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Comment by kayodelycaon | Hacker News Reader

Grit is defined as "the perseverance and passion to achieve long–term goals".

I have a lot of mental health challenges and completely lack the reserve capacity most people have. The advice to "suck it up and do it" fails spectacularly with me. At best, I burn out mid-day. At worst, I burn out for several weeks.

This doesn't preclude having grit.

I work to know myself and my limits. Other people do not get to define my limitations. I know me, they don't. I will never "live up to my potential" in their eyes.

To them, I lack grit in all its forms.

But grit isn't about each day, it's about the long term. If I have to give up today, it's only so I can be ready for tomorrow. Every day is a chance to start again.

That is the very definition of perseverance. It's a choice to keep going after being defeated.

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I identify with this.

I heard somewhere that certain high performing folks only need five hours of sleep a night. I tried this for a week and it was a disaster. Damage to work. Damage to relatonships, etc.

But it did lead me to a years long experiment to discover my limits for sleep (while also struggling to understand how diet and caffeine intake interact).

I just finished a year where I aimed for 49 hours of sleep per week (5 nights of 6 hours, 2 nights of 8 hours, 1 or 2 naps of 1.5-3 hrs), and after 11+ months I started having the same problems I had from the initial 5hr/night experiment that last only a week.

So I've accepted I'm not a 35/hr a week guy. I might be a 45/hr a week guy, with precise diet/exercise/caffeine dosing, but in the meantime I'm comfortable accepting decent productivity at 55/hr a week.

There's that old tale of the people chopping wood but one takes a bunch of breaks but chops way more wood than the other, and it turns out every time they took a break that they were sharpening their axe.

That's what sleep is to me, the most effective nootropic "sharpening the axe" you can do for your productivity. Unfortunately, that doesn't quantify easily like "hours of sleep" so it's harder to track.

I'm not a sleep scientist, but Fitbit's advanced sleep tracking has been a boon for me to collect data on how I'm sleeping.

I agree with everything you're saying here. I'm sorry others do not see grit in you from their perspective. That must be a continually frustrating struggle.

Are you able to speak more about your daily processes?

How do you work to know yourself and your limits? How do you know if you're being lazy or recuperating? If grit isn't about each day then what psychological stat is?

I'm not the parent commentor, but I have MS which presents a lot of similar issues.

For me, the main things I use to determine my limits are:

- "Does doing this increase my odds of a relapse?": There are correlations between stress and risk of relapse, so I manage my stress very closely.

- "Is doing this/pushing through sustainable, or will I need to borrow energy/sleep more/create issues going forward?": This one is hard because it involves knowing oneself and one's triggers and body very well. Like I'll down a shit ton of aspirin and Benedryl to work through migraines because I know they're brought on by either quick changes in barometric pressure or my menstrual cycle, which resolve quickly and can't spiral into worse problems. MS heat intolerance, on the other hand, means I need to stop and rest if I end up too warm because my nerves will be fried until I rest even if the weather does cool down.

> Are you able to speak more about your daily processes?

My life is defined by the absence of process and discipline. It's basically managed chaos. I do what I can, when I can.

The one process I have nailed down is medication. I use a pill planner and make it a habit to check it any time I can't remember if I took my medication. I use alarms because they are difficult to ignore and I can hit the snooze button if I'm busy. Reminders and calendar events don't work.

> How do you work to know yourself and your limits?

I've learned how my body and mind feels when I'm running low. I started with a mood tracking application, but once I learned to operate by feel, it became automatic. Once that problem was offloaded, I stopped using the app.

My therapist gave me some great advice: "go with what works". If an app becomes work that I start to avoid, then it's time to switch strategies.

> How do you know if you're being lazy or recuperating?

I generally give myself 15~30 minutes to get started on something. If I can't manage any useful focus, I move to something I can accomplish.

I may look lazy from the outside but I've had to be told by everyone (friends, family, doctor, therapist, support group, manager, etc) to slow down and take care of myself. That's been hard to accept but my productivity and happiness has greatly increased since I started doing that.

> If grit isn't about each day then what psychological stat is?

People aren't robots. We all have good days and bad days. There is no one stat, only patterns and trendlines. In a way, it's heartening. We can always make better decisions tomorrow. :)

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