It's weird how we don't want to admit we are overworked. Competition is such a horror show. I really disagree with the whole "procrastination" thing. It's normal to feel depressed, it's part of nature of being tired, our brains are fragile and require a lot of energy and sleep. I bet that I would generally would be much happier working at a moderate pace in a farm rather than using my brain to do some other complex t…
In 2010 I went to prune trees in Australia. Immediately, my depression stopped. Almost as if using the full body made everything better than using only the brain and speaking to a computer all day.
You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance
101–110 of 146 posts
Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
In before the other comments to this effect: - You are weak - Your grandparents had it worse - Think of the people working for minimum wage - Some of us actually love programming so much we will happily sacrifice our health; this choice is morally superior because we say so - I haven't had a vacation in 20 years and neither should you /sarcasm off
I really like society as it is. I, as rare as it is, identify as a neoliberal and I generally am invested in how things are. I like to see people working hard, I work hard myself, and aside from wanting a larger safety net, largely value the idea of a competitive market for labor. Those ideas, I suspect much more prevalent on HN than other sites, lead to defensiveness when antiwork or work-critical ideas are shared.…
That's the problem I have with neoliberals, they want to impose their ideology on the rest of us.
Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance
#103Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1, I've been an on-and-off brush cutter and tree planter for several years. I can fully confirm this: physical work outdoors does wonders to mental health. The interesting part is that I can be really exhausted from a day in the woods, struggling to somehow get to the car, etc -- but after 7-8 hours of decent sleep, all of this is gone! No muscle pains next morning, no nothing. It is incredible how well our body can…
Concur 100%. I've always made sure my work has some physical component. Even if that's just soldering, I need to use my hands and know that something is different tomorrow because I did this work today. The quickest way to crush someone's spirit is to make them feel that their work is for nothing. Making prisoners break rocks in the prison yard, for instance. Or pushing spreadsheets and git commits endlessly, to no t…
Mhm, in physical work, you always see a result -- even if it's a mess or failure. You get direct, no-bullshit feedback every single day. Mental work, in contrast, most typically ends in an abstraction: you work all day long and there is a result, but you can't always see it the way you see a planted tree in the forest.
Yup, I'm a primitive creature, devastatingly tied to the simplest of my senses: seeing, hearing, touching.
Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance
#105I've read sooooooo much of this kind of shiitake, I am sick of it. It is bullshit. Or rather, it's written by people who don't even take into account the biological nature of the brain. Let me check... of course he's a "coach"... If you can't do, teach, I guess. All of this shit will act as a bandaid, a crutch at best. It's like the bullshit "imagine you're wealthy and you will become wealthy". No, that doesn't work.…
So what happened with all these people in the dark ages?
Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance
#106 Internal resistance is an attempt to avoid the pain we associate with successfully doing the thing.
We subconsciously believe that succeeding in doing something — that we’ve presumably never done before — will cause us some “emotional pain”, thus we go to lengths to avoid it? If what we’re attempting is novel, how could we possibly know that? Even if we were to assume that, why would this “pain” override the elation of success?I can understand the argument that people procrastinate because of the fear of failure…but the fear of success? I don’t get it.
Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance
#107It's weird how we don't want to admit we are overworked. Competition is such a horror show. I really disagree with the whole "procrastination" thing. It's normal to feel depressed, it's part of nature of being tired, our brains are fragile and require a lot of energy and sleep. I bet that I would generally would be much happier working at a moderate pace in a farm rather than using my brain to do some other complex t…
Even if I am not writing code, fixing things in the house, personal projects, helping others, just doing something is fun and challenging.
Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
until UBI?
I doubt UBI will make everyone stop working. As far as I understand, the point of UBI is to ensure that people are not homeless, have enough to put food on the table and it covers your absolute basic needs. Lets say we implement UBI at 1K/Month which is what people like Andrew Yang proposed. That is not enough to just sit at home all day. You still need to make money but hopefully with that 1K, you won't be homeless…
Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance
#109You are "lazy" if you don't do something that would benefit you because it's too much effort. That sounds reasonable, right? Except according to this article, you're not lazy, you have "internal resistance." Or in similar articles, you're not lazy if you have depression or ADHD, because it's your mental illness.
But then, who is lazy? Where do we draw the line when someone is depressed vs. merely sad, or ADHD vs. merely inattentive? Moreover, since you can't always tell of someone has a mental illness and you definitely can't see "internal resistance", you technically can't state that anyone is lazy.
Now, I don't want to attack people with mental illnesses. If you have depression or ADHD or burnout or are overwhelmed, you're not a bad person. But you are lazy. Calling it something else is just beating around the bush.
Instead, we as a society need to change how we look at laziness. Just because you're lazy, doesn't mean you should punish yourself, or consider yourself "worse" than someone with more discipline. Don't even try to just "power through" the laziness. None of those things work, and often actually lead to more laziness. Honestly, the author does a good job explaining what you should do. But - if you're lazy, you're lazy, and calling it something else like "internal resistance" is just sugar-coating it.
Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance
#110Maybe it really is actually a bad thing. And by "it" I mean the important thing that you are resisting. It's actually a bad thing. And you have convinced yourself that it's a good thing. But you aren't completely convinced. Deep down you know that it really is a very bad thing. One more step on a march of doom that you have been trying to escape since forever. A special door that, once passed through, your waste and…
> to forget the life that you lost What life would that be?