How many of you are low energy?

[WFJ]

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).

During my traditional working career (TPS reports, meetings, action plans, etc...) I would find myself in a low energy state as I entered the parking garage on Monday morning. The jobs was mostly about measuring how long the hamsters were in their wheel, not the rotations or speed, but simply being in the wheel, which favored the lethargic hamsters who would rather die than move. There is no solution to low energy in jobs like this (IMHO), it is the condition of the employment either by design (lethargic people will not look for other jobs) or by happenstance.

The opposite side of this job would be like that of a hot-shot or troubleshooter, who are not even at work, but called on to solve, time dependent problems caused by a variety of different integrated issues. My grandfather, who was not educated, was a "fixer" for the AT&T. When the local, highly educated engineers could not get some aspect of the connections to work, they would call him. His only conditions were to work alone and not bother him until the problem was solved. He was paid a good salary and would sometimes not work for months as there weren't any issues that needed his expertise.

When I have been employed in jobs like the former, I am a very low energy individual which over time affects many aspects of my life (I once was about 10% slower in an activity after 6 months of one of these jobs without any other change in any other variable). Taking breaks from this kind of job will not have any long term impact as most of the time on break is spent dreading the inevitable return. I also suspect some people are expecting too much from their job, it is just a paycheck that allows you to enjoy your life, nothing more. Being "Good" as a job is usually not worth the effort unless it is in one of the few high skewed professions (MLB salary vs minor league baseball players, top 1% hedge fund manager vs median, etc). Putting forth effort to be better than the bottom 25% in most fields does nothing but waste one's time and energy.

A very intelligent friend of mine, when trapped in the hamster jobs, would often experiment how bad he could do the jobs and remain employed. This puts a different spin on the job and allows for some challenge and intrigue.

[zbigi]

Thanks, that's an interesting perspective. In my bank, we have a ton of people like you described - they go to meetings, generate reports and generally play their part in the corporate Kabuki theatre, but have long since optimized for minimum effort and engagement. Basically, you can see entire forests of dead wood, up to the horizon line. Unfortunately, my job is not like that - I have to produce real contributions to the system (code) at a fairly consistent rate.

BTW I'm just accepting an offer for doing the same kind of work, but for 40% more money... This will be in a startup, so I'm kind of worried that their demands on my energy will be higher than in the bank. They're offering six weeks of vacation though and seemed fairly relaxed at the interview, so hopefully it's not a meat grinder...

[WFJ]

In my opinion, breaks do not solve these issues, only prolong the pain.

One also has to define whether they prefer jobs that are like golf or long jump. A golfer may have 70 or 71 incredible holes and meltdown on 1-2 holes and fail miserably while a long jumper is measured by a single jump, where all others are ignored. The TC Chen 1985 Open performance (at the time only double eagle in Open history and later a quadruple boogey) where incredible performance for well over 98.6% of the holes was historically destroyed by poor performance on a single hole. In the 1968 Olympics, Bob Beamon faulted on most of his attempts, yet in one jump destroyed the world record and his personal best by two feet (around 7% improvement for an elite athlete is ridiculous). Beamon's several faults are forgotten, only the one jump is remembered as one of the greatest athletic achievements in history. TC Chen is one of only three albatrosses in Open history but remembered more for the double hit and Beamon's average length of jumps at the 1968 Olympics would not win a middle school track meet and largely forgotten. One needs to determine if their job is like golf or long jump and understand their own personality.

Even for non sports fans, both events are captivating and relatable to many other aspects of life, worth a 10-minute documentary watch.

[guitarplayer]

By the way, @zbigi how much can an EREite live on in your area? What is your expenditure aim?

[zbigi]

By the way, @zbigi how much can an EREite live on in your area? What is your expenditure aim?

I'd say my area is very conducive to ERE if you already have the stash or happen to make multiples of local median salary (usually through some remote work arrangement).

My average expenses over the past two years were $600 per month. That includes:
- mandatory maintenance costs on a 1-br 400 sqft apartment in a city center that I own
- utilities (cold and hot water, apartment central heating, garbage)
- electricity bill, incl. power for air conditioning
- car maintenance and mandatory insurance
- gas (I travel by car around 4-5k miles per year). BTW, as everywhere else in Europe, gas is expensive here.
- food. I don't save on food, and could definitely be spending less.
- eating out/takeout. On average, I perhaps eat out/order takeout 40% of the time.
- cell phone
- Internet at home
- misc., including clothing, presents for people, some small trips around the country, a new iPhone (!)

I get state-provided health care for free (included in salary taxes). If I were to stop working, I'd have to either start paying for it (around $120 per month) or use an existing semi-complicated loophole which effectively allows you to start paying only when you actually need the treatment.

Also, gym membership is paid for by my employer. The gym I go to is $30 per month otherwise, and there are two cheaper options available around - all within walkable distance. Everything here is walkable btw, I mostly need the car to visit family which is scattered within 50 km radius, and for that car is faster than public transit. If I stop working and my time is no longer scarce, I might not need the car any more - public transport can get me everywhere, it will just take longer than by car.

Basically, come to think of it, I live like a proverbial king while being on 1 JAFI. Location, location, location

PS. Oh, and I have recently started paying $15 (way above market, but didn't want to feel like an exploiter) to a lady that cleans my apartment every two weeks - it's not really reflected in the monthly average yet.

[guitarplayer]

Cool! Still, I bet there aren't that many jobs / one has to have an extensive skill set like yours to earn multiples of local median salary. Interesting that healthcare ceases with work, I am in the UK and here I think it is unconditionally free at the point of use (maybe barring non-residents).

Back to the OP, going with @WFJ's analogy, seems to me that the job you do (or the way you want to do it) is like golf. Perhaps in a stoic fashion you could aim for goals more under your control / within reach and, like others said, pace yourself. After all it is only about two years until you don't have to do it, this isn't that long considering that it will take you a few years to build a new identity post work. I would slowly start concentrating on life after work already now (which you clearly are doing by participating in the forum).

[zbigi]

Cool! Still, I bet there aren't that many jobs / one has to have an extensive skill set like yours to earn multiples of local median salary. Interesting that healthcare ceases with work, I am in the UK and here I think it is unconditionally free at the point of use (maybe barring non-residents).

Yep, most of the people in my city are probably making $500-$1000 in take-home pay.
Health care tied to employment was mainly the state's way of fighting tax evasion - lots of people were just working without paying any taxes, so the state gave them an incentive to pay them...
BTW "free health care" is supposedly a "right" and it's even in Polish constitution - but apparently ERE scum like us doesn't count I.e. you get state-covered health care premiums if you work, are sick, are disabled, are unemployed and looking for work, or are a pensioner (over 65) - but ERE fails in neither of those categories.

Back to the OP, going with @WFJ's analogy, seems to me that the job you do (or the way you want to do it) is like golf. Perhaps in a stoic fashion you could aim for goals more under your control / within reach and, like others said, pace yourself. After all it is only about two years until you don't have to do it, this isn't that long considering that it will take you a few years to build a new identity post work. I would slowly start concentrating on life after work already now (which you clearly are doing by participating in the forum).

Like I wrote somewhere above, an offer for a new job have just landed on my lap, so the next 6 months (at least) will be a roller-coaster of getting up to speed at the new company, with little "me time". Ostensibly, I'm doing it mostly because they pay more - but there are deeper reasons at play too. The new company is better than the current one - I think they don't have the dead wood and bordeline-incompetent engineers that plague my current company, and I'm curious if I can make it there. I guess I need an adventure.

[WFJ]

Another general tip when in a corporate NPC job is to count up vs count down. This is a tip I developed while in one particularly unpleasant job (for everyone) which has a fixed end date (for everyone). Let's assume the job lasts 200 days and at day 150, some workers will "count down" meaning 50 more days, then 49, 48, etc. day 151 represents 2% of your goal (1/50), day 49 represents 2.041% (1/49), day 48 = 2.083% (1/remaining days) This is a mental trick, but each day represents a larger portion of your goal which makes everyday more miserable than the last. Vs "counting up" at day 150, one has completed 75% of the job each day is a smaller portion of the goal (1/150 =0.667%, 1/151 = 0.66%, 1/152=0.65%) and each day is less miserable.

Human brains are woefully ill-suited to understand stats and left to natural tendencies, usually end up with bad outcomes. I am currently "counting up" in my current career.

[guitarplayer]

This then is like a prisoner scribbling on the cell walls each day of their sentence so that they accumulate and the prisoner sees all the bulk? I did something like this for my dad so he can count until his retirement next year October. A simple excel page filled with cells in a shape of an inverted pyramid, he starts from the top writing down each date he went to work, as time goes, the pyramid becomes narrower so it is also optically inviting to fill it out.

[zbigi]

Another general tip when in a corporate NPC job is to count up vs count down. This is a tip I developed while in one particularly unpleasant job (for everyone) which has a fixed end date (for everyone). Let's assume the job lasts 200 days and at day 150, some workers will "count down" meaning 50 more days, then 49, 48, etc. day 151 represents 2% of your goal (1/50), day 49 represents 2.041% (1/49), day 48 = 2.083% (1/remaining days) This is a mental trick, but each day represents a larger portion of your goal which makes everyday more miserable than the last. Vs "counting up" at day 150, one has completed 75% of the job each day is a smaller portion of the goal (1/150 =0.667%, 1/151 = 0.66%, 1/152=0.65%) and each day is less miserable.

I don't get it. Aren't the percentages going UP every day a good thing? I.e., on a penultimate day, you'd be getting 50% of your goal done in a single day! That's a huge motivation - "don't quit today and get 50% closer to the end goal". Whereas on first day it's "don't quit today and get 0.5% closer to the end goal" - sounds much less motivating to me.

[BookLoverL]

Not sure if it's so relevant to your situation or not, but I've been pretty low energy from roughly the start of the pandemic right up until just recently. I think a lot of it was tied to a job that was a poor fit for me - I left that job at the end of July and it's only within the last few weeks that I seem to have returned to the old levels of energy and curiosity and liveliness I had before I took that job. The job was only part time, but it was unsuited for me in a number of ways. It was work from home and even though I was technically managing it, due to my own brain issues I was somehow spending pretty much 24/7 thinking about the job, all my rest time was full of feeling guilty for not having done various work tasks, etc. I'm looking for a new job now and I'm going to make sure the new one is confined to certain days and times of the week so it doesn't invade my leisure time.

I'm also disabled, so even when I have a higher amount of energy I only seem to be able to sustainably manage about a 50% of full time job anyway.

Anyway, the point is that if your job seems to be exhausting you more than previous jobs, it could be that aspects of the job aren't a good fit for your personal psychology. Or also it could just be that you've been pushing yourself for too long and your body is screaming, "let me rest please!"

A small number of years to FIRE is great, but not if you give yourself health conditions while getting there due to sheer stress, so it definitely could be worth taking it a bit easier in exchange for a little less money (which at an ERE level of expenses would still give you a high savings rate).

[zbigi]

It was work from home and even though I was technically managing it, due to my own brain issues I was somehow spending pretty much 24/7 thinking about the job, all my rest time was full of feeling guilty for not having done various work tasks, etc.

I've had similar issues earlier in life. Over time, I've learned to give my best or close to it at the job, and if that's not enough, then I guess they'll fire me and I'll just go work somewhere else, where hopefully the fit will be better. Following this philosophy, if I'm too tired in a given day to continue, I know that I've given my best today and can now rest for the remainder of the day with clean conscience.
Another trick I've learned is that, if I'm having troubles with some task or I feel it's taking me way too much time, I try to communicate this early to my manager, along with reasons for why that's happening. This way I can see his actual reaction instead of imagining him silently judging me (the reality is never as bad as my imagined scenario).

I'm also disabled, so even when I have a higher amount of energy I only seem to be able to sustainably manage about a 50% of full time job anyway.

I'm not disabled but I'd say I'm able to work at around 50-60% only as well. I've been asking about it on programmers forums and it seems pretty common - people have a lot of trouble sustainably focusing on code for more than 3-4 hours a day on average. Of course, there are exceptions - guys like John Carmack (a legendary game programmer, co-author of Doom, Quake) who can sustainably code for 10-12 hours a day, every day. I'm guessing their brains or general biology must somehow be different.

Anyway, the point is that if your job seems to be exhausting you more than previous jobs, it could be that aspects of the job aren't a good fit for your personal psychology. Or also it could just be that you've been pushing yourself for too long and your body is screaming, "let me rest please!"

Nah, the jobs are mostly similar. And if they demand too much or are particularly stressful, I cut them short pretty quickly - either ask the manager to be moved to a different position or, if that's not possible, I switch to a different company.

[WFJ]

I don't get it. Aren't the percentages going UP every day a good thing? I.e., on a penultimate day, you'd be getting 50% of your goal done in a single day! That's a huge motivation - "don't quit today and get 50% closer to the end goal". Whereas on first day it's "don't quit today and get 0.5% closer to the end goal" - sounds much less motivating to me.

It is just a heuristic to frame each day as a smaller amount of work to achieve the end goal of a fixed amount of time to complete. It only works if there is a fixed end to the episode and only after the halfway point in the journey.