Stamina Is a Quiet Advantage

I’m not sure I can connect to any particular moment or chain of events (that will probably take some soul searching) to point to as a cause, but I’ve become conscious of a reduced (though not entirely severed) connection to my emotions in recent years. There are times where feelings will come through with strength similar to how they used to, but much of the time sensations are dulled. This has naturally had negative effects on my ability to make choices purely based on personal pleasure, too, which can be a problem when e.g. I’m spending an evening out with a friend and they ask what I’d like to do — sometimes answering is difficult because even if I have a preference, it’s not surfacing itself which makes it seem that the decision makes no difference.

Something that helped was re-connecting with the past version of myself by going through some truly ancient computer backups. To some extent it put me back into my prior mindset, and so now at least I’m doing things explicitly because I want to and find doing them enjoyable.

I can only theorize on what might finish returning me back to how I used to be, but I think probably the most beneficial thing would be a hard break from most of my responsibilities for an extended period of time which I can then dedicate to myself, probably somewhere between 6 months and 2+ years. That’s not exactly practical though because I have a mortgage and bills to pay.

> My hypothesis is that I spent so much time compartmentalizing emotions like anxiety, grief, sorrow, and hurt in order to keep moving forward that I got too good at stuffing them in a box. The only way to avoid being overwhelmed by them was to sever my connection to all of my feelings, which meant I lost access to joy, humor, whimsy, and passion too.

You know, actually, I think this is what it is too. I had a terrible therapist for ~7 years that always tried to get me to avoid/mitigate uncomfortable emotions but I always felt it was making the issue worse. When I broke away from therapy in favor of things like meditation/philosophy, in some sessions, I felt ancient grief/pain bubbling up in ways that were overwhelming, but always felt way better afterwards. This isn't easy to do though and is taxing in itself. Some people need substances to do it, or hypnosis. I do think it's something to do with this though.

I'm about 4 years out from my no good, very bad 6 months. The similarities are a bit eerie. This happened while working a high stress product management job and I realized I was in the middle of burning out and had to do something about it.

Thankfully I had the resources to self-fund an extended sabbatical, and I left my job. In many ways this has been incredible and has helped immensely. But in many ways, it made the grief even more central in my life because I was no longer spending my days solving other people's problems.

Therapy has been immensely helpful, but I've struggled with integration. To this end, I'm about to experiment with psychedelic-assisted therapy. I've tried a lot of things up to this point, but I'm actually pretty optimistic about this. We'll see.

I'm now in this weird middle place where I recognize a growing need to do something useful and to work on big problems. But I'm also depressed and struggling to imagine returning back to what I was doing. I think the 2nd half of my career may be simpler and more focused.

completely unrelated but the end of your comment really reminded me of the popular tv series Severance.

You might find it interesting. Anyway best of luck healing! You’ve been through a lot.

Overall, would you say it was worth it? I'm asking because I feel like I'm getting myself into a comparable situation.

Former founder now small-time entrepreneur and this resonates with me. I know what I’m capable of when I turn on the switch but I also know the sacrifices it entails. Not willing to go into that mode so someone else can profit in my behalf.

The energy of youth seems impossible to separate from the optimism. I suspect you could find enormous stamina in older folks for a goal that can rekindle their optimism.

This is a good point other commenters have alluded to, and funny enough, my very first job out of school taught me this lesson - I was hired by a professor in my 2nd to last quarter, in a startup <10 people that was mostly his PHD students. It felt exciting, and this was like, peak startup era - we didn't have a bad product, just a bad/nonexistent way of monetizing. I had some equity but not enough to be working/stressing as hard as I was with how it played out.

Of course, it fell apart in the most obnoxious way possible. We assumed we'd be receiving a series B, that didnt appear, and then tried to monetize aggressively at the last second, got some buyout offers that would have been life-changing money for me at that time, that for whatever reason the founders/board would not accept, boom, no paycheck 6 months later followed by a few months of being shopped around for no pay, basically held hostage, then collapse.

I am kind of glad it happened, I laugh at equity offers or "bonuses" now from startups. The one piece of equity that has cashed on me in my career so far was in the very very low 5 figures. Lol. Less than a cost of living adjustment when averaged over the course of that employment.

Then why does the dwindling inner reserve seem to line up so neatly to completed objectives? E.g. you successfully emerge from the dark period, but are unwilling or unmotivated to grind through another. The end of a struggle is not usually conveniently timed to match your age.

I agree, although I don't know that it's specifically a chronological function. I'm starting to think of aging as just an accumulation of abuse and trauma. Maybe that's physiological - sun exposure, broken bones that didn't heal quite right, whatever. But it's also mental. The parent comment is a great example, but there are basically an unending number of them. Loss of family or friends. Financial struggles. Mental illness. It all just adds up.

This is good advice in general, but feels like it’s missing the point of what it’s replying to.

Concretely, it assumes a lot of agency.

The words “major life calamities and personal loss”, were key words that really change the amount of agency it’s reasonable to assume.

Neither does burnout - despite the name it's not like a lightbulb burning out after which it's impossible for it to produce more light. It's an emotional thing where you don't want to any more.

How did you recover?

I have asked myself this question a lot over the last few years - I don't know. I always want to say no, I wouldn't have done it. But, likely, the stress/instability of living with such a low wage would have caused irrecoverable circumstances at some point, so I guess whatever state I exist in now is probably better than the version of me that would exist had I not pursued my degree.

I am the first generation from my dad's side, who descended from slaves, to get a college degree (or really HS degree if we only include my paternal lineage). So it was a big deal. For me though, my career hasn't been the blazing success I'd expected it to have been, and I didn't end up doing remotely what I thought I would do. I 10x'd my income from college within 5 years, which felt like a big deal, til inflation blew the crap out of that, my meager savings were all but obliterated due to a series of bad financial moves/timing, and I am starting to hit a ceiling where 2xing my salary in a few years is no longer a reasonable expectation. So, I feel stagnant and unsatisfied, and I guess in my worst moments I'd prefer to have never gone through it. My life's materially better, I'm not at risk of starving anymore, and I got some health problems fixed. yet, some of the best people I met while in college I tossed aside because there simply was no time for them + what I was trying to do, very honestly - so I am very alone now, and tossed aside things like settling down in favor of getting ahead, which was another thing I had to kind of give up for a while.

But, I suspect, deep down, I would have done it anyway, or I wouldn't have ended up here. I didn't want to do it then either but I did, for whatever reason.

No, stubbornness plus being right are the most valuable trait a scientist can have. A whole lot of scientists were stubbornly wrong and are justifiably forgotten.

Stephen J. Gould wrote many of his Natural History magazine essays on these sorts of scientists. The most notable example would probably be Louis Agassiz, who was enormously famous in their own time, but held out stubbornly against evolution, and most of these stubborn scientists today are mere footnotes if they are remembered at all. (Agassiz also was a huge player in scientific racism- his special flavor of the idea was that Black and White people- as Americans defined them- were separate species created separately by God. Again he held onto this idea long after it had gone out of vogue with the rest of the scientific community.) He was the head of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, was hugely prominent in his time, and his stubbornness in defense of wrong ideas is why he had his name removed from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and elsewhere.

It can work both ways though, I've had projects that I kept going far beyond what was sensible.

Raw intelligence is just another tool in the toolbox. Sure, it gives advantage if used right, or massive disadvantage (often paired with ocd-ish behavior, general unhappiness since one sees more what a clown show real world often is and who often gets success).

Not ashamed to say - I am not anyhow special re intelligence compared to my most of my uni peers, I struggled with memory too, a lot of endless rota. I was lets say above average on high school and thats it, facing same memory & non-stellar intelligence issues. So I learned to work longer on stuff, learning, everything, not giving up quickly, simply more patience. Saw this already on uni - bright folks were so unused to putting in effort from high school (which they coursed through effortlessly), they hit literal wall on uni.

At the end, I left most of those peers behind professionally, financially and life fulfillment wise, some non-easy choices with long term consequences. A lot of folks jump to their comfort zones way too early and eagerly. I've had some luck too but luck is just wasted chances if not prepared to seize them and take some risks.

When one hits those few crucial moments in life when big-consequence choices are done (which uni, which job, who to marry, where to settle etc), stamina can mean choosing more intense path with rewards in future, instead of going for the easy and a bit safer path from step #1.

in a sense, yes, because distraction and "success" are just different types of work. you're burning neurons either way.

the important thing is to latch onto the the independent variables, the knobs you can turn.

BJ Fogg's book Tiny Habits is great, particularly about the important of motivation vs ability in starting new routines. His main point is that ability relative to the task is much more important than motivation, because motivation is volatile. That is, it's much more likely that your ability to do something will remain stable long term than your motivation to do something. So if you choose really easy things to do to start a new habit (drink a glass of water in the morning), your motivation won't matter much, and the habit will stick.

https://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Habits-Changes-Change-Everything...

So I think Piers is skating over that very important part of the equation.

Another piece of it is, if you manage to get healthy somehow, sleep better etc, then your motivation changes; the base level is reset. You have more energy to spare which you can devote to goals.

But I think there is a simpler way to think about motivation, which comes down to the ratio of effort to reward. The smaller the effort-reward ratio of a given activity, the more likely one is to do it. That single idea seems to rule my own behavior and that of many people I see. But it's also something you can hack, partly by using Fogg's idea of starting small. To change a behavior (and ultimately, your life), you just need to find a small enough starting activity to trigger action. It's not about motivation at all, and all the "motivational speakers" out there are misleading people in some fundamental way about the path to change.

One of the traps in that dynamic is that as we decrease the magnitude of the activity (drink a glass of water as oppposed to "go to the gym once a week to get stacked"), our motivation decreases as it loses its grandiose visions of change. I don't think task size and motivation necessarily decrease at the same rate tho. And I do think that grandiose visions are sometimes a form of self-sabotage or psychological homeostasis; ie "i'm only motivated to do things that i can't follow through on."

Makes sense how it depends on both the task and the person. I wonder if there is any way to change impulsiveness or if it's some sort of genetic trait. There are probably both learned and genetic factors.

very true. this is just about controllable inputs tho.

Modern readers seem to misinterpret writings by virtue ethicists as self help, perhaps because much of modern "philosophical" discourse is just disguised therapy books. These are descriptive, not prescriptive, when Aquinas says what perseverence means he doesn't tell you what to do to be virtuous, but what the virtue in itself is. Although there are some prescriptions in the Summa (see Ia IIae Q38 as a prime example), Aquinas mostly left the study of the building of virtue to other writers, as it is a secondary matter.

Also, don't shrink away from toil or lack of pleasure- to an extent.

I think the “of course” (involuntarily) assumes that you have to choose a good goal, which, looking at the world, is by no means a given.

Many people show tenacity, persistence, and even obsession, but they choose wrong or mediocre goals, at least if we consider traditional “success” as a "good target". And I'm not referring to people who spend hours and hours scrolling through social media, showing tenacity, persistence, and unusual resistance to boredom, but to those who spend enormous energy, effort, and time trying to get a minor job promotion that would earn them an extra 10K a year, along with the satisfaction of having given their work arch-nemesis a hard time, instead of using the same energy, effort, and time to earn 100K more a year elsewhere.

I see tenacity and stamina in people who every day look for the best, the most “optimal” diet that will allow them to finally reach the best shape of their lives, instead of using the same stamina to resist a little hunger when they choose and follow the most effective way to lose weight, which is to eat less.

If I look back on my life, one of my biggest regrets is not having chosen better and bigger goals for my efforts: I spent a lot of time and energy trying to make relationships work, instead of using the same time and energy to find someone more compatible with me; I spent energy, time and willpower to get excellent grades in school, without thinking too much about whether those excellent grades would lead me to the professional career I aspired to; I spent years working tirelessly toward the dream of an academic career, before realizing that I did not want to work with students that much, my research was not that groundbreaking, and I wanted to earn much more money than what an academic career could offer.

Choosing the right goal is by no means a given.

A journey of a thousand days starts with a single day, recursed until one eventually arrives at the destination.

Nothing crazy: #1 caffeine (4 coffee + 1 black tea + 1 green tea), #2 100% dark chocolate, #3 berberine, #4 noopept, #5 phenylpiracetam.

Sufficient sleep plus exercise could substitute for all of them, but then I wouldn't have more than two hours left for work.

Yes, exactly. The chemicals are intended to make up for the lack of immense love for the organization of the work.

That sounds like a false dichotomy as it's suggesting that pleasure may not coexist with the good. Typically they do coexist. Typically it is pursuit of the good that brings innate pleasure. If there is insufficient pleasure from work, it's typically because it's insufficiently good. The chemicals are an attempt to fill the gap.