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Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

#171

Post by rodolphoarruda »

mabbo wrote: post #161

Last year, I moved from a large faceless corporation to a startup. For the twist in this story, at the startup I got exactly the way you feel. I had no motivation. Everything was easy, everyone was amazing, the benefits were great, but I was just so bored. After 7 months, I went back to the large corp. I really enjoy what I do here and I'm now in a new role that I enjoy even more. I guess my point is: you're bored. Y…

It's interesting to read this because my experience was completely the opposite: the startup days were really exciting, especially when we were designing and creating things from scratch using the best of our intelligence/intuition. A couple of years later I moved back to the corporate world of large international IT companies. I felt bored to do things that were forethought, designed and/or implemented by other people. I freaked out to see gaps in processes, inefficiencies in general and could not fix them because it was not my job to do it.

Re: Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

#173

Post by bluehatbrit »

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #10
hungerstrike wrote: post #8

Are you working by yourself most of the time? I forget where I read it, but I think it was Joel Spolsky that said “Don’t be a guy in a room” because even if you can do whole projects by yourself, it gets boring and feels unfulfilling compared to working on a team.

The exact opposite is true for me most of the time. The open office ruins it, working on my own or limiting contact is productive.

Spolsky has always been an advocate of private offices, I don't think this quote is intended to be literal. I think it more means being the only one working on a project can suck after a long time, especially if you've got ideas you want to bounce of people and can't.

Re: Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

#174

Post by jseutter »

arconis987 wrote: post #110
zinckiwi wrote: post #5

I'm familiar with this. There's no magic solution, sadly, but I'll share one thing that has helped me and may apply at least to some of your situations. I realised a while ago that my main issue was with nebulous tasks -- that is, the more concrete, defined, and _meetable_ a task was, the less trouble I had with it. So I started to break down large tasks, which never got started much less finished, into smaller ones,…

This approach is immensely helpful to me as well. Started practicing problem slicing after watching a lecture from Don Knuth. He started by writing down a problem and underlining it. He then solved small bits of it and worked through many examples that seemed almost trivial. Eventually, some amazing results began to emerge after the many trivial examples were worked through. Impressed on me the power of breaking a la…

Do you have a link or title to the video? I'm interested in watching it, but searching isn't turning up likely matches.

Re: Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

#175

Post by tambourine_man »

First of all, if you work alone at home as I do, it is freakishly hard to do something that you're not madly in love with. And most jobs involve at least some portion of that, so I try not to be too hard on myself. We are fighting a world of distractions and no visible restrictions. It's amazing to accomplish something at all.

Second, finding the right music helps me a lot. I also play a few instruments which are right next to me and I often pick them up for a minute or two and play along. I can't imagine not being able to resort to music while working on boring stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

#176

Post by danschumann »

At the end of your shower, switch the water to cold. Listen to your thoughts as you prepare to move the water to cold. Your brain is probably slinging lies about "you'll die", "this will suck", "it won't be worth it", etc. Pay attention to these lies, because it's the same stuff you think when you're working.

Eventually your thoughts will lessen, "this again", "we've already gotten good at this, you can stop now", etc. It's a great microcosm of learning opportunities.

It's also great for health.

"No discipline feels pleasant at the time, but it yields a harvest of righteousness" -- I have to say this pretty much every day to move myself in the positive direction.

Re: Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

#177

Post by Tepix »

moduspol wrote: post #157

I'd recommend talking to your doctor about Adderall. I have the exact same kind of issues focusing and basically have all my life. Sometime in college I talked to my doctor about it and it's single-handedly one of the best decisions I've made. With it, I can multi-task and stay focused on even tedious tasks. I'd say I'm easily 4x as productive, which has helped my career tremendously. Seriously--I don't want to come…

Adderall is an illegal drug in many countries. Be careful.

Re: Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

#178

Post by bitL »

What can help:

- visualize yourself as a homeless in your late 40s, abandoned by your wife and kids, no longer recognized/avoided by your friends, destitute, in bad health. It's a likely outcome if you don't learn how to finish things, work on your own projects and make it. Think about it as your default future state you want to avoid

- remove distractions while you are working on something. If distractions are your inner ones, contemplate on them for a few minutes and then decide to stick with a task for 2 continuous hours.

- put away those sugary foods that wreak havoc on your focus; look up how cancer in obese people looks like and replace their exterior with you; contemplate about how to avoid such a fate

- when you are stuck for multiple days, don't keep sitting on the chair; take a walk to a forest, talk to completely different people to allow your brain stop overloading the same "circuitry"

- force yourself to have 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every single day; experiment by going to sleep before 10pm and waking up around 6am

- build resilience by doing something you hate for an hour a day. It could be sports, it could be talking to/helping some annoying person, taking a 5 minute cold shower, take a morning run for 30 minutes or doing any useful things you hate to do; simply define the lowest point of the day - "it can't be worse than that" and move off to better things

- ignore your past failures, only learn from them. Don't occupy yourself with the past whether it was glorious or awful; you only own the present and shape the future

Re: Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

#179

Post by sosuke »

If you’re still here looking at replies feel free to contact me. And or watch/listen to this video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YSfCdBBqNXY

Wish you'd left some way to contact you.

Now that I'm at a computer I can say more but you're certainly not uncommon and there is lots of help that you can have. Cognitive behavior therapy shows great results in adult adhd/add patients. The video I linked talks about children but you'll likely feel yourself nodding along thinking of you.

Money quote for me was something like the ADHD child has zero self motivation. All motivation comes from the outside world. Which is why kids can play video games for hours because there is instant feedback. But when you finish a problem on your homework nothing happens.

And that there is a extremely poor short short term memory problem.

Tons of stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

#180

Post by moduspol »

Tepix wrote: post #177
moduspol wrote: post #157

I'd recommend talking to your doctor about Adderall. I have the exact same kind of issues focusing and basically have all my life. Sometime in college I talked to my doctor about it and it's single-handedly one of the best decisions I've made. With it, I can multi-task and stay focused on even tedious tasks. I'd say I'm easily 4x as productive, which has helped my career tremendously. Seriously--I don't want to come…

Adderall is an illegal drug in many countries. Be careful.

Interesting.

I'm in the US, and it's just a controlled substance here.

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