Hacker News Reader

Comment by EddySchauHai | Hacker News Reader

Exercise, drop the drugs, ensure you have some part of your identity unrelated to work.

I was in a rut for years because my work was my identity and I wasn’t where I wanted to be (thank you effective altruism for the identity crisis lol). When I moved out to California I quit drinking (for a while, quit again more recently), focused on exercising, and set a goal of not seeing my whole identity as a software developer. It helped so much with my physical and mental health, and in turn that helped me with my work life.

Honestly if you just view work as a source of income to do the things you want to do, and get out and be a bit more active, you could get out of the rut pretty quickly.

And if you don’t care for any of these suggestions - just stay positive these things are temporary and you’ll feel better in time anyway :) We all have these moments.

View on HN

Everyone says this: work out, eat good, sleep well, let go of bullshit and get the girl. The problem is that while it often works, no one seems to understand why it does - or why it doesn't work for a lot of people.

Taking care of your health and general well-being is a basic activity at some point and may not give you the necessary emotional boost to escape your own hand carved rut. The real issue is that you need to do something that makes you proud of yourself. That's what "exercise and get off drugs" advice is really trying to say, but it's never a one size fits all like everyone makes it seem.

People can gather their sense of pride from a lot of things: from helping others, to cleaning their room, to climbing Mount Everest. Maybe they feel pride from cooking a perfect lasagna or by praying every night. OP should do some soul searching and figure out why he isn't proud of himself and... make the necessary corrections.

EDIT: Apologies EddySchauHai! I mean to agree with you but also acknowledge that different things scratch that invisible itch for different people, and at different times in their lives.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Exercise, sleep, healthy diet and foundational to balancing your body and mind. Research shows the best way to increase dopamine and serotonin is through these consistent, simple habits. Also getting more sunlight.

Once you've covered your bases, then you can work on the spirit. The last level is self-actualization. Work in itself is only a means in expressing your existence. Either it funds your lifestyle, and that's what we call a job, or it can bring fulfillment, which we call a vocation.

This is just my mental model for a good life, but I think it's a solid start for building your own.

Out of interest do you know of any specific papers showing that Maslow's hierarchy of needs (or just what it recommends) is a good way of increasing dopamine and serotonin? I've heard of dopamine diets where you give up media etc for a few days to 'reset' so to speak, so assumed the absolute basics would decrease the amount. But I also have little to no understanding of this :)

For sure, nothing is one-size-fits-all in life!

I agree, at least in spirit.

I exercise 2 hours per day, 5 times a week, and eat healthy food: vegetables, protein, no snacks, low sugar, low salt, no ketchup, no mustard, no mayonnaise, no oil for cooking, basically anything doctors recommend, I do it, and I have been doing it for the last 5 years or so.

Does it help? Probably.

Do I still feel constant dread? Yes, every single day, but I learned to live with that feeling and focus on the happiness between work hours.

You don't have to be militant about health/exercise to get real world positive effects out of it though. Many people talk about how much better they feel after a 30 min run in the morning shrug

>> Many people talk about how much better they feel after a 30 min run

You don't even need to run. Starting your day with a 15min walk has huge benefits. Maybe someday most people can actually enjoy their physical activities but start by forcing yourself to do something, similar to flossing your teeth, will form the habit and give you a taste of the positive benefits.

Yeah the goal is to enjoy life and being healthy makes that possible for longer. I try to eat healthy but no one is keeping me away from my occasional cheesy pasta or burger. No one.

Please add animal fats or olive oil to your diet. The modern processed oils are bad. Animal based fats or olive, coconut and other traditional oils are better. Avoid palm, corn, vegetable oil. Also salt is healthy. Check out the channel what I've learned on youtube.

All oils and added fats are bad for people with heart problems or those at risk of them.

The right types of oils will reduce heart issues. Eating a carb heavy oil free / fat free life will kill you.

My father had a heart attack at 43. In response, he dropped red meat and dairy and had to have stents put in 2 years later as his condition deteriorated.

He stopped eating any foods with added oils, as well as anything fatty like nuts and avocados. He eats absolutely zero oil, just basic grains with vegetables and fruits. Ten years later and his doctor says, aside from the stents, he shows no signs of heart disease at all.

Anecdotal improvement aside, your statement about high carbs/low oil being unsustainable is false.

This anecdote is contrary to actual medical advice and does not suffice as evidence against the mountains of research.

You need dietary fats to be healthy, and healthy sources like fish and nuts are often recommended by doctors and dieticians to improve cardiovascular health.

The US also has a very poor handle on heart disease; almost 10% of men in the US have coronary heart disease. The recommended strategies aren’t working.

The recommended strategies aren't being taken by patients.

Diet and exercise recommendations work in the overwhelming majority of people who actually follow them.

This is validated by mountains of research.

The reason we have such poor health outcomes in the US is because people have such terrible diets and sedentary lifestyles which are contrary to those recommendations. And as these lifestyle choices are being adopted in other countries, you see their populations starting to have similarly bad health outcomes of the same kind (e.g., diabetes, hypertension, etc.).

All of this is extremely well-understood.

This guy gets it. It's crazy how corporate interests so thoroughly warped the common man's and even medical professionals understanding.

Yeah I don’t know about OPs health obviously, but he’s describing a lot of the DASH diet which is known to help those with hypertension.

Nope. Eating healthy fats and protein is am absolute requirement for long term health. However you don't need to eat carbs at all. The body produces the little you need.

You can try breaking those habits for a few months and see how you feel haha. Health is something we easily take for granted when we have it.

I also recommend some form of mindfulness, whether it's being fully present during a workout, or just sitting in the sun for 10 minutes in the morning.

The feeling of burnout/constant dread is a tiredness of the spirit. Physical nourishment and exercise can only provide so much. You gotta feed the soul too.

Why no mustard? Everything else you mentioned is stuff I know, but I eat quite a bit of Dijon.

2 hours a day spent exercising? It must be something you really love. I bike to work and back everyday no matter what that’s 40 minutes exercise for me. I also go to gym couple of times a week that’s already hard to fit in my schedule

Only thing I would add is get a partner if you don't have one already. Life is incredibly lonely to go through alone. I've heard that you can be happy alone for long periods, but I have never seen it in practice.

+1 on exercise, this helps me when I get down. Not only because I spend time outside and clear my head and feel better after, but also because it helps me meet people. I'm not very social to begin with and even more so when I'm in a rut and I've met a lot of people hiking or running and ended up having a good conversation which helped me.

Another +1 for exercise.

A great thing with it is that you can just basically force yourself to do it, and still reap the rewards.

I find it's much easier to procrastinate when I don't feel like working. But if I just push myself to go out for a walk or lift some weights, once I get going I'll usually see it through and feel much better afterwards. It doesn't even have to be much, just a few rounds of pushups and squats (without weights) is enough to get the blood flowing and get my spirits back up. There's something about feeling your body working that's very mentally relaxing.

Bonus points for this having an effect on my food cravings, which I've seen have an effect on mood. I think there was a related thread on HN recently, but I can't seem to find it.

This is good advice, but depression can make these things hard to accomplish.

I’ve experienced this before — falling into a rut, becoming depressed and having extraordinary difficulty getting back up. It’s like a motivation off-switch.

Talk therapy is good. Try to find a therapist that you can trust.

Don’t be afraid of anti-depressants, especially for something likely to be shorter term like this. They don’t change your personality (although you might put on 3 to 5 lbs).

Are you being treated for ADHD? Some people with ADHD find that their depression goes away when they take psychostimulants or practice CBT to manage their symptoms.

+1 for CBT. Exercise and good diet might take you so far, but not all the way. If you won't work on your mind, and the problems that accumulated there you won't go 100%.

What helped me out is finding a good information about CBT and its principles, where it explained clearly in simple terms. After that - actually doing the work myself. I did journal different situations that produced strong negative emotions or body reactions throughout the day for 3 months. Event-Thought-Emotion-Reaction. That helped out to find running themes in my head. Then afterwards every 2 weeks I went through the journal and wrote down alternative thoughts for it.

Remember when you going to the talk therapist you are expecting them to solve your problem, to give you the pill that solves everything. That won't work. You must do the job in the first place. With good information you don't even need to go to the therapist, you just need to be desperate enough that you start actually working on it. At least that what worked for me. Meditation is also pretty good, but same as exercise won't take you all the way there

As someone who has been struggling with ADHD their entire adult life. Last week was my first time back on treatment in 15 years. It felt like the brain fog had been lifted and I could think clearly for the first time ever. My situation has been much the same lately.

I will also do a +1 for exercise & talking to a therapist.[though I'm still trying to find one]

+1000

Thanks for mentioning this. If it’s depression then talking to a doctor is really important, and if you’re unsure of wether it’s a rut or depression then err on the side of caution and speak to a doctor. There’s apps like Talking Space that let you speak to a therapist if you’d rather go ‘off the books’ so to speak.

Ok so now, can I go directly to a therapist or do I need to fight a bureaucratic machine to get a recommendation or some shit.

Check out Talking Space - it’s expensive but let’s you speak to someone without a referral and have access almost 24/7. I’ve heard good things. And there is some trust-based discounts that help price wise. No affiliation with them btw!

> ensure you have some part of your identity unrelated to work

I don't want to be that guy, but this is one thing religion helps with.

If your identity is based on anything physical (e.g. family, money, looks, career, etc.) it's fragile and can be lost easily, but if it's a constant not part of the physical world, it can help live life more resiliently.

Does active atheism help in this ? Sometimes when i listen to talks by people who advocate atheism and rationalism, I feel good for a while. But I am not sure if that is what you are talking about.

I used to regularly talk/text to people interested in these things about what I see/learnt about atheism and spend time making fun of religions ( within our circle ).

Belief can be fragile too and can easily be lost. I am not very spiritual or religious myself but from what I observe with religious parts of my family and friends there is really nothing resilient about their beliefes - they need constant refreshing and practice otherwise doubt quickly creeps in (and there is a lot of ways doubt can come in - most of religious beliefs and rituals is selfserving and does not go well with critical thinking)

I might quibble a bit with the 'just stay positive' line, but the "identity that's unrelated to work" is so real, crucial, and easy to overlook. Trying to jam a sense of life purpose that's a circle into a square hole of "make money" just leads to being miserable for the sake of being miserable.

Well what worked for me might not work for them - no one will get out of a rut without positivity though. Maybe getting high and playing video games is the solution and the guy goes full time streamer and loves his work all of a sudden! Who knows :)

I don't think anyone takes issue with your belief that you need to get positive, more as advice it sounds similar to "get confident" or other "outcomes as strategies" statements.

That’s fair, good point :)

To this I would add, make sure you have a great support network, be it friends, family, significant other or even co-workers. Also, never underestimate the benefits of a decent therapist.

The weed is only contributing to your depression. You may think it helps you escape, but it actually is making it worse.

Cannot stress enough how much exercise helps. A healthy body goes a long way in maintaining a healthy mind.

How did you go about achieving that identity goal?

I’ve worked remotely for years beyond the start of Covid so my personal and work life had morphed into one. The key thing here was disassociating the two with clear boundaries. Also, I tried to stop comparing myself to others I see on sites like HN and LinkedIn who have these ‘perfect’ careers and focus on improving myself only against myself (and at a slower pace, one summer I spent the entire time on Coursera as if life was some sort of sprint and knowledge was a competition, which it really isn’t). Basically I just had to chill out and get a life, ha :)

Yes, how did you find it ?

Devils advocate; I ditched video games, TV, mindless social media, internet scrolling, but kept the daily 420 and coffee (caffeine is a psychoactive too) and I get more technical work done than ever.

In the end the weed makes what I’m doing feel more interesting. Media is designed to be interesting; together, too much stimulus.

Like remote or in office, it’s too subjective to say what is exactly right or not for others.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com