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80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

news.harvard.edu

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Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#121

Post by graphitezepp »

stewbrew wrote: post #100

The sad thing about this is, nothing of this is news. I did some health research in the 1990s and read tons of studies telling you the same things. One of the best predictors for subjective well-being was whether people had 3+ really close friends. IMHO there is something wrong with this kind of research that rehashes known facts but doesn't really go any deeper than what was already known before. My gratulations to…

Nothing new under the sun, most things our modern work in social sciences show was figured out by some ancient philosopher or religious leader or another it seems to me.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#122

Post by kutkloon7 »

rubicon33 wrote: post #8

What I take from this article is that social interaction is extremely important to ones health, and it's something that we largely taken for granted. In the age of computers and secluded work environments, I think we need to be aware of the effect that even casual interaction has on our mental and physical health. I have some personal/anecdotal experience which back this research up and affirms my belief that communi…

I'm having the same experience. I have been working on my thesis for the last year. My university is in a different city, and everyone working on something related is in another country. This made it hard for me to make progress and this has had the effect of me isolating myself even more (I haven't made enough progress to have a beer with friends and not feel bad about myself).

Although I have never been sick for the last year, I recognize all the other symptoms to some degree. For an assessment, I took an IQ test a while ago. I used to be really good at number sequences, acing them or at least getting 95% right. I think I got about half of them this time, which was quite shocking.

Once I finish this thesis (my supervisor keeps trying to convince me to postpone my graduation - a student working on a very similar problem has spent more than 2.5 years now, and has not graduated yet) I want to spend more time on my social life again.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#123

Post by mcableton »

This is a great article. I agree with the comments here that says working at home can really squish your mood. It makes me wonder about social security. I remember some comments here about if they got rid of it, grandma would have to move in. Well, according to this article, that might be the best thing for grandma! I work from home but have been staying with my in laws since we had a baby. It has been great for my mental health.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#124

Post by wdbbdw »

rubicon33 wrote: post #8

What I take from this article is that social interaction is extremely important to ones health, and it's something that we largely taken for granted. In the age of computers and secluded work environments, I think we need to be aware of the effect that even casual interaction has on our mental and physical health. I have some personal/anecdotal experience which back this research up and affirms my belief that communi…

In the last six months I've moved to a new apartment in another part of town, I changed jobs, and I graduated from grad school. My social life has been severely disrupted! The change in work was maybe the most dramatic since I moved from a highly social environment to being isolated in an office by myself (and on a floor with taciturn colleagues). It's only been a few months, but I already see some mild forms of the symptoms described in the parent comment.

Now, being in grad school, working full time and having a toddler did a lot of the work in atrophying my social connections over the last three years, but this spring delivered a knock-out blow. Luckily, I'm attentive to my mental health and generally a proactive person, so I've outlined steps to try and at least get into another job (Cracking the Coding Interview... groan). I've also started scouring the internet looking for ideas to start developing my community ties:

  - Our local YMCA has programs for families that we'll be taking advantage of, including free babysitting once a month(!!!)
  - There's a local collective of volunteer "civic hackers" that I'll start hanging out with after summer's over.  
  - I just saw, somewhere above in this comment thread, a mention of meetup.com. It's now open in another tab.  
  - I'm even leaving comments on the internet, such as this!
Anyway, just wanted to share (edit: formatting).

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#125

Post by kevstev »

rubicon33 wrote: post #8

What I take from this article is that social interaction is extremely important to ones health, and it's something that we largely taken for granted. In the age of computers and secluded work environments, I think we need to be aware of the effect that even casual interaction has on our mental and physical health. I have some personal/anecdotal experience which back this research up and affirms my belief that communi…

I went from very brutal environments (massively stressful jobs in algorithmic trading, generally sitting on loud trading floors with late hours, weekends, etc) to working remotely and found almost the opposite.

Instead of being sick several times a year- we would literally watch colds and other illnesses work their way up and down the rows, I instead got sick maybe once a year.

Solving problems in a nice quiet room with no coworker conversations around me improved my ability to concentrate and do the hard things 10x.

Social interaction is a mixed bag. My last two jobs I was surrounded by a bunch of people who hated their work, and we only really bonded over the fact that we would rather be literally anywhere else. My remote coworkers all get along great, and it would be nice to spend more face time with them, but I have an active personal social life so that helps.

I think you are missing a big piece here though- and that's activity. I take my dog on long walks and generally like to bike around town (I live in a city) but it requires much more of an active effort. Luckily I eat a lot better and much less than I used to. I don't keep junk food or really any prepared foods in the house.

YMMV.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#126

Post by ck425 »

circlefavshape wrote: post #96
rubicon33 wrote: post #8

What I take from this article is that social interaction is extremely important to ones health, and it's something that we largely taken for granted. In the age of computers and secluded work environments, I think we need to be aware of the effect that even casual interaction has on our mental and physical health. I have some personal/anecdotal experience which back this research up and affirms my belief that communi…

Yikes. I'm just about to start a new job working from home fulltime. My wife's been expressing her concern that the lack of social interaction might be difficult for me, I guess I better heed her and join up with some sort of social group (was thinking musical theatre)

Having done musical theater as my main hobby for almost 8 years I can thoroughly recommend it for that exact purpose. There's something about singing with folks and sharing a stage that leads very quickly to strong deep social bonds. It's also a nice contrast to my tech friends I find.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#127

Post by ck425 »

smallgovt wrote: post #6

The article seems to argue that healthy relationships CAUSE physical health. How do you actually prove that the relationship between the two attributes is causal versus correlated? For example, one could conclude, instead, that being in good physical health is the cause of successful relationships.

I can't find a link but there was an article here recently where researchers had concluded strong relationships contributed to better self control and thus had a knock on effect on health.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#128

Post by freeflight »

CalRobert wrote: post #81
coldtea wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As this article and book say "loneliness kills", but what does that mean for those of us who want to live long and healthy lives? Do we need to start scheduling social time alongside gym time? No, we need to stop scheduling things and embrace a less forced, more natural, community-centric, living.

I think your vision of things is the ideal, but it also isn't always practical. If you live a 30 minute drive (or more) away from everyone you know, and service-workers / fellow consumers (people at the grocery store, etc) are anonymous to you, scheduled interaction may be your only interaction. Of course, that also speaks to a profound failure of urban design and a desolate hellscape. Human-scale communities where y…

> service-workers / fellow consumers (people at the grocery store, etc) are anonymous to you

But they don't have to be anonymous to you, that's also a rather new and urban development: The expectation that nobody should "bother" anybody else unless they already know them or have some business reason to do so.

In smaller communities, everybody knew most of their "service-workers" even outside of their service function, that wasn't something out of the ordinary it was pretty much normal.

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#129

Post by heydonovan »

rubicon33 wrote: post #8

What I take from this article is that social interaction is extremely important to ones health, and it's something that we largely taken for granted. In the age of computers and secluded work environments, I think we need to be aware of the effect that even casual interaction has on our mental and physical health. I have some personal/anecdotal experience which back this research up and affirms my belief that communi…

It's frightening how accurate this describes my situation as well. Went 3+ years working at a startup where essentially we were one giant family, everyone hung out after work, and I rarely had time to myself. Everything technical was super easy to digest, I was exercising every other day, and I was on top of my game.

Now most of my days are spent working from home, and the only human interaction are the cashiers at the grocery store. I'm tired all the time, focusing is difficult for me now, and I feel like I've become slower with anything that requires mental effort.

What's the solution here? Don't work from home? Hang out more?

Re: 80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life

#130

Post by flamedoge »

heydonovan wrote: post #129
rubicon33 wrote: post #8

What I take from this article is that social interaction is extremely important to ones health, and it's something that we largely taken for granted. In the age of computers and secluded work environments, I think we need to be aware of the effect that even casual interaction has on our mental and physical health. I have some personal/anecdotal experience which back this research up and affirms my belief that communi…

It's frightening how accurate this describes my situation as well. Went 3+ years working at a startup where essentially we were one giant family, everyone hung out after work, and I rarely had time to myself. Everything technical was super easy to digest, I was exercising every other day, and I was on top of my game. Now most of my days are spent working from home, and the only human interaction are the cashiers at t…

Deep Work

you pay small price to get intense focus whatever that small price may be. go isolate yourself in a room or go to a library or co-working space. take a long pensive walk.

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