Finding the Joy in Feeling Tired | Hacker News Reader

Finding the Joy in Feeling Tired

jeanhsu.substack.com

71 pointskiyanwang41 comments

There were some reasonable bits in here, but there is just enough typical, ridiculous Silicon Valley nonsense to largely turn me off from the article.

> I actually got a lot done

In an article that seems to be promoting the idea of relaxing and taking a break once in a while, the author couldn't resist sneaking in nod to the typical fetishistic obsession for constant productivity that is endemic in this crowd. It seems like we're told that it is possible to relax AND be productive. Is it so unreasonable to disconnect from work every once in a while without worrying about being "productive?"

> Metrics are useful

No they aren't, not for this. There is something seriously wrong with someone if they need a $300 piece of equipment (+ a few hundred more $ for the phone to connect to it) in order to understand something so fundamental about their bodies. We aren't talking a diagnostic imaging to find a suspected tumor here. We're talking about being tired. This is absurd.

EDIT: Small typos

The author's not talking about rest; they're talking about accepting tiredness.

Well what does that even mean if you don't follow that up with some good 'ol R&R?

I have one of those rings. I bought it because I like gadgets. I think I know what the author is getting at - it's nice to have a soulless device tell you yes, you aren't imagining it, you're having a down day. Take it easy on yourself.

But isn't that the core issue with "these" people: they have lost the ability to be able to interpret their body's sensations and warning signals and burn out as a result?

I'm not excempt from this. But the urge to substitute bodily awareness with sensory gadgets seems to gather religious proportions in some circles.

People can be surprisingly good at blocking out signals, especially when they have learned to regard a signal as broken and unhelpful.

Aron Ralston, the guy that 127 Hours is based on, in his memoir singles out a specific moment in his childhood when he decided to disregard his sense of fear, because it was paralyzing him and stopping him from doing normal things with his friends like skiing. Operating without regard for fear was obviously not a great fix. As an adult he lost friends who refused to go into the backcountry with him because he took irresponsible risks that put them in danger. Then he lost his arm.

People who struggle with depression have the same adversarial relationship with fatigue. When you spend much of your life struggling to force yourself to go when your brain says stop, you start to take a cynical attitude toward your sense of fatigue. It's a chronic liar, a stopped clock, the boy who cried wolf. On the other hand, once in a while it's telling the truth.

Anxiety can present as fatigue as well. When your brain is afraid of something, inducing a sense of fatigue is an easy way to avoid it.

When you can't trust your sense of fatigue, there's no simple rule for handling it. It's dangerous to ignore it, but on the other hand, you can't just trust it, because then you'd spend most of your life in bed. Maybe today the right answer is to "find joy in it" (barf) but tomorrow the right answer is to suck it up and work through it. There's no inspirational slogan that solves it. You just do your best to figure it out every day.

More people need to just work out. If you lift on a regular basis and you're having a day where you don't feel great, you'll know for certain very quickly if it's a "real" down day or not, without needing some special ring, because you'll miss lifts. It's somewhat true of cardio, too, but it's much more possible with extremely low energy output per rep exercise to just power through and do it. With strength training, you'll know for certain when your strength isn't there.

That sounds like a great system - for some people.

I am way too tired to read all of this. But jokes aside, when you're tired, just give yourself time to rest. The solution isn't "how to be productive when you're tired", but rather "how to rest in a healthy way and managing your focus so that it's there when you need it".

You might think you're just tired for no reason, it's not burnout or physical condition. But you are always tired for a reason even if it's not clear at first. Pushing on work when you're tired is a straight shot to burnout even if you're sure that's not the reason. Whatever the reason is, your body is telling you to take it easy and you should listen.

Whatever you do, don't condition yourself to be productive when tired. This is not the way. If you're often tired for no apparent reason, and resting doesn't help, you need to change something. Consult a doctor, a nutritionist, look into your environment and ergonomics, make time to work out a bit, see an eye doctor (yes!) or even try therapy.

That was an interesting read. At first I suspected it might be about ignoring one's own physical/mental well-being in order to be more productive, but it's more nuanced than that. I feel like the message is encapsulated by the following lines towards the end:

> My brain felt slower, so I couldn’t worry as much about the future. I couldn’t multi-task too well, so I just made my way through one thing at a time. I was too tired to be irritable with my kids and partner.

and also by this line in the comments:

> this is a very real first-hand account of the joy of giving yourself permission to focus

I've noticed in the past couple of years that my anxiety levels decrease significantly when I get ill. I put it down to a combination of internalising that the office is not that important, and being too tired to ruminate on negative thoughts.

The trick now is to practise bringing that into my normal every day mindset. Turns out it's very difficult!

I noticed several times that I can become hyper-efficient when I am extremely tired. I attribute to "not thinking so much" when being tired, and its probably as simple as the frontal lobe being less used, I think anyway. I just think a lot less cleverly and do rote stuff instead, but really quickly and without delays.

Colloquially we call that "stacking cans". Works best when brain is in low-activity mode.

> I've noticed in the past couple of years that my anxiety levels decrease significantly when I get ill.

Gosh that's really interesting to read. I suffer from huge anxiety at work but this summer was sick for 3 weeks (but still able to attend work). I was much more "relaxed" in my interactions with people and in a strange way got through the daily workload with less stress.

As you say, I think my excess thoughts and worries were "dampened down" by the illness (and my perspective about the office changed).

FWIW there’s anecdata out there that neurodivergent people (eg autists) get symptom improvements when they are ill. Maybe it’s a related mechanism for anxiety.

I've heard of that as well. There's a UK TV programme called The A Word about boy with autism, and in one episode his mother believes that he's suddenly developed a "normal" theory of mind, only to find out that it may be linked to his being ill.

Although I don't have a diagnosis myself I do struggle with executive functioning and much of my anxiety is tied into that. Being ill definitely relieves this because there are no expectations on me to get things done to a schedule.

I can relate a lot. Are you aware of PDA (pathological demand avoidance)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_demand_avoidance

No, thank you for the reference. That's interesting, I don't have an issue with doing things that are asked of me but I do get easily overwhelmed when I have to start managing demands or expectations (e.g. by maintaining and committing to a schedule/roadmap). Then I have a tendency to distract myself with things that are more fun. I much prefer an academic style of work where I complete jobs as and when I feel in the zone.

Quite an interesting read. I’d make a distinction between tired and drained. There are EOD that I feel tired but deeply satisfied because I did what I had to do, was productive, and what I did was something worth doing. On the contrary there are EOD when I’ve been very busy, meetings, complicated conversations, disagreements, and such… those days I just feel drained, exhausted and don’t really find any joy in that.

Two things come from that, the first being that doing nothing is terribly unsatisfactory for me, it is in doing that I find that my hours have been well used, and is not just $WORK but being intentional about doing and then having the satisfaction of having done.

The second is that a day when I’m tired in such fashion is often the time that I’m inspired to make some dinner or spend time with family, call a friend, or some other thing that I usually consider healthy, while the days that I’m drained usually have evenings wasted on hours of YouTube or Netflix that I really didn’t care for, thus wasted, all just a blur only to realize that is past midnight…

Thus nowadays I strive to be more tired and less drained :)

Chronic fatigue is always feeling tired but not as in “not enough sleep” but more like “running on low octane fuel”. I try to find joy in the doing less even though it is kind of frustrating. Keeping up with normal life is a challenge let alone being ambitious.

I'm frequently tired due to depression and/or lack of sleep. Pushing through and trying to work in a degraded state never ends well.

Neurotypical people have far more reserves that I do, but they will eventually hit the same walls. If your body is tired, it's trying to tell you something. You may be able to ignore this time without too much trouble because you're relatively healthy.

A neurotypical person can go for years like this, but all you're doing is training yourself to ignore warning signs. Your body starts warning you more loudly and more frequently. But you're numb to it. Then something breaks and you're in for a long recovery.

This is fascinating and timely for me. I've recently been on some deadlines that have more or less required 36-hour shifts on my part (yes, my choice; yes, entirely unsustainable and likely unhealthy) and have experienced what the author describes.

There's been a real liberating feeling of throwing off the culturally imposed standard working, wake, and sleeping hours and going forward with a sense of: "alright, we're awake, we know what we need to do, and we're going to keep trying to do that until we can't"

The nights in the city are sublimely quiet in a way I haven't appreciated in the past. Living on a busy road, I now could practically set my clocks to the rumble of the first trucks barrelling by in the five o'clock hour.

There is an obvious, from within the state of tired-mind, connection to moderate drunkenness. Inhibitions are lowered, and in my experience it lowers the barrier to action that I've tangled with for most of my adult life. It's an interesting variant of "fuck it, it's gotta get done, let's do it" — not just the work you intend, but for the chores and other tediums previously put off.

Anyway, there's a substantial cognitive deficit after 30 hours. Time for a nap.

I've noticed an interesting paradox...

If you get up early, before you are well rested, your body will shake it off and make it's way through the day. And that evening you will sleep harder.

(I'm not saying get three hours sleep and be unproductive all day)

Meanwhile if you sleep until you feel seriously well rested, you might not sleep as well that night, and the next day might not be as good.

A perfect amount of tired is what you need to balance.

Wholeheartedly agree with the thrust of the post.

I don't know anything about the author. Perhaps she has specific risk factors or is somehow immunocompromised, but barring that...

> societal tiredness from being in a pandemic, from having to constantly re-evaluate risk factors

This strikes me as a bit obsessive, absent some other details that explain this. If you're relatively young and healthy, I don't see why one would be thinking very much about COVID at this late time (Sept 2022 when she posted this). Am I underestimating the varying impact COVID has on people? I could understand this a couple of years ago, but I think remaining very focused on COVID (again, for most healthy individuals) at this point is a bit of a pathology and something the media perhaps encouraged. I dunno, just my 2c

The book "How to Be Idle" by Tom Hodgkinson is an interesting read that has a similar viewpoint

Lauded Stanford sleep researcher William Dement has done a lot of work to characterize fatigue and drowsiness. Generally speaking his conclusion is that sleep debt is extremely common and also damaging. He gave an hour talk at Google going over many of his results. His manner in this is informal and drags a bit but the information is potentially extremely valuable for anyone experiencing the feeling of tiredness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8 Personal Growth Series: Dr. William Dement on Healthy Sleep and Optimal Performance

One of the great joys I’ve discovered recently is learning when and how to rest. The “when” being a feeling thing and the how I’ve found long form TV shows to provide a good space for that.

> And I didn’t just hole up at home because I was too tired to do anything.

If you are 'just holed up at home' you aren't resting 'correctly'? Otherwise why pat yourself on the back for not doing it?

> I found a good balance of still doing stuff like meeting up with friends and having leisurely time at home.

I think I'd prefer my friends to 'hole up at home' if they are feeling off. It may be something contagious that hasn't come to a head yet.

> My brain felt slower, so I couldn’t worry as much about the future. I couldn’t multi-task too well, so I just made my way through one thing at a time.

I found I could lean into this and be hyper efficient as well. If I mixed it with only a dash of anxiety I could get a lot of work done without getting distracted. I usually hit that stride between 1am - 4am and can get days worth of work done in that time. It almost feels like a super power sometimes.

I have barely slept all week because I’m taking care of a sick dog. Feeling tired is not bringing me any joy. All the benefits of being tired can be enjoyed when not feeling tired if you know how to take good care of yourself.

I want to sleep so badly right now. What is this magical world where all you have to do is get tired and then you somehow get a free pass to go rest?

Great article.

My biggest challenge is that when I plan to take whole days to recover or have fun, I end up falling sick or my kids/spouse do.

It’s usually a reminder to take more frequent time off rather than wait until after a long grind at work. The analogy of not waiting for your gas tank to be empty to get more fuel comes to mind.

Part of how they were able to do this is that they have independent kids (reading age, able to self-care/entertain) so there is a possibility for a day off with little preparation. This isn’t the case for most parents I know, including myself.

> perhaps that your tiredness is from the general societal tiredness from being in a pandemic, from having to constantly re-evaluate risk factors, from not getting the typical recharge activities that we all so desperately need

Was this written two years ago?

I’m an alter cocker and I feel way too tired all morning and not tired enough when it’s time to go to sleep.

I know a lot of people who feel tired all the time. it seems to be everywhere and getting worse...

It's very difficult to get diagnosed and there are many possible causes - hormonal disruptions, nutritional deficiencies, sleep apnea, covid, depression... Depending on your healthcare provider it might be difficult to even to be taken seriously.

There are many causes, sure, but why does it happen to so many people simultaneously?

Our bodies are not designed for modern life, and our constant attempts to "deal with it" manifest as stress and tiredness.

What are you implying?

Imagine some medieval equivalent of the ordinary modern suburban household.

In particular, the lighting and the entertainment available.

It'd have to be some kind of grand, once-in-a-lifetime celebration at a palace, right? To even get close. A real blow-out. Gotta be royalty, and powerful royalty, not just some minor prince. This is empire at its fullest.

Thousands of mirror-backed candles burning, a dozen of the best musicians from the known world, a dozen troupes of players, a dozen master storytellers, all taking requests. Ambassadors with news from the farthest reaches of the world. Wizards, philosophers, writers, ready and willing to bend your ear. Jugglers, game-tables, and sports—lit by torch-bearing servants aplenty, why not, even in the depths of night? Your friends are there, to chat and gossip with. All the notables from a hundred courts with their own juicy tales. Merchants, aggressively hawking the latest and greatest wares that the wealth of three continents could provide.

And that's before we even consider the sex shows! Anything your heart (ahem) desires is there.

And the party never sleeps. You might, but it's always there, any time you like.

Ponder the following:

1) If there were a fable about a palace that kept this kind of revelry up for a whole year, what might the lesson be? How would you expect living in that environment to go? How would the kingdom do during this time?

2) The above is in some ways less distracting and tempting than the way we all actually live, right now.

Really nice not to say masterful comment - thanks

What strikes me about this metaphoric description is that I'd much rather be in the real-life scenario. Listening to a streaming service gives you plenty of options, but it's nothing like a live show. News are coming from afar, but there is no mystery of far-off lands anymore, only anxiety as to what is happening all over the place and a sense of nothing being there than you can particularly control. A banquet is going to be much better in the same room than over Discord. I'll skip the pornography aspect as some consider it a trap and others a boon, but overall the only part that is genuinely better is the easy access to books and knowledge.

I loved your comment, however. Definitely storing the analogy for later use.

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