How being alone may be the key to rest
bbc.com
bbc.com
I find I get the best rest when I unplug for a bit. Take a long walk, just for the sake of walking. Or lay down for 30 minutes and do nothing for a while.
[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mental-downtime/
That said I recently went for over two months without reading in the evenings - when I resumed reading (a friend literally pushed a book on me and said it needed to be read within a fortnight) I became notably calmer and less stressed.
To have colleagues note that none of the workload had changed yet I was significantly more with it was startling, and the only change I could identify was the book.
For me it's mostly about slowing down.
1. While I'm inside a chapter, I'll keep reading until the end of the chapter.
2. When I'm at the end of a chapter, I will stop if (and only if) I feel that I cannot invest the time to start the next chapter right now.
So short chapters are bad because I will just keep going ("oh come on, only two more pages") and long chapters are bad because I will not even start them. The sweet spot for me was two years ago when I read www.hpmor.com.
1. While inside a chapter, I'll just finish this chapter...
2. At the end of the chapter "oh, I gotta find out what happens. Just one more quick chapter..."
That's very location-specific. Many cities are very pedestrian unfriendly, for example every city in India.
It was figured out a few thousand years ago and became known as meditation. When needed I found it a good tool, but unfortunately it haven't become a habit yet.
Why is this (being stimulated) is a problem? Sleep already ensures that one gets a good rest.
Short wavelength blue light from smart phones/computers affect circadian rhythms:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/q-a-why-is-blue-li...
But you mind is never at rest. Its always thinking, ruminating. 'doing nothing' is impossible and absurd, you mind is always 'doing something' .
A lot of people just mindlessly browse online or work too much because they don't want to deal with their own mind.
Sure you can just chill and sit on the couch doing nothing, but thats relaxing only when you have the mental peace to do so.
I don't think people mean what is implied by the article as 'rest'. Its not a time issue. How can you possibly be 'alone' if you are stressed out about job, health, money, relationships or whatever. Sitting on a wooden pier with an umbrella is not being 'alone' , its precisely the opposite .
I never really understood the 'stopping' part, how is that even possible? At best you can simply refocus it to something you find peaceful, if that is the case how is meditation any different from say watching a movie that you love or playing drums.
How interesting that that thought wandered by just after this other one. It's "smile", that one feels pretty good.
This next one is "boredom"... Fascinating! What is that about? Why do I feel it? What happens if I use "smile" on it?
What about this monologue? Can I step back and observe those thoughts?
The Zen master says he's thinking about nothing while meditating. That doesn't mean no thought, it means observing the thing that Null pointers point to.
The mystical philosophies around meditation describe it with all sorts of features and properties, but I'll skip getting into that here. I'll just mention martial arts in particular. They practice relentlessly so that the actions are instinctive, then they use meditation so that higher-brain noise doesn't get in the way of that hyper-awareness and instinctive action.
See stopping as a metaphor. You are not "not thinking" ever but you can ignore some thoughts. And we do that all the time - usually thoughts we don't like. With meditation you'll learn to do that a bit better. A thought pops up in your head and instead of following it and expanding on it, you simply let it slide. Another one pops up and you do the same. When I meditate for 15mins at most 4-5 mins of it would be close to "peace" - that's all I can manage. When I'm doing it regularly, (it could very well be placebo) I find myself to be less agitated and not following every thought that comes to my head through out the day. I learn to say "not now" and focus on what I'm working on instead.
With practice.
The main difference, I've found, is temporal. By focusing on the breath, you stay grounded in the present moment. Watching a movie will trigger memories or thoughts about the future, which, to me, seem to tax the mind a lot more than simple, objective thoughts about the present moment.
Playing the drums could be like this, but you have to get lost in it and be improvising or sight reading something you've never played before. If you're worried about making mistakes, remembering the music or anything along those lines, you're not as in the moment as you could be. Most people don't play that way.
With meditation, if you get good at it, you can get lost in a kind of haze that's way less focused than playing drums or watching a movie. Sort of like sleeping while awake.
So that's a lot like "stopping". Sure, neurons will fire, etc, so you're not stopping anything completely, but they also do that when you are sleeping, or when you're completely wasted on weed.
I never have time for them, so the only moment my mind can explore some ideas is when I'm in bed.
Today's Sunday, I'll try and sit on the couch alone doing nothing for an hour and see where my mind wanders.
Try writing stuff down quickly on paper - just scribble the ideas. I do this with my teaching (I don't work in IT). It seems to 'earth' the thoughts and then I can relax.
Pro: in about 10 minutes I drift off easily to sleep
Con: I get the weirdest dreams. Probably listening to Dan Carlin talk about Mongols and Anabaptist religious fanatics in my sleep is responsible.
[1]: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2015/10/23/yanss-061-how-to-wil...
You'd be surprised.
For those that this doesn't come naturally (or have stress, are anxious etc), they can try some meditation techniques.
Meditation is not about some mystical mumbo jumbo, it's about being mindful and taking control of your thoughts, so think it more of like training of your "thought-muscles" to shut up and enjoy the silence, than "becoming one with the universe".
Great for unplugging, and means I am recharged by the time I get home for an evening of non-work related hacking at code.
I've always been pretty introverted, and also a night person. I used to roll into work around 10:30 or so, after a long chill morning.
When I got married and had kids, that schedule wasn't feasible any more. For a couple of years, I would set my alarm as late as I could get by with and then rush rush rush in the mornings to get my daughter ready and at day care and myself ready for work. That way, I could still be as much of a night person as I used to be.
It was a disaster. I felt tense and unbalanced all day. Lots of fights with my wife. By the time the evening rolled around and the kid was in bed, I had a little free time, but I was too spent to do anything useful with it.
At some point, due to commute changes, I ended up getting up at 6:00 to avoid the worst of rush hour. That was even worse. There's nothing quite like getting up early to stare at brake lights ahead of you for 45 minutes every morning to make you lose the will to live.
When my commute fortunately got much better—a five minute drive—I decided to try keeping my 6am wake up time.
Holy crap, it was amazing.
I had a solid two hours before the wife or kids woke up. The house was silent and all mine. I could have a quiet cup of coffee, read a bit, work on projects.
What I figured out is that, while I like being around people, my personality or sense of self kind of deflates during it. I don't have enough courage or force of will to be me in the presence of other people. Their own circles of identity sort of press into mine, and I'm not confident enough to easily push back all day.
That solitary time in the morning is exactly what I need to reinflate my bubble. To sort of gather around myself a sense of who I am, and what it is about myself that I like and feel good about. When I have that time in the morning, I can go out into the day feeling a little more secure and insulated. Without it, I feel exposed.
It's so worth becoming a morning person to get that feeling.
(Alas, now my kids have to be at school earlier, so they are getting up shortly after me and I don't have much quiet time anymore. I'm tempted to try getting up even earlier, but getting up at five is really hard.)
My brain just doesn't seem to be wired that way and it revolts every time I try this, even for an extended period.
Any tips for making it less painful?
Than in a few weeks that hunger feeling disappeared, but I still could wake up earlier with no problems.
The idea is to lay on the back with arms along the body as relaxed as possible. Then one rolls eyes and relax jaw to the point when mouse opens slightly. The reason behind this is that when one sleeps, eyes roll and mouse opens. So if one do that when awake, that gives brain a signal to sleep.
For me it works most of the time.
If you're staying up late at night and getting work on projects done then, then switching that to the morning isn't going to make much of a difference. The total time is the same.
I wouldn't read too much into all of those gushing blog posts about people who get up at the ass crack of dawn to write the next Great American novel while also preparing a wholesome organic breakfast, running twenty miles, and volunteering at their local soup kitchen.
People are incentivized to present their idealized self and blogs are no different, and there's some strange vicarious joy we get from reading about people who are (theoretically) way more disciplined or productive than us.
In my experience, there's nothing magical about the early morning hours. I could, and have, also had lots of productive time late at night.
I switched to mornings because it worked for my particular schedule and the other constraints in my life. Find what works for you.
> Any tips for making it less painful?
The main tip I know for getting up early is: consistently go to bed early. What you choose to do the night before determines how your morning is going to go.
Personally, I'm not very disciplined. So if I was getting up early to do something I don't enjoy, like exercise or work on something difficult, it would be a non-starter.
So, instead, I tell myself that I can get up to have some coffee, surf reddit, watch some dumb videos. Whatever. Something totally easy and selfish.
That's enough to get me out of bed. Then, once I'm on my computer with coffee in hand, I eventually start doing something useful.
-Sartre
I'm sure many of you felt it. you're walking along a trail deep in a forest. And, your conscious mind has faded a bit. Maybe you're humming to yourself, or talking to yourself, or just zoning out. And, then you see a figure way ahead of you, coming nearer. And, something changes - some 'identity' snaps back into the front of your consciousness, and you start to feel the tension. The 'you' who is not you takes control, and it's a bit of an uncomfortable feeling.
It's something that we have to do daily, almost all day long, and it's very, very tiring.
During "on" time, you are customer-facing. You're performing a service - normally what you would consider doing your job. But you're physically visible to customers, or they're directly waiting for your responses, like on a phone call. You're so visible in this fish bowl that you're like an actor or news anchor, and must be mindful of every action. Some jobs, like retail checkers or bartenders, are "on" for most of their work shift. In a way, it's like P time.
Other jobs are "off" jobs, where you're never seen by customers. This is time spent "in the workshop", building demos, displays, and developing presentation. It's like NP time, and any communications are asynchronous. You don't see customers, sometimes don't see coworkers or boss, and might even get to be alone.
Many jobs have a mix of "on" time and "off" time - where you may take a client call, then work independently to make what the client wants.
Counter-thesis: factors in modern society such as hyper-collaborative working practices have caused people who'd once have just been a bit quiet to think a lot more about what the introvert-extrovert axis means.
It can't be cost. Primo office space is $30-$40/sqft/year. A 100 sqft personal office would cost $4000/year.
I recently interviewed quite a few places. Big fancy modern offices. Common spaces. Foosball tables. And all the devs shoved into a corner, working shoulder to shoulder, desks facing each other. Like slaves on a war galley.
I'm an extreme extrovert. Open offices suck. If you want me to be productive, give me some me space and me time for head's down uninterrupted concentration.
While I'm ranting...
"Agile" (whatever that is) and "collaborative" (ditto) are mutually exclusive. Cite: The Tyranny of Structurelessness essay.
I really want to know where these whackadoodle ideas come from. Then maybe we can do something to mitigate it.
I've assumed management self actualization blather is management's way of asserting their self-importance while screwing labor. Know your place you worthless keyboard monkey.
More charitably, a bestie just went back to school (after 20 years) to wrap up her masters degree. She said the cultural change was jarring. Kids these days all work in groups, collaboration, special snowflakes, etc. Because that's how the "real world" operates.
Is the "collaboration" fantasy an education meme which has infected know-nothing corporate management echelons?
There's a stupidly heavy emphasis on group work, with the superficial justification that "it's how the real world works", discounting that, in the real world, if you're in a team but don't actually do the work, you're going to get screwed.
It seems to me, though, that teachers are mostly pushed to do that because it's being done everywhere else, and because IT students have a reputation for being antisocial, so they need to be pushed to work together, in real life, if possible.
It's an entirely wrong approach to the problem.
Ha. I used to think that, then had two separate experiences with completely different management chains where the incompetent guy did just fine.
If I had followed standard practices from University at my day job, I'd be a "cowboy coder".
They just think that the cost in productivity is less then the cost of the extra real estate required.
Your estimates of cost are totally incorrect.
When it comes to a difference of 200k vs 300k per fully loaded employee, most managers are going to doubt they are going to get 50% more work out of each employee.
A non-negligible number of people genuinely do seem to believe that the loss of individual productivity is offset by "team cohesion" or equivalent.
Illuminate me.
Control has nothing to do with it. We're just increasing variety.
Or worse: reading Facebook and Buzzfeed. (and HN?)
Imagine the effect all that extra free time to look at Internet ads will have on the tech giants' stock prices!
When I spend a day or two alone I really get back to thinking about what and who I feel matters, and why.
It is on those days that I really do know who I am, who I want to be, and how I am getting there.
Its lovely.
Upvote for unplugging a bit each day, too.
This is a poor conclusion. For one, 18,000 people isn't sufficient to draw any conclusions on a global level. It's a tiny sample of a relatively huge population.
Furthermore, I think the ~795 million people is much more so a pressing issue.
If we disregard the developing world, 18,000 people is not an adequately large sample to draw any such conclusions either. I'm glad that they are using the word "might" in the article and "may" in title, but I still regard the journalistic value of this piece as being really low.
"A full analysis of the data will be published within the next year. It's already clear that it holds lessons for doctors. Callard points out that when doctors prescribe rest, not every patient will interpret the word in the same way."
It doesn't hold factual lessons for anyone, it's too speculative. I'm hoping that people will be getting more rest either way.
Is there a journalist watch-dog for when poorly designed studies such as this one is covered by the media in a manner such as this that can be alerted? Especially since BBC themselves were involved in the study.
(This breaks down a bit when the sample size and the total population size get very close, and does not include sources of sampling error other than random variation - e.g. biased sampling, which I would be more worried about in a global study like this.)
That does not invalidate the statement that being alone may be the key to rest, but it should point out that drawing the conclusions that the article alludes to about the scale of the issue is shoddy.
> [...] showing perhaps what a pressing issue rest is in the modern world.
Even if the concept of "modern" world precludes areas suffering from famine, I am not convinced that it should be considered a pressing issue.