's a
| psychological wound that can't heal, and it closed off 3D
| graphics as a line of work for that person. Trauma is one
| of the words we used when talking about it over the years.
| lawn wrote:
| I had the same experience and I think I'm back where I used to
| be. A year later.
|
| I think the key is to take an extended break from work or
| whatever caused the burnout. Other things may be helpful, but
| for me this is the only thing that really helped.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| This is what I experienced in college!
|
| A stressful gauntlet of trying my hardest, only to be met with
| failure, which generated self-loathing and hopelessness,
| eventually resulted in an emotional "snap". It wasn't gradual;
| I think I felt it the minute it happened. It was sudden. It
| was, "Oh, suddenly I can't bring myself to care anymore." It
| was like dropping a heavy load onto the ground and finally
| being free.
|
| It felt exactly like "a defense mechanism has been installed in
| my brain preventing me from hurting myself like that again".
| From then on, I had much more self-compassion, regardless of
| how things turned out, and I felt emotionally decoupled from my
| performance or self-perceived intelligence. (Disappointing
| people still hurts when it hinges on those things due to the
| personal connection, but impersonal metrics like grades or
| money or whatever ceased having an effect.) I couldn't work or
| focus as hard as I did before, when I self-flagellated myself
| to with shame and insecurity. That seemed like a potent fuel
| source, like coal or gasoline: powerful but dirty/unhealthy
| long-term. ;p
|
| I don't feel like I have that anymore. I can't really "push
| through" using it. But I'd say I'm only debuffed like 10 or 20%
| -- not by a HUGE amount, and what motivation I marshal now
| feels a lot more sustainable and grounded in my actual, day-to-
| day well-being. I think learning and striving from a place of
| self-security and self-compassion feels a LOT better, even with
| that debuff. (Compared to from a place of "OH GOD I GOTTA DO
| THIS OR I'M NOT AS GOOD AS THAT PERSON OR GOOD ENOUGH FOR THIS
| OH GOD OH FUCK[0]".)
|
| So, oddly, for me, it felt (and feels) great.
|
| > _When I have to think hard about something for work I have to
| push past that and then I feel an intense dissociation while I
| do._
|
| I don't even feel capable of pushing too far past beyond my
| boundaries. I simply don't. It's kind of a like high-
| functioning depression for me, where the "can't get out of bed"
| factor kicks in at like "175% of your typical day's workload".
| I still "work hard" on things, and people regularly say I do or
| say that I'm working all the time, but I only hit like 150%
| max.
|
| For me, it's also been several years while only a year for you,
| however. Maybe that changes things!
|
| Also, the "coal" and "gasoline" of insecurity were probably
| coming from ego. I think that's what broke: my ego. If your
| starting point _wasn 't_ "I have to do this because my ego
| tells me I should be able to so my self-image is completely
| wrapped up in it", like mine was, that might also change
| things.
|
| 0: https://i0.kym-
| cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/367/603/ab...
| RobRivera wrote:
| it me O.O ive been trying to refactor my health habits to
| identify a proper solution. hikes, runs, lifts, good dieting,
| sleep. gave up alcohol. results vary, its not all doom and
| gloom, but burnout is real
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| It took me a year to recover from burnout. Don't underestimate
| the recovery phase. I was at the point where any cognitive
| effort caused very similar effects to what you would describe,
| kind of like the mental equivalent of having lifted weights to
| failure but with an instantaneous onset. I suspect every case
| is unique, but I'd suggest thinking very carefully about how
| you can take an extended break from work.
|
| The key distinguishing what I felt with burnout from just being
| mentally tired is that no problem, no matter how hard it was to
| solve (or even if I failed miserably at solving it) has ever
| caused me to _instanteously_ feel 100% mentally exhausted. By
| contrast, when burnt out, even fairly trivial work tasks would
| trigger this.
| stavros wrote:
| Did you also "hear" a sound in your head like a guitar string
| breaking when it happened?
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I don't think so, but your comment sounds super familiar. I
| think we may have chatted about burnout before on another
| thread on HN?
|
| I did once have an experience with nitrous oxide where I
| heard something similar and subsequently had a pretty major
| shift in my thinking process for awhile.
| stavros wrote:
| I think I may have read it on here before, this thread
| just jogged my memory and I figured I'd ask.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I would love to take an extended break, but unfortunately
| it's not really possible at the moment... I'm living in a
| VHCOL city, and have an expensive chronic disease as well
| that means I can't really afford extended time off. I don't
| have any family members that I could fall back on either.
|
| So in the meantime, I'm kind of just putting in the minimal
| effort at work, not doing any side projects, and going on
| lots of really really long walks. That seems to be slowly
| helping.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> and going on lots of really really long walks._
|
| What I found helps is spending as much time outdoor as
| possible, preferably in the sun and in the wild nature,
| especially if they're light hike. Try to do that at least
| half a day every weekend.
|
| Hope you get better.
| kodah wrote:
| fwiw, I'm in the same boat. My parents are retired, though
| still here. The strategy you mentioned worked for me,
| although it takes longer. A year instead of six months.
|
| I have read more about being able to use short and long
| term disability, which might help, or be a viable part of a
| strategy. If you do this, I'd recommend having your own
| insurance and not using your state or companies disability
| insurance.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Long walks help. Also therapy or just a long talk with
| someone you trust, work wonders. Just intensely and
| suddenly realizing that the situation is not your fault and
| that other people go through periods like that, takes a big
| weight off your shoulders. It's exactly that weight that
| makes you tired soo fast.
| amelius wrote:
| Try sleeping 9-10 hours every night, and see if it becomes
| less.
| pengaru wrote:
| Anecdata:
|
| I've found something as simple as a daily calm stretching
| routine goes a long way towards keeping the mind+body on board
| with everything else I call on it to do.
|
| Not that I'm some new-age meditation and yoga solve all
| problems type at all.
|
| But stretching in particular is a surprisingly effective
| mind+body exercise because there's all these safeguards in
| place to prevent carelessly damaging your muscles and joints.
| When you increase your flexibility and condition your mind+body
| to allow reaching these extended positions, it's like you're
| earning the trust of the system. It's not purely a physical
| flexibility thing, there's a huge mental component.
|
| That seems to translate into greater self-trust elsewhere, be
| it pushing physical limits of endurance/strength or constant
| long coding sessions.
| expertentipp wrote:
| > Like a defense mechanism has been installed in my brain
| preventing me from hurting myself like that again.
|
| I consider this a feature not a bug. Now go focus on important
| things in life: money, sex, and exercise. Don't overthink.
| Learning another state management method in new generation of
| Angular, unwinding a mess created by CV-driven FOMO hysterics,
| acrobatics in Java design patterns... they're all not worth it.
| vanjajaja1 wrote:
| Came to post this. Life gets much better when you stop
| thinking of your body functions as bugs. They're features.
|
| Your body learned that 'working really really hard for this
| resulted in very little tangible reward' and then probably
| concluded 'i will not work very hard for long periods of time
| without seeing reward'
|
| Probably the hardest part is understanding that 'i made a
| number in a database increase' is not actually a reward.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| A few weeks ago I'd have disagreed, but this weekend I did
| nothing close to dev and I feel a lot better.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| There's a reason r/woodworking is full of software
| engineers
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Great idea. I always wanted to get into this sort of
| stuff, esp blacksmithing.
|
| Now, if only I had the space for it...
| straydusk wrote:
| [flagged]
| gear54rus wrote:
| that first one on the list kinda requires it though... and
| the 2nd one kinda requires the first one haha
|
| not that easy is it
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Maybe not. I put a ridiculous amount of effort into that
| last project last year. I saved it from disaster, which
| saved a bunch of people's asses that had fucked it up over
| and over.
|
| Nobody really noticed. My raise this year didn't keep up
| with inflation. I could have let the project fail like it
| should have, rather than burning myself out. Maybe I would
| have received some of the blame, but chances are I'd still
| just be making the same amount of money if I had just cared
| less.
| gear54rus wrote:
| That's a classic story in a corporate world but I fail to
| see how is it relevant in the context :) We were talking
| about 'thinking' being required but nobody said it was
| sufficient.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I was mostly approaching it from the angle of how
| overworking and overthinking isn't really necessary to
| make money. And how doing so can actually lead to
| burnout.
| Geezus-42 wrote:
| Please give us your secret to making easy money.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Not what I was saying. Being the person on a team that
| kills themselves to get a project across the finish line
| isn't the secret to making money. It doesn't even get you
| recognition for your efforts most of the time.
| DANmode wrote:
| It doesn't have to be easy, it can just be the correct
| amount of work, or effort, for you.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| It looks like you got downvoted, but I agree with you
| actually.
| ansc wrote:
| Oh wow. I had the same thing, I hadn't actually heard of anyone
| else with the same issue. Basically got a panic attack/heavy
| anxiety/vertigo feeling sometimes when sitting down at the
| computer to work. It was a year ago, luckily I'm doing better
| now. Or well, I now hate technology, computers and programming.
| Shame to lose what you once loved like that. I hope you are
| well.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Same. I feel completely stupid, and have to strain even for the
| most basic code. It's like I know the high level of things, but
| to actually force myself to write the code, email, design the
| workflow, or get engaged in meetings feels like an impossible
| feat.
|
| I've been pondering changing my job, but I worry that I'd be
| just a low performer in the new place.
| politician wrote:
| Supplement with ChatGPT for anything rote.
| FastEatSlow wrote:
| If you want to avoid being a low performer then maybe take a
| junior job where you're not expected to do much.
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| In Andrew Huberman's podcast, I heard the first X minutes of
| concentration are the hardest, as the brain resists getting in
| that state. He says that deliberately fighting it, helps
| improve it (lower the resistance).
|
| I'm paraphrasing, and I don't remember the specific episode.
| But look it up because it might help start turning it around
| for you.
| bityard wrote:
| I keep hearing great things about this podcast over and over
| but every time I try to get into it, I can't get over the
| insane number of ads.
| FractalHQ wrote:
| They're always in the beginning so you can skip them. And
| on YouTube you can use an ad blocker if you get hit with
| regular ads.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Like many, I tie the defense mechanism's arms behind its back
| with music.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I think this may be helpful advice for regular work, but not
| somebody suffering from burnout. During burnout, the brain
| puts up a much much stronger and persistent layer of
| resistance to concentration, in order to try to protect you
| from the pain that occurred while working in the past.
| Pushing past that is much harder, and can lead to additional
| blowback.
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| Sorry, my bad. He was not talking about it from a
| "psychological" standpoint. He was citing real hormone
| changes in the process. So it might be a bit more
| complicated than what I expressed.
| coding123 wrote:
| That does sound like PTSD. My wife has it and this sounds very
| similar.
| elcritch wrote:
| I had this after my physics undergrad. When I went back to get
| a masters in material science my brain just _would not_ do even
| simple fractions.
|
| Luckily I had a friend who knew I was capable of it and pushed
| me a bit to get through it, but it was exactly like a trauma
| block. Well doing quantum chemistry research as an undergrad
| with a crazy Russian professor will do that to yah.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > Strumming my pain with his fingers
|
| > Singing my life with his words
|
| > Killing me softly with his song
|
| In you know that you're describing a feeling not trivial, but
| especially not unique.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| What we describe colloquially as burnout has a lot of parallels
| to mild to moderate clinical depression. So much so that they
| both respond similarly to the most effective treatments. There
| is no singular cure, but a consistent regimen of exercise,
| bright light exposure, and social activity can produce
| incremental improvements over time.
|
| What definitely _does not help_ is using stimulants to try to
| push through. I feel like I'm seeing more and more social media
| posts from people who deepen their burnout by trying to use
| excessive caffeine intake (or stronger prescription stimulants)
| to try to ignore the warning signs and push on.
| arnejenssen wrote:
| Coffee and "energy drinks" like Red Bull does not give you
| energy. They borrow energy from you.
|
| It is like overclocking your brain. Sometimes it is what you
| want, but it comes at a cost.
| danenania wrote:
| Caffeine easily creates a negative feedback loop where you
| consume it, then get less and lower quality sleep, and
| therefore need more caffeine to function at the same level,
| so you sleep even worse, and so on.
|
| The main fixes I've found for myself are:
|
| - Get a lot of exercise and sunlight (if possible) to
| counteract the caffeine's effect on sleep.
|
| - Resist the urge to have more caffeine than usual when
| tired. It works well as an enhancer to a well-rested brain,
| but when used to compensate for sleep deprivation, it's
| counter-productive.
| icpmacdo wrote:
| Only having 1-2 cups of coffee between 10am and noon have
| been a very helpful personal rule
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| Second point is a great call out. I used to keep
| shoveling caffeine when I was younger and ended up having
| huge sleep problems (surprise) and a 26+ circadian
| rhythm. I'd quit for a month, then be back on it.
|
| Eventually I figured out that a solid blast of cold brew
| in the morning and none the rest of the day worked better
| --- almost like medicine. Like you say, if I feel I need
| more then it's a lifestyle problem.
| inconceivable wrote:
| i sometimes drink a single cup of tea in the morning now,
| but back when i was pushing hard, i would just buy cold
| brew concentrate and drink an espresso-sized amount in
| the morning. it was very effective at jump-starting the
| day and was strong enough that i didn't ever feel the
| need to keep consuming. it wore off by noon and that's
| when i would break fast and get some lunch. then i'd do
| non-demanding tasks in the afternoon.
|
| i think a lot of people drink cups and cups of coffee
| because the first one just isn't strong enough. get a
| strong buzz first, get your shit done, and then let it
| coast down. probably why many europeans start with a
| strong espresso and asians drink less-caffeinated tea
| throughout the day. drinking coffee all day long seems
| like a solution in search of a problem.
| carterschonwald wrote:
| Strong agreement. Thermonuclear burnout is a medium weight
| depression Episode
| RobRivera wrote:
| I can vouch for the sunlight, exercise, and social
| interacfion. a week on a cruise in the carribean and I was
| BRIMMING with energy.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| How do you determine whether you have been burnt out?
|
| Because for me stimulants have helped against the symptoms
| that are described for burn out. By that I mean things like
| lack of motivation, helplessness, frustration, anxiety,
| incapability to feel pleasure, cynicism, sense of failure,
| self-doubt, etc.
|
| While stimulants have a withdrawal period, I prefer to have
| an option to be productive and motivated for a certain amount
| of time and then when I don't have to do anything, it's fine
| to comedown as opposed to being constantly in that depressive
| state of mind.
|
| Because stimulants remind me that it's possible to feel
| motivated, essentially. Otherwise I would never feel
| motivated. It would be a constant grayness.
|
| And I can learn from the mindset I was able to have while
| being under the effect.
|
| I also do few weeks of breaks to reduce tolerance and
| dependency when times are easier.
| sandermvanvliet wrote:
| For me it was serious black-outs and lots of migraines. The
| ones where you start seeing scintillating scotoma [0].
|
| On top of that both anger and anxiety attacks, you know all
| the fun stuff.
|
| Of course this is different for almost anyone but I've
| spoken with some folks who've had similar-ish symptoms.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillating_scotoma
| quags wrote:
| Not everyone is equal. For what you say , talking
| everything at face value , you may have something that
| stimulates treat such as add/adhd and that may also mean
| more prone to depression or it's slower burn dysthymia.
| Shaggy2000 wrote:
| [dead]
| bitL wrote:
| Boost B1/B2/B3 vitamin supplementation, take NAD boosters like
| Niagen or NMN, NAC, potassium and alpha-ketoglutarate to get
| your neural mitochondria back into shape. Sodium-potassium pump
| consumes 75% of neuron's energy and too low potassium or too
| weak mitochondria interferes with it. Too strong mitochondria
| with low potassium makes it worse as well. NAC is to get rid of
| metabolic waste, AKG is to make cells more resilient.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Supplementation can only do so much when there are
| fundamental psychological issues at play too
| majkinetor wrote:
| Supplementation can also work wonders. There is literray
| almost zero downside to it except wasting money. So if you
| have some money to waste, start experimenting.
|
| The above advice is solid, but I would add number of
| others. CoQ10, C in multiple forms, ALCAR, D, Bromelain,
| concentrated fish oil, etc.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Personally i'm convinced they work. If and only if you
| believe in the working of supplements.
|
| I am also convinced they do not work for me, because of
| the premises.
| majkinetor wrote:
| What is amazing is you dismissing the entire domain of
| the science with a single unsubstantiated sentence. Feel
| free to read some schoolar journals and research papers,
| rather then popular zines, if that is not too much
| trouble...
|
| If you could fight deficiency with a mind, we would not
| have deficiency disesases.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I'm only speaking from experience.
|
| > If you could fight deficiency with a mind, we would not
| have deficiency disesases.
|
| That is so true. The thing is, a lot of diseases get
| treated as a deficiency disease.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Experience is highly overrated. Some stuff may work for
| you some not, depending on your current state (dynamic
| thing, daily changing). Many stuff you can't experience
| but you must measure.
|
| Science is important. In accute phase response deficiency
| is the norm, as one example.
| bitL wrote:
| Psychological issues often stem from mitochondria not
| working properly, i.e. neurons not having enough energy to
| work well. Fix mitochondria and many psychological problems
| disappear.
|
| See e.g.:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18979198/
|
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/mitochondria-may-hold-keys-
| to...
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Fixing psychological issues with supplementation can
| sometimes be like trying to apply a bandage to a cut on
| your nose while somebody repeatedly punches you in the
| face. You should apply the bandage, but it's not going to
| do much good until you stop getting hit in the face.
| bitL wrote:
| Alternate take: get your energy levels and body function
| in order first and then face whatever problem you have.
| tayo42 wrote:
| what makes you think that your mitochondria isn't working
| properly. reading this it sounds like your throwing a
| bunch of supplements at something and hoping something
| else happens. it doesn't sound very scientific.
| bitL wrote:
| Did you read the second link?
| newsclues wrote:
| Unresolved problems eat away at my mental capacity, as if
| problems are mentally uncompressed in the mind when it's still an
| unsolved problem, but when a solution is found it can be
| compressed and stored without continuing to load the problem into
| the brain.
|
| Once I learn something and it make sense, or solve a problem, it
| seems like the brain optimizes storage and frees up computational
| power.
| Verdex wrote:
| Same. When I'm in the middle of a research topic I find that I
| have to periodically stop and sort everything out because it
| gets really hard to me to focus on more mundane work.
| 19h wrote:
| Using electricity uses electricity..
| jkettle wrote:
| I think this number will probably stay the same or perhaps
| decrease a little for the short-medium term, but will most likely
| explode in the long term to maybe 60% because of the all the AI
| content. With GPT-# and all of the new mid-tier content thats now
| floating around, its almost impossible, even today to tell whats
| actually valuable content, so I've been going online less. I
| think most people feel the same uncanny Vally feeling when they
| realise that most of the content the view is not human created.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| After Einstein died, his brain was removed and analyzed. One of
| the findings was that he had more glials cells than normal
| people.
|
| This means that he probably did not get as tired from thinking as
| other people do. But he also slept 10 hours per day.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| > But he also slept 10 hours per day.
|
| Wait, is that unusual? If so I might be a genius lol. How much
| do "normal" people sleep? I thought 10 hours was pretty
| standard stuff.
| grugagag wrote:
| I find that the more sleep I put beyond of threshold of 7-8
| hours brings about proportionally more lethargy to my day. If
| I sleep for 11 hours my day is nearly ruined for heavy mental
| tasks
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Normal is 7-9 I think
| mjreacher wrote:
| On the contrary, John von Neumann was not known to sleep much
| at all and he was well known for being the fastest thinker
| alive in his time.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| "You know, Herb, Johnny can do calculations in his head ten
| times as fast as I can. And I can do them ten times as fast
| as you can, so you can see how impressive Johnny is"
|
| - Fermi on Von Neumann
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Here's a non-paywalled article from a few years earlier where
| this technique was developed:
|
| "Working Memory Modulates Glutamate Levels in the Dorsolateral
| Prefrontal Cortex during 1H fMRS" (2018)
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5845718/
|
| > "We interpret elevated glutamate levels during working memory
| task performance to reflect increased metabolic activity and
| excitatory neurotransmission driven by working memory-related
| demands."
|
| Practically, it might be beneficial to take cognitive breaks
| before exhaustion sets in, as well as improve blood flow and
| oxygen delivery - i.e. get up, walk around, drink some water,
| meditate for a few minutes etc. on a regular basis. I imagine a
| full eight hours of solid sleep is needed for a complete return
| to baseline, although vivid dreams might interfere with recovery.
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| hashmap wrote:
| > Their eyes were the clue. The pupil initially constricts when
| participants are shown the two options. The time it takes for the
| pupil to subsequently dilate reflects the amount of mental
| exerted. The pupil-dilation times of participants assigned hard
| tasks fell off significantly as the experiment progressed
|
| Maybe tracking pupil dilation time with your webcam can give you
| a live reading of how tired you are or how much you're exerting
| yourself at a given task. I'd pay for this.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I do think this is notbunders well because if there is some
| activities that you look forward to, most times even if you are
| tired you would want to do it, say a social activity, video
| games, something to blow off steam, you are still using the brain
| but a different activity. So tired is selective
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| This pop-psychology stuff has been dismissed some 10 years ago
| fullsend wrote:
| Recently got burned out for the first time. Context switching and
| constant hard thinking were a direct cause. I unofficially took
| on a chief architect's role doing design and planning for a huge
| project, was doing some managerial work assigning tasks and
| mentoring younger team members through it, and was writing code
| as an individual contributor.
|
| I just wanted it to succeed so badly, I took on an absolute ton
| without any systems in place in my own habits and daily life to
| protect me. I would be in a conference room tracking ten
| different threads of work day in and day out. Making decisions
| for every component, directing people, debugging...at first I
| felt like a god. Everyone was looking to me, we made more
| progress in six months than the last two years, meetings would
| get cancelled because I couldn't be there to make a decision
| (should have been a massive red flag but it fed my ego).
|
| But the way I work is to put my head down and get addicted to a
| problem in some sense. I can't stop until it's done. I think of
| these as loops in my brain, and I deeply need to close them. It
| is both a strength and tremendous weakness. As I climbed to
| principle engineer and above, this was a huge boon. A few weeks
| of nonstop coding, then crash for a couple weeks till the next
| tasks come along. But at a certain level, I stopped having clear
| cut tasks. The work had huge scope and was totally open ended. I
| was doing quarterly planning and this quarter's work wasn't done
| yet, etc.
|
| I got lost pushing to be "done" and it never came. One day my
| brain started hurting all the time. I started crying when I had
| to think about work, out of nowhere...really scary for me who
| always thought I was rock solid even after months of long days
| doing nothing but thinking hard. I tried to push through, ask for
| more money to soothe my pain, the company offered me a sort of
| break. But I had to quit cold turkey.
|
| Now I am taking a real break and the thought of that work makes
| my body tense up. I get tearful again. I am going to take a lot
| of time to build some workout habits, some set hours of the day
| where I will never "work", and do some emotional digging into my
| loops.
|
| Thanks for sharing! It is so nice to hear everyone's stories.
| vimwizard wrote:
| Exercise helps a lot in my experience. I also got stuck in a
| position of "Context switching and constant hard thinking" for
| a long time. Just stepped back and let it burn because it was
| also an "unofficial" position.
| byteware wrote:
| what I noticed is that rubber ducking works kind of like doing a
| DFS instead of a BFS, even when I can barely think, but I know
| that a few more lines at just the right places solves the problem
| and I simply can't let it go, (going for a walk rarely does it
| for me) so speaking out loud what and why is happening makes all
| the difference
| JestUM wrote:
| Yup.
| entropicgravity wrote:
| Anyone who does coding for a living will know this. Personally my
| average thinking to resting ratio is about 90 min thinking to 30
| min resting (ie keeping up with tech news).
| Ezku wrote:
| Is it really considered acceptable not to link to the scientific
| research you are basing your news on?
|
| Pubmed link (with abstract); full text is paywalled:
|
| > A neuro-metabolic account of why daylong cognitive work alters
| the control of economic decisions. Curr Biol. 2022
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35961314/
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Context switching burns people out and geeks don't notice how
| much they force themselves into too much of it.
|
| E.G: I have a friend that went full nerd on his coding setup.
| Dvorak keyboard, Full Arch Linux with tiling windows manager.
| Everything in the terminal, all dev through vim. If it's not a
| religion, it's at least a lifestyle.
|
| He is very happy with it: the keyboard is so ergonomic, he barely
| has to move the hand of it. Every task can be controlled out of a
| few key strokes
|
| Except he didn't notice how much of a burden he put on himself.
|
| Even for very simple tasks I see him struggling because of all
| the context switching.
|
| If you have to copy/paste something from your web browser to your
| editor, it may require you to select with a mouse, and ctrl+c,
| then alt-tab a bit, click on the IDE tab and ctrl+v. Not instant,
| but this procedure is the same for everything, so it doesn't take
| much brain to do it.
|
| For him, it's a whole guacamole, because there is a special
| shortcut to get to the browser, another one to get to the text,
| then copy/paste, then go to vim with another shortcut, select the
| proper buffer, paste with a yet another shortcut and make sure he
| uses the proper mode. Since Dvorak is a different layout than his
| phone keyboard or his client keyboards, the shortcuts don't
| perfectly rely on muscle memory.
|
| Every simple task in his setup like that: it requires a lot of
| effort.
|
| And his whole life outside of the computer is like that too,
| because he has very high moral standards, so he lives a
| constrained life in society that is optimized for a totally
| different life style. However he never cuts himself a slack.
|
| Multiply that by a hundred times a day, a hundred days a year.
|
| He burnt out.
|
| And he has no idea why: all the reasons he gave me were external
| factor, blaming other people a lot.
|
| But it was not.
|
| He killed himself with a thousand paper cuts, chasing an ideal he
| theorized in his head but could not only never reached, but could
| not even assess the real cost on his life.
| strus wrote:
| > For him, it's a whole guacamole, because there is a special
| shortcut to get to the browser, another one to get to the text,
| then copy/paste, then go to vim with another shortcut, select
| the proper buffer, paste with a yet another shortcut and make
| sure he uses the proper mode. Since Dvorak is a different
| layout than his phone keyboard or his client keyboards, the
| shortcuts don't perfectly rely on muscle memory.
|
| I think you are over-estimating the effort. Most experienced
| Vim users not even think about motions when they use them, it's
| just the muscle memory.
| lawn wrote:
| Meh. I've made my own layout and have been using Linux and Vim
| for the last 15 years or so. The context switching is barely
| noticeable and I think you're vastly overestimating the effort
| this kind of setup demands of you once you get comfortable. It
| all feels so natural to me.
|
| What's much worse is switching between different types of
| tasks, like answering emails to coding to helping co-workers to
| having to jump on a call.
| notfed wrote:
| > Dvorak keyboard, Full Arch Linux with tiling windows manager.
| Everything in the terminal, all dev through vim
|
| I'm a little confused, because most of these things sound like
| a great way to reduce context switching / extra keystokes.
|
| I imagine if you're not familiar with this setup, coming from
| another world, them yes a learning curve will be needed, and
| that might last for years. I think that'd be just as true with
| any radically different setup than you're used to.
| sershe wrote:
| I typically (especially on the weekend, since at work I somehow
| have higher motivation to push myself) go down a "thinking
| cascade" to adapt to this, where I'd code for some time, then
| when my brain gets tired go do something involved but not too
| involved (like figure out how to do something with Linux or
| whatever, or read a book that is actually useful), then when I
| get tired of that go read medium-effort stuff, like history or
| check how to do some project around the house, then when my brain
| is completely fried I'd go comment on hacker news :)
|
| Or eventually just go exercise and do chores... I find I can
| reset to the beginning of the cycle in an hour or so.
| hyperthesis wrote:
| When you exercise, your fitness does not improve during it, but
| afterwards.
|
| When you think intensely, your key insights do not coming during
| it, but afterwards.
|
| Rest is as important as work.
| marsven_422 wrote:
| [dead]
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