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Comment by mstanuch | Hacker News Reader

> Her life seems intense to me, and I don’t understand how she’s here at this party looking lively. I personally can work on my research a few hours a day before I need to go nap or watch some youtube videos. Is she fundamentally different from me in some profound way? Does she just have more energy resources? Or does she (and everyone else here) habitually exaggerate their productivity?

This is a question that I’ve been asking since forever, never got an answer. They just do „normal things” and „nothing special”. I’m by no means an elite class but I see those overproductive people with an unlimited energy on my college educated but not wealthy level too. I just want to know how they do it!

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There is an "aggressive normal" one can reach and live within for a while. It requires a schedule that includes daily cardio, a strict healthy diet, and attention to all the guides and rules for how to "live healthy" as well as how to "study in a University setting" but you're not in a university setting, you're in your post University life still pushing at that same "Dean's list" level.

I managed to live like this for a good decade and a half, pushed into it by a dotcom startup in '99. I simply liked the aggressively analytical life style and used it to transition from video games to VFX, become a specialist within VFX (actor replacement), get an MBA in less time than normal, do my own startup, write and acquire a global patent, go bankrupt, change industries to FR & AI, and become a principal engineer in that industry. Writing FR software simply exhausted me, and I lost (or aged out) of my ability to maintain such an aggressive schedule. While "in the zone" it was amazing how much I could do in a week.

There are several possibilities.

* There are people with generally higher energy levels, personally I suspect it's mostly about the dopamin/noradrenalin system. * People can choose different strategies how to approach their work. Some are very good at controlling the amount of attention they put into tasks. They might spend lower amounts of energy per task compared with other people, thus having more overall energy to spend. * The types of task you do. I can sit in meetings all day. Draining but not exhausting. However, difficult programming and data analysis, writing acamedic texts, having actually creative thoughts? 4-6 hours per day, tops. * Stimulants. Lots of them. Again, mostly about dopamin/noradrenalin. Amphetamines, modafinil, nicotine, caffeine, .... There's a plethora to choose from, especially if you live in the US.

I was wondering about that as well. Aside from drugs and productivity, do some of these people simply have a lot of passive income where they don't have to concentrate on a "job"? Must be nice.

I agree brain chemistry probably plays a significant role. I've avoided stimulants (even as mild as caffeine) and depressants (including alcohol) since I was a teenager. I still have what I call an addiction prone personality, and can happily spend 15 hours/day playing the same game for days or weeks on end.

I am able to direct this "addiction" to more productive tasks as long as I can convince myself the reward is there. There was a period of about a year where I averaged 100 hr work weeks and got very little sleep. I belive various forms of meditation kept me sane during that period.

If someone enjoys the work they do, it is not work. In fact, it is rewarding and rejuvenating:

"When people wonder about founders, inventors, scientists, the “workaholics” who seemingly dedicate their lives to their work, they rarely ask about the intrinsic motivations behind this behavior. But the adage from Mark Twain, “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life,” holds true. Do you want to know why people start companies, create new technologies, build new products? Because they’re having fun doing so. Even after making gazillions of dollars and being able to afford a life of leisure, most “workaholics” choose to continue their work. Why? Because it is intrinsically rewarding and motivating to learn to do something, to discover something. This is happiness. And this is why the United States has been so successful in developing big international brands. Part of the American psyche is to encourage fun. It’s not just drills and homework, drudge work and toil. School includes recess, sports, and clubs. Companies often offer extensions of these. Entertainment in various forms is pervasive in the US, and why “moviewise” even exists at all."

From: https://moviewise.substack.com/p/going-through-an-existentia...

That's survivorship bias. I get tired no matter what I do, fun or not. In fact I get tired faster if it's too fun. But maybe I'm just an anomaly.

I assume America's success (and the ability to create huge international brands) is due to them sitting on a continent with no natural predators. They only need to avoid civil wars to be successful, and in Europe there's always someone invading its neighbours.

Many manager types are good at faking it, others are genuine hypomaniacs or hyperthymics (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymic_temperament ), and others still are systematically taking stimulants, prescribed or not. And then there are extroverts and introverts.

There is little doubt it is biological, it's just that this aspect of natural biological diversity is poorly studied.

Nature would lend itself to more mutability, if only people decided to drop the pretense that "attitude" is the only differentiator. It is not.

A lot of it really is just time management, minimize things that don't matter, and maintaining your mental and physical health. I am by no means part of this elite class referenced - but I am able to keep up with a demanding job, full time school, and a large family well enough.

A couple of books I can recommend on the subjects are Cal Newport's "Deep Work" and Greg McKeown's "Essentialism".

Well, I find that when a project is chosen by me, and belongs to me, or when it’s something me and a few friends are doing together by choice, it’s very very easy to feel motivated. I only have problems when I’m doing tasks chosen by someone else, which benefit someone else, and are owned by someone else. And you know, if you’re working class most of your projects fall in the latter category. Whereas if you’re in the ruling or owning class most projects are in the former category.

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