Comment by duncanawoods | Hacker News Reader

Comment by duncanawoods | Hacker News Reader

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>> The idea is to either sustain energy level or spend what you have then gain it - just like charging a battery

I am beginning to believe this is a dangerously misleading analogy because what we describe as energy in productivity terms is definitely not a resource that is depleted and refilled, but something that behaves very differently.

For example, lets say you are in a productivity slump but then a few nice words from customer turns it all around, you feel full of energy and motivation and crush your work with enthusiasm. The customer has not handed over a resource, instead, their words have changed ideas in your head. The ideas in your head are dictating whether you feel full of energy or in a slump, not a quantity that follows the rules of conservation.

An example of a different analogy that conflicts with the battery version is to describe energy/motivation as a fly-wheel. If your don't put enough energy in, it will stall and all energy you put in is lost. However get it up to speed and it can be self-sustaining - you seem to get more out of it than you put in. I find that more interesting than the battery but its also pretty weak.

Addressing the true causes of productivity requires understanding how our thoughts lead to feelings of energy and motivation. The battery analogy is tempting because it is easy to understand and makes the problem seem tractable but its actually disguising and hiding the hard problem.

>>Addressing the true causes of productivity requires understanding how our thoughts lead to feelings of energy and motivation.

According to psychologist Jordan Peterson, moving towards a goal that you value while seeing things working out during the journey is what produces positive emotions. Positive emotions are not a result of attaining things. Infact there is evidence that people sometimes get depressed once they reach the destination.

I'd like to point out, that you shouldn't link energy with productivity but instead of how compatible person is with the workflow.

I can have a lot of energy, but be totally unproductive. Good example are students, who (usually) don't have as much obligations as work force people and procrastinate a lot. There's is joke they're going to do everything except studying - mostly because anxiety of studying for exams creates somewhat mental barrier that in turns into perception that studying takes much more energy than it actually will.

On the other hand - one can have almost no energy and still be productive (have you ever worked so hard, that you fallen asleep 10 minutes after you'd finished?).

Obviously, battery analogy is not 100% true, because humans don't really have a full/empty condition. You can borrow your energy almost ad infinitum to the moment that you're going to experience burnout and heavy depression. And even then people can still get some energy in crisis situations. As always when talking about people's psyche there are a lot of conditions and baggage to discuss, yet, on basic level battery analogy usually works fine.

You need to be aware of your energy and need to take care of yourself. Both physically and mentally.

Its a good point - I think the language being used in productivity discussion is painfully informal and wooly.

I think energy in this context is often used to mean "enthusiasm" or "motivation". Its the energy that can be applied in a desired direction - a combination of actual gas in the tank as well as a panoply of psychological factors.

> You can borrow your energy almost ad infinitum to the moment that > you're going to experience burnout and heavy depression

Sama says something quite interesting here that indicates the psychological rather than the energy aspect of burn-out. He believes its impossible to burn-out if you are experiencing success. I think there is truth there, failure to progress and dis-satisfaction is a common feature in burnout cases. I suspect burnout is often a protection mechanism to get us to stop a behaviour rather than an actual state of energy depletion. Its a bit like the growing evidence for psychosomatic backpain occurring in response to psychological not physical factors.

As a useful model, however, I think it works. Regardless of whether or not it's real energy, all I really want to know is if some things make it difficult to work (say social media) and some make it easier (working out). The battery is as useful a way to do this day to day as anything else, in my opinion.

I can empathise but wouldn't you prefer to know the true causes rather than fictional ones?

For that particular pairing, it might be self-esteem, how the individual handles other people's perception of themselves etc. If they can get a handle on the real causes, they can then build techniques to use SM without it being a drain and extract more benefits.

The reason I think its important and not just an optimisation is that one day, the gym might stop being positive. When the positives stop working, you then have a limited time window to fix the situation before you enter a downward spiral. IMHO better to get your hands on the real tools earlier.

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