Cocaine and hookers.
Ask HN: Emotion hacks? How do you work despite crummy love/life things going on?
11–20 of 82 posts
Re: Ask HN: Emotion hacks? How do you work despite crummy love/life things going on?
#12Slightly tangential, but I had this thought the other day. In our industry, shutting oneself into a room with a computer and being alone with our own thoughts is considered functional and praiseworthy. I think a lot of my most productive colleagues deal with almost everything in life by diving deep down in this mode. Is this really a good thing?
Re: Ask HN: Emotion hacks? How do you work despite crummy love/life things going on?
#13Learn to cope faster. You can't change the past, so there is no reason to dwell on coulda/shoulda. Cut your losses, learn from the experience and move on with your life.
Re: Ask HN: Emotion hacks? How do you work despite crummy love/life things going on?
#14You need to communicate your situation to family/friends, make yourself not feel isolated. Many people feeling anxiety and depression think they're the only ones they know, whereas many people are vulnerable. And when i see people prone to chemical dependencies or extreme behaviors, i urge them to seek counseling. One thing that helps me is multiple 5-15 minute exercise breaks over the day. You can walk up a hill or…
I agree 100%. Ubuntu has a program built into gnome that forces you to take breaks.
Go to Keyboard preferences > Typing Break. I set it to 10 minutes of work / 5 minute break. I can focus more, take short breaks to get things done (eat, brush my teeth, clean), and get more done than I do if I just stare at a screen for an hour straight.
Re: Ask HN: Emotion hacks? How do you work despite crummy love/life things going on?
#15Working hard helps, but if your job is anything like mine (grad student) inevitably work can be quite an emotional/mental challenge in and of itself which may or may not help.
So i tend to turn to exercise, running hard with music is akin to meditation for me, the physical pain forces everything else out of my head. At the end of a good workout i'm buzzed from the endorphins and often i find that i've unconsciously/subconsciously come to some useful realisation.
Personally at least i think my unconscious (if that's a thing) deals with problems far more effectively than my voluntary thought processes. it just needs some peace to get on with it
Re: Ask HN: Emotion hacks? How do you work despite crummy love/life things going on?
#16It really depends on your problem and the situation your in. Sometimes you cant, there are some nagging problems that can not be left and should not be ignored. I guess these things are more along the side of family and health (for me anyway).
You shouldnt start a startup if you have to address family or serious health problems with you or anyone close because they need your full attention.
However for any other problem, girlfriend issues, money problems, loss of friends, yes they are hard but can be overcome with strong will. It depends on your priority, i value family and health over anything else so i can choose to ignore the others if i need to focus.
Im really close to finishing my startup now after about a solid 1 year of un relenting work, curve balls and problems, with day job, with startup and other things personal. During the last year i could probably say that i faced 3 problems that were quite difficult to ignore however they did not directly concern my health and not directly my family (god bless) so i keep going.
There are 24 hours in the day and you just need to tell yourself that after 3 hours of getting angry or wollowing or whatever you do, it gets you no where, but 3 hours of work gets you a step closer to how you see yourself in the future which can also be something you value.
You can even trick yourself into thinking that where you see yourself in the future is a future you without some of the problems you may be having now. The approach i guess is to take a completly robotic and logical approach and kind of dehumanize some aspects that arent that important cause if you let everything get to you then you wont get anything done, not even the basic day to day things.
The side effect of this is if you dont make it (even though you poured everything in) you need to be ready so you get into a state of depression.
Its all about iron will , specially when life throws you curve balls. Good thing is, if you get through it, you will become a much stronger person.
Having said that, take time off once in a while cause even though i take a robotic approach (as sometimes its the only way) im not a robot :)
Re: Ask HN: Emotion hacks? How do you work despite crummy love/life things going on?
#17sleep. exercise. eat healthily. spent time with great friends. most importantly, put time aside to spend dealing with the emotions that come up. don't bottle them up. they will be expressed in destructive ways when you least expect it. see a therapist if necessary; having someone help you get through growth roadblocks is the best money you will ever spend. realize that whatever you're dealing with will eventually pas…
most importantly, put time aside to spend dealing with the emotions that come up. don't bottle them up. they will be expressed in destructive ways when you least expect it.
Does this really happen? If you spend much time with military veterans, you notice that they have way more self-control than the average person, even though they've also been through more than the average person. Is this because the military attracts very emotionally controlled people, or because exercising such control strengthens it?
Re: Ask HN: Emotion hacks? How do you work despite crummy love/life things going on?
#18What a coincidence—I'm going through this right now. The night my boyfriend broke up with me (two days ago) I differentiated equations until 4 a.m. Now I'm working on inductive logic and doing my best to stay off of e-mail and facebook.
I use other outlets such as reading and exercising, but I've found mathematics' abstraction to be the most helpful. Reading books brings up motifs and messages and content that calls certain memories to mind; diving into math allows transcendence.
Re: Ask HN: Emotion hacks? How do you work despite crummy love/life things going on?
#19What a coincidence—I'm going through this right now. The night my boyfriend broke up with me (two days ago) I differentiated equations until 4 a.m. Now I'm working on inductive logic and doing my best to stay off of e-mail and facebook. I use other outlets such as reading and exercising, but I've found mathematics' abstraction to be the most helpful. Reading books brings up motifs and messages and content that calls…
I would give my left nut for a woman who understands half of what you just said. Rebound? ;)
EDIT: (BTW that's also to say some guys just don't know what they've got till they don't. You'll land on your feet, you'll see.)
Re: Ask HN: Emotion hacks? How do you work despite crummy love/life things going on?
#20What a coincidence—I'm going through this right now. The night my boyfriend broke up with me (two days ago) I differentiated equations until 4 a.m. Now I'm working on inductive logic and doing my best to stay off of e-mail and facebook. I use other outlets such as reading and exercising, but I've found mathematics' abstraction to be the most helpful. Reading books brings up motifs and messages and content that calls…
I would give my left nut for a woman who understands half of what you just said. Rebound? ;) EDIT: (BTW that's also to say some guys just don't know what they've got till they don't. You'll land on your feet, you'll see.)
reminder: "hackers" and "gay people" are not disjoint sets, so mentioning a boyfriend doesn't imply femininity (not gay; recently made a public mistake of this nature).