161–170 of 266 posts
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When you find yourself in this situation, it's a good idea to "zoom out" a little and get closer to nature and real people. I took long walks, trying to soak up the sun, trees, insects everything. I also walked all over the city and watched different people getting on with their lives; commuting, serving, sweeping, chatting ... and all the while paying attention to their facial expressions and language. And finally I…
That last sentence. Seriously?
But what do you do when both your personal and professional life collapse at the same time. That's the boat I'm in right now. As soon as I'm done with work. I practically start working on salvaging what I can of my personal life. I forcefully have dragged myself to the doctors. But am not getting much help as of yet from that field.
But what do you do when both your personal and professional life collapse at the same time. That's the boat I'm in right now. As soon as I'm done with work. I practically start working on salvaging what I can of my personal life. I forcefully have dragged myself to the doctors. But am not getting much help as of yet from that field.
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An aside here, just in case you ever find that you miss using jQuery for something: There are several jQuery-mostly-compatible replacements that are much smaller.
I've heard of lighter versions of jQuery and it's not really like I'm against jQuery in this particular case internet speed is really bad... and I did not know of a way to async load scripts and not have the $.is not defined problem. Mainly though the jQuery library itself is 80KB (jquery-min)... the downloading speed thing (watching network) it's hit and miss, I mean I see a 1KB file take nearly 1 second to download…
This does not follows though, TCP doesn't works like that, the initial congestion window is usually small and grows as more packets are received, that's why using Keep-Alive is so important, so you don't have to rebuild the socket and TLS connection before every request. Add some ping into the equation and getting the socket up to speed can take several seconds (even minutes) depending on the bandwidth, and the connection's packet loss.
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Yup exhausting to have this world view isn't it? And rising depression rates suggest, to me at least, that people that think this way are becoming more common.
I think the increased ability to talk about depression is a more important factor in rising depression rates. Unless the old rates had a model to factor in unreported cases.
I think a big factor in burnout is that most work is ultimately meaningless, or even morally wrong, and on a deep level, we're aware of that. Why is it so hard to make yourself work? Probably because you actually should be doing something else with your life. If someone paid you money to kick a dog, you'd feel a strong urge to do something else. That's because you shouldn't kick dogs. But when we feel the same urge t…
Quite simply, I love life. I know this isn't true for everyone, but it is for me. I find a lot of things meaningful and exciting. I love watching people on youtube excel at their random hobbies, I love seeing people compete in sports, I love talking about random things with friends and coworkers. I love the feeling I get when I stretch my legs out, I love walking outside and feeling the breeze on my face.
I love watching my daughter learn to walk, I love cuddling with my wife. I love fiddling with computers and getting them to do stuff.
Yes, maybe my job isn't 'meaningful' in some abstract, deep and profound, sense (I work for a large CDN owned by a giant corporation), but I think it makes the world a little bit better for people to be able to stream silly videos, watch live sports, and surf the web faster. I enjoy my coworkers, and look forward to going into work every day to see them and talk about random things we see in the world.
Even the horrible things that go on in the world don't get me too down. Yes, suffering is awful and I want to do everything I can to alleviate it where ever I can; at the same time, it is amazing that we do as good a job as we do. I am always gratified when I think about how many people live together in this world, and we get along remarkably well when you think about how we are really just randomly evolved animals. I mean, look at the complex society we have built! When I drive down the freeway, I can't help but be amazed at the things humans are able to build.
In short, things are fucking amazing. Life is pretty awesome, if you choose to focus on the awesome things.
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What do you mean by "goals"? I've met too many people hopelessly throwing themselves against a wall trying to "achieve their dreams"... they see themselves as a Hollywood-esque main character, either aiming unrealistically high or shooting for mundane gimmes. Without a broader vision, those that pick reasonably scoped goals may still end up depressed by their small wins that add up to nothing. Modern mss media and im…
Yes, I concur that resistance to burnout depends on having a broader context to your life and humanity as a whole. If you understand your own life within the perspective of the billions of humans that have lived and died before you, and that will live after you, it adds a very resilient drive and resistance to small setbacks. Personally, I was able to achieve this using the recursive why, or chained why, which is a t…
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When you find yourself in this situation, it's a good idea to "zoom out" a little and get closer to nature and real people. I took long walks, trying to soak up the sun, trees, insects everything. I also walked all over the city and watched different people getting on with their lives; commuting, serving, sweeping, chatting ... and all the while paying attention to their facial expressions and language. And finally I…
That last sentence. Seriously?
I was so detached from feeling reality, I felt jealous when I saw scavengers in Nigeria finding 'treasure' in the junk yard that they can fix and sell in the market. And when I was in a not so affluent area at one time, and guys in rags gathered around a trolley were chatting away happily. And when a shopkeeper of a small booth looked so relaxed, watching the world go by with his shiny eyes and small smile.
These people I felt was really experiencing life. They're on the knife edge, yet they seem ... I don't know, they had something which I didn't have at that time.
I'm sure alright now. But till today I can't feel sorry for disadvantaged people: they are not pathetic masses, they're people who happen to be born in unfair circumstances and something's gotta be done - and pity is not one of them.
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Most high-level goals that I've seen people have amount to what I call "winning the gauntlet". Making a lot of money, founding a big company, achieving fame, finding a high-profile SO, etc. Statistically, those goals will not be achieved by a given person, and not only that, but they effectively amount to "have it better than someone else", i.e., they're zero-sum. Goals like these seem reasonable to people when they…
>A broad non-status goal wouldn't fit that paradigm. It is likely to be overwhelming and require a lot of people, or, on the other hand, be fairly straightforward and missed because it's not prestigious. I think you have it here. There are some very simple, very natural things that can fulfill most of the average individual's basic yearnings, but they're overlooked today, they're regarded as passe or even backwards.…
I think a big factor in burnout is that most work is ultimately meaningless, or even morally wrong, and on a deep level, we're aware of that. Why is it so hard to make yourself work? Probably because you actually should be doing something else with your life. If someone paid you money to kick a dog, you'd feel a strong urge to do something else. That's because you shouldn't kick dogs. But when we feel the same urge t…
random unconnected thought I'm working on a "may eventually make me money" thing and I do pretty much 100% of the work as far as technical aspect goes (coding) and I'm set to have 30% of this "thing"... 13 hours of coding today, I feel like I achieved nothing. And it's like there is no return, I didn't get paid "someday you'll make money maybe" and I'm not sure I like the idea itself. I don't know I keep asking mysel…