Ask HN: How to maximize mood and energy when working long hours?
How can you not get low mood and low energy when working 60 hours in a week?
And then how do people who work in investment banking doing 80-120 hours a week possibly do it?
And then how do people who work in investment banking doing 80-120 hours a week possibly do it?
Also some things involve different intensities of work. Management, for example, is mostly information filtering and routing. It can be done for longer periods of time with less fatigue.
Evolutionarily you are programmed to not expend energy unless you either have continuous progress/rewards or threat of harm if you don't keep at it. Perhaps these can be hacked but I haven't yet found a way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/well/live/burnout-work-st...
You do not just have a low mood. You have a potentially life-threatening condition on your hands (not to be over-serious, but). And overwork is linked with cognitive decline. You are potentially talking about somehow managing mood control while getting dumber.
Just to put some kind of perspective on that.
Personally when I was doing this, I had really good luck with anti-inflammatories (I was hitting I think 1200mg Ibuprofen a day, this is not medical advice), caffeine, L-theanine, and a bunch of other stuff including sweets. I found that if I switched my diet to pure sweets, like donuts and chocolate bars for every meal, I could overwork myself while hitting weight loss calorie targets, when I would otherwise stress eat (normal food + sweets). The inflammed mind & body and sweets are good friends sometimes I guess.
If you can't sleep, meditation and self-hypnosis can feel pretty close. Otherwise you might consider supplements for insta-sleep, noise machines, and so on. Definitely give some time to planning your sleep cycles so you can minimize e.g. anxiety derived from poorly-managed sleep.
> And then how do people who work in investment banking doing 80-120 hours a week possibly do it?
I've coached some of these folks, it's also similar with some top salespeople depending on industry, age, etc.
To put it gently, most of them are or were very fluid/open about letting emotions and sensory needs come and go. They don't like it but they don't act as if they have much of a choice.
Those I spoke to who fit your criteria in extremis would essentially torture their body via overwork and a work/life values mismatch, and then pay that debt down by periodic heavy indulgence. That's one way of defining it, anyway. They also have an office culture or cult of some kind where the vibe is that we're all in it together, we're f**ing navy seals of selling stuff, we're different here, and so on. It's a self-reinforcing torture ring, maybe.
Their relationships were in the gutter, regardless of friendship or romantic relations.
I remember one of these clients had a crazy booze & coke habit, they had custom homes on four continents, yada yada.
A couple years later they were living out of a suitcase and very limited funds in a cheap apartment looking at new career options. Burnout is real.
A lot of them explain that the "why" is that they want to be doers, they want to be achievers, etc. But of course this is coupled with the worst parts of boundary-destruction. They never set realistic targets at which they'd stop or be happy. So there was no end to how far they'd push mind & body.
(I get annoyed writing about this because I'm lecturing my past self to some degree, but glwt and I hope you can make the best of your situation)