51–60 of 259 posts
Life is surprising. You have no idea what you will be doing in 5 years, and there is every chance that you will find currently unimaginable happiness. Finding out what form that happiness takes is the adventure. It might be travel, it might be love, it might be proving the Jacobson's conjecture. Find out!
I was quite literally obsessed with programming. I would wake up in the morning, program all day, go to sleep, and repeat it the next day. This earned me many accolades in college and a great job afterward. But, like you, if I paused for a moment to reflect, I felt so incredibly empty and alone. The programming increasingly became an escapist activity to avoid these feelings. Then one day my old high school friend, w…
> if you are a gamer, immediately stop Hard disagree there. Yes, gaming can be addicting, but that is also the case with basically all habits. If you easily get addicted to games, then I would suggest sticking to shorter single-player games. I would add reading (fiction or non-programming books) and traveling to the list of things to spend more time and money on.
On the positive side, it can sometimes provide people with a needed social outlet, at least if it's an online social game.
It can also sometimes stimulate a mind that's depressed and lethargic, giving it a much needed jump-start so to speak which carries over into other productive tasks.
Conversely, it can get you addicted to and dependent on quick and easy dopamine hits, killing your ability to focus for extended durations needed for any kind of productive work. It can also cause mental fatigue that makes committing to or completing non-trivial tasks difficult or impossible.
Gamers have to be aware of both effects, and honest with themselves about which are occurring, and willing to change their behavior if they observe the negative ones.
And I /second reading and traveling as better uses of time and money.
1) Set a realistic goal. Having a purpose helps maintain your focus from drifting into negative thoughts.
2) Exercise. The mind and body are connected. If you’re having trouble changing your mind, try changing your body and diet and sometimes your mind will follow.
3) Speak to a therapist. Many are free or discounted for certain income brackets and can help you work through deeper issues like the ones you’re dealing with.
4) Meditate. Spending silent time with yourself focusing on letting your thoughts come and go might help illuminate what you want out of life or how to get unstuck.
5) Psychedelics. Some organizations like maps.org offer MDMA-assisted therapy that’s shown highly promising results. Other substances like Ketamine, Psilocybin and Ayahuasca when taken in a group or therapeutic setting can help to physically rewire parts of the brain or illuminate subconscious thoughts and patterns.
6) Try authentic relating. There are lots of groups and events that teach how to relate to yourself and others in a way that creates deeper connections. If you’re feeling isolated or disconnected it gives you a procedure for fixing that.
Life is not meant to be devoid of suffering or challenges. I hope you can find a way to move through the tough times with greater ease. And thank you for writing this post, you are not alone in these feelings. You get one life and I hope you’re able to have all the experiences you desire. There’s a huge world out there that you haven’t explored that almost certainly will have some impact on your view on life and the quality of your experience. Thank you again for putting enough value in this community to seek out our collective opinions.
Step 2. Hire someone (preferably a young girl who also uses tinder) to take pictures of you and give you fashion advice. I ended up hiring an actual fashion school graduate :)
Step 3. Make your job fully remote and travel (easy for programmers like us). Learn a new language.
Do these and youre in top 5 percentile easily. Good luck!
The Dotcom bubble exploded and there weren't any jobs. I still had a year of university to complete and felt burnt out.
I had a bit of money aside, and bought a plane ticket to Europe. I knew nothing of the world. Backpacked 3 months, stayed in youth hostels, for lost a lot, learning as I went. Completely changed my life.
In 2010, after a brutal separation, went six weeks in the middle East. Hitchhiked in Syria (pre-war), slept in the desert. Came back home, quit my job, went freelance, and got into new adventures.
Moral of the story, I guess, is that we are lucky to have skills very much in demand. Take risks, go have fun, there will be work when you get back and you'll land on your feet.
Alternatively, of you don't like gyms, try an indoor rock climbing class. Lots of geeks, but also lots of other people, and no pressure to perform or look good.
When you're depressed, never trust your own brain's assessment of your situation. It always shows you a selectively bleaker picture than the actual reality. It's never as bad or as bleak as your brain is making it seem to you. It's a weird effect because your brain should be doing the opposite, trying to heal you by showing you a selectively happier picture than the actual reality. When your body gets sick, your immu…
I think so. When things are really bad, getting even a little worse can be utterly catastrophic; making your problems loom larger when you're in a mess is probably an adaptive heuristic that forces people in bad but recoverable situations to behave very conservatively and maximize survival odds; however, in the extreme (e.g., chronic loneliness), that heuristic winds up compounding the problem by inhibiting the only kind of behavior that can rescue the situation, and yet the heuristic survives because it's adaptive in less extreme circumstances.
Beware the psychology of edge cases.
I turned my loser life around at 27. I actually had spent years trying to optimize it, seeking success and happiness, but I was stuck. What was the big move? Little did I know it back then, but the solution has many parallels with non-convex optimization: I got the heck out of the local minimum I was stuck in life - moved continents, changed careers, changed the people in my life, changed the culture around me. Concr…
If you found yourself at a house party and you found a particular room annoying, depressing, boring, etc, you'd go find a different room. Change the scenery.
Trying something new like moving to a new city or country is certainly an option. But another surprisingly low effort way to achieve something similar is to pick up a new hobby, start working out and eating right, etc.
I personally found myself in a terrible rutt in my mid twenties. I couldn't imagine a future where things were better.
I decided to get into shape, which gave me a huge boost in confidence and outlook. I decided to read some books on topics I was always curious about and realized how little I knew about the world around me. I really tried to broaden my perspective and at the same time, develop an idea for who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do with life.
But it all starts with deciding to make that change.
There's so much out there, and OP's current situation is an infinitely small slice of what life has to offer.