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You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

neilthanedar.com

171–180 of 424 posts

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#171
post #76

I'm burned out because I have to raise two young children, work a full time job in a demanding career, and then in the hour or two a day of time that isn't accounted for in those two tasks, I need to maintain a household and try to care for myself. I feel a strong sense of purpose caring for my family, but don't have enough time to meet life's demands. Maybe other people relate more to this post because they more mon…

I have more money and no kids, I still relate to your comment. I burned out basically because I'm stupid and decided to work a demanding full time job while also remodeling my house by myself. Like all renovation jobs, it ended up being bigger than planned (I actually expected it to grow from us discovering something that had to be done during the renovation, I just never expected the thing we found to be as large as…

Why didn't you just pay someone to take over out of interest?

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#172
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's simpler to just appeal to every entrepreneur's spider sense - go where the great people are. It really does feel a bit like how Silicon Valley and San Francisco felt in 2000s-2010s. Caveat of course, which is even before 2008, aware insiders of SV were trying to warn that the Goodness of the internet was being squeezed too hard, that VC was turning to rent seeking too soon, the cart is way too far ahead…

This is literally my first time hearing this. All the stuff I see from china is about lying flat, giving up because no matter how hard you work it won't make a difference? Is this a Shenzhen attitude?

"lying flat" and unemployment are a thing, but nowhere near as bad as media makes it out to be. My experience is mainly in Shanghai and Hangzhou.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#173
post #140
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to be able to afford a house. Historically, in the US at least, for lower and middle class people that has been within reach. Now that's not the case. If I was in my late 20s and was lighting thousands per month on fire in rent, it'd be pretty darn alienating. Sure, if you zoom out far enough, the standard of living for zoomers is pretty good, there's not a mass casualty event when the potato crop fails. Bu…

They don't want just a house though. They want a house in a "cool" area. Look at median home prices in rust belt cities. Mortgages around $2k a month or so. Very doable for a lot of people but you never hear a drum beat about this. You never hear about people moving to these cities unless they have family there already to remind them that, hey, this is in fact a great deal.

Used to be you could buy a starter home in those cool places. I live in one today with a $1200 mortgage. Good luck buying that now, kids.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#174
post #136
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is factually false :) and if you’re really worried, there are many options available to you to preserve what you will need or consider adoption - there are so many humans being born without a family after all.

I agree with you on a factual basis, but you understand that a large amount of people have a deep emotional instinct to not be ok with those options, right?

Indeed, that’s what I mean by raising awareness. It takes time to change such deeply rooted beliefs. I think if humans are to prosper and resolve planet-wide challenges like global warming, we need to be better at managing resources and we need to work together as a species, not separate counties fending for themselves.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#175

I'm burned out because I have to raise two young children, work a full time job in a demanding career, and then in the hour or two a day of time that isn't accounted for in those two tasks, I need to maintain a household and try to care for myself. I feel a strong sense of purpose caring for my family, but don't have enough time to meet life's demands. Maybe other people relate more to this post because they more mon…

> Maybe other people relate more to this post because they more money and no kids. I have kids, but I don’t think having kids or even a lack of money is necessary to experience the type of burnout you’re describing. While everyone and every situation is different, my personal experience is that having kids led to less burnout for me over time. I expected the opposite after reading comments online, but it turns out th…

This. Focusing on your highest potential is energizing and the rest is what we call burnout. Having kids is what caused me to think so hard about these questions, both for myself and them. I have to justify every minute I'm not with them, and now my life fully represents my values.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#176
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have more money and no kids, I still relate to your comment. I burned out basically because I'm stupid and decided to work a demanding full time job while also remodeling my house by myself. Like all renovation jobs, it ended up being bigger than planned (I actually expected it to grow from us discovering something that had to be done during the renovation, I just never expected the thing we found to be as large as…

I don’t know the circumstances but this sounds very wrong. The moment you find a problem with the foundation, you call professionals. DIY has its value but your story is well beyond DIY.

Not everyone has the means to call in a “professional” and pay the fully loaded price without trying to trim some fat. It sounds to me like they were taking the fat out of the foundation job by mining out a space for the repair. What he’s describing is probably between the mid five figures and the low six figures to get a professional to do. I don’t know many people who could come up with the down payment for a construction loan on that.

I also took on a remodel under similar conditions and I think that the decision they undertook was likely very reasonable at the time. The outcome, in retrospect, would be obvious as well. But sometimes you have to grit your teeth and finish something.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#177
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop looking it country by country. Globally, the trend is that of an increasing population. And fast. Humans are reproducing at unsustainable level.

The number is still rising but the growth rate is plummeting. https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2016/03/ourworldin...

here is a more current graph that predicts the growth rate to become negative in the 2080s:

https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=900&type=Probabilis...

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#178
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop looking it country by country. Globally, the trend is that of an increasing population. And fast. Humans are reproducing at unsustainable level.

The number is still rising but the growth rate is plummeting. https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2016/03/ourworldin...

It’s a trend and it’s slowing down not plummeting. And even if it is, there are already more of us than we know how to sustain.

The problem at hand is not growth rate slowing down, it’s humans divided in tiny pockets of countries burning through what little we have left of natural resources.

People who have kids today, do so knowing that their children will most certainly be displaced by natural disasters.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#179
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't want just a house though. They want a house in a "cool" area. Look at median home prices in rust belt cities. Mortgages around $2k a month or so. Very doable for a lot of people but you never hear a drum beat about this. You never hear about people moving to these cities unless they have family there already to remind them that, hey, this is in fact a great deal.

A yes, the rust belt, where folks are famously living like fat cats.

Detroit used to suck, but it seems like enough millenials took that deal that it’s way better than ten years ago.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#180

Maybe unfair, but I can't read a title with this cadence anymore without assuming it's AI.

Even before AI, I think I've seen it used before in self-help books or therapy type stuff. It has always felt like an intellectually lazy attempt at reframing, painting things as black and white in the form of a thought-terminating cliche. "It's not X, it's Y" discounts X entirely, when usually the relationship between X & Y is more nuanced: "X and also Y", "X because Y", etc.

Also if you do want to use "it's not X, it's Y" as a clincher, you better make sure that Y in fact builds on X in some way (which implies that X and Y actually have to be similar enough to be plausibly associated with each other) and Y isn't just some orthogonal concept.

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