How many of you are low energy?

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chenda
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by chenda »

jacob wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 8:46 am
Minimalism did for a while but seems rather commercialized these days as the focus has shifted from simple living to which minimalist product is optimal.
I know you're not a fan of videos but Matt D'Avella, who is one of the most prominent minimalists on you tube, did a video touching this.

https://youtu.be/i57ejDn6HRY

The latest nascent trend seems to be something called 'Essentialism' which seems to be a last ditch spin off from minimalism.

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unemployable
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by unemployable »

If I'm supposed to go get a job, y'all are really bad at selling it.

chenda
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by chenda »

unemployable wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 2:05 pm
If I'm supposed to go get a job, y'all are really bad at selling it.
You are unemployable.

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unemployable
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by unemployable »

chenda wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 2:08 pm
You are unemployable.
I guess I can't disagree with everything I read on the internet.

shaz
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by shaz »

If you told me that every time you enter a race, you start out really strong and are beating the competition but by the end you have run out of energy and can barely finish with the pack, I would tell you that you have a pacing problem, not a conditioning (energy levels) problem.

And also perhaps you should learn to draft. Victory is often found by working as part of a team rather than through individual heroics.

(Cycling as an analogy for life.)

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Lemur
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by Lemur »

I filled out a Doctor's questionnaire about my latest symptoms: depression, anxiety, stress, low self-esteem, occasional palpitations, insomnia, and rumination. I was diagnosed with having a job.

Joking aside. Do you suffer from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectio ... sychology) ?

Also the Gervais Principle likely cited in this thread somewhere is always a good read! https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/
Consider just becoming a loser in this sense.

zbigi
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by zbigi »

Lemur wrote:
Tue Oct 19, 2021 12:54 pm
I filled out a Doctor's questionnaire about my latest symptoms: depression, anxiety, stress, low self-esteem, occasional palpitations, insomnia, and rumination. I was diagnosed with having a job.

Joking aside. Do you suffer from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectio ... sychology) ?
Probably, to a degree. It's a good trait to have in programming (and programming is probably reinforcing it in me), because a program that is only 95% correct is often useless and/or harmful. From my observations, the better a programmer, the more obsessive he his. That's probably part of the reason behind ageism in the industry - it's hard to sustain such obsession for so long and many of the most talented people burn out relatively early, so, if you made it into your forties, it means you probably weren't really that much into it anyway, which implies mediocrity... So, basically, negative selection over time.
Also the Gervais Principle likely cited in this thread somewhere is always a good read! https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/
Consider just becoming a loser in this sense.
I think I'm already a loser. I don't have the temperament to become a psychopath and I'm definitely not clueless. For example, I perfectly know that the project I'm working on is pointless (after 4 years, we barely have any users) and basically a giant wank by certain people in mgmt - it's not affecting my motivation to work in a negative way. I'm onlu there to extract my contracting daily rate, while working on (hopefully) interesting technical puzzles.

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Lemur
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by Lemur »

@zbigi

Understood. I'm in a similar field so totally get that...perfectionism is a form of natural selection in this field. Unfortunately, like you said, it tough to sustain but necessary in this niche. Its why the Type Bs (like me now) end up becoming the product leads and/or managers, or just give up specializing and end up landing in a more generalist role like 'data analyst.' Sometimes I feel like the ceiling in tech is really just ones own ability to not go supernova on burnout. I used to be a Type A. And I just turned 30 lol! Having a degree of financial independence accelerated the conversion from clueless to loser for me I believe.

I barely care for the technical puzzles these days...guess that is why I'm doing management / business work lately and powerpoint. The drive is lost after a while and it is hard to get excited when you've been there done that. Occasionally, I get the drive to fix something when no one else can figure it out but mostly I try to delegate that stuff when I can. ​

Maybe that could explain some of the low energy? Perhaps novelty has worn off?
Weirdly enough, I always avoided the business side of my firm but lately I've found it to be interesting ... only because I don't have to think too hard...and I've embraced some of the subjectiveness.

Another point of low energy - there are a lot of things I want to do right now but can't (or just don't have the will too) simply because having a job is like having a real life RPG mana bar and mine drains me by 5:30PM. Sometimes you even have to save some of this mana for more work later...And creative activities sometimes only work when you've a certain amount of mana but you can't execute (don't bother too) because you can't put your heart in it like you want too.

zbigi
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by zbigi »

Lemur wrote:
Tue Oct 19, 2021 1:59 pm

(on business roles and type As/ type Bs)
I'm a bit older than you (40 this year), so I've managed to perform the "burnout followed by transition to business role" routine a couple times already. Unfortunately, I can't really hack it on the business side - it's usually a giant mess, nothing makes sense, we're happily marching towards a cliff (or, at best, spinning in circles) - and nobody gives crap. When asked to work in these conditions, I'd basically need to convert into a spineless, smiling (and secretly dying inside) shadow of a man like most of these business folk I believe are. Programming is better than that, at least it doesn't take my integrity from me.
It may be better in smaller organizations - the business roles in startups I've worked for seemed relatively no-nonsense. Unfortunately, my business exp. was only in large, hopelessly dysfunctional organizations.

EDIT: one more thought here. The problems in business are much less well defined and much more open-ended. These conditions make for a great personal/hobby project or even PhD subject, but create a lot of stress when operating in business environment. Whereas, with coding, I just have to fix bug X or add fairly-well-defined feature Y.
In general, in a typical business, the business people make the most because their job IS the hardest. Only in tech, the coding got so bloody hard that it can match the difficulty of management's job - and, in result, the grunts often make as much as their managers.
I barely care for the technical puzzles these days...guess that is why I'm doing management / business work lately and powerpoint. The drive is lost after a while and it is hard to get excited when you've been there done that. Occasionally, I get the drive to fix something when no one else can figure it out but mostly I try to delegate that stuff when I can. ​
Getting better at technical stuff (mostly, mastering the hyped tech of the era) is a self-serving goal for me, because it will lead to more money. It's motivating, I can get behind that.
Another point of low energy - there are a lot of things I want to do right now but can't (or just don't have the will too) simply because having a job is like having a real life RPG mana bar and mine drains me by 5:30PM. Sometimes you even have to save some of this mana for more work later...And creative activities sometimes only work when you've a certain amount of mana but you can't execute (don't bother too) because you can't put your heart in it like you want too.
Similar here. A full-time job in software means basically I have almost no life. Beyond basic maintenance (daily walks, some gym) I maybe manage to read a book a month, see a friend or family a couple times per month, play Magic for 2-3 hours on weekend (too tired to play more) and that's mostly it. The rest is vegging. A bit like a life of a monk - ora et labora, but without the prayer and with vegging in front of the laptop in the evenings. I imagine the rhythm and monotony are similar.

Some say that "you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable", "push through the pain", i.e. that it should be possible to say do some hobbies in the afternoon even when tired, if only one can make oneself do that. I've tried that many times, and it usually leads to crippling headaches after a week at most. So, in my case, it looks like a genuine physical limitation. That's why it makes sense to maximize income and just get it over with in a couple of years.

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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by white belt »

zbigi wrote:
Tue Oct 19, 2021 2:57 pm
Getting better at technical stuff (mostly, mastering the hyped tech of the era) is a self-serving goal for me, because it will lead to more money. It's motivating, I can get behind that.

[...]

Similar here. A full-time job in software means basically I have almost no life. Beyond basic maintenance (daily walks, some gym) I maybe manage to read a book a month, see a friend or family a couple times per month, play Magic for 2-3 hours on weekend (too tired to play more) and that's mostly it. The rest is vegging. A bit like a life of a monk - ora et labora, but without the prayer and with vegging in front of the laptop in the evenings. I imagine the rhythm and monotony are similar.
My concern with this approach, which I believe is quite common in the FIRE crowd, is that it seems to foster a "freedom from" rather than "freedom to" mindset. This is also the danger in using money as the only motivator, because eventually you will have more money than you ever know what to do with. Then you'll have to figure out what will get you out of bed in the morning, which is difficult when one's identify, habits, lifestyle, etc are wrapped up in directing ~100% of energy towards financial pursuits.

You don't have a journal so I don't know the specifics of your situation, so maybe I'm just filling in too many blanks based on this thread alone.

zbigi
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by zbigi »

white belt wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:22 pm
My concern with this approach, which I believe is quite common in the FIRE crowd, is that it seems to foster a "freedom from" rather than "freedom to" mindset. This is also the danger in using money as the only motivator, because eventually you will have more money than you ever know what to do with. Then you'll have to figure out what will get you out of bed in the morning, which is difficult when one is used to directing ~100% of energy towards financial pursuits.

You don't have a journal so I don't know the specifics of your situation, so maybe I'm just filling in too many blanks based on this thread alone.
Yes, unfortunately I think you're right. Right now, I may be one of those people who are bad at self-directing and are trained to be strongly driven by external rewards (that's probably one of the reasons I don't have a journal - no boss told me I must have one...) - essentially, I function much better with a job than without one. My plan for dealing with that is to transition to part-time in 2 years from now, and use the extra free time to start building some sort life outside of job.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by mountainFrugal »

zbigi wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:31 pm
My plan for dealing with that is to transition to part-time in 2 years from now, and use the extra free time to start building some sort life outside of job.
I think what @whitebelt is getting at is that putting off that hard self-work for another 2 years might be risky. Slowly building a habit of thinking about this now might allow you to move to part time in 6 months after you decide that your goals are actually different. Once again, hard to know because there is no journal. I am not your boss, but you might consider making one today as a way to explore what you will do after. This is not the only way of course, but you do spend time on this forum so there is somewhat of a habit built in. Just an idea.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by mountainFrugal »

As a prompt: what is it about playing magic that you find interesting?

zbigi
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by zbigi »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:50 pm
As a prompt: what is it about playing magic that you find interesting?
Not sure how useful it will end up being, but I don't mind talking about Magic :)

So, the reasons why I find Magic fun:
1. The right amount of tactical depth. The games (duels) themselves are less deep than e.g. chess (both because of the random factor and because your opponent's cards are hidden - these two make game tree explode extremely quickly and no one is capable of analyzing it in their head further than just a couple of moves ahead). Hence, the game is less about computation and more about intuition and pattern-matching to past experiences. This is fun for me, while I find chess rather boring.
2. Randomness. While super-frustrating, it also makes for the best stories. Without it, the game would be far less exciting (more similar to chess or go).
3. Lots of novelty. I tend to be bored easily, but with Magic it's hard, because the game is so varied on so many levels. Magic plays right into my character flaw...
4. Creativity (similar to point 1). Coming up with novel strategies (e.g. deck ideas) requires much more than pure calculation - the problem is way too complex for that, and so you have to use intuition and trial and error as well. Japanese Magic teams are (were?) best at that, their work ethic and good organization allowed them test out large number of crazy ideas and, in result, sometimes find a gem that the rest of the world has missed (Magic pro teams are basically research institutes for Magic :)
5. Competitive aspect. I think I am fairly competitive. I don't particularly like that about myself, and again Magic is playing into it.
6. Discovery and building competence. Whenever a new set of cards comes out (around 4 times a year), the whole Magic world scrambles to get the best understanding of what are the good strategies and interactions in it, how they fare in different contexts etc. I prefer to not look at what the pros are doing (which would greatly increase my win rate), but instead figure it out on my own. It's a fun process of discovery.
7. Art and lore. The company that makes Magic hires some of the best illustrators in the world, and it shows in the quality of artwork. It's just a pleasure to interact with.
8. Social aspect. Lots of people I've met playing Magic 20 years ago (the time when I was really active, i.e. before getting a job :) are still playing, and we chat at tournaments. Some of them are good friends that I see regularly.

zbigi
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by zbigi »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:43 pm
I think what @whitebelt is getting at is that putting off that hard self-work for another 2 years might be risky. Slowly building a habit of thinking about this now might allow you to move to part time in 6 months after you decide that your goals are actually different. Once again, hard to know because there is no journal. I am not your boss, but you might consider making one today as a way to explore what you will do after. This is not the only way of course, but you do spend time on this forum so there is somewhat of a habit built in. Just an idea.
The thing is, I just had a 5 month break from the job, during which the process of exploration returned essentially nothing (BRUTE style). Perhaps I should try harder and for longer - but I'm too scared that, after even a couple years of searching, I'll still come up with nothing, while meantime my money-printing CV will fade into mediocrity and I'll end up far worse off overall. That's the shit side of being a programmer unfortunately - extremely short shelf life of skills. Hence, it makes sense to me to work a while longer ("get it while the getting is good"), esp. since the job right now is ok, all things considered (by my standards, a job is ok if I'm not fantasizing about quitting a couple times per week). If/when it takes a turn for the worse, it might be my cue to switch to part-time.

As for a journal, I'll give it more thought. However, I have a very good friend with whom I talk over a lot of this stuff regularly already (sort of like free therapy - BTW that might a good definition of a real friendship?), so I don't need a journal per se to get my thoughts out (as I am already verbalizing them in those conversations).

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mountainFrugal
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by mountainFrugal »

zbigi wrote:
Thu Oct 21, 2021 3:32 pm
Not sure how useful it will end up being, but I don't mind talking about Magic :)

So, the reasons why I find Magic fun:
These are all great reasons! For any one of them are there adjacent activities that could fulfill a similar role, but where you might get to be more of a creator in the process? As an example, you like the story-telling, lore, randomness, strategy, and social aspects of magic...could this be replicated by learning to be a Dungeon Master for D&D and hosting campaigns for your friends? You already have a great set of threads to pull on with your list. Start pulling!

WRT to therapy in writing... a majority of this entire forum is *Share-apy* and *Me-search* to one degree or another so you are already participating!

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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by Scott 2 »

A drawback of waiting to address the freedom from mentality, is it may lead you to miss the good parts of working. I made this mistake.

I'd opt out of pretty much every non-required event. Mostly, these were team builders a company cannot force you to attend. In hindsight, some of my fonder memories are from the team builders I attended. I said no to ax throwing, boating, baseball games, skiing, summer picnics, holiday parties, etc.

I also dismissed the value of easy access to quality people. The company spends all this money screening for intelligence and culture fit. You go through challenges and grow together. This is a chance to build lifelong relationships. Since all I wanted to do was get out of there, I mostly opted out. I favored working remote for a geographically distant company, partially because it let me avoid the interactions by default.

Now the network of people I built over 10 years is hours away. It is much weaker than it could have been and quickly eroding. This is the natural outcome of freedom from - exactly what I was working towards. I don't get those years of my life back.

Similar with what I worked on. Since the goal was getting money to not work, I didn't really care about the why of the work. Once the getting money problem was solved, my stance on the work product quickly soured. A year removed, with some heavy personal growth, I am less negative towards it. I'd say the impact was probably net neutral. But that is far from having pride in the peak results of my career.


Conversely - had I found the freedom to in my career, I'd probably still be working. I dunno whether that is good or bad.

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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by Michael_00005 »

I've found low energy is almost always interlinked with diet. If you watch this trailer, at 1:22 it should give the clues to much when it comes to health and energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpglxHTJVM Not only will a crappy diet clog arteries going to your heart, but all the tiny blood vessels in your brain. One image, can say more than an entire book, if we only pay attention. Can you guess which sample came after eating plant based for one day? Whole foods: vegetables and fruits are very easy to digest, little to no energy in digestion, meat on the other hand will sit in your system for days, requires tons of energy/enzymes to digest. Experiment with a green smoothie for breakfast for 6 weeks (consider it an experiment), see what happens.

So Monday, and Tuesday you have lots of energy... take breaks, get out for walks, fresh air, don't work overtime - pace yourself! Have you ever watched a runner sprint out in front of the pack in a mile race, only to come in last, because he spent all his "gas" in the 1st half of the race? Saying "No" is a skill anyone can learn, it's a skill learned by practicing... sometimes the "no" is to ourself. "No more work, I'm getting out for a walk", but you have to do it.

zbigi
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by zbigi »

I've tried not eating meat for a couple of months. Didn't really notice any change of energy levels - if anything, I remember feeling better after coming back to meat - but maybe just because it's so tasty and my mood improved from adding it back to my diet.

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GandK
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Re: How many of you are low energy?

Post by GandK »

Things I've noticed that cause low energy in me, in order of how often they're a problem:

1. Lack of enjoyment for the task in front of me
2. Dehydration/low sodium (I have chronic low sodium; it runs in my mother's family. There are people who would love to have this malady instead of their high sodium levels, but it does mean I have to drink extra water all the time because my body cannot hold onto it like others' can. And if I don't, low energy is one of many negative results.)
3. Blood sugar spike --> drop
4. Low iron
5. Not enough daily physical exercise; this is occasionally related to #1
6. Hormone fluctuations common to people who are 45-55

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